CBC-TV Can No Longer Afford to be Free

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CBC-TV Can No Longer Afford to be Free

Postby jon » Fri Sep 12, 2014 5:15 pm

CBC execs tell CRTC it can no longer afford to be free
James Bradshaw - MEDIA REPORTER
The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Sep. 12 2014, 7:23 PM EDT
Last updated Friday, Sep. 12 2014, 7:24 PM EDT

Canada’s public broadcaster says it can no longer afford to offer its television programming for free over the air as its advertising revenue deteriorates, and it wants cable and satellite companies to start paying for its signals.

On Friday, Canadian Broadcasting Corp. executives told the federal regulator it is time to turn off free signals and allow conventional TV stations such as CBC and CTV to charge distributors a fee for carrying their channels in basic packages – even if that cost is passed on to customers.

The CBC’s argument echoes arguments BCE Inc. presented earlier this week before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which is holding a major two-week hearing into the future of Canada’s television industry, called Let’s Talk TV. Both companies argued local television is suffering and unsustainable under current rules, after the CRTC floated a proposal to allow local over-the-air signals to be shut down. (BCE owns 15 per cent of The Globe and Mail.)

“Conventional television still remains at the heart of the broadcasting system, but its business model is broken,” Hubert Lacroix, president and CEO of the CBC, told the Commission.

The notion that CBC’s channels could be restricted only to those with a cable, satellite or Internet subscription raises fundamental questions about a publicly funded broadcaster’s role and the rights of over-the-air viewers, many of whom live in remote areas and have low or fixed incomes.

The CRTC’s own analysis of thousands of submissions ahead of the hearing suggests Canadians still value over-the-air signals, even though only about 5 per cent still access them, through antennas. Chairman Jean-Pierre Blais pressed the CBC about how it would explain to viewers that they would have to pay $25 to $30 a month to subscribe to cable or satellite to keep CBC TV, when many see free access to public broadcasting “as almost a constitutional right.”

“It’s not free” to produce, replied Steve Guiton, CBC’s vice-president of technology and chief regulatory officer, “and it’s been funded by a specific model, which is advertising.” He used Via Rail Canada Inc. and public transit as examples of services that are similarly heavily subsidized by taxpayers.

“Whenever I get on a Via train, I don’t assume I get a seat for free,” Mr. Guiton said.

When Mr. Blais suggested some viewers might argue CBC would be “taking the bus off the roads completely” and should use its public subsidy to avoid that, Mr. Lacroix replied that advertising has long been a pillar of the CBC’s “hybrid” funding model.

“The bus is on the side of the road, and it’s not going fast enough,” Mr. Lacroix said, warning the quality of content on conventional stations is now in peril.

The CBC earned about $331-million in advertising revenue in 2013, down more than 11 per cent from 2012, and a large part of that revenue will vanish this year after it lost NHL hockey broadcast rights to Rogers Communications Inc.

But ditching over-the-air TV channels, particularly CBC’s, would be “a betrayal of the public trust” and could spur a backlash beyond the 1.5 million-plus people who still use them, said Ian Morrison, spokesperson for the advocacy group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.

“If you get the vast majority of people saying it is a right, well then anybody who’s going to trample on that is going to get in trouble,” he said.

But Christopher Waddell, an associate professor of journalism at Carleton University and former CBC executive producer, thinks Mr. Guiton’s public transit analogy is reasonable given dwindling over-the-air viewership and the corporation’s collapsing ad revenues. And it “may be outdated” to think the way a broadcaster delivers its programs is what makes it “public.”

“It’s a nice concept to say, ‘yes, it should be free, and yes, stuff was free for a long time, too,’ but I think we’re in a different world [today],” Mr. Waddell said. “… Maybe it’s time to think of public broadcasting as more about content and a different philosophy” compared with private broadcasters.
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Re: CBC-TV Can No Longer Afford to be Free

Postby Mike Cleaver » Fri Sep 12, 2014 6:14 pm

All of these multi-billion dollar corpse that own most of the media and distribution in Canada are crying poor and claim they need money from us to continue providing their "service."
Have a look at their financial statements.
All they have done is cut programming and staff to maximize their bottom lines.
Local television now is a couple of so called "newscasts" and usually a cheezy morning show.
Radio may have a live morning show, talking about tits and ass and no real news anymore, with the rest coming "out of the box," with "music radio" playing the same three to four hundred pieces of overplayed crap every day.
There's basically nothing but crap to watch or listen to anymore and you can get more and better coverage on the internet for the price of your connection.
Let the CRTC do what it wants with radio and TV, most of us don't care anymore.
But keep its hands off the Internet.
It has no business trying to regulate that, it's not in its mandate.
Mike Cleaver Broadcast Services
Engineering, News, Voice work and Consulting
Vancouver, BC, Canada

54 years experience at some of Canada's Premier Broadcasting Stations
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Re: CBC-TV Can No Longer Afford to be Free

Postby ThisIsNotCBC » Fri Sep 12, 2014 7:24 pm

Mike Cleaver wrote:All of these multi-billion dollar corpse that own most of the media and distribution in Canada are crying poor and claim they need money from us to continue providing their "service."
Have a look at their financial statements.
All they have done is cut programming and staff to maximize their bottom lines.
Local television now is a couple of so called "newscasts" and usually a cheezy morning show.
Radio may have a live morning show, talking about tits and ass and no real news anymore, with the rest coming "out of the box," with "music radio" playing the same three to four hundred pieces of overplayed crap every day.
There's basically nothing but crap to watch or listen to anymore and you can get more and better coverage on the internet for the price of your connection.
Let the CRTC do what it wants with radio and TV, most of us don't care anymore.
But keep its hands off the Internet.
It has no business trying to regulate that, it's not in its mandate.


Exactly. On the surface they may be in competition, but in reality, the CBC, Bell (CTV), Shaw (Global) and Rogers (City) are in collusion with each other to try to obtain whatever they're calling "fee for carriage" nowadays at our expense. This is just one of several big reasons why the big media companies need to be broken up.
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Re: CBC-TV Can No Longer Afford to be Free

Postby jon » Sat Sep 13, 2014 8:44 am

This article covers much of the same material as the G&M article, but the headline, and some of the article, makes a point not covered in the G&M article.

CBC/Radio-Canada bosses say Canadians ready to pay to get broadcaster
By Melanie Marquis
The Canadian Press
September 12, 2014

GATINEAU, Que. - The heads of CBC/Radio-Canada say Canadians are ready to pay to get the broadcaster's content even if many consider it an acquired right.

Steven Guiton, one of the leaders of the publicy owned broadcaster, told hearings at the federal broadcast regulator on Friday that "95 per cent of Canadians have come to realize that you pay for TV."

"Canadians are there," said Guiton, the Crown corporation's vice-president of technology and chief regulatory officer.

"There is a group, and it's not a criticism of them, who still believe there should be something in this free. It's not free. It costs money."

The CBC/Radio-Canada executives hammered the traditional television business models and told the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission hearings they are in favour of revamping it.

They said the current system has become less profitable, pointing out that conventional television content providers do not get any cut of cable TV bills paid by consumers.

"Something's not working," CBC/Radio-Canada president Hubert Lacroix later told reporters.

The corporation also cited the multiplication of platforms and new players in the market, saying providers of online video services such as Netflix should contribute financially to the Canadian system as much as other industry players.

Heritage Minister Shelly Glover said Monday the government has no intention of regulating or taxing the Internet content providers, a proposal the New Democratic Party described as "indecent."

Lacroix pointed to Glover's position and told reporters there are still outstanding questions to be addressed.

CBC/Radio-Canada also suggested in its testimony that a fund be established to pay for the production of local news, another service they said Canadians support.

However, the CBC/Radio-Canada executives would not say how much consumers would have to pay for the broadcaster's service despite questions from journalists and CRTC commissioners.

"I don't know what that will be," Guiton told the hearing. "Is it going to be two cents, is it going to be a buck? I don't know. None of us in this room know."

Guiton said he didn't think this was the time to have that discussion anyway.

Lacroix insisted new sources of funding are vital for CBC/Radio-Canada to ensure its survival or else the quality of its programming will decline.

Jean-Pierre Blais, chairman of the CRTC, suggested the broadcaster's funding model is possibly a greater challenge than any regulations it may face.

CBC/Radio-Canada has already undertaken deep cuts to its workforce to balance its books, aiming to reach $130 million in savings by the end of the year — the equivalent of 657 full-time jobs.

Lacroix preferred to avoid the issue in testimony, saying the debate at the CRTC is about the business environment facing those in the Canadian broadcasting and telecommunications industry.

"Government appropriation is something completely different from the conversations we're having today and the suggestions we're putting forward," he said. "This is about the system."

The CRTC hearings will continue until Sept. 19. They are aimed at developing new rules to govern the television industry in the wake of changes brought about by new technology and services.
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Re: CBC-TV Can No Longer Afford to be Free

Postby Jack Bennest » Sat Sep 13, 2014 9:26 am

May not be the answer but Feds could pay CBC radio 1 a fee for every man, woman and child in Canada.
Annual review by a committee as to how that subsidy makes CBC a public broadcaster with a obligation to be different.

Other wise - TV and all other platforms like CBC 2 should be commercially viable or sold.
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Re: CBC-TV Can No Longer Afford to be Free

Postby mccrady » Sat Sep 13, 2014 3:15 pm

Or maybe TV news operations could pull in their horns a little bit and stop trying to out-toy each other and work a little harder at meaningful content.

Do we really need to be paying overtime so a reporter can be “live” at the scene of something that happened hours ago? Live coverage has its place, but we now seem to be more concerned about being “live” than we are about having something to cover. And speaking of that ...

Do we really need to be treated night after night to the sight of reporters kicking the snot out of ad-libbed live hits when scripted standups would do the job just as well (or better!) and much more cheaply?

Do we really need two anchors engaging in meaningless “chat” instead of one using that time to actually present a real story, even if it's only a tightly-written copy yarn? Do we really need two anchors at all?

Do we really need to try to flog two hours of news every night when there generally is, at most, 30 minutes of real stuff going on that's worth reporting? Do we really need to get tape of every fender-bender where someone comes away with a hangnail? And helicopters? Come on!

My point is that there are cheaper and equally effective ways to do it.

Right now, I can't stand to watch more than five minutes of anybody's show, including the one I used to work on. Better content. Less flash. Then, maybe someone will take them seriously.
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Re: CBC-TV Can No Longer Afford to be Free

Postby slowhand » Sat Sep 13, 2014 3:54 pm

mccrady wrote:Do we really need to try to flog two hours of news every night when there generally is, at most, 30 minutes of real stuff going on that's worth reporting?

Lets picture this. All the commercials they've sold for those two hours of news shoehorned into 30 minutes. Viewers are already howling about how much of the supper hour news is ads.

But you are right. Maybe if it didn't cost so much to produce the news, they could sell less advertising and still make money.

One big problem is the fact that local stations now only produce the news and nothing else. Cuts like you suggest to news would decimate the staff of most local stations to a point where it would be hard to justify even owning a building, or maybe even doing any of this locally. Outsourcing overseas might even be feasible.
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Re: CBC-TV Can No Longer Afford to be Free

Postby Blabbermouth » Sat Sep 13, 2014 3:57 pm

I don't see why taxpayers should subsidize content which is exactly the same as that which is being produced by private broadcasters. The last straw for me was when CBC News grabbed Tony Parsons to try and buy ratings. How is that "strengthening the cultural fabric" of Canada?

The radio one morning and afternoon shows are great....but they are competing directly with private broadcasters (especially cknw) who have smaller budgets and also the disadvantage of having to run commercials. The fm cbc morning show plays very commercial music, as does the CBC.ca music streaming services. Why are we paying for that?

I'm all for funding good, non commercial programming but the current system makes no sense.
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Re: CBC-TV Can No Longer Afford to be Free

Postby gwp » Fri Oct 10, 2014 12:22 pm

Purhaps the return of radio receiver and television reciever licenses. :bag:
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Re: CBC-TV Can No Longer Afford to be Free

Postby slowhand » Fri Oct 10, 2014 12:37 pm

Blabbermouth wrote:I don't see why taxpayers should subsidize content which is exactly the same as that which is being produced by private broadcasters. The last straw for me was when CBC News grabbed Tony Parsons to try and buy ratings. How is that "strengthening the cultural fabric" of Canada?

The radio one morning and afternoon shows are great....but they are competing directly with private broadcasters (especially cknw) who have smaller budgets and also the disadvantage of having to run commercials. The fm cbc morning show plays very commercial music, as does the CBC.ca music streaming services. Why are we paying for that?

I'm all for funding good, non commercial programming but the current system makes no sense.

If CKNW actually has a smaller budget than CBU for their morning show, for one, I'd be surprised and, second, it is their own stupid penny-pinching fault.
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Re: CBC-TV Can No Longer Afford to be Free

Postby Blabbermouth » Sat Oct 11, 2014 10:06 am

If CKNW actually has a smaller budget than CBU for their morning show, for one, I'd be surprised and, second, it is their own stupid penny-pinching fault.

Budgets aside, it's not a fair playing field if both shows are chasing the same listeners (and don't think ratings aren't important for the CBC radio morning shows) with the same style of content offered by privates broadcasters, if one show is funded by playing commercials and the other is not.
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Re: CBC-TV Can No Longer Afford to be Free

Postby jon » Sat Oct 11, 2014 2:52 pm

Blabbermouth wrote:Budgets aside, it's not a fair playing field if both shows are chasing the same listeners (and don't think ratings aren't important for the CBC radio morning shows) with the same style of content offered by privates broadcasters, if one show is funded by playing commercials and the other is not.

Having seen both sides of the argument, having worked public, private, campus and pirate radio, including the CBC and its private affiliates, I've come to the conclusion that Public Radio is always going to make someone angry. Private stations if they do well in the Ratings. Those who fund them if they do poorly in the Ratings. Admittedly, less so for a Listener-Funded model like CKUA has evolved into. More so when it is taxpayer money.
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Re: CBC-TV Can No Longer Afford to be Free

Postby Blabbermouth » Sat Oct 11, 2014 4:25 pm

jon wrote:
Blabbermouth wrote:Budgets aside, it's not a fair playing field if both shows are chasing the same listeners (and don't think ratings aren't important for the CBC radio morning shows) with the same style of content offered by privates broadcasters, if one show is funded by playing commercials and the other is not.

Having seen both sides of the argument, having worked public, private, campus and pirate radio, including the CBC and its private affiliates, I've come to the conclusion that Public Radio is always going to make someone angry. Private stations if they do well in the Ratings. Those who fund them if they do poorly in the Ratings. Admittedly, less so for a Listener-Funded model like CKUA has evolved into. More so when it is taxpayer money.


I really like the national CBC content, and I think it's crucial to have that type of programming available in a country as spread out and sparsely populated as Canada - especially in the rural areas. And that's regardless of how many listeners it brings in.

It just seems to me that the local shows in the big urban centres are just doing their best to out-commercial the commercial stations (I go back to the example of CBC TV news bringing over Tony Parsons as a cheap grab for ratings).

How is that fair to private broadcasters and how is it helping Canadian culture?
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Re: CBC-TV Can No Longer Afford to be Free

Postby jon » Sat Oct 11, 2014 5:18 pm

Blabbermouth wrote:It just seems to me that the local shows in the big urban centres are just doing their best to out-commercial the commercial stations (I go back to the example of CBC TV news bringing over Tony Parsons as a cheap grab for ratings).

How is that fair to private broadcasters and how is it helping Canadian culture?

At the risk of being slightly off topic from how the thread started, my comments in the previous post were about CBC Radio, specifically Radio One. I cannot really speak to CBC Television.

I have to believe that CBC senior management's priority one is showing the federal government politicians the only kind of results ("Value for the Dollar" with a short term horizon viewpoint) they think they will accept: Ratings Numbers. Remember, this is the same government that is unhappy funding University Research that does not pay back their investment in less than 5 years.

At least for CBC Radio One, local programming has to focus on outdoing all the other stations on Local News and "Near News". Whether that is Fair to private broadcasters or helping Canadian culture might not even be on their Radar.

On the other hand, Radio Two still seems unable to garner anything resembling the Ratings that Radio One scores in most markets where they have local AM and PM Drive programming. As I say, I don't keep up with Radio Two, but I don't believe they have any local programming.
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