Saving CBC From Budget Cuts
CBC Television’s Golden Opportunity
By Wade Rowland
A biologist friend once told me of literature on the fringes of his discipline that speaks of a strange synergy between predator and prey species. As he described it to me, a gazelle being chased by a lioness will suddenly slow, as if willingly offering itself up; squirrels fleeing swooping hawks can be observed doing the same. Whether these observations record self-sacrificial behaviour, or merely resignation on the part of the prey, who can know? In either case, they present a useful metaphor for what’s happening with the CBC. The Prime Minister’s barely suppressed glee in responding to House of Commons questions about whether there is any plan to support the public broadcaster during the current economic crisis (“Times are tough all over…”) is complemented perfectly in a kind of dance of death by CBC management’s decision to axe 800 jobs, cash in its real estate assets at what can only, in this market, be fire sale prices, and slash popular programming on both radio and television.
The deliberate hobbling of the public broadcaster by hostile federal governments is a story as old as the corporation and its predecessors dating back to the 1920s, and the victim has always been able to elude its adversaries and stay alive. But this time we are in a situation where there is not only motive, but genuine opportunity to kill the elusive prey and blame it on “the global economic downturn.” And the CBC’s will to survive seems crippled by a combination of low morale, lack of imaginative leadership, and a usually supportive public’s preoccupation with the personal challenges of making ends meet in a crippled economy.
If we want the CBC to continue playing its role as the nation’s single most important cultural institution and a defining expression of our distinctive North American identity, we need to face some realities. First among these is that the deep animosity in the governing party for the CBC (and for public broadcasting in general) is a feature of their ideological identity that is not going to go away. The second is that Conservative CBC-bashers have a point when they argue that the network’s English television arm is irrelevant and largely indistinguishable from its commercial counterparts, with whom it competes unfairly thanks to its substantial government subsidy.
If the CBC is to survive the shock-doctrine opportunism of federal politicians bent on either privatization or elimination of the public broadcaster, it needs to once and for all come to terms with the albatross that is advertising on its television network. (Advertising on radio was eliminated in 1975.) As long as CBC TV continues to find a substantial portion of its operating revenue in commercial sponsorship, it is doomed to irrelevance and eventual death. And when it dies it will in all likelihood take the always competent, often brilliant CBC Radio down with it.
The problem is that so long as CBC TV is advertising-supported, it is necessarily involved in the competition for audience called the ratings game, and it is a game in which it simply cannot win when faced with competition from private broadcasters who are willing to run wall-to-wall American programming that is supported by a multi-billion dollar promotion machine and its associated celebrity industry. Nor should it even try. Ratings are an arbitrary and essentially value-empty measurement, as industry insiders well know. And playing the game leads the CBC to such self-defeating strategies as purchasing the American game shows Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune— not because any intrinsic merit, but because they provide a strong lead-in audience to the network’s evening news shows, and prime-time Canadian programs. An audience magnet like Wheel would boost ratings for The Luggage Hour.
If it is ever to escape from the fun-house world of chasing ratings, with the enormous waste of resources it involves, CBC television must become a true public broadcaster by ending commercial sponsorship on the network. Given current realities, this is no longer a utopian proposal, but an urgent necessity. If this means cutting back the broadcast schedule to, say, a ten-hour day, and dropping expensive professional sport coverage, then so be it. The country badly needs the CBC’s unique contribution to the continuing process of shaping our multi-faceted national identity, and, while Radio does this well, the TV network simply makes too many ratings-driven compromises to be distinguishable in any important way from the commercial competition.
For most of CBC television’s history, it was at least possible to argue that the network had to maintain the same broadcast schedule as its commercial rivals, or it would not be taken seriously by either advertisers or audiences. We can forget about advertisers in this new scenario, and in the age of new media and multi-platform delivery of programs, it is not longer the case (if it ever was) with audiences. Fewer and fewer viewers identify the programs they enjoy with networks, stations, or even time-slots: they can watch what they want whenever they want, on platforms as varied as personal video recorders (PVRs), laptops, and cell phones. The notion of “flow” once fashionably attached to television viewing is dead as a dodo in this era of hypertext hop-scotch. Today, it’s all about the individual program.
If we can salvage CBC television as a centre for innovative, uniquely Canadian programs, then CBC Radio will have a secure future, as well.
I recently experimented with my second-year communications studies class at York University by assigning them to listen to eight sequential hours of CBC Radio One programming, and write a brief critique of what they’d heard. The first thing the exercise taught me, before I’d even handed out the assignment, was that among a class of nearly fifty students, a large majority were not aware of the radio network’s existence. Most students had never listened to a single CBC Radio program. When the assignments were eventually handed in, I discovered that a majority of students were surprised to discover that there is no advertising content on CBC Radio. There was general amazement at the length of time devoted to individual subjects on news and current affairs programs, and the degree to which audiences are involved through phone-ins and email and telephone talkback. The range of subject matter was another big shock to many of them.
I was gratified to see how many students said they would listen again, perhaps even regularly. To what extent they were simply trying to please their professor with that last answer I can’t say, but several students took the trouble to thank me for the assignment, saying it had opened up a whole new world of information to them. (Incidentally, the favourite program by far was The Point, one of the shows CBC has decided to chop.)
Among these same fifty-odd students, a large majority tell me that they watch “television” programming almost exclusively on their lap-tops or mobile devices of various kinds. Most are aware of the existence of CBC TV, but few are able to state whether they regularly watch CBC programs: they are mostly unconcerned with and unaware of the origins of the material they enjoy. They avoid commercials whenever possible, and thanks to digital technologies they are highly successful in doing so. This is not the future of television—it is the present. It’s all about the programs, the content that traditional commercial broadcasters tend to think of as the expensive stuff that separates the income-producing advertising breaks.
My little classroom exercise is not “scientific” —the assignment was intended to teach, rather than to produce numbers, a joyless chore which I leave to the statistics-choppers. But it nevertheless reinforces my conviction that it is not only necessary, but possible for CBC television to reshape itself along the lines of public broadcasters all over Europe, as a producer of state-of-the-art news, current affairs, drama, and documentary programming that could only have originated here, and which speaks to audiences at home and abroad of the uniquely Canadian experience. The opportunity is real.
The commercial sponsorship revenue model that has been with us in broadcast media for nearly a century is a last broken and television is facing a shift in its foundational assumptions every bit as radical as that being confronted by the music industry. It will doubtless take a long time for commercially-sponsored television on the current model to die away—it will remain until the last nickel is squeezed dry, and then its passing will be bitterly mourned. But for advocates of public service television the extinction of this crude and archaic business model should be taken as a cause for rejoicing, and an opportunity—at long last!— for CBC Television to remake itself into the true public broadcaster it has always wanted to be and that the country has always deserved.
Wade Rowland is a former television producer and senior manager at both CTV and CBC. He currently teaches communications studies at York University in Toronto. www.waderowland.com
By Wade Rowland
A biologist friend once told me of literature on the fringes of his discipline that speaks of a strange synergy between predator and prey species. As he described it to me, a gazelle being chased by a lioness will suddenly slow, as if willingly offering itself up; squirrels fleeing swooping hawks can be observed doing the same. Whether these observations record self-sacrificial behaviour, or merely resignation on the part of the prey, who can know? In either case, they present a useful metaphor for what’s happening with the CBC. The Prime Minister’s barely suppressed glee in responding to House of Commons questions about whether there is any plan to support the public broadcaster during the current economic crisis (“Times are tough all over…”) is complemented perfectly in a kind of dance of death by CBC management’s decision to axe 800 jobs, cash in its real estate assets at what can only, in this market, be fire sale prices, and slash popular programming on both radio and television.
The deliberate hobbling of the public broadcaster by hostile federal governments is a story as old as the corporation and its predecessors dating back to the 1920s, and the victim has always been able to elude its adversaries and stay alive. But this time we are in a situation where there is not only motive, but genuine opportunity to kill the elusive prey and blame it on “the global economic downturn.” And the CBC’s will to survive seems crippled by a combination of low morale, lack of imaginative leadership, and a usually supportive public’s preoccupation with the personal challenges of making ends meet in a crippled economy.
If we want the CBC to continue playing its role as the nation’s single most important cultural institution and a defining expression of our distinctive North American identity, we need to face some realities. First among these is that the deep animosity in the governing party for the CBC (and for public broadcasting in general) is a feature of their ideological identity that is not going to go away. The second is that Conservative CBC-bashers have a point when they argue that the network’s English television arm is irrelevant and largely indistinguishable from its commercial counterparts, with whom it competes unfairly thanks to its substantial government subsidy.
If the CBC is to survive the shock-doctrine opportunism of federal politicians bent on either privatization or elimination of the public broadcaster, it needs to once and for all come to terms with the albatross that is advertising on its television network. (Advertising on radio was eliminated in 1975.) As long as CBC TV continues to find a substantial portion of its operating revenue in commercial sponsorship, it is doomed to irrelevance and eventual death. And when it dies it will in all likelihood take the always competent, often brilliant CBC Radio down with it.
The problem is that so long as CBC TV is advertising-supported, it is necessarily involved in the competition for audience called the ratings game, and it is a game in which it simply cannot win when faced with competition from private broadcasters who are willing to run wall-to-wall American programming that is supported by a multi-billion dollar promotion machine and its associated celebrity industry. Nor should it even try. Ratings are an arbitrary and essentially value-empty measurement, as industry insiders well know. And playing the game leads the CBC to such self-defeating strategies as purchasing the American game shows Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune— not because any intrinsic merit, but because they provide a strong lead-in audience to the network’s evening news shows, and prime-time Canadian programs. An audience magnet like Wheel would boost ratings for The Luggage Hour.
If it is ever to escape from the fun-house world of chasing ratings, with the enormous waste of resources it involves, CBC television must become a true public broadcaster by ending commercial sponsorship on the network. Given current realities, this is no longer a utopian proposal, but an urgent necessity. If this means cutting back the broadcast schedule to, say, a ten-hour day, and dropping expensive professional sport coverage, then so be it. The country badly needs the CBC’s unique contribution to the continuing process of shaping our multi-faceted national identity, and, while Radio does this well, the TV network simply makes too many ratings-driven compromises to be distinguishable in any important way from the commercial competition.
For most of CBC television’s history, it was at least possible to argue that the network had to maintain the same broadcast schedule as its commercial rivals, or it would not be taken seriously by either advertisers or audiences. We can forget about advertisers in this new scenario, and in the age of new media and multi-platform delivery of programs, it is not longer the case (if it ever was) with audiences. Fewer and fewer viewers identify the programs they enjoy with networks, stations, or even time-slots: they can watch what they want whenever they want, on platforms as varied as personal video recorders (PVRs), laptops, and cell phones. The notion of “flow” once fashionably attached to television viewing is dead as a dodo in this era of hypertext hop-scotch. Today, it’s all about the individual program.
If we can salvage CBC television as a centre for innovative, uniquely Canadian programs, then CBC Radio will have a secure future, as well.
I recently experimented with my second-year communications studies class at York University by assigning them to listen to eight sequential hours of CBC Radio One programming, and write a brief critique of what they’d heard. The first thing the exercise taught me, before I’d even handed out the assignment, was that among a class of nearly fifty students, a large majority were not aware of the radio network’s existence. Most students had never listened to a single CBC Radio program. When the assignments were eventually handed in, I discovered that a majority of students were surprised to discover that there is no advertising content on CBC Radio. There was general amazement at the length of time devoted to individual subjects on news and current affairs programs, and the degree to which audiences are involved through phone-ins and email and telephone talkback. The range of subject matter was another big shock to many of them.
I was gratified to see how many students said they would listen again, perhaps even regularly. To what extent they were simply trying to please their professor with that last answer I can’t say, but several students took the trouble to thank me for the assignment, saying it had opened up a whole new world of information to them. (Incidentally, the favourite program by far was The Point, one of the shows CBC has decided to chop.)
Among these same fifty-odd students, a large majority tell me that they watch “television” programming almost exclusively on their lap-tops or mobile devices of various kinds. Most are aware of the existence of CBC TV, but few are able to state whether they regularly watch CBC programs: they are mostly unconcerned with and unaware of the origins of the material they enjoy. They avoid commercials whenever possible, and thanks to digital technologies they are highly successful in doing so. This is not the future of television—it is the present. It’s all about the programs, the content that traditional commercial broadcasters tend to think of as the expensive stuff that separates the income-producing advertising breaks.
My little classroom exercise is not “scientific” —the assignment was intended to teach, rather than to produce numbers, a joyless chore which I leave to the statistics-choppers. But it nevertheless reinforces my conviction that it is not only necessary, but possible for CBC television to reshape itself along the lines of public broadcasters all over Europe, as a producer of state-of-the-art news, current affairs, drama, and documentary programming that could only have originated here, and which speaks to audiences at home and abroad of the uniquely Canadian experience. The opportunity is real.
The commercial sponsorship revenue model that has been with us in broadcast media for nearly a century is a last broken and television is facing a shift in its foundational assumptions every bit as radical as that being confronted by the music industry. It will doubtless take a long time for commercially-sponsored television on the current model to die away—it will remain until the last nickel is squeezed dry, and then its passing will be bitterly mourned. But for advocates of public service television the extinction of this crude and archaic business model should be taken as a cause for rejoicing, and an opportunity—at long last!— for CBC Television to remake itself into the true public broadcaster it has always wanted to be and that the country has always deserved.
Wade Rowland is a former television producer and senior manager at both CTV and CBC. He currently teaches communications studies at York University in Toronto. www.waderowland.com
Labels: advertising, CBC, public broadcasting
posted by Wade Rowland at 2:21 PM
3 Comments:
Wade, you have done us a great service with publication of this opinion piece in the Toronto Star. I almost cheered out loud when I read it! I feel I could have written it. But I would not have been able to bolster the argument with the facts that this piece bring to bear on the discussion. Even my brother-in-law, who is anything but an activist, will not watch live TV any longer because he is so angered by the commercials. Only because Canadians' unique measure of comparison is U.S. TV, do we somehow or other accept the status quo as somehow "normal". Having lived in Europe at one point, I still find it quite incredible that we actually stand for commercial TV in general and the current commercial format of CBC Television in particular. Let's hope SOMETHING can stir up a consideration of alternatives - such as the one suggested in this opinion piece. You certainly have my FULL support! Tim Ryan
The most exquisite essay about CBC I have ever read.
As an employee of the CBC, I consider it a privilege to work for one of Canada's most important public institutions. Alas, the Harper government doesn't believe this and has completely shrugged its fundemental responsibility to preserve and protect the CBC. You've articulated the government's position perfectly.
But the atmosphere, inside, is changing, ever so slowly. Soon the unimaginative management team will be gone; maybe as early as this summer, and the CBC will get the kind of leadership it deserves. Not the current few who only equate success with revenue generation and the drug called, "Ratings".
If I've learned nothing else over the past year, we must be become a lot less selfish and a lot more selfless.
LeonT
Hi Wade. We have a similar problem down here in Oz, in which the Australian Broadcasting Commission stands as the only intelligent, thought-provoking and relevant broadcasting organization for intelligent minds, and thus has to beg for every cent in funding it can get. And it's strictly non-commercial too, though no-one can be sure how long this will last, with every succeeding government, conservative or Labor, trying to get it to float financially on its own. One way the poverty has been eased somewhat, is to allow the ABC to run ABC Shops, selling videos, books, gifts, everything you can think of connected with and promoting its programming. It's become a very successful, lucrative business, and of course the conservatives have targeted this "back door" commercialism as a way of cutting or even killing its public funding. Australia would be thrown intellectually back into the cultural wasteland it once was, if not for the ABC. And it is still a wasteland out there. It's complained by many that because of its funding problems, the ABC has to broadcast far too many British documentaries, movies, miniseries and shows, But there's very little output locally that matches the quality of British production.
By the way, Wade, such a delight to find you again. And such a delight to see what you've been doing since those horrible days at CTV. Let's catch up. Warmest regards, Derek Maitland, Sydney, Australia earthlighttv@primusonline.com.au.
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