Paul, any day's news broadcast will include stories 'just as gripping, timely and unforseen' as the stories you give as examples to make your point.
As for Joe Biden's age - or Don Trump's for that matter - that is irrelevant. What really matters is competence. That is what you should be judging those candidates on. No, let me change that. Not judging, but rather, assessing. Assessing competence or incompetence, rather than innocence or guilt. (Yes there are situations which call for an evaluation of culpability, but this is about ageism.)
Moving on: No one should expect a newscast called "The World Tonight" to always lead with a Canadian story.
I don't get a CBC TV signal, but I do get the local CTV station unless the weather's really bad. (That's my biggest media-related concern, but my gripe is with the CRTC, not the CBC. I used to get four local channels, which provided me with more diversity in news coverage, entertainment, diversion and mesmerization than I personally need or want. But I digress.) So I'm unfamiliar with Peter and Susan's banter, but I'm sure it can't be much different than the stream of babbling and occasional cackling that are a feature of CTV's "Your Morning" broadcast, which I occasionally watch, waiting for a few snippets of news or the first installment of a weather report to interrupt the fun. But that 'fun' is what the average viewer is there for.
You make the point (obliquely) that CBC finances are mismanaged (although "continues to lose 125 million dollars a year" is an exaggeration and a misrepresentation - until now it only happened in 2023). I won't disagree that better fiscal management is required, but that's not the same as eliminating the CBC completely.
"I mean, is it really Canadian if it’s not some cheap knock-off of US culture?"
This question deserves a lengthy response all by itself, but I'll try to be fairly brief.
French as an official language is not a 'knock off' of U.S. culture, but, obviously, of French culture.
Canadians are, on average, much less obsessed with firearms than our American neighbours, and religious and multicultural tolerance in Canada are certainly not knock-offs of American culture (though Bubba has an increasing and disturbing influence up here, most notably in Alberta).
Reach For The Top is not a cheap knock-off of U.S. culture, but a Canadian game show. Sure, game shows, and television itself, first appeared in the U.S., but that doesn't mean anything. The show is not a cheap knock-off but an imaginative, original, Canadian implementation of the concept of game shows.
Insulin was a Canadian discovery. Now Big Pharma in the U.S. is producing 'cheap' knock-offs.
Margaret Atwood, Leonard Cohen, the Group of Seven and Farley Mowat are just four random examples of of thousands of Canadian cultural icons that are not knock-offs of U.S. or any other culture.
I guess my point regarding culture is, whether you appreciate diversity or see only sameness is entirely up to you.
Paul, any day's news