How should we remake the CBC? Cultural minds weigh in

DAN MANGAN, Juno-winning musician, based in Vancouver

If I had a magic CBC button, I’d focus on allowing CBC television to execute its mandate as a public resource, rather than trying to compete with private broadcasters at a game they’re better and more hawkish at.

I’d put a nominal tax on all new televisions sold in the country and eliminate advertising on CBC television. I’d cull television to one channel – a 24 hour resource dedicated to news, sports, documentaries, children’s programming, comedy, mini-series and specialty programming.

I’d stop trying to compete with big-budget American dramas by producing crappier, lower-budget versions of them. I’d take funding saved from the new television platform and give much of it to radio. I’d make sure that every remote community in Canada had access to radio, and that their local programming was relevant to their community. The CBC would be even more daring, weird, funny, intelligent and articulate. I’d move further away from old-school terrestrial broadcasting and incorporate forward thinking online resources into both television and radio.

In short, I’d like to see CBC thrive as a unique access point between all Canadians. It shouldn’t need to compete with private broadcasters because it should be playing a different game.

GEORGE JAMIESON Former CBC programmer/producer

When I started working at the CBC the place was rich enough for this: Producers and managers would suggest programs that didn’t fit existing molds. Bosses would say “we’re not sure, but we like the idea, the imagination, the energy. Here’s a budget, give it a try.” Together, they reinvented the CBC of the 1950s and 1960s. They created what we call “the radio revolution.” They brought television into the world of multi-channels, colour, and cable. They made a CBC that nobody had seen or heard before. They were bold, because they could afford to be.

These days I hope the CBC is poor enough to do the same. Try new programs, measure them by imagination and energy, not by whether they fit a mold. Make a CBC that hasn’t been seen or heard before. Be bold, because you can’t afford not to be.

Some qualities of the CBC I worked in have been ground down recently. It would cost little to restore them, and it would pay big dividends.

For example, rebuild what has been denigrated as “unit culture.” The people who’ve tried to kill this think programs should not have individual identities and loyalties; instead they should be parts of a service, swapped in and out as required. They don’t notice that Coaches Corner is the alpha and omega of unit culture. So is The National. So were the George Stroumboulupoulos programs. So is any program involving Kevin O’Leary or Michael Enright. It’s a good quality. Give it oxygen.

Also, embrace what industrial psychologists call “creative disobedience.” Creative people sometimes have an excess of this. Let them say “shit” now and then, or piss off somebody with a title, or tell a boss to get out of the way. If they’re smart programmers, the CBC will be better for that. If you don’t believe me, check out the work of Allan McFee and Peter Gzowski.

Stop telling programmers what they can’t do, and ask them what they can do. Then help them do it. The German poet Friedrich Hölderlin wrote a line, generally translated as, “where there is danger, that which will save us also grows.” Makes sense to me.

RICHARD STURSBERG Former head of English-language services at the CBC, 2004-2010

There are a number of principles that should guide the CBC’s future.

1. CBC should offer – to the maximum extent possible – only Canadian programming.

2. The corporation should focus on making popular shows. It is financed by the taxes of all Canadians and should serve as many of them as it can.

3. CBC should not duplicate the work of the private sector. There is no point spending public money on things that are already being well done without it.

The application of these principles leads to some broad conclusions about programming strategy.

1. The Corporation should abandon local television newscasts. The private networks do this very well and the CBC is typically third in the markets it serves. The CBC should focus instead on national and international news to let Canadians better understand their place in the world.

2. The Corporation should focus it’s prime-time strategy on the creation of popular, distinctively Canadian dramas, comedies, documentaries and reality shows. The private networks cannot do this because their deep prime-time schedules are inevitably dedicated to U.S. shows.

3. The CBC should be out of sports completely. The private networks do sports very well.

4.The CBC should reflect French Canada to English Canada and English Canada to French Canada, so that both linguistic communities can better understand each other. The CBC is the only broadcaster – public or private – able to do this.

A CBC that looked like this would provide an enormously valuable service that is unavailable from the private sector.

MARK DAMAZER, Master St Peter's College, Oxford (and former BBC executive)

The great tradition of public service broadcasting in Canada is just about clinging on – and now minus its ice puck. Public service broadcasting is a great and noble ideal about the value of information, education and entertainment for citizens, not for consumers. Of course we are all also consumers too – but at its best public service broadcasting plays to our aspirations and curiosity and asks its audiences to sample points of view and modes of expression – in every field – that may not entirely accord with our prejudices, or with received wisdom. Fight for that.

I do not know enough about how best the programming should be orchestrated to convince the public that the CBC should not be whittled out of existence – that it is part of a valuable Canadian identity and that its abolition would be a serious loss to many millions of people. But perhaps, despite the job cuts, getting hold of young talent – and ensuring that the main networked news programs are better, more rounded, deeper than anything provided by the commercial sector – is a tactic. Others will know better.

JUDY MADDREN, Radio announcer

It’s about acknowledging and celebrating our Canadian-ness. It’s about valuing our country’s story and our own individual stories. It’s about Canada’s place in the wider world. But it is not about competing for viewers, listeners and readers.

Working in CBC Radio News and now as an audio biographer, I know that we learn from stories, and we change behaviour when we hear stories that move us or shock us, or entertain us.

I also know the CBC makes us a community. No matter where you go in Canada, you are in the neighbourhood, connected during the day by the same CBC radio programs, web pages, and to a degree, by television. If you are in Squamish, B.C. you can tune in to the same programs as the folks in Antigonish, N.S. We all become part of the Canadian story.

Our neighbours to the south in the United States don’t have that.

So my list for a re-imagined CBC would include funding for a strong news gathering team, an emphasis on radio nationally and in our communities (radio is relatively cheap), and if there is some room in the budget, a Canadian-told and crafted array of visual news and stories on television. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation should be reflecting Canadians to Canadians.

As the saying goes, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” The CBC should be helping to tell all Canadians what we’ve got.

PETER KLEIN, Director of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of British Columbia, U.S. current affairs TV producer and documentary filmmaker

Imagine for a moment that Canada has no national broadcaster, and the government has decided to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to build a network for the 21st Century and beyond. What an exciting prospect, but where to start?

First and foremost we’ll need some great journalists – reporters who are hungry for important stories, and can tell those stories well through a variety of mediums – so they should know how to report, capture video and audio, present, write and engage thoughtfully with the audience.

Let’s blanket the country with these 21st-century reporters, so they can develop local sources and find those hidden stories that mainstream news organizations are missing. Let’s package their stories by theme, location and other relevant organizing principles and present them through the medium of choice for the audience of the future – the Internet.

There will likely be good audio in many of these reports, so why not pull together some programs that can be broadcast through traditional radio waves for Canadians stuck in rush hour traffic? And “talk radio” is so popular on commercial broadcasts – what if we did a smarter version of talk radio, with cutting-edge, creative hosts. (I hear that guy from Moxy Früvous is a great interviewer – let’s check him out.)

There’s surely going to be some compelling video too, so let’s find ways of delivering video packages through streaming mobile apps and TV. And perhaps most importantly, let’s be careful not to replicate what everyone else is doing. This is public money, after all, so let’s spend it in the most efficient way possible.