It’s over, at least for now. And it seems it’s all because of ice hockey.
The media coverage was largely sympathetic to the locked-out employees, and towards the end of the dispute, worried Liberal government MPs, inundated by complaints from the public, applied very public political pressure on the management to end the dispute. In the end, the management backed down from its strongest demands. In the new deal, it appears to have won few concessions from the union.
But it was more commercial than political pressure that led to the sudden end of the dispute.
It is the start of the new National Hockey League season and the TV broadcasts are a huge source of commercial revenue for the broadcaster.
This has at least led to a debate as to whether CBC television, which unlike its radio counterpart carries advertising, should be so commercially driven.