Blurring the lines

They say people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

So, first off, allow us to point out the panes in our own particular greenhouse. Private media in Canada has, for years, run advertising supplements and “sponsored content” for advertisers. It's clearly identified as being advertising, and helps offset the cost of gathering news.

It's probably not the kind of business that you'd expect to find as part of a public broadcaster.

But that's exactly where the CBC announced in September that it was moving next.

It's just another area where the CBC, which regularly claims it isn't trying to compete with private media, is walking into the private arena.

The broadcaster announced a new advertising offering called Tandem, a program that would let advertisers set the direction of CBC pieces, pieces that, under the original plan, would be fronted by CBC staff.

As CBC'S chief revenue officer Donald Lizotte put it in a news release, “Clients wanted an integrated, turnkey solution to create quality content and leverage the credibility of our network. I am so pleased that we now offer this.”

It was touted as a way to use the CBC'S reputation to help customers sell products or services, and a way to help solve the CBC'S problem of diminished advertising revenues. The CBC certainly has its problems. According to numbers released by the CRTC on Canadian viewership in 2019, CBC Television lost something close to 25 per cent of its viewers last year. That can't help its advertising revenues.

But CBC journalists, both past and present, are angered by the latest move, which promised, originally, to “monetize its content ... across all platforms.” The CRTC is now also going to allow questions on the move.

CBC management blinked at the opposition coming from both within and without the CBC, and has toned down its message, saying that journalists won't appear in paid content, along with other rules about where the content will appear.

But that doesn't mean the wheels have come completely off of Tandem.

As CBC executive vice-president Barb Williams said in a statement, “(As) long as we operate a diversified business model and aim to maintain current levels of service to Canadians, we must be able to provide advertisers with the suite of options that all of our reputable colleagues provide.”

Yes, we do indeed provide that suite of options, even without the CBC'S federal subsidy.

So, here's the question, along the lines of that famous old saying “if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck.”

If the CBC is going to look like private media, swim like private media, and quack like private media, why is it getting $1.5 billion in federal subsidy every year?