Arts
CBC Culls Content and People
I've always wanted to work for the CBC. That is, until recently... because in the last few days comments from distressed employees, wondering if their jobs are safe, flooded Facebook and Twitter.
They found out on Thursday afternoon whether or not they still worked for the public broadcaster, after the CBC announced deep, sweeping cuts to news, drama and sports programming, and almost 400 jobs in English language services.
Goodbye award-winning Outfront and baseball games. We can also expect less investigative news, local programming and Canadian content. Hello reruns of Being Erica.
Hubert Lacroix, CBC's president and CEO, says the public broadcaster needs to cut 800 positions across Canada to make up for a $171 million shortfall. Lacroix unsuccessfully approached the federal government for bridge financing to help balance the CBC budget in a lagging economy.
"I'm distressed to hear that the solution to the funding crisis, which we all knew was coming anyway, is not more creative," said Janice Neil in a phone interview. Neil worked for the CBC and now teaches at the Ryerson School of Journalism since 2007.
Neil thinks the CBC is missing an opportunity to remodel itself. She says it's hard to maintain the publicly funded argument when CBC television competes with private broadcasters for advertising dollars and for American programming like Jeopardy!. Though Jeopardy! brings in needed cash, Neil likened it to wearing a cheap suit when you're use to fine Italian garb.
Relying on the federal government isn't working either. CBC is one of the most under-funded public broadcasters in the developed world. At a speaking event in February, Lacroix said the CBC receives about $35 per Canadian in a year. The BBC gets almost $140 per Brit. Maybe the CBC should look to other public broadcasting models that don't depend heavily on advertising or government handouts.
I'm a fan. My radio dial is stuck on 99.1 FM and I'm giving CBC television a chance after canceling my cable. Love it or hate it, it tries to narrate Canada, and to reflect us to ourselves. Saturation of American radio was one of the reasons the CBC was born 73 years ago.
Things haven't changed that much. And with regional closures of news media hit by plummeting advertising revenues, there are even fewer places that tell our stories.
Photo by Adam Finley
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...unless you count locally produced content ;)
http://torontocitylife.com/
The BBC gets more money from the government because Brits have to pay a license fee each year in order to watch TV. When I was living there (about three years back) the fee was about 140 pounds a year--not sure if it's gone up. Because they pay a fee, they have a much better national broadcasting service. But it all comes back to that saying, 'you get what you pay for'. Right now, we pay very little. Yes, the CBC is good. Yes, it could be better--much better. But are Canadians willing to pay for it?
according to Stephen Harper, the CBC gets a lot of money.
but he is a dick with no respect for the arts.
when are we gonna be a liberal country again? im tired of this republican, jim flaherty corporate tax cutting bullshit.
sigh.
A licence fee is just taxation by other means, and regressive taxation at that. It's not pay as you use because everyone has a tv or a computer, plus it just means antagonising the public by creating a licencing inspectorate and filling courts with charges. Imagine the firearms registry push-back and multiply it by a gajillion.
jt - electing Liberals will not necessarily make Canada a "liberal country" - the CBC wasn't rolling in money in the Martin years.
"Maybe the CBC should look to other public broadcasting models that don't depend heavily on advertising or government handouts."
Uh, such as?
It's pretty lazy journalism to posit a question like that without bothering to suggest any answers.
Wow what a shitty article.
how can they cut outfront but decide to keep monsoon house? MONSOON HOUSE???!!
Columnist Robert Fulford puts it best in an article this week. The CBC is a horrifying spectacle.
" In mass communications, which demands spontaneity and imagination, they show little originality and barely a hint of daring. This comes through when they acknowledge, condescendingly, that they are appealing to the young. The melancholy results usually appear to be the work of 30-year-olds instructed by 45-year-olds on how to appeal to 20-year-olds.
Broadcasters who came to the CBC with dreams of making great programs instead find themselves conscripted into a nightmare of sclerotic bureaucracy in which everything matters more than broadcasting. What counts most is the endless, baffling shuffle of titles and responsibilities, a byzantine turf warfare. "
Canadians pay the equivalent of $3 a month for the CBC, approximately. In the UK it's about $11 a month and in France it's about $7 a month. It ain't much considering the amount of Canadian content, doc makers, artists and musicians reap the support of the Ceeb. Like it or not, it's a big part of Canada's national identity, and unless everyone feels like having nothing but equivalents to the FOX network in Canada, it's not the worst idea in the world to support it.
On a side note, myself and many other former BlogTO alumni are currently working at the Ceeb or have recently been laid off because of cut backs. Here's hoping more of us don't get the axe.
The only other funding source I can think of is corporate sponsorship, like you see mentioned before most of the high-profile series on PBS in the U.S. and TVO here in Ontario. I've rarely seen that attempted on CBC, though it has sort of happened a few times, like when a special is 'presented by' one company or another.
I'm sure Robert Fulford's right, but there's rich irony in him accusing CBC of being out of touch with younger audiences by himself using phrases like 'conscripted into a nightmare of sclerotic bureaucracy' and 'byzantine turf warfare.' I know, he's not nominating himself as youth representative, but still ... LOL, RF, LOL!
Not to be blase about CBC's current woes, but this kind of thing has happened before and will happen again. When I was in journalism school and we had a break for internships, many of my friends did theirs at CBC. This was in late 1996; they had to sit in meetings where the axe fell on tonnes of departments around them. The prospects looked very bleak.
The CBC building on Front Street was built in headier, more optimistic days, with robots delivering the mail (not kidding here). After the '96 cuts, much of its studio space started to be rented out to private-sector production houses. The point is, the losses are all the more dramatic because so much had been built up before them, so the issue is, what is CBC's continuity supposed to look like? What long-term funding model should it use and, on the other hand, how will this need to be tweaked from time to time?
CBC is making cuts in areas that should be cash cows. Like the BBC (which is by no means perfect; their newscasts are plummeting in quality) it needs to focus national efforts on being responsible to Canadian taxpayers while also seeking ancillary markets for profit. Put more shows on DVD. Sell more shows to international broadcasters.
And yes, use reruns once in a while. I've always hated the 'miss it once, miss it forever' scheme that seems to apply to so many of CBC's short-run TV series. I won't accuse CBC of being cheap simply for recognizing the market reality that broadcasters need to show reruns now and then ....