LAST FALL, AROUND THE TIME of the CBC’s 75th anniversary, Edmonton MP Brent Rathgeber suggested the broadcaster become more commercially self-reliant. It couldn’t fulfill its mandate if “few people are watching and listening,” in his estimation.
In January, OpenMedia.ca and Leadnow.ca, two citizen engagement groups, launched a campaign to re-imagine the CBC by crowd-sourcing ideas using an online discussion forum. Then, recently, The Toronto Star launched The Network, a site devoted to what’s wrong with the CBC and how to fix it.
The CBC, however, is already “fixing” what it believes needs to be upgraded already via its five-year plan, “2015: Everyone, Every Way.” A more accurate title is probably “Rock. CBC. Hard Place.” It sums up the everlasting problem the Crown Corporation faces, its kicker of a mandate to provide programming that informs, enlightens and entertains all of Canada, beleaguered by a constantly threatened, much-resented-by-some, budget.
When CBC launched its plan in February of last year, it acknowledged it can’t be all things to all people but hoped to “be something for, and mean something to, every Canadian. Whether it’s connecting them to this country, to their communities, or to each other as individuals with their own realities and interests.”
(Ed note: And remember the thesis of our examination of the CBC, that the new media, multimedia age we live in finally allows our national public broadcaster to meet its mandate in ways it never could. We think its five-year plan is a good start. Not everyone agrees.)
“We can only exist if we receive public support and, to do that, we have to continually prove that we are relevant in people’s lives,” said Louis Lalande, executive vice-president of CBC/Radio-Canada French services, to Cartt.ca INVESTIGATES.
“CBC/Radio-Canada is the only national conventional television broadcaster in the country not owned by a cable or satellite company, even though in Quebec, for the French-speaking market, V is still owned independently and Télé-Québec is owned by the provincial government,” he says. “Most of the media content in Canada is now controlled by four companies who have a massive influence on our broadcasting system and dominant market power. This underlines the importance of a strong, independent public broadcaster in Canada and a regulatory environment that ensures a level playing field and fosters diversity in the media offer available to Canadians over the long term.”
Adding even more Canadian content, original, innovative, entertaining homegrown stories; adding more digital services; increasing its regional presence with expanded regional programming, new local stations, web sites and delivery models (such as its new Hamilton digital station) are integral to the framework—a decision that may allow it to meet its obligations.
It’s the kind of thinking the CBC ought to use, says former CTV president and CEO Ivan Fecan. “But you shouldn't lose sight of the truth that consistent first class storytelling, whether documentary, drama or satire, costs money and requires accomplished artistry… The CBC ought to be as different as possible from commercial television. It certainly worked for CBC Radio. The proliferation of viewing choices should actually free the CBC to rethink how this new environment might allow it to better meet its mandate. And for all I know, they are doing just that.”
CANADIAN CONTENT
According to the most recent reports filed with the CRTC, the CBC’s English TV division spent about $409 million on Canadian content in 2011. Leading private broadcaster CTV, for example, spent less than half of that, mostly on news. CBC’s French TV arm spent about $300 million.
Despite that spending leadership. last November, MP Rathgeber still wrote in his blog “it becomes a live question as to how much of our national identity would disappear if the CBC did.”
Almost in defiance of that quote, the CBC has posted stellar results of late. Yesterday it announced final numbers for the new television drama Arctic Air. From its premiere January 10 to the finale on March 13, it averaged an audience of 965,000, the largest to follow the first season of a CBC television drama series in 15 years, edging out North of 60.
“We had the best new drama debut in 20 years,” says Kirstine Stewart, executive vice-president, CBC English services. “We have the most number of shows that have debuted over a million, and they’ve stayed there. We’ve just had a banner season with the most shows to ever beat all American line-ups in their time slots. It’s been a very good season.”
But several critics argue it’s trying to be a more Canadian CTV, with popular content that doesn’t really reflect Canada, and that’s not good enough. Blindly pursuing ratings and focusing energy on a rich program versus poor program dichotomy is the wrong strategy.
“I know what they’re doing,” says Richard Nielsen, president of Norflicks Productions, an independent Canadian television production company. They’re trying to get numbers to show Parliament. But they’re not thinking of their audience. What public broadcasting is about is not simply to get a program noticed by the maximum number of individuals. The thing that makes television unique and so powerful is that we’re all indulging in the thing at the same time. The purpose of the public broadcaster is to create a congregation — people who turn to it for a particular thing. That’s true of any station.”
Programs will do that, Nielsen says. Technology just provides access. “It’s like if you own a concert hall and not enough people are coming, and you say well, maybe if we had a concert hall on every corner, and they didn’t have to walk so far or drive so far, maybe then they would come.”
REVENUE STREAMS
Over the course of 2011, CBC announced a number of specifics of its five-year plan, among them either new or enhanced television, radio and online services for more than a dozen cities and towns (besides Hamilton), such as Kamloops, Edmonton, London, the Maritimes, and Montreal.
Hamilton’s a go, but the progress of other services may be delayed to manage cash flow if the rumored 10% cut in its $1.1-billion budget by the federal government (to be announced officially on Thursday) becomes reality.
“It’s going to slow down the plan, to be quite frank,” says Stewart. “We’ll have to make some choices. The essence of the plan and the directives behind it about being Canadian first, local, digital, are still going to be the three pillars of any kind of business plan that we’ll structure going forward. But, where we had one time planned for different kinds of local presence, we’ll see if the Hamilton model’s going to be how we, in fact, have a presence in the local communities. That could be more economical. We will need to cut around those priorities.”
As we've analyzed, the CBC was written into the Broadcasting Act. Its budget is a hash of two-thirds public, taxpayer dollars, and one-third private, ad-fueled revenue. The bickering about how to tweak that recipe is always ongoing.
“Rather than compelling every taxpayer to pay $69 towards the CBC, viewers could contribute whatever amount they like voluntarily and get a tax receipt for so doing,” Rathgeber wrote (Ed note: His math is wrong. It’s about $33). “This certainly works well south of the border for its Public Broadcaster (PBS), which continues to produce great documentaries, while promoting American culture.” On-air fundraising drives, though? That’s enough reason to tune out.
The PBS formula wouldn’t work, anyway, says Stewart. PBS would be the equivalent of one of our cable channels, while CBC runs Canadian content throughout its schedule, including prime time.
“You think of the size of America and the budget of PBS and think of what they do. They don’t have local news. They don’t have national programming except for that which they buy from Britain. They make very little programming. They have huge endowments. They get 15 percent from the government, the rest is endowments—that means a huge number of very wealthy American families who leave their estates to PBS. We don’t have that same kind of structure here in Canada. The telethons that PBS has, that’s not where the bulk of their money comes from. The money comes from the endowments.”
Another suggestion considers a public-private partnership, giving a consortium of private broadcasters $1 billion to run the CBC at arm’s length (sort of like what the cable companies do with CPAC) with all its assets, and asking them to produce specified programming that doesn’t duplicate what the privates already do.
The CBC is oft-compared to the British Broadcasting Corporation, but it is an unfair parallel. The BBC is funded by an annual £146 colour-TV license fee British television watchers pay it directly, whether they watch on their computers, phones or other devices. It works out to roughly six times more than Canadians pay for the CBC.
Right now our national pubcaster relies heavily on ad revenue. “The effect of that, of course, is to make it indistinguishable from the other networks,” says Nielsen. “I’ve got nothing against advertising fueling programs, as long as you don’t want serious programs.”
Wade Rowland, a professor in the faculty of communication and culture at York University in Toronto and author of several books including Spirit of the Web and Greed Inc., Why Corporations Rule Our World and How We Let it Happen, agrees. “I don’t consider CBC television a public broadcaster, really. Radio is. I hope it will stay that way. But television is this kind of hopeless hybrid that is doomed. I think the sooner it becomes a true public broadcaster, the sooner we can hope that there may be some salvation for it. But right now, it’s irrelevant.”
That doesn’t mean he thinks its doesn’t have a place. “Between Medicare and CBC, I think CBC may be the more important in the long run as a public institution rather than privatized. But, in a nutshell, commercial sponsorship inevitably corrupts media content. I think you can say it as flatly as that.”
The CBC will find out the definitive word on its parliamentary appropriation in Thursday’s federal budget. Watch for Cartt.ca’s coverage of that important angle. What do you think of the Corp.’s five-year-plan? Let us know at editorial@cartt.ca.
Next week in our investigation of the CBC, we analyze what nearly everyone says the Corp. does just right: Radio.
