And it will take years to complete, because cleaning, restoration, and transfer of analog to digital media takes on average about 11 hours for each hour of programming--11.3 hours actually, according to L'INA. Given the CBC's current programming inventory, they're looking at 30 years of work by one technician to complete just one component. By the time that's done, of course, the format will be close to four decades old. It will be obsolete, and well past time for starting to transfer it again.
The CBC Museum, which was referenced by you previously this morning, is a very modest facility. It was launched as a broadcast centre in 1994 and eventually given an annual budget that ranged from $50,000 to, last year, $148,000. However, the museum staff, who work only part-time, have both—that's right, there are only two of them—received termination notices effective the end of May of this year. So very shortly there will be no one charged with safeguarding the thousands of artifacts in the museum's care.
Furthermore, as of that date, as you know, the CBC's costumes, props, and set collections will also have been disposed of or dispersed to interested third parties. Working with staff in the costume department at the broadcast centre here in Toronto, the foundation has been able to identify a very limited number of special costumes, related to iconic programs, that represent the work of major designers. For the moment, we'll be taking these into our own collection so that they can be preserved and integrated eventually into a national broadcast collection for Canada.