whither the cbc? · a northern service broadcasting in english, french and eight aboriginal...

Whither the CBC? The Future of Public Broadcasting in Canada A Discussion Paper

June 2006

PUBLIC POLICY FORUM WHITHER THE CBC?

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A NOTE FROM THE PRESIDENT

In 2005, the Public Policy Forum took its first step in what we hoped would become an ongoing examination of Canadian media and their connections to government and issues of public policy. In the span of a year we invited several distinguished speakers to discuss how journalists, politicians and public policy makers interact. We also published a report that took a hard look at the state of political journalism in Canada. In this report, we have gone from the general to the specific. Rather than examine journalism from a distance, we have put one particular media organization under the microscope. It is of course the most talked about such organization in this country: the CBC. I hope you find the report not only makes a case for change at the public broadcaster but underlines roles both government and CBC management can play in recreating the organization for the future. Jodi White President Public Policy Forum ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bill Neville is Senior Advisor to the President of the Public Policy Forum and a highly-regarded public policy strategist and observer. Mr. Neville was a member of the CBC board of directors from 1986 to 1994. He is a former chief of staff to Prime Minister Joe Clark. He participated in the writing of the 1968 Broadcasting Act and also worked as Parliamentary Bureau Chief for United Press International.

WHITHER THE CBC? PUBLIC POLICY FORUM

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THE PUBLIC POLICY FORUM

Striving for Excellence in Government

The Public Policy Forum is an independent, not-for-profit organization aimed at improving the quality of government in Canada through better dialogue between the public, private and voluntary sectors. The Forum's members, drawn from business, federal and provincial governments, the voluntary sector and organized labour, share a belief that an efficient and effective public service is important in ensuring Canada’s competitiveness abroad and quality of life at home. Established in 1987, the Forum has gained a reputation as a trusted, neutral facilitator, capable of bringing together a wide range of stakeholders in productive dialogue. Its research program provides a neutral base to inform collective decision making. By promoting more information sharing and greater links between governments and other sectors, the Forum helps ensure public policy in this country is dynamic, coordinated and responsive to future challenges and opportunities. Public Policy Forum Forum des politiques publiques 1405-130 Albert Street Ottawa, ON KIP 5G4 Tel.: (613) 238-7160 Fax: (613)238-7990 www.ppforum.ca


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WHITHER THE CBC? THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC BROADCASTING IN CANADA

A DISCUSSION PAPER

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is one of the country’s signature institutions. Founded in the 1930s to ensure a strong Canadian voice among a growing wave of North American radio signals, the CBC played a similar role 30 years later with the advent of television. Today the Corporation has evolved into one of the world’s more comprehensive broadcasting services, including:

� Two national television networks – CBC Television and Radio-Canada – broadcast over-the-air, on cable and by satellite with 23 regional stations and 17 privately owned affiliated stations.

� Four National radio services – CBC Radio One and Two in English and La Premiere Chaine and Espace musique in French – with 82 regional stations coast-to-coast.

� Two cable news services – CBC Newsworld and le Réseau de l’Information (RDI) – providing 24/7 news and information programming

� A Northern Service broadcasting in English, French and eight aboriginal languages.

� Radio-Canada International broadcasting in nine languages. � CBC.ca and radio-canada.ca, providing both radio and TV content on the

Internet. � A variety of other services, including specialty TV channels such as Country

Canada and the Documentary Channel, Galaxie, a 45 channel digital audio pay service, an interest in Sirius Satellite Radio sending six Canadian radio signals throughout North America, and Radio 3 and Bandeapart FM.

Some of these services are unique to public broadcasting. No private for-profit broadcaster is likely to replicate the Northern Service or RCI. Nor would they provide comparable service to French and English speaking minorities across the country. Others clearly have found a distinctive role within the Canadian media. The radio services, all non-commercial with one in each language offering balanced and intelligent information programming and the other providing the best of classical music and Canadian music talent, have established loyal and growing audiences. The Internet sites average 2 millions visitors a month. Surveys show that nine out of 10 Canadians use at least one CBC service monthly and 95 percent of Canadians say they regard CBC services as essential. By any reasonable yardstick, the CBC is delivering value for money. The Corporation’s total annual budget to deliver its myriad of services is about $1.5 billion – roughly two thirds of it from Parliamentary appropriations and the rest from advertising revenue and other sources. That works out to about $30 per Canadian. By contrast, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has an annual budget of $7.3 billion (financed largely


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by an annual license fee on British TV and radio receiver owners) or $122 per person. The U.S. public broadcaster, PBS, has a budget of $1.6 billion to provide a single-language TV service. So why the continuing debate about the CBC? The answer is television – and English-language TV in particular. While Radio-Canada suffers from some of the same challenges, especially its reliance on advertising revenue, there is no question its support base among its French-language viewers is more solid than CBC-TV’s is in English Canada. Radio-Canada’s audience share, for example, is more than three times that of the English network. That reflects, in part, the fact that Radio-Canada has fewer French-language competitors vying for its audience. But that is not the whole story, In part, Radio-Canada is succeeding because, especially with its recent transformation and its historic ownership of the “téléromans” genre, its programming is simply more attractive. Programs such as Les Bougon, Tout le monde en parle and Francoeur, have won audiences – and critical acclaim unmatched in comparative terms by CBC-TV. The issues facing CBC Television are fundamental and go to the very heart of what public service broadcasting is or should be about. This paper examines some of those questions and the choices facing the federal government and Parliament and the Corporation. The Issues

1. Mandate versus Resources – A Basic Disconnect

The CBC’s mandate, set forth in the 1991 Broadcasting Act, is, to put it mildly, very broad. The Act states that:

“…the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as the national public broadcaster, should provide radio and television services incorporating a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens and entertains; …the programming provided by the Corporation should: i. be predominantly and distinctively Canadian, ii. reflect Canada and its regions to national and

regional audiences, while serving the special needs of those regions,

iii. actively contribute to the flow and exchange of cultural expression,

iv. be in English and in French, reflecting the different needs and circumstances of each


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official language community, including the particular needs and circumstances of English and French linguistic minorities,

v. strive to be of equivalent quality in English and French,

vi. contribute to shared national consciousness and identity,

vii. be made available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and efficient means and as resources become available for the purpose, and

viii. reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada.”

Historically, the Corporation’s mandate, in practical terms, was boiled down to the “two C’s” – coverage, ie., get a signal to as many Canadians as possible as quickly as technology and resources allow; and content, ie., provide a general “something for everyone” programming service. Technology has long erased the coverage issue. With the advent of, first, cable TV and latterly, satellite services, the CBC signal can be delivered to virtually every household in the country. Indeed, with the imminent widespread introduction of digital TV, a good case can be made for doing away with the corporation’s current terrestrial transmission system, thus avoiding the cost of converting it to digital high definition TV. The content mandate remains, although it is hardly the same question it was a few decades ago when CBC-TV was the only game in town in terms of available service or one of the few signals Canadians could receive. We now live in the multi-channel (not to mention, multi-media) universe and with digital there will be as many channels available as communications entrepreneurs can dream up uses for. While general interest networks remain at the centre of the North American TV system, their dominance is long gone, their audiences are steadily eroding, and more and more questions are being raised whether their historic role as bundlers and schedulers of programs can survive the emerging “watch what you want when you want” technology. With the exception of removing foreign (i.e. U.S.) programming from its primetime schedule, CBC-TV appears to have been very reluctant to challenge its “all things to all people” attitude of the 1960’s and ‘70’s. It insists on competing in every program category (it recently hired someone to chase the latest fad genre, reality programming) and to regard audience shares, especially vis-à-vis rival CTV, as the benchmark that really matters. Its audience share continues to decline, a trend the response to which tends to be “If we only had more money to do what we are doing a bit better.” And yet there has not been more money for decades now – and there is no sign that that fact of life is about to change. In real dollar terms, CBC’s current Parliamentary appropriation is actually $300 million less than it was 20 years ago. Successive Liberal


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and Conservative governments have subjected the Corporation to substantial budgets cuts in 1984, 1990 and 1995 and no federal political party has indicated a willingness to go to the wall on behalf of the institution’s funding. The result, absent a change in mandate, has been to push the CBC ever more toward commercial revenue, compounding its directional problems. It is time the government and Parliament – and it is their job, not the CBC’s – faced up to this mismatch of mandate and resources. If there is no political will to significantly increase CBC funding, then it is incumbent upon our elected representatives to reshape the mandate to realistically reflect available resources. As well as addressing the current financial disconnect, such an exercise would be invaluable, if not essential, in redefining what we mean by “public broadcasting”, especially on TV, in the 21st century. Canadian policy-makers might begin by reviewing the process the British government recently completed to review the BBC’s mandate. That process, which involved two years of consultation and discussion, culminated in March with publication of “A public service for all: the BBC in the digital age.” While the adequacy of BBC funding was not a central issue, its role within the overall broadcasting system was. To wit: “The BBC’s content should offer something distinct from other broadcasters. That does not mean that it should only provide types of programming that others do not. Instead, where it does provide genres already available in the market, its content should stand out clearly as the BBC’s.” The paper spelled out criteria for judging the distinctiveness of BBC programming and established a Public Value Test “to help meet concerns about ratings chasing by the Corporations” The British paper spelled out six new purposes for the BBC, including, “sustaining citizenship and civil society,” promoting education and learning, and “stimulating creativity and cultural excellence.” “No other broadcaster will be required to focus all of its efforts on achieving a similar framework of public purposes – and that in itself is sufficient to set the BBC apart from the rest.” Public broadcasting can be defined in terms of the programming elements that set it apart from private commercial operations. For example, most attempts to define public broadcasting and to differentiate it from others start with news and public affairs as a programming cornerstone. Public broadcasters are expected not only to do more news and currents affairs, but to do it better in terms of accuracy, balance and depth – to be the standard-setter for the broadcasting system as a whole. Historically, from Matthew Halton to David Halton, CBC News has been the standard-


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setter for Canadian broadcast journalism. CBC Radio remains that today. While its coverage of world affairs continues to excel, CBC Television’s overall dominance is less clear. More Canadians, in fact, watch CTV News than The National, although that may be the result of factors other than quality per se. One can argue that CBC Television news is in need of renewal. It has not had much priority compared to drama and sports, in recent budgeting. There has hardly been a new news or public affairs program launched on the main network in the past 20 years. The CBC remains one of the few major networks, public or private, that does not have a weekly national affairs review in its TV schedule. If there is to be renewal, it might do well to address two basic policy issues. The first is the underlying philosophy of CBC TV news. Television news programs on many networks have been undergoing gradual transformation, giving less emphasis to “hard” or serious news and more to lighter items involving health, lifestyle and celebrity. Yet, there remains a significant number of viewers with a serious interest in national and international affairs and a desire to watch comprehensive coverage and analysis of them. It is not “elitist” to suggest that those Canadians should rightfully look to their public broadcaster for that kind of journalism. There is also a need to clarify the role of and relationship between the CBC’s main networks and its cable news channels. Inevitably, a large part of the Corporation’s news resources are taken up feeding the insatiable appetite of its 24/7 operations. It also may be convenient at times, especially if ratings and ad revenues are the driving forces, to consign top-flight documentaries to the cable channels. But Newsworld and RDI, whose audiences generally are a fraction of those of CBC-TV and Radio-Canada, are not a substitute for the Corporation’s broader obligations as a public broadcaster to emphasize news and public affairs. Hopefully, the recent appointment of Mark Starowicz to head CBC-TV’s documentary division is a step toward meeting those obligations. A second priority in defining public service broadcasting might be called “national experience sharing,” that is the production of programs that bring Canadians of all walks and regions together around their common heritage and values. When one speaks, as many do, of a CBC that is “unapologetically and enthusiastically Canadian,” the reference is in no small part to this element of the public broadcaster’s mandate. This is an area where the CBC is often at its very best. From the ambitious Canadian history series to live events like the Olympics and the Normandy Anniversary ceremonies to docudramas like the Halifax explosion and the Pierre Trudeau and the Tommy Douglas biographies, the CBC frequently has played, as former CBC Chair Carole Taylor has put it, “a critical role in helping Canadians identify with each other from one region of this large country to another.” Private broadcasters, pushed by the CRTC, have been doing more of this kind of programming of late, but commercial considerations, especially their desire to find non-


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Canadian secondary markets for such programs, often limit their efforts. The CBC, for its part, needs to find ways to get more replays out of its programming in this area, a task too often complicated by arrangements with independent producers and unions that sometimes make the rights to second and third broadcasts prohibitively expensive. Another key role for a public broadcaster is, as the BBC paper put it, to “stimulate creativity and cultural excellence.” This can cover a wide area of programming from comedy and the performing arts to drama specials and series. It is an area where the CBC has had some success (e.g. in comedy programming with the likes of Royal Canadian Air Farce and Rick Mercer), but where, by its own admission, it also has been struggling, especially with Canadian drama. The challenge here is a daunting one, for it brings CBC-TV squarely into competition for viewers with the major U.S. imported programs that make up the bulk of the private networks’ prime time schedule. It is no accident that as many as 19 of the top 20 programs on Canadian TV in terms of audience size are U.S. imports. With their large home audiences and budgets, American programmers are good at producing mass entertainment, be it drama like CSI and Desperate Housewives or “reality” shows like Survivor and the “Idol” series. The fact that Canadian networks can buy the domestic rights to these programs for a fraction of their real cost and then cream off added revenue through commercial substitution in the U.S. signals just makes the equation that much more difficult. CBC President Robert Rabinovitch, in a recent speech to the Empire Club of Toronto, identified Canadian drama—“shows that are not only produced in Canada, but made for Canadians and reflecting our unique sensibility” as the Corporation’s number one programming priority:

“What we need is a critical mass of Canadian drama. It is not enough to make one or two good shows; we need to rehabilitate the entire genre.”

Rabinovitch went on, as do all CBC Presidents when they spell out ambitious plans for the Corporation, to ask for more and stable funding to do the job. In the meantime, management at CBC TV has been restructured and repopulated with the over-riding goal of producing drama and other entertainment programming that can draw large audiences – and even more advertising revenue. It is interesting that the CBC is struggling with this whole area at a time when Canada is undergoing a cultural explosion in terms of regional and national theatre and performing arts groups. So far at least there seems to be little connection. As one experienced observer put it, “you can hear that talent explosion on CBC radio, but you can’t see it on television.” Yet it is questionable whether, fiscal reality being what it is, CBC-TV can effectively go it alone in achieving its goal of drama and entertainment programs that attract at least one million viewers – and perhaps two million if they are to show an actual return on


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investment. One wonders whether an alternative strategy might be to seek, first and foremost, to form a working alliance with the existing successful cultural institutions across the country. In fact, the CBC could become their television partners in bringing productions now limited to live stage performances to the much larger audiences available through TV. Not since the days of Donald Campbell and “Opening Night” (which drew smallish, but highly appreciative audiences) has the CBC engaged in such partnerships. Enlarging the role of an internal unit specializing in the technical challenges of transforming live stage performances into TV productions might be a starting point. No discussion of CBC’s public broadcasting mandate would be complete without reference to at least two other areas of programming. One is the current priority given to professional sports (principally NHL hockey and CFL football) which makes the CBC unique among public broadcasters. Only an elitist would say that sports, even professional sports, have no place on a public broadcaster. Who can top the Olympics or the 1972 Canada Russia hockey series as examples of “national experience sharing?” The issue surely is one of degree. Hockey Night in Canada is a venerable Canadian institution, one which millions of Canadians have shared around their radios and TV sets. But does “Hockey Months in Canada,” the annual spring playoff ritual during which the entire programming schedule is disrupted almost nightly from April to June, not carry the idea a bit far? The reasons the CBC does it are quite straightforward: the hockey telecasts produce large audiences and advertising revenues (some 50 per cent of CBC ad revenues are derived from NHL hockey), two goals eagerly sought by current management. The other issue is the thorny question of the CBC’s mandate to serve the regions of Canada. Unfortunately much of this debate has constantly been narrowed down to the questions of local suppertime newscasts in cities with CBC stations. In all but a couple of these communities (principally St. John’s and Prince Edward Island), the CBC’s suppertime newscasts are a pale shadow of those produced by the private stations. (For most private stations local news is the one area of substantial investment.) The CBC’s weak showing in local news has brought commensurate marginal audiences. Every time the Corporation has faced significant budgetary pressures, it has fiddled with cost-saving changes to these programs, usually with results that angered everyone involved. Perhaps it is time to take a fresh – and honest – look at what “serving the regions” might mean for the CBC. First, one might note that the CBC already is well-established as the community broadcaster. It happens to be just that on radio. Second, rather than beat its collective brains out trying to compete with the private newscasts on TV, perhaps the Corporation could look at different approaches to regional broadcasting. In information programming, a series of regional public affairs programs, modelled perhaps on TV Ontario’s highly-touted Studio 2, would be a useful contribution, especially if the best of


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these regional items could be fed into national distribution. As for arts and entertainment, providing a TV stage for regional drama and music groups, as suggested above, also would be, in the words of the Broadcasting Act, “reflecting (Canada’s) regions to national and regional audiences while serving the special needs of those regions” 2) Ratings and Commercial Policy – Elephants in the Room

Television programs are made to be watched. To be deemed successful, a given program requires a significant audience, as measured by its ratings, which record the percentage of viewers who choose that program over others available in the same time period. The issue is one of degree. For private, for-profit broadcasters, ratings are everything. As far as advertisers are concerned, television is a mass medium and their dollars go where the numbers are (subject increasingly to demographic considerations). For private broadcasters, it is commercially important to be “number one” versus their competitors in the local market. For public broadcasters, the issue is – or is supposed to be – a bit more complex. Attracting advertising is not the be all and end all of public broadcasting. Nor is competing with their private sector rivals. Public broadcasters march to a public service mandate which gives priority to purposes or objectives other than sheer audience size. They must attract worthwhile audiences to justify their budgets – and their existence – and to avoid allegations of “elitism”. But they are not in the business of, as the BBC paper puts it, “ratings chasing”. Indeed some suggest that network reach, that is the percent of the population that uses the service some of the time during a given period, is a more important indicator for these networks. (CBC-TV regularly records reach numbers in the 85-90 percent range.) There is considerable evidence that ratings - and competing with the privates, especially CTV – are a major pre-occupation within the Corporation. Indeed, one ex-CBC manager commented that “the whole place is ratings driven”. News managers fret over whether The National outdraws CTV News. The new drama strategy is unapologetically ratings-driven. Critically successful dramas such as This Is Wonderland and Da Vinci’s City Hall were dropped partly because their declining audiences in the 500,000 viewer range were deemed insufficient. Several factors seem to be behind this over-emphasis on sheer audience size. Some of these are historical; the CBC was number one in the early days of TV and the internal culture appears to have difficulty in accepting the loss of statistical stature inevitable in the ever more fragmented TV world of the 21st century. But if there is one over-riding reason, it must be the Corporation’s unique (for an English-language public broadcaster) reliance on commercial revenue to fund its television operations. At least one-third of CBC-TV’s and Radio-Canada’s operating budgets depend on ad revenues. For the current fiscal year, CBC-TV plans to spend $527 million and raise $212 million from advertising. For Radio-Canada the numbers are $341 million and


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$110 million. The result is to make the raising of commercial revenue these networks’ number one priority. The equation is simple: raise the necessary ad revenue or the entire budgeting structure collapses. Corporation executives, past and present, readily admit the dilemma. Robert Rabinovitch, in his Empire Club speech, declared:

“How can you call yourself a public broadcaster when over 50 percent of your budget comes from competing with the private sector? The reality is that CBC Television is only partly a public broadcaster.”

One former executive described CBC-TV as “forever trying to keep two balls in the air – its programming mandate and its need for commercial revenue” and concluded, based on his experience, that “it just can’t be done.” Another spoke of “the tyranny of advertising” and how it “corrupts” the CBC. Despite comments like these, it is striking how many knowledgeable persons with a genuine commitment to public broadcasting are prepared to live with the ongoing need for substantial amounts of commercial revenue. Former CBC President Tony Manera, while welcoming some reduced emphasis on commercial revenue, has written that there are “far better uses” for $300 million than employing it to eliminate commercials from CBC Television. Lise Lareau, President of the Canadian Media Guild, one of the CBC’s major unions, has said:

“You argue whether the CBC made a poor decision moving into the advertising game the way it did. Unfortunately, it makes it less distinctive to Canadians so it is sometimes harder for them to know what they are standing up for. But television is a very expensive medium and, if it can’t be funded properly and as it should be, through public sources, you need advertising revenue.”

Yet, if CBC Television is to be a “public service broadcaster,” in any real sense of the term, different and distinctive from its private counterparts, it would seem essential to bell these twin cats of ratings and advertising. Clearly it is impossible to eliminate or even substantially reduce $300 million of ad revenue in a single swoop without causing programming chaos. But one can envisage a three to five-year program of staged reductions which might involve:

• Eliminating commercials from all CBC-TV and Radio-Canada news and public affairs programs.

• Limiting commercials in remaining programming to natural breaks between programs at the hour or half – hour.

• Eliminating local advertising, long a sore point with private broadcasters.

That would leave commercials largely centered in professional sports, especially NHL


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Hockey, which currently account for at least 50 percent of the Corporation’s ad revenue. The rights to major sports events often come with sponsors attached to them and the nature of sports events is such that commercials can be inserted into their coverage without undue disruption for the viewer. The issue here perhaps is more related to the CBC’s ongoing involvement in this whole-area, particularly its ability – and its mandate – to outbid private networks for these TV rights. (CBC-TV’s hockey contract runs until 2008; it lost the rights to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics to CTV, but already has declared its intent to seek future Games rights.) On the hockey side, one might suggest that, if the Corporation is to continue to be a Hockey Night in Canada broadcaster, into the future – and a good case can be made for this national experience-sharing – it could make future rights bids in partnership with a network such as TSN which could help avoid total schedule disruption at playoff time. Reducing advertising revenues by limiting them to sports and perhaps some messages between programs obviously would impact on CBC-TV and Radio-Canada and reduce those budgets by $100-150 million a year. Would the government and Parliament acknowledge that this reduction was being made in the name of better defined public broadcasting and provide an offsetting increase in public funding over the transition period? If not, is there a new deal to be struck with cable operators? And is it time to consider a Public Broadcasting Foundation to which the CBC’s supporters could contribute, thus providing not only a new funding source, but also a national lobby group for the Corporation, something it now lacks? A move to significantly reduce commercial revenues also would bring to a head a long-standing CBC-TV anomaly: its reliance on 17 privately owned affiliates to deliver CBC service to their communities. In the early days of television, this arrangement was a matter of mutual convenience – the CBC wanted to extend service as quickly and economically as possible, and the private operators needed a network affiliation to fill their program schedules. The arrangement has long since ceased to make sense. With the advent of cable and satellite transmission, the CBC does not need private affiliates to reach its audience. Their continued existence merely stands as a constant impediment to acting like a public broadcaster. The private affiliates are commercial operators and their lobby is consistently to do whatever makes financial sense for them. If they are to be dis-affiliated, these stations also require a reasonable transition period to allow them to form new relationships with other networks or independents. A three to five year transition to reduce CBC-TV’s commercial revenues should fit their situation as well. The Choice

It would appear that, inside the CBC and out, there is a growing debate – some have called it a “culture war” – between two distinct visions of public broadcasting, especially as it applies to television. This debate is occurring as the very medium itself is being transformed by emerging technologies and changing consumer preferences. We now live in what some have called a “three-screen” world where similar content is being transmitted via television, the internet and a variety of hand-held devices. Within


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television itself, the profusion of so-called “specialty” channels, catering to narrower consumer interests, continues to fragment audiences and further reduce the traditional dominance of the major networks. As Winnipeg-based consultant Ken Goldstein has put it, we are approaching a “tipping point” in how media operate. In this milieu, content becomes evermore expensive on a per-play basis. As feature film producers have done by moving their product from in-theatre release to DVDs, pay TV and even Internet streaming, the makers of TV programs are going to have to seek multiple plays for their output on their own networks, (if they have them), on specialty channels, and on the other two “screens” the Internet and hand-held devices. They are going to have to grapple as well with a different breed of consumer, one who uses available technology to download programs for viewing at his/her convenience (often minus the commercials) and many of whom seek or respond to an inter-active element available to them. To its credit, the CBC is trying to adjust to the changes just described. It is introducing new services and taking a holistic approach to its work, seeking to integrate radio, television and Internet news offerings. It is worth noting, too, that for 15 years now Canada’s TV industry has raised more revenue from subscriptions (primarily cable fees) than from advertising and the long-term trend is toward even more direct payment. This at least raises the question, posed recently by a number of private broadcasters, whether cable should be paying fees for the general interest channels in the same way they pay – and charge the consumer – for the specialty channels. That issue could be important to a CBC which decided, for public broadcasting reasons, to reduce or eliminate its dependence on ad revenue. In this unsettled environment, what is a Canadian public broadcaster to do? One course, apparently favoured by most of CBC-TV’s current management, is, in effect, to beat the private broadcasters at their own game. To be unapologetically ratings driven with a special emphasis on producing Canadian drama, which, while not exactly made in-Canada U.S. drama, competes for audiences (and even ad revenue) with the American exports on CTV, Global, etc. It is a strategy that says, in effect, if a drama or entertainment program cannot draw a million or more viewers, it doesn’t make the grade. It is a strategy to stay at least as active as now in professional sports and to be ready to take on others in a rights bidding war if that is what it takes. It bows toward the importance of news and public affairs, but its priorities – and resources – lie elsewhere. The other option seeks to give fresh definition to the concept of “public broadcasting” especially on television. Its proponents argue that this is why CBC Radio succeeds. Not because it is commercial free per se, but because commercialism does not cloud its public service mandate. And because radio has found a niche in a crowded market (admittedly easier to do on radio than TV), it has won a growing and loyal audience. This option calls for a better defined mandate from Parliament and at least a gradual reduction in commercial revenue.


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In days past, its critics could dismiss the CBC by complaining that it was “fat” and poorly administered. Cut out the waste, they said, and the Corporation really did not have a problem. Those days are long over. Given the budget cuts of the past 20 years and the efforts of recent management, the CBC is now an efficiently run corporation. Mr. Rabinovitch recently was able to report onetime savings of $102 million and ongoing efficiencies of $65 million during his term as president. The issue now is squarely about content - the CBC’s mandate or vision. What does the term “public broadcaster” really mean in the 21st century? The first response rests with the federal government and Parliament.


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Author’s Note

While the views expressed in the paper are entirely those of the author, he wishes to acknowledge with thanks the input of more that a dozen knowledgeable individuals who provided their insights on a not-for-attribution basis. The author also wishes to acknowledge the research assistance provided by Ross Neville of Pinnacle Policy Research, Toronto.

whither the cbc? · a northern service broadcasting in english, french and eight aboriginal...

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