Most Canadians think they know how to run the CBC better than its current management: ditch Jeopardy, ditch Rick Mercer, ditch ads, ditch NHL hockey, ditch the $1-billion federal grant. However, many of the popular criticisms and suggestions lack realistic context. As the CBC prepares for a 75-day countdown to its 75th birthday on Nov. 2, here are four much-discussed strategies for the CBC, showing what is possible and what isn’t.
Can we privatize the CBC?
No; we might as well close it.
The call for privatization pops up all over the place; recently, the CBC raised the issue itself, publishing a consultant’s report showing that it has a $3.7-billion economic impact every year, while a privatized version without the parliamentary grant would produce only $1.1-billion in economic activity.
Yet it is hard to understand what is really meant by a privatized CBC. There is no business model for the CBC’s radio services, which are wholly non-commercial, and only a weak one for CBC’s television schedules, which raise between 40 and 50 per cent of their budgets from advertising, leaving public subsidy to cover much of the rest. A privatized broadcaster might be expected to abandon its public-service mandate and its original content in favour of cheaper U.S. imports. That would leave it to compete with CTV, Global and CITY-TV in an era where network television is increasingly unprofitable. Is there really any need or any room in Canada for a fourth player scrabbling over American hits it can simulcast?
“I participated as a lawyer in the privatization of Air Canada,” recalls CBC president Hubert Lacroix, who has also taught mergers and acquisitions at the Université de Montréal’s law school
Why can’t the CBC be more like PBS?
The flip side of the privatized CBC is a completely non-commercial CBC. Some critics of subsidy suggest the CBC should vacate any area that a commercial broadcaster could be counted on to cover (NHL games, for example or local newscasts in large cities) and leave the ad revenue to the privates, while critics of populist CBC programming also want it to rely less on ads. While CBC’s radio services have a distinctive non-commercial voice, TV is a lot more expensive to produce: Any plan that scrapped ads altogether without increasing the government grant would greatly reduce the CBC’s programming reach.
This skinny version of the broadcaster is sometimes referred to as PBS North – either as a slur on a more limited public broadcaster or as a vision of high-minded programming. Many Canadians appreciate the American public broadcaster, whether for its programs, the small amount it costs the American taxpayer or both, and wonder why the CBC can’t copy that model.
The truth is the markets are so different it is hard to make comparisons. PBS mainly fills in the few blanks in the most successful commercial television market in the world, offering an alternative national newscast, children’s programming and many documentaries, but it produces no local news and its scripted shows are either foreign imports or occasionally co-productions set in Europe. Apparently the only kind of drama the American marketplace can’t produce is British drama.
PBS also depends on corporate and philanthropic donations that would not be available on the same scale in Canada, and on viewers’ contributions, which can leave a public broadcaster programming only for its pledge group. The PBS North model is one that would definitely produce much less Canadian programming and would risk creating a CBC that was irrelevant to all but a tiny minority of Canadians.
Why can’t the CBC be more like the BBC?
Part of the problem with status quo at the CBC is that it is trying to be the BBC – on one-fifth of the budget.
