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2014-06-26 23:18:37 UTC
Let's test the leadership candidates for the next election on the
subject of funding for the CBC. Harper we can ignore. How would Justin
Trudeau or Thomas Mulcair handle public funding for the CBC?
___________________________________________________
Contributed to The Globe and Mail - Thursday, Jun. 26 2014
by Wade Rowland
The CBC’s a service, not a business
The CBC’s strategic plan to shift priorities from broadcast to digital
services and outsource virtually all but news and current affairs
programming is, on the whole, a sensible strategy – from a purely
business perspective. It saves money by reducing production and
distribution costs. Shedding more jobs will further enhance the bottom
line between now and 2020; as many as 1,500 positions will be eliminated
in the plan announced Wednesday.
The thing is, however, that the public broadcaster is not a business in
any conventional sense. It exists not to make money or to satisfy
financial goals, but to fill a public need – one that is not being
served by private media outlets. The CBC is a public good, like the
school system, like medicare, like our universities and colleges, our
public museums and galleries.
In a world of commercial sponsorship of media, both broadcast and
online, the CBC’s purpose is to serve its audiences as citizens, rather
than as consumers. Its purpose is to create news, information and
entertainment that’s judged for its creative, intellectual and artistic
integrity, rather than its ability to attract large audiences that can
be sold to advertisers.
What CBC management has delivered is not a public broadcasting strategy
but a business plan, one that further distances the corporation from its
public-service mandate.
For example, most people who study digital online media recognize that
one of its impacts is to atomize audiences. Where traditional
broadcasting creates a kind of congregation, a community of interest,
the fragmented, specialized nature of Internet content tends to
encourage individuals to focus on their own established interests. There
is certainly a place for this, but it runs counter to the
community-building remit of public broadcasting.
Another example: Nowhere in Wednesday’s in-house town-hall webcast, nor
the accompanying documentation, was the issue of whether the public
broadcaster ought to be carrying advertising even mentioned. The best of
the world’s public-service broadcasters (PSBs) carry no commercials.
Their involvement means engaging in the ratings game, which pushes
programming toward the lowest common denominator in tastes and
interests. This is why commercial-free subscription television services
such as HBO and Netflix, like true PSBs, tend to produce superior
programming.
One of the reasons why CBC is anxious to accelerate its shift to online
services is because that’s where advertising revenue is moving. It hopes
to cash in on the bonanza.
But a reliance on ad revenue from online services is just as corrosive
to PSB values and goals as it is in conventional TV and radio, for the
same reasons.
If 70-odd years experience with the CBC to date proves anything, it’s
that the public broadcaster can’t serve two masters. It should leave
commercial sponsorship to the private media, which exist to serve
advertisers, and it should focus on its public-service mandate exclusively.
Can the CBC survive without advertising revenue? That’s like asking
whether the public school system can survive without corporate
sponsorship. Of course it can – as long as that’s a public priority, as
it ought to be.
At present, the CBC receives an annual parliamentary appropriation of
about $1.34-billion. This puts Canada third from the bottom of the list
of OECD nations’ support for their PSBs. A subsidy of $3-billion would
boost us to around average. That level of funding would make it possible
for the CBC to produce television programming matching the highest
international standards, and to continue to finance an exceptional radio
service while providing online services as the market – rather than
internal balance sheets – dictates.
A dedicated 5 per cent to 7 per cent impost on what the CRTC calls
Broadcast Distribution Undertakings – the big, vertically integrated and
enormously profitable Internet/wireless/telephone/broadcast providers
like Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Quebecor – could bring CBC funding up to a
level that would allow it to properly do its job of providing an
alternative to commercial media.
It could put the CBC back in the business of being an authentic
public-service broadcaster, beholden to no vested interests, commercial
or political. It’s what the country needs and deserves as a culture and
a community – more so than ever in the evolving digital era.
______________________
Wade Rowland is the author of Saving the CBC: Balancing Profit and
Public Interest. He teaches in York University’s communication studies
department.
subject of funding for the CBC. Harper we can ignore. How would Justin
Trudeau or Thomas Mulcair handle public funding for the CBC?
___________________________________________________
Contributed to The Globe and Mail - Thursday, Jun. 26 2014
by Wade Rowland
The CBC’s a service, not a business
The CBC’s strategic plan to shift priorities from broadcast to digital
services and outsource virtually all but news and current affairs
programming is, on the whole, a sensible strategy – from a purely
business perspective. It saves money by reducing production and
distribution costs. Shedding more jobs will further enhance the bottom
line between now and 2020; as many as 1,500 positions will be eliminated
in the plan announced Wednesday.
The thing is, however, that the public broadcaster is not a business in
any conventional sense. It exists not to make money or to satisfy
financial goals, but to fill a public need – one that is not being
served by private media outlets. The CBC is a public good, like the
school system, like medicare, like our universities and colleges, our
public museums and galleries.
In a world of commercial sponsorship of media, both broadcast and
online, the CBC’s purpose is to serve its audiences as citizens, rather
than as consumers. Its purpose is to create news, information and
entertainment that’s judged for its creative, intellectual and artistic
integrity, rather than its ability to attract large audiences that can
be sold to advertisers.
What CBC management has delivered is not a public broadcasting strategy
but a business plan, one that further distances the corporation from its
public-service mandate.
For example, most people who study digital online media recognize that
one of its impacts is to atomize audiences. Where traditional
broadcasting creates a kind of congregation, a community of interest,
the fragmented, specialized nature of Internet content tends to
encourage individuals to focus on their own established interests. There
is certainly a place for this, but it runs counter to the
community-building remit of public broadcasting.
Another example: Nowhere in Wednesday’s in-house town-hall webcast, nor
the accompanying documentation, was the issue of whether the public
broadcaster ought to be carrying advertising even mentioned. The best of
the world’s public-service broadcasters (PSBs) carry no commercials.
Their involvement means engaging in the ratings game, which pushes
programming toward the lowest common denominator in tastes and
interests. This is why commercial-free subscription television services
such as HBO and Netflix, like true PSBs, tend to produce superior
programming.
One of the reasons why CBC is anxious to accelerate its shift to online
services is because that’s where advertising revenue is moving. It hopes
to cash in on the bonanza.
But a reliance on ad revenue from online services is just as corrosive
to PSB values and goals as it is in conventional TV and radio, for the
same reasons.
If 70-odd years experience with the CBC to date proves anything, it’s
that the public broadcaster can’t serve two masters. It should leave
commercial sponsorship to the private media, which exist to serve
advertisers, and it should focus on its public-service mandate exclusively.
Can the CBC survive without advertising revenue? That’s like asking
whether the public school system can survive without corporate
sponsorship. Of course it can – as long as that’s a public priority, as
it ought to be.
At present, the CBC receives an annual parliamentary appropriation of
about $1.34-billion. This puts Canada third from the bottom of the list
of OECD nations’ support for their PSBs. A subsidy of $3-billion would
boost us to around average. That level of funding would make it possible
for the CBC to produce television programming matching the highest
international standards, and to continue to finance an exceptional radio
service while providing online services as the market – rather than
internal balance sheets – dictates.
A dedicated 5 per cent to 7 per cent impost on what the CRTC calls
Broadcast Distribution Undertakings – the big, vertically integrated and
enormously profitable Internet/wireless/telephone/broadcast providers
like Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Quebecor – could bring CBC funding up to a
level that would allow it to properly do its job of providing an
alternative to commercial media.
It could put the CBC back in the business of being an authentic
public-service broadcaster, beholden to no vested interests, commercial
or political. It’s what the country needs and deserves as a culture and
a community – more so than ever in the evolving digital era.
______________________
Wade Rowland is the author of Saving the CBC: Balancing Profit and
Public Interest. He teaches in York University’s communication studies
department.