What would happen if taxpayers gave the History Channel a billion dollars a year? Or MuchMusic? Or The Food Network?

Sound preposterous?

Well, that's roughly the subsidy CBC gets handed every year by the Canadian government. The payoff? Stale programming, inept scheduling and plummeting ratings. The CBC is now officially a billion-dollar-a-year specialty network.

This was launch week for Canada's public network, culminating in tomorrow night's two-hour debut of The Greatest Canadian (8 p.m.). The week was packed with season premieres and specials, featuring new series such as Ciao Bella and old favourites such as Da Vinci's Inquest.

The strategy to launch them all at once, roughly a month after the big American rollout, is further proof that the CBC brass: a) really doesn't care about ratings; or b) really doesn't know television.

The problem for viewers is they are already hooked on episode four of Desperate Housewives or CSI: NY. The problem for TV critics is they can't drop everything to cover this sudden CBC flood. What are you going to cover, Da Vinci or Bella or Suzuki or Gross?

The result: Ciao Bella, a cute little comedy thrown away Wednesdays at 7 p.m., gets sampled by 286,000 viewers. Nationally. More people live in Brampton. Way more.

Last Sunday's Venture drew 178,000 viewers. That's not a typo.

Da Vinci is still a draw on a new night at 720,000. Whew.

Programming decisions at CBC seem to be made in a total vacuum, with no regard to the clock or the calendar.

Last weekend's big CBC Thanksgiving treat? A warm and fuzzy Hallmark or Disney movie? No, Sex Traffic -- a grim, explicit, disturbing exploration of international prostitution. It found 458,000 and 500,000 viewers last Sunday and Monday. Pass the turkey.

Old standbys such as The Royal Canadian Air Farce and This Hour Has 22 Minutes? Don't ask. Ratings are way down. The National, once Canada's newscast? It's life and death to out-perform Coronation Street at 7:30. Sad.

It gets worse. Much worse.

Tonight at 7 p.m. should be the season debut of Hockey Night In Canada, CBC's last Top-20 show, anchoring the only night of the week CBC outdraws CTV and Global.

Instead, CBC is showing movies (Disney's Dinosaur, Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Jaws are tonight's triple bill). So if you haven't seen those movies 10 times already, aren't locked into TVO's Saturday Night At The Movies, don't subscribe to The Movie Network, or live miles from the nearest Blockbuster, woo-hoo.

TSN, by the way, is doing the sensible thing, showcasing a series of classic hockey tilts. CBC has an even more "now" solution at their fingertips: A hockey reality series. What do they do? Air it Tuesday nights. And they call it Making The Cut (lunch meat? hairstyles?) instead of Hockey Star or anything with the word "hockey" in the title. Result: Cut inched up to 615,000 viewers Tuesday night (where it got trounced by another Canadian series, CTV's Corner Gas).

Hey, the TV business is a ruthless game. Ask the three top executives at Global, canned last week as that network falls further behind Canada's dominant broadcaster, CTV. Global's Doug Hoover was known as the "golden retriever" in the '90s, sniffing out a decade of American hits such as Friends, Frasier and The X-Files. Now he's ex-Global.

A team of American TV executives has been hired to try to turn Global around. That won't -- and should never -- happen at CBC. But a change in programming leadership? Long overdue.

Having said that, it must be conceded that Slawko Klymkiw, CBC's programming head, has the toughest job in Canadian television. He starts with no American hits, and therefore nothing to build an audience around. Imagine CTV with no Law & Orders, CSIs or American Idols.

He's also on a political hot seat, answering to levels of bureaucracy that would make Alfonso Gagliano blush.

Still, you can't be in the business of television without being in the business of television. If you are pouring tax dollars into programs, you owe it to taxpayers to at least try to stay competitive. Klymkiw has had nearly a decade to figure it out.

That is a lifetime in television.

The TV revolution is raging and a billion dollars should afford bold steps. Ordering only one episode of promising new shows from Colin Mochrie and Mary Walsh, as CBC has done this year -- and then hoping they open big -- is not the way to get there.

Even if viewers happen to stumble on them once, there's no build. You can't have success if you don't have a plan to succeed.

Celebrating Greatest Canadians might be a start. After decades of eating our own, Canadians seem ready to wave the flag and salute our stars. Go Terry Fox.

But what CBC really needs to answer is this: Who is the next great Canadian programmer?