CBC embraces web, but stuck in past

Good news! The CBC has discovered the internet. With an eye to the tens of thousands of “cord- cutters” who have been abandoning cable and satellite providers for online video, the corporation has begun streaming all of its live television services via an upgraded mobile and Apple TV app.

More remarkably, it will offer a paid “premium” version: for $ 4.99 a month, subscribers will receive all of the regular app’s content ad-free, plus the CBC News Network feed in the bargain.

Bad news! While its online boffins may have embraced the open, unregulated, consumer-driven world of the internet, the CBC’s management is still wedded to the same old closed, regulatory, subsidy-driven model as before.

In a submission to the CRTC, which is embarked on its latest attempt to divine the future of TV, the corporation calls for a tax on other streaming video services ( hello, Netflix) and more subsidies for itself — in the name of a “level playing field.” ( Oh, and new regulations that would somehow force providers to give greater prominence to Canadian content. Net neutrality? What’s that?)

The contrast between the two visions could not be more stark.

On the one hand, the CBC’s new app is a recognition that the world has changed: not just for the public broadcaster, but for broadcasters of all kinds. If advertisers are deserting them, as they are deserting us, it is also true that advertising is no longer so vital a revenue source: where once it was not possible to charge viewers directly for programming, now it is — has been for decades, actually. Similarly, while the internet makes regulation largely obsolete, it also makes it unnecessary. There aren’t five channels any more, but five hundred, or five million: as many, theoretically, as there are points in cyberspace. “Spectrum scarcity” has been abolished.

On the other hand, the corporation’s CRTC submission is firmly rooted in another, older world. In that world, it is true, the familiar biases of advertising — to the largest possible audiences, and to the safe, middle- of- the- road programs that attract them — combined with the limited number of channels available in television’s early years added up to a kind of market failure: government intervention, whether in the form of public funding or regulation, was justified, precisely in order to recreate the diversity of offerings normally available in most markets.

Yet none of that now applies, as the CBC’s “premium” app bears witness. Absolutely nothing is stopping viewers, in Canada or around the world, from subscribing to the app, if they choose, the same as they now pay for HBO, or Netflix, or Amazon Prime: the only question is whether the content is worth the money.

And what sort of content is likely to attract paying viewers? The kind that people value highly, that engages and absorbs them on a much deeper level than we used to associate with TV. When people talk about a “golden age” in television, that is what they are remarking upon. The good stuff, almost all of it, is on pay. For a paying audience, it turns out, is also a demanding one.

Indeed, nothing would prevent the CBC from moving its cable signal onto pay, as well. I don’t mean as a supplement to exist- ing revenue sources, but as a replacement for them. It’s clear to just about everyone that advertising finance is fundamentally incompatible with whatever role there might still be for a public broadcaster: the kind of programming attractive to advertisers is exactly the kind readily available on the private networks. But the way to wean the CBC off advertising is not, as its CRTC submission maintains, to give it gobs more public funding ($ 400 million more, annually). It is to put it on pay: not just online, but on all its platforms.

Though proposed as an antidote to advertising, public funding suffers from much the same basic problem: in either case, the broadcaster is accountable not to its viewers, but to someone else — advertisers or the government, whoever is paying the bills.

The larger goal, then, should be for subscription fees to replace, not just advertising, but also the CBC’s public subsidy. The beneficiaries from this would not only be taxpayers, but CBC viewers: subsidy is not only no longer necessary, but an impediment to quality — the kind that, we can now see, comes from a direct relationship with a passionate, paying audience.

It would also, incidentally, result in the “level playing field” the CBC claims to want: if there is anything tilting the field these days, it is the corporation’s billiondollar annual grant. Certainly there is no case for a “Netflix tax,” a proposal that is every bit as untenable and self-interested coming from the CBC as it is from Netflix’s private competitors. The idea is usually defended on the grounds that Netflix does not bear the same regulatory obligations as domestic broadcasters and distributors, notably to contribute to a production fund for Canadian content. But neither is Netflix eligible for all the subsidies and regulatory benefits (simultaneous substitution, anyone?) that they are.

And in any event, there is no longer any case for forcing people to pay for Cancon. People who want to watch Cancon can now pay for it, the same way people who watch the CBC can. Now that they can, it’s not clear why they shouldn’t, still less why those who don’t should have to pay in their place.

THE GOAL SHOULD BE FOR SUBSCRIPTION FEES TO REPLACE THE CBC’S PUBLIC SUBSIDY.