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news

Daddy Warbucks vs. The Mother Corp

By Hamutal Dotan

20090226cbc.jpg
Photo by andyscamera from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.


The CBC doesn’t always get it right. In the last few months alone we’ve mocked it for losing an iconic hockey anthem, been exasperated by its new primetime television show, and condemned its poor taste in music venues. Still and all, we’re pretty sure that the CBC is essential to keeping Canada, well, Canadian, and we’d very much like for the federal government to stop kicking it around quite so much.


20090226mercer.jpg
Photo by BruceK from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

Due to plummeting advertising revenues the CBC was forced to ask the government for some bridge money earlier this week, in the form of an advance against future revenues or appropriations; the loan would be paid back when economic conditions improve. The Tories quickly shot them down, leaving the CBC with no choice but to consider significant staff and programming cutbacks. There’s no word yet on what form these reductions might take, but Vice-President of English Services Richard Stursberg has said, ominously, that “everything’s on the table.” (One estimate put potential job losses in the range of six to seven hundred.) All this is coming on the heels of last year’s major slap in the face: in June 2008 the federal government rejected the report of its own Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, which recommended a substantial increase in funding so that the CBC could properly fulfill its mandate. Completely ignoring the committee’s finding that the organization was chronically underfunded, the feds simply told the CBC to “make the best use of its existing resources.”
The problem, essentially, is that successive federal governments going back as far as the late 1980s have been pulling a bait and switch in their positioning of the CBC. The CBC is a Crown corporation, established by the government to meet public policy needs. It operates in the public realm for the public good, and its purpose is to achieve cultural (not financial) goals. As outlined in the Broadcasting Act, the CBC provides “a public service essential to the maintenance and enhancement of national identity and cultural sovereignty.” Recent federal governments, ignoring this apparently inconvenient fact, have been treating the CBC as though it were any other company seeking their aid: an enterprise judged in the first place by the state of its books and only secondarily (if at all) according to how well it satisfies its stipulated mandate. The distortion of the CBC’s identity has only gotten more glaring under Harper, whose spokesperson said yesterday: “Nobody likes to see this, but broadcasters have to adapt to lower ad revenues. No one broadcaster is immune from that.”
This is missing the boat on a grand scale. The CBC is supposed to be immune precisely from that—from the vagaries of the marketplace that leave private broadcasters vulnerable in economic downturns. That is much of the point of deeming it essential in the first place. The Tories are playing dumb, acting astonished that they’ve been petitioned for a loan at a time when everyone needs to make do with less. But just like healthcare services or border control or the myriad of other public goods that government undertakes to provide even when times are tough, the CBC needs to be able to keep doing its job. With other media operations retrenching at every turn, tough times are perhaps when it is most important that it do so. How else will Mr. Harper know what Rankin Inlet residents think of his tax cuts?

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  • http://null PickleToes

    I don’t care what happens to the CBC, they’re just the left’s partisan mouthpiece anyway.

  • http://undefined Svend

    Correct, Coronation Street has become far too socialist.

  • http://undefined PickleToes

    Ha! There are exceptions of course, like Coronation Street and the Simpsons, but it’s no coincidence that these aren’t produced by the CBC.

  • http://undefined Andrew

    I have this fantasy in which the government takes CBC Newsworld and transforms it into a world-class international news network, similar to BBC World, with enough funding to attract excellent television journalists and to dispense with advertising.
    Aside from having a global reach, Fantasy Newsworld would use its proximity to Washington to develop the world’s best Washington bureau, and would be one of the the go-to networks for coverage of American politics.
    Fantasy Newsworld would then use its resources to break into the US cable market, acting as a more intellectual and centrist counterbalance to the existing US-native Washington and international coverage. Fantasy Newsworld would be loved by the American educated elites, who would be getting their reporting through a Canadian lens, as well as the occasional mention if issues important to our country.
    Whatever the cost of Fantasy Newsworld, you could spend twice as much on lobbying and not achieve that kind of influence.

  • http://null ajc

    Whether CBC is too left or not is immaterial here. Canadian media is on the ropes big time. Global’s is $0.42 a share, CTV is slashing. If a presently under-funded CBC is forced to contract further, then aren’t we just hastening Americanization? If a minority government falls, and no one is there to report it . . .

  • http://thebitterguy.livejournal.com Justin M

    Yes, featuring well known left wing mouthpiece Don Cherry.

  • http://undefined rek

    Funding Canadian culture increases competition with American companies, and Harper will not stand for that. If you want jobs you can work for Lowe’s or Walmart.

  • http://null Vincent Clement

    You haven’t heard of the Internet? If ‘old’ media embraced the Internet instead of fighting it, things would be much different today.
    I don’t need a government funded agency to promote Canadian culture. How does Hockey Night in Canada promote Canadian culture? Interesting how the CBC does not suggest selling of HNIC? Nah, that would make too much sense.

  • http://null Robsonian

    The CBC IS fundamental to our national identity. It is also the only consistently reliable source of quality radio broadcasting in the country. Sure its made in Canada TV programming is hit and miss (mostly miss), but with a bigger budget and the freedom to agressively pursue its mandate to ‘enhancing national identity and cultural sovereignty’, I am certain that it would be able to produce one or two decent, long running, essentially Canadian TV shows one day. In the meantime, it is the National news broadcaster, and a robust source of quality journalism.
    Sure it trends left; no corporation is devoid of institutional memory, and the Mothercorp’s corporate culture is what it is. I don’t believe that any real and disruptive bias gets into their coverage; at least not to the extent that their funding should be cut, after all, as this article points out, the CBC has been consistently underfunded since the 80s, so there’s plenty of blame to go around.
    If I end up listening to a radio ad for a car dealership on 99.1 I will cry. And I will vote the government responsible out on ITS EAR!

  • http://www.publicbroadcasting.ca Justin Beach

    I wrote about this just a few days ago
    http://www.publicbroadcasting.ca/2009/02/cbcs-funding-must-be-increased.html
    and then I created this
    http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=53334563398&ref=ts
    I don’t support everything the CBC does but I certainly support the CBC in principle, and letting it whither and die will not make the CBC or Canada better.

  • http://undefined PickleToes

    The CBC IS fundamental to our national identity
    No, but it is important to Liberal and NDP support.

  • http://undefined x_the_x

    “but with a bigger budget and the freedom to agressively pursue its mandate to ‘enhancing national identity and cultural sovereignty’, I am certain that it would be able to produce one or two decent, long running, essentially Canadian TV shows one day”
    The CBC as a whole (TV, radio, french language services) gets about $1B a year. How much does it cost to product one or two decent Canadian TV shows? And how does it justify the cost?
    I greatly value the CBC, but I’d pare it down to news services (incl. documentaries) and radio. We need to break the perception that good drama, television, cultural programming are right below the surface if only more money was thrown at them.
    While I am here, who wrote this piece? Did some 50 year old cultural elitist from the Annex join Torontoist staff? The authors dodge: that CBC should be judged by cultural goal achievement, not financial (as if they were strangers never to meet) obfuscates that the CBC is not a success on either metric.
    Moreover, the public policy analysis is unidimensional and, frankly, dim. You mention potential job losses, as if the CBC’s mandate was not as cultural institution, but as government make-work program. You also compare its utility to health care (keeping you alive) and border services (protecting Canadian sovereignty) without mentioning that the CBC is in competition with those institutions for dollars. As with all public policy decisions, its about which service is most vital.

  • http://null McKingford

    This also gives us some insight into how insincere the Conservatives (and their hopelessly feckless Liberal enablers) are about the budget stimulus.
    There is near universal consensus among economists that only government can provide the necessary spending stimulus to jumpstart the economy. Harper didn’t really seem to want to do this, until forced by the prospect of the coalition. His January budget purports to spend a lot of money on stimulus, which, if they follow through on, may lead to more hiring, and thus, more spending by Canadians. From an economic perspective (for the purposes of stimulus), it doesn’t matter what you spend the money on – as long as it creates jobs.
    Except this: what are the best jobs to create? Well, the *most* important thing is to preserve the jobs we currently have. Here’s a perfect example – the CBC is now faced with cutting hundreds of jobs. How does this help the economy? Well, it doesn’t help, it rather hurts. But the Conservatives are so partisan in their hatred of anything CBC that they’d rather see it fail, even at substantial cost to the economy (an economy that they claim they’ll inject an additional $30B this year to prop up).
    Pathetic.
    And equally pathetic are the Liberal who allowed this to happen by backing Harper when just about everyone knew this is exactly the kind of stunt Harper would pull.

  • http://undefined spacejack

    Nothing would improve the quality of CBC more than slashing its budget to a fraction of its current $1 billion/yr. (That’s an approximate guess… all told I think it’s closer to around $1.3 billion if the stats I looked up a few years ago still apply.)
    The main problem with the CBC TV is that ever since it went partly commercial to augment its revenue (back in the 70s?) the entire place has gradually shifted more and more toward being just another commercial network. They bid on the same shows as any other network and load them up with ads. It’s become a Frankenstein monster, trying (and usually failing) to make money from its commercial ventures, while continually attempting to justifying its massive funding with vaguer and vaguer platitudes. Like zombie banks and corporations that continue to exist on government bailouts.
    There is no fundamental understanding within CBC culture that they have been entrusted with public funds to provide content that benefits the population – to provide programming that the private sector can’t or won’t do. Instead they try to be more “like CTV” or “like Global” or even “like FOX.”
    A few years ago there was a huge push to do “reality TV” – just because everyone else was doing it and that’s the kind of TV management types enjoyed watching.
    When CBC actually does find a show that’s actually any good, if it’s not pulling in ratings right away, they drop it. There’s barely anything left to distinguish them from any other commercial network.
    Within the industry, it’s known as the place where media burnouts go to retire and get a nice pension, and where youthful creative types go to become jaded burnouts as management treats them like their personal play-things and as stepping-stones to climb the management ladder. Hence its nickname “The Corpse”.
    The attitude within management is to distance itself from doing “boring” intellectual content, and continually trying to catch up to what was “hip” 5 years ago (something that public-sector lifers simply aren’t capable of.) And every time, they find useful idiots in the media to play it up like this time CBC is “with it” and “hip”, for realz!
    The place has no real mandate. It has no direction, other than being stuck in a perpetual 4-5 year “rebirth” cycle, which is just an excuse for management to ditch the last cycle’s contract workers (you know, the people who actually make stuff and have the least job security) and to dumb-down its programming yet again.
    Radio’s pretty good, and their web is sometimes okay. But those media are cheap compared to TV (or at least the expensive kind of commercial TV CBC keeps trying and failing to do right.)
    The absolute last thing this network needs is another editorial bemoaning the state of CBC’s funding. The scare is usally something like “without the CBC Canada won’t be Canada anymore!!” Except that with only about 2% of TV viewers… that claim just doesn’t add up.
    Why does TVO, on a shoestring budget, continually provide more purposeful, higher-quality content? Because they’re 100% non-commercial, have a more specific mandate and don’t have a budget so large they don’t know what to do with it. The Agenda alone is worth more than the sum total of CBC television.
    CBC needs to get back to its core value – non-commercial news, in-depth analysis and interviews. Documentaries. Showcasing Canadian film & TV that can’t get played elsewhere. Serve rural and remote communities better, as opposed to trying to appease a spoiled, media-overloaded Toronto population. Provide quality, Canadian programming, ratings be damned.
    Cutting its budget and ditching commercials is the only way to get there. Otherwise it will continue to be “that other commercial network no-one watches but has great job security and benefits for administrative staff.”
    Any politician who understands this and would take steps to make the needed changes would be burned at the stake by a well-meaning, but very misguided and uninformed press. Public sector unions would go ballistic, completely oblivious to the concept of serving the public interest, not just their own. Yet they’ll be the first ones in line to wave that flag with faux patriotic vigour.
    The fate of this country and the CBC are completely independent of one another.

  • http://undefined x_the_x

    I think you might want to run that argument by a few real economists, rather than the hypothetical ones you cite in your post.
    Good stimulus is the precise, careful and measured application of government dollars to elicit the greatest impact, which depends on where it is spent, who receives it, where it is spent again, and so on. Your argument relies on the assumption that government dollars are best spent continuing to fund $80,000 a year jobs in Toronto, without a shred of evidence. It is laughably inept.

  • http://undefined x_the_x

    Careful rek, you are starting to sound like a parody of yourself.

  • http://www.publicbroadcasting.ca Justin Beach

    There’s a poll today on the Globe and Mail site asking people to vote
    whether or not the Feds should provide more funding to the CBC.
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

  • http://null typezed

    Pity the advertising salesperson at the CBC. What a difficult life it must be working in a building where everyone reflexively sneers at mention of what he does. We could give George Clooney the job and all his co-workers would see when the look at him is Herb Tarlek.
    Have you ever watched a late-night movie on the CBC? Every ten minutes they interrupt the movie to show commercials, and what are we shown? That same promo for Being Erica, Little Mosque on the Prairie or The Nature of Things that we saw ten minutes ago. I’m certain there’s some accounting fiction that declares that all this self-promotion is revenue, but if they’re not going to dirty their souls bringing actual money into their building then please quit interrupting the flow of the movie. Maybe, you think, the CBC is an upscale media outlet that charges premium rates that those companies which advertise on Global or Showcase or CBC or MuchMusic can’t afford, but what do you see when they actually squeeze a paying customer in between screaming Erica once again heading for a head-on collision? An infomercial for a home-improvement club or that guy from Concrete Equities fruitlessly trying to convince anyone in the present economy that it’s a super idea to invest in commercial properties, shopping malls and vacation resorts.
    It looks to me like they’ve either locked the sales department in the basement beside the custodial department (where the night janitor negotiated a volume discount with her cousin over at Concrete Equities) or that advertising salespeople at the CBC don’t work on commission.
    For their higher profile presentations, the CBC seems to compete with all the festivals and cultural organizations for sponsorship from the banks, even though the torch carrier in the bowler hat may somewhat resemble an advertisement.

  • http://null kstop

    CBC has the most popular news and media site in the country. It does cross-platform shows, has a myriad of podcasts, has Internet-only radio stations, and puts as much online as it has rights and resources to do. If there were revenue to be made in online-media-that-isn’t-porn, it would be making it. As it is it’s contributing significantly to online CanCon, something the CRTC is looking to start promoting (bass-ackwardly, but that’s another comment).
    Ad revenues are the canary in the coalmine for the recession, which is why old media is suffering right now. If it wasn’t for the fall-off in that, this would be just another year of fraught budget negotiations leading to no extra money. Unfortunately this year that isn’t going to be compatible with maintaining all the services that the organization now offers, so expect to see stuff being cut, online stuff especially.

  • http://undefined spacejack

    That’s the CBC for you – cutting its most useful services instead of dead wood.

  • http://undefined kstop

    It’s more a case of cutting the stuff that nobody will pay for. The strictest mid-C20 interpretation of the mandate is to run a TV station and some radio stations with a certain %age of Canadian content, and that’s all the federal appropriation supports. You could argue that the CBC has been deviating from the letter of its mandate by having a website at all.
    This is of course nonsense, as any media organization without an online strategy in early C21 would be dead meat, but the financing model for the CBC has made it the whipping boy of successive governments and made it impossible to have an adult conversation about its growth and changes over the past decade. Oh for a TV license fee…

  • http://null spacejack

    As I understood it, CBC’s web budget is carved out of the TV budget (and is largely viewed from within as having a “support” role for TV.) I’m not sure the government funding model makes this necessary or not, or if it’s just a tradition of the corporation. Additionally, there’s a certain amount of “content sharing” amongst the 3 media, so strict separation of funding may not be a solution either.
    But we’re probably in agreement that web should have its own independent budget, not just whatever TV decides to give it. Then if TV wants additional web support for specific shows, it could put money toward that.
    TV is a massive black hole of a money pit. I don’t know why we keep shovelling such absurd amounts of money into it.

  • http://null nk

    The ‘reality TV’ is actually what has the high ratings at the CBC at the moment. The talk shows and the reality shows are doing well, have a more-than-substantial web presence and are, from observation, actually serving the whole of Canada rather than being Toronto-centric.
    The Border just sold to the US.
    There is money being made and people doing good work.
    We can give the Ford plant money, but screw those people living and working at ‘The Corpse’. Damn, that’s cold. I’ve never seen so many people actually *wish* for people to lose their jobs.
    Stay classy, guys.

  • http://null Svend

    If it wasn’t for the CBC, who would tell Weatherfield stories to Canadians?

  • http://undefined rek

    That would be a pretty great direction for CBCnw to go.

  • http://undefined Hamutal Dotan

    The Standing Committee’s recommendations, the ones that were rejected by the last Harper government, included several about expanding the CBC’s mandate and funding to include new media. Unfortunately, they’ve largely had to cobble together resources for their online presence to date.

  • http://undefined Hamutal Dotan

    Grrr – the above was meant to be re: spacejack at [5]
    @x_the_x: that the CBC ought to be judged in the first place on its satisfaction of cultural goals is not my claim, it is written into the articles which govern the corporation. Harper’s more honest route, if he really thinks that the CBC is a broadcaster like any other, would be to call for a re-examination of the Broadcasting Act. I cited the number of job losses to explain the scope of the CBC’s funding problem and not to justify its existence. Your point about setting budgetary priorities doesn’t apply here as the CBC is not competing with other departments for this money—the bridge financing would have been an advance on money that’s already been allocated to the CBC, not new money. (I am also, for the record, nowhere close to fifty and live nowhere close to the Annex. The CBC has massively bungled its attempts to woo a younger audience, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have one.)

  • http://null spacejack

    nk, the CBC pulls in about 1/4 or so of its budget from its commercial ventures (mostly NHL hockey.) That’s not a “money making” corporation by any stretch.
    However, closer to 90% of its TV programming has been “corrupted” by commercials, and a commercial mentality – exactly the thing a public broadcaster is NOT supposed to be attempting.
    Second, I don’t want people to lose their jobs. But what is the CBC? A broadcaster or a retirement home? Is its primary responsibility to its employees or the public interest? The two are not at all aligned, particularly not the way the corporation is today.
    It’s got a billion dollar budget. Yet it complains because it can’t accomplish what a $2 billion budget would. If it had $2BN it would complain that it can’t do what a $4BN corp could. And so on.
    If it stuck to doing the kinds of things a public broadcaster should, it could probably run on a budget closer to $100-$200 million. And it would do a better job of it.
    Getting there from here would be a painful process. The more people want to throw money into this pit, the worse the problem gets.

  • http://undefined spacejack

    A lot of those recommendations are good. However the bottom line is that they ask for more money. The only realistic fix for the CBC is less money, separate new media funding, and to stop pretending to be one of “the big networks” like it’s still 1980.
    They also need to move out of that monolithic and entirely too-expensive building that they cannot make effective use of.
    In a commercial sense the CBC is a failure, and it always will be. It has to learn to live within its means. It cannot be a public broadcaster AND compete with the likes of FOX or HBO. How many decades must it take before the public realizes this?

  • http://undefined RealityCheck

    The CBC is inherently totalitarian and evil – no government should own any media, as it is inherently propaganda. It will either be propaganda for the government of the day if it is not independent or it will be propaganda for the favorite faction of the permanent bureaucracy, the situation we now have with the CBC.
    I would be less opposed to the CBC if it had no commercials and did nothing in the realm of commercial television. No ads and no “sponsorships” like PBS, only the federal funding and maybe telethons a la TVO. The CBC should be restricted to educational and public service shows only, with a strict mandate to not compete with any private broadcaster. So no game shows, no NHL, no CFL, no syndication of any private content, and no news. As it is now, an industry with serious challenges faces a competitor that gets a billion dollar subsidy and fights for the same shows, movies, viewers, and advertisers.
    The idea that the CBC is essential to Canadian identity is insane. Hockey Night in Canada is so essential that the Leafs have their own channel… The only truly popular thing on the CBC and the execs try to kill it by screwing with the anthem and trying to remove Don Cherry any chance they get.
    This year they syndicated Jeapardy and Wheel of Fortune away from CTV. Because Pat Sajak is essential to Canadian identity??? In the past they’ve had a massive failure with trying to knock off Idol in partnership with a US commercial station. None of these are the actions of a public service broadcaster, they are the habits of a malignant parasite that consumes public money while paying huge salaries to people who don’t believe in private enterprise while they engage in a bastardized form of it.
    Of course my recommendations would devastate viewership, but that only matters if you’re selling ads. Ratings are antithetical to public interest broadcasting, as they lead you to emulate a commercial station instead of providing things that they aren’t.

  • http://undefined friend68

    I don’t really think the CBC is essential to my idea of national identity… maybe CBC radio.
    I know these things aren’t supposed to matter, but after years and years of the CBC engaging in partisan bashing of the Conservatives, can any real human being really expect the government to do anything else that tell them to stuff it when the come hat in hand?
    And when you have a situation where the government has to return to massive deficits due to the global economic situation, I don’t really see it as an appropriate metaphor to refer to them as “Daddy Warbucks” as the headline does.

  • http://null williama

    It is very disappointing and scary to read what appears to be a well-researched and well-informed opinion on a public issue turn out to be based on half-truths and misinformation.
    The role of the CBC has been up in the air for a while, its beginning roughly coinciding with the first budget cuts back in 1984. Since that time, the CBC has struggled to do more with less year after year. In absolute dollar terms, the Corp.’s entire budget is about the same as it was in 1984, but in 2009 dollars. Despite that, CBC Radio One has never been as popular as it is now, with several local radio morning shows No. 1 in their markets; the viewing share for English TV has increased year over year (to between 7% and 8% in primetime, not 2%) for the first time in a long time, while the share going to CTV and Global has remained stable.
    At present, CBC television is attempting to do exactly what it is entrusted to do, and that is bring Canadian stories to Canadians. The airing of documentaries or in-depth news interviews isn’t the only way to accomplish this. Drama and comedy, even sports can tell us a lot about ourselves and they offer the additional benefit of being appealing to a potentially wider and younger audience.
    The fact is the CBC does provide something the privates do not, and that is Canadian programming. CTV and Global stuff their schedules with US produced content that tells us nothing about ourselves and employs zero Canadians. For that reason alone, the CBC deserves to be judged differently.
    In your world, I guess we would hope and pray that CTV and Global would take a break from counting their money and invest in Canadian programming and Canadian jobs, but the fact is that that will never happen. Or maybe we should just give up on seeing Canadian drama on our TVs at all.