Last night’s broadcast of the National, the CBC’s flagship national newsprogram, was devoted entirely to the Toronto Raptors winning the NBA basketball program.

The whole damn program.

There are so many things wrong with this. Why devote so much time to a sports story? It’s “news” only in the sense of being an attention-grabbing headline. And the thing is, the CBC’s sports coverage isn’t that good in the first place (and it wasn’t at all good in this instance), so who would be coming to the National to watch it?

I wish I could support the CBC more. I get the sense that they’re trying. I like the hosts of the National, and think they held on to Peter Mansbridge far too long. But they just seem to be flailing now. And they really have to do something about the number of local human interest stories that they’re regularly running on this program. These don’t belong on a national news broadcast.

I know these are tough times in the news business, but I don’t see how any of this is helping. Five minutes on the Raptors would have been plenty, even on a slow news day. It looks like we’re into a death spiral now.