BROADCAST BUNGLER
CBC lacks creativity
When is a crisis actually an opportunity?
CBC-TV’s loss of NHL hockey rights to rival broadcaster Rogers Media has caused much handwringing and hysteria at the public broadcaster, when the real problem is a failure of imagination. The lights may be going out on NHL hockey at CBC, but that doesn’t mean the lights have to go out on good ideas, as well.
Executives with CBC Englishlanguage television unveil their fall schedule May 29. The daylong event in Toronto is likely to rekindle the old, tired debate about what to do with the public broadcaster and fading cultural institution, once NHL hockey is gone and the lights have been turned out for good on Hockey Night in Canada.
CBC-TV won’t lose NHL hockey until the 2015-16 TV season.
The real issue is what happens after that.
CBC staff were briefed last month on what a post-hockey world will look like at the public broadcaster, in the short term.
CBC/Radio Canada plans to cut more than 650 positions over two years, to meet a projected shortfall of $130 million in CBC’s operating budget. As it is, the CBC’s parliamentary appropria- tion has already been cut, to $913 million in 2014-15 from $1.03 billion in 2011-12.
In related news this week, a watchdog group says CBC is planning a fresh round of service cuts, including making Radio Two online-only and merging some English and French programming — but the public broadcaster denies the claims. Friends of Canadian Broadcasting says executives are set to propose several new major cuts when the board of directors meets in Ottawa on June 17 and 18.
The staff cuts already announced will be deepest in news and sports, if reports are true. That seems the obvious, safest choice. It’s also exactly the wrong choice.
The solution is so obvious it’s barely worth repeating: Do what others are not doing, and do it well.
Ever since Bravo! gave up on the arts and became a feeder channel for reruns of Criminal Minds and Blue Bloods, there’s been a dearth of arts programming across Canada.
TVO in Ontario and Knowledge in B.C. have established a template for quality public broadcasting on a regional level. No one is better positioned to do that on a national scale than the national public broadcaster.
Bidding against private broadcasters on professional sports was a sure road to ruin. The only wonder is that it took this long for CBC-TV to finally lose the rights to NHL hockey, using the public subsidy in a constant, mad scramble to outbid Rogers, Bell Media and Shaw to land the rights to a well-organized sport played by well-paid professional athletes. NHL hockey no more belongs on the CBC than English Premier League soccer belongs on BBC, or NFL football or the NBA on PBS.
If you choose to agree, as most do, that a public broadcaster should serve in the public interest, that it show a country and its people at their best, that it acknowledge that its core audience aspires to overcome social, economic and cultural barriers to achieve a greater, deeper meaning to their lives, that it stand for something, that its legacy count for more than who won last night’s hockey game, then the solution seems obvious.
More arts, more documentaries and more of a focus on Canadian geography and history, and less of a scramble to resemble a cheaper, lighter version of CTV and Global.
It would be advertising-free. Programs would be underwritten by major corporations and deep-pocketed private donors. Tax laws could be reworked to make charitable donations and private foundations more feasible. Chances are, even without ads and constant pleas for money, this programming lineup might still come in for less than $900 million.
Public broadcasting is not about ratings. It’s about serving the public interest, and doing what others can’t or won’t do. As long as there’s an audience — any audience — it’s justified its existence, the same way Peachtree and Encore 2 have justified their existence.