WITH THE NEW NATIONAL SET TO AIR MONDAY NIGHT, THE CBC HAS PRESENTED ITSELF WITH AN ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TASK: RE-IMAGINING THE NIGHTLY NEWSCAST. WILL THE MOTHER CORP. BE ABLE TO SUCCEED? JEN GERSON.
Can the new National succeed in sunset times?
The CBC has presented itself with an almost impossible task: Reimagining the nightly newscast.
The new National is set to air Monday night. The heirs of Peter Mansbridge will inform an eager public in a format that seems dramatically different from the nightly newscasts of old.
What no one yet knows is whether it will be enough to save TV news.
Much ink has already been shlepped about Mansbridge’s retirement, and the end of the Walter-CronkiteDan-Rather Gilded Age of news reading. No more will a white, greying paternal figure be beamed into your living rooms at the dinner hour to deliver the day’s morsels with the studied neutrality of the broadcast Gods of yore.
In truth, the conceit of the news anchor probably reached its apotheosis decades ago; the whole facade was brilliantly skewered by the 1976 movie Network, in which anchor Howard Beale suffers a mental breakdown on air, transformed from respectable newsman into a ratings-driven madman prophet who spoke to the fears of the common American in the face of unprecedented social and economic upheaval.
“I am mad as hell and I am not going to take this anymore!”
It’s a little too on the nose, in hindsight.
(Will Ferrell’s retro satire only ever reached the level of cheap slapstick by comparison.)
Now we have Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly and Rachel Maddow and I suppose we must also include Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart and Jon Oliver to the list. Which all seems appropriate as it reflects the corrosive fragmentation of our media consumption habits.
We share clips from the anchors who agree with us as we retreat into our socialmedia driven ideological cesspools, lacking any common understanding of what happened in any particular day, or why it mattered.
It’s no surprise, then, that TV news is facing the same kind of precipitous decline that currently afflicts the newspaper industry. (As someone who draws a paycheque from both this print media outlet and as a freelancer for the CBC, I am more pessimistic than most.)
The audiences are shrinking and they are getting older.
CBC itself witnessed the fray. The final years of Mansbridge saw the National drop in popularity. It was surpassed by both CTV and Global, although no newscast in this country now tops a million viewers per night.
I am not sure any nightly newscast can fix this, or reverse the trend even as I hope I am wrong. A democracy requires a well-informed populace, which works only as long as the populace trusts the people in place to inform them. But more than this, it also requires a degree of social cohesion; this is not agreement, but rather a sense that we are, at the very least, arguing about the same things.
That is what America lacks. A Democrat and a Republican don’t even see the same news, much less agree on it.
But Canada has always been a bit different, and CBC deserves some credit for that fact. We have nicknamed this entity, pejoratively, the “Mother Corp” for a reason. It is the all-knowing, all-loving, inescapable arbiter of Canadian identity.
And if the CBC’s mandate seems a little contrived at times — can I turn on Radio One without hearing another Gord Downie song yet, guys? — the Mother Corp hydra probably deserves some credit for mitigating the hyper-polarization now at play in U.S. politics.
So it will be fascinating to watch whether The National will be successful in building a common bond and attracting more and younger viewers, or if it will suffer the Great Burning of Mainstream Media still to come.
On paper, the new National appears to be exactly and scrupulously correct — although it is very different from the model that seems to be maintaining its popularity in the U.S., that of personality-driven, opinionheavy round-the-clock newsertainment.
“We read the Canadian market a little differently and we see our role as a public broadcaster as trying to push the idea of a collective experience across the country,” said Jennifer McGuire, the general manager and editor-in-chief at CBC News. “It’s hard to create this idea of a collective experience because the choices are so ubiquitous and the danger is that everybody lives in their own information bubble.
“We’re definitely trying to move past that, but the environment is fragmenting and disrupting ... We need to think about that and continually evolve, but also be at the places where people are choosing to consume information.”
The new National will feature fewer stories, but more in-depth coverage and analysis. The team seems focused on digital distribution and repackaging, even creating a concurrent newsletter and podcast.
The four hosts are consummate professionals with complementary skill sets ranging from whip-smart interviewing skills and indepth reporting to the practised anchorman’s neutral manner. The ages of the host range from 33 to 55; they include two women, Rosemary Barton and Adrienne Arsenault; and two people of colour; Ian Hanomansing and Andrew Chang.
The newscast is geographically diverse, with hosts in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa.
The new set even features a corner for mementoes featuring an antique TV and former CBC anchor Knowlton Nash’s pre-hipster glasses. The vintage chic is millennial friendly.
It sounds like the kind of broadcast Canadians should clamour for, even if it has the air of decision-making by committee.
McGuire also noted that the format is entirely novel; it’s not based on any other nightly newscast. If successful, expect private broadcasters to follow suit, shifting ever further away from the prime-time anchorman model.
I want the National — and other nightly newscasts — to do well. I would be an avid consumer of a lively and informative daily rundown, particularly if it’s streamed through services like Netflix.
But I am afraid that the hour is much later than any of us care to admit.
Mansbridge signed off in July. Have enough people since felt his lack?