Why do we need CBC TV?
The federal government spends a lot of money on Canadian culture. It subsidizes Canadian books, Canadian movies, Canadian theatre, Canadian music and Canadian television.
But it doesn’t own any bookstores, movie theatres, concert halls or record stores. It leaves the production and distribution of all those other artistic endeavours to the private and not-for-profit sectors. So why does it own a television network?
The loss of NHL hockey has thrown the CBC’s business model up in the air. Everyone seems to have lots of advice for the network about what it should do next. But the real question is: Why is the CBC in business at all? More importantly, why is competing with private companies that do the same thing it does?
The justification has always been that the CBC does some things that private networks don’t. But out of financial necessity (meaning because the government doesn’t give it enough money), the CBC has a hybrid model of doing exactly what other broadcasters do — televising commercially viable material — and a bit of what they don’t — producing and airing less popular but culturally significant programming.
The former not only puts it in direct competition with private broadcasters, it drives up their costs.
Once upon a time, it made sense for the CBC to exist. Broadcasting was a new technology that could link Canadians from coast to coast to coast, just as the railway had done decades earlier. And there was less of a business model for a private company to do it, so the government did.
Today, however, almost everyone in the country has access to hundreds of channels. If there’s one thing we don’t need in our lives, it’s another television network.
Rather than helping Canadians get access to programming, the CBC actually makes life harder for private broadcasters. The government would never be able to rationalize competing with Canadian companies in any other industry. So why does it bid against the private sector for talent and assets in broadcasting?
In February, the CBC will have live coverage of the Winter Olympics. It outbid private networks for those rights. That means it’s not only taking away viewers from broadcasters who were willing to air the Olympics, but also driving up the cost of the rights whenever they get their turn. The CBC has been outbidding private companies for the rights to the NHL for years; the price only recently rose beyond its reach.
But the existence of private companies willing to do much of the commercial side of CBC’s work is not the only reason the network is redundant. In the digital age, conventional distribution networks are becoming less important all the time. More Canadians are getting their programming directly from the Internet than ever before. So the idea that the only source of programming for many Canadians will be a publicly owned, conventional television network is obsolete.
Some people would like to see the entire CBC budget wiped out and put toward other priorities. But even if you support the idea that the government should be investing in Canadian broadcasting — as most Canadians do — the CBC doesn’t provide the best bang for its buck.
If the goal is to ensure there is good programming that unites Canadians, why not take the CBC’s entire budget and spend it on that programming instead of paying for network operations, overhead and infrastructure, not to mention sales representatives whose job is to take business away from private competitors?
Instead of funding a public television channel, the government should sell CBC’s broadcasting infrastructure — the network — to a private company or turn it into a notfor-profit run with private donations.
The CBC’s annual operating budget could then be invested in a granting agency that subsidizes great Canadian television productions. Without the cost of running and marketing an entire network, there could be even more money to fund this programming. And these shows could be made available to the newly privatized CBC or the dozens of other television networks the CBC currently competes with. Whoever wants it could have it.
This model isn’t entirely outside the CBC’s roots. There was a time when it made its programming available to privately owned affiliates across the country.
Frankly, if the goal is to give Canadians access to great Canadian programming, it would probably be cheaper, more efficient and less damaging to the private sector for the CBC to pay other broadcasters to air its shows than to operate its own channel.
Ultimately the discussion needs to do what the market is doing: move beyond traditional channels to the digital world. If the government focused its investment on content rather than distribution, it would be ahead of the curve, making digital programming available directly to consumers who want to watch it. That would make a lot more business sense than maintaining a competitor to the private sector at a time when network infrastructure is of declining value.