The Self-Destruction of the CBC

Ira Wagman

The fed­eral gov­ern­ment recently announced it is review­ing the CBC’s man­date. This review is the lat­est chap­ter in a long story of ques­tion­ing the value of the CBC since its incep­tion sev­enty years ago. Clearly there are pol­i­tics involved here; the CBC is an easy tar­get for attack by par­ties of all stripes. What’s dif­fer­ent this time around is that the CBC’s pain has been self-inflicted. Through an obses­sion with youth demo­graph­ics and a propen­sity for deriv­a­tive pro­gram­ming, the CBC has rewrit­ten the rules for pub­lic broad­cast­ing. It has pro­vided ammu­ni­tion to its crit­ics, and it is in the process of writ­ing its own death warrant. 

To wit­ness the decline in action, let’s go back to February 2006. The head of English tele­vi­sion, Richard Stursberg, addressed mem­bers of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association to out­line the CBC’s new pro­gram­ming pri­or­i­ties. These were based on mar­ket research that con­cluded that CBC’s pro­grams attracted peo­ple “largely to be informed.” Those look­ing for enter­tain­ment were “less likely” to tune in. To attract the “less likely” demo­graphic, con­sist­ing pri­mar­ily of younger view­ers, Stursberg argued that the CBC needed to change the rules of the game. Dramatic pro­grams need to be “pos­i­tive, redemp­tive sto­ries” that deal with themes “audi­ences will respond to on an emo­tional level.” Documentaries need to pro­vide “more adven­ture and romance” and the news must aim to pro­vide mate­r­ial that is “more acces­si­ble” and “per­son­ally rel­e­vant.” And let’s not leave out those real­ity and lifestyle shows — they’re also part of the plan. After decades of offer­ing Canadians an alter­na­tive to pro­gram­ming on other net­works, the CBC will now aim for popularity.

The result of this new strat­egy has been as embar­rass­ing and awk­ward as an old per­son in a FUBU sweat­suit. Reality shows such as Dragon’s Den and the recently unveiled Fashion File Host Hunt are pale imi­ta­tions of pro­grams air­ing on other net­works, like The Apprentice or Much­Music VJ Search. Speaking of Much­Music, for­mer VJ George Stroumboulopoulos deliv­ers news with a punk aes­thetic on The Hour, which con­sciously incor­po­rates nose rings, stuff from YouTube and con­tests spon­sored by Doritos. Another exam­ple of prod­uct inte­gra­tion, Kraft Hockeyville, united Canada’s hockey-crazy com­mu­ni­ties and the pur­veyor of “KD,” a prized Canadian foodstuff.

Real­ity and cheese are served up in other pro­gram­ming areas as well. On The Gill Deacon Show, the Corporation’s lifestyle entry, view­ers are chal­lenged to think about their lives “out of the box” with a pro­gram that sheep­ishly mim­ics shows like CityLine. On radio, pro­grams like Out Front and Sounds Like Canada and the drama Afghanada are intended to make you cheer at the power of the human spirit.

One thing is for sure: the new pro­gram­ming isn’t about bring­ing more peo­ple under the CBC umbrella. By pit­ting younger view­ers against its tra­di­tion­ally older demo­graphic, the CBC’s pop­u­lar­ity con­test has cre­ated a clash of gen­er­a­tions. Judging by the audi­ence out­rage over the can­cel­la­tion of On the Road Again and last summer’s pre­emp­tion of The National for the short-lived American tal­ent series The One, it’s clear the “up with peo­ple” approach isn’t working. 

It is also clear that this offen­sive approach has been under­taken for defen­sive rea­sons: the CBC’s need to demon­strate to Parliament that it is not an elit­ist insti­tu­tion. The way to prove this is through audi­ence rat­ings. Although it is a pub­lic insti­tu­tion run by career bureau­crats, the CBC must now act like Canada’s other piti­ful pri­vate broad­cast­ers. The result is pre­dictable: it grasps at straws, chas­ing down what­ever pro­gram­ming it thinks will bring in the rat­ings. The kids like real­ity shows and blogs? We’ll give them real­ity shows and blogs!

Here you might ask: isn’t this what every other broad­caster does? The answer is yes. And you might also ask: don’t most pro­grams on U.S. net­works fail every sea­son? The answer is yes again. But the CBC’s for­ays into pop­u­lar pro­gram­ming are par­tic­u­larly lame because it lacks the com­pe­tency to make them. So when Stursberg recently told employ­ees that the CBC needs to “move to a 2.0 envi­ron­ment,” with more oppor­tu­ni­ties for Canadians to rate things, blog or offer “user-generated con­tent,” it sounded arti­fi­cial. Saying the right things and mak­ing shows that look like pop­u­lar shows are one thing, but the proof is in the pud­ding. If the rat­ings for efforts like The Gill Deacon Show and Making the Cut say any­thing, it’s that no one likes a poseur.

It didn’t have to turn out this way. The CBC is act­ing like it’s 1956, when media were scarce and it needed to be all things to every­one. This is 2007, and media are abun­dant. The chal­lenge for pub­lic broad­cast­ing is not to ensure access to Canadian sto­ries but to rec­og­nize that more of those sto­ries are avail­able than ever before. Abundance can lib­er­ate the CBC to focus on what it does best: news, infor­ma­tion, children’s pro­gram­ming and dra­mas pro­duced well and pre­sented with con­fi­dence. “Traditional” shows like As It Happens are not the only ones that fit this descrip­tion: efforts like O’Reilly on Advertising, Hot Type and Venture are excel­lent exam­ples of pro­gram­ming other Canadian net­works would not support. 

This is why audi­ence rat­ings are a trap. To boil down com­plex issues into sim­plis­tic con­cepts — like “wait times” for health care — is to co-operate in the pri­va­ti­za­tion of pub­lic resources, and the same is true for audi­ence rat­ings and broad­cast­ing. If the CBC attracts more peo­ple because its con­tent is sim­i­lar to that of other broad­cast­ers, why should it receive spe­cial treat­ment? When a pub­lic insti­tu­tion behaves like a busi­ness, it fore­shad­ows its own demise.

With its puny bud­get and niche pro­gram­ming, the CBC should not com­pare itself to CTV; it should under­stand itself as a spe­cialty net­work, like Showcase. The fact that peo­ple per­ceive the CBC as a source of infor­ma­tion is evi­dence of the strength of the CBC brand that is rec­og­nized nation­ally and inter­na­tion­ally. By con­cen­trat­ing on its core com­pe­ten­cies — earnest pro­gram­ming for peo­ple who find infor­ma­tion enter­tain­ing — the CBC can make itself rel­e­vant to Canadians again by offer­ing us some­thing truly dis­tinc­tive on the air. It also makes sound busi­ness sense to claim one’s niche in a crowded media mar­ket­place. If the CBC stays the course, it will become increas­ingly irrel­e­vant. And then, when it becomes a pale shadow of its for­mer self, the CBC’s man­darins won’t be able to pin the blame on politi­cians or a pub­lic that can’t get enough of CSI.