Last night on the CBC, we discussed … the CBC. (As, it seems, are a lot of people these days.) I got a little tongue-tied, possibly due to the effects of an unfortunate haircut, but here are the points I would have made if we’d had the time and I’d had the presence of mind…
- The CBC is caught in a perpetual dilemma: whether to be an elite service providing programs presumably too high-brow for the private networks, or a broad, inclusive service that draws the nation together around the televisual hearth. It has traditionally resolved this conflict by being neither. It has not produced consistently high-quality programming, and has seen its average audience share dwindle over the years.
- The current leadership has tilted strongly to the populist option, offering fare that is often indistinguishable from what’s on the private networks (what is Jeopardy!). While this strategy has broadened the corporation’s audience somewhat — ratings have been rising in the last couple of years, to 8.7% of prime time viewers — it has only made its existential dilemma more acute: If there was ever a case for public funding, it was to produce programming that the private networks wouldn’t.
- You could make that case in television’s technological infancy, when it was impossible to charge audiences directly for the programs they watched. Selling advertising was one solution to this problem. Public funding was the other, one that many people came to prefer as the failings of the advertising model became clear. That is, there was no way to measure the intensity of viewer preferences — how much they wanted to watch a show, not just whether they had the set tuned to it. So advertising buys, and therefore programming decisions, were biased to the median viewer, ie to the largest number of eyeballs. Instead of selling programs to viewers, television networks sold audiences to advertisers.
- This tended to produce a lot of very safe, very similar programming, all aimed at the same mass audience, and as such gave private TV a bad name — an example, it was said, of the philistinism of “the market,” viz. you and me. But in fact it’s not true of “the market.” It’s only true of TV. In most markets, there is an almost limitless variety of tastes served, from high to low, narrow to broad. You don’t have to take what the largest possible audience wants when it comes to, say, sweaters. You can buy a cheap mass-market sweater, or an expensive designer item. If your tastes are very particular, you can have one hand made.
- So the case for public funding (and, analogously, regulation) was not to supplant the market, but to create one: to replicate that diversity that exists in most other markets in the supply of television programming. That’s why it is so contradictory to have advertising on CBC TV: if there’s one thing that everybody should agree on, it’s that the Corpse has to kick the advertising habit.
- But public funding has its own problems. One, it has proved notoriously unstable: if advertising revenues expose the CBC to the ups and downs of the business cycle, public funding leaves it hostage to the whims of its political masters. And two, it insulates the network from any direct connection with the audience: if advertising finance biases programming to the largest audience, public funding obviates the necessity of reaching an audience at all. Rather, it too often serves the interests and values of the people who produce it.
- With the advent of pay-TV, and now pay-per-view and video-on-demand, that dilemma has been resolved: viewers can pay directly for the programs they want to watch.
- And passionate, paying viewers, it turns out, are the key to excellence. I can pull a dozen shows at random out of the TV listings, and I’d challenge anyone to say whether they were on private or public TV. The much greater signifier these days is between conventional “free” TV and the cable/pay channels, like HBO. That’s where the best TV is being produced these days, specialty pay channels catering to all sorts of different tastes, in a way that would once have been associated with public TV.
- So there is no longer any necessity for public funding, and lots of reasons to want to get rid of it — the first being its lack of necessity (logic suggests we should reserve scarce public dollars for those things that cannot be paid for in any other way. See Coyne’s Third Law: “government should only do what only government can do.”)
- However…. Even if you still think there’s a case for public funding of TV, the time has surely come to reconsider the CBC model, ie as a full-service, “flagship” broadcaster. It makes no sense to aim all these public dollars at one spot on the dial, where they can be so easily avoided.
- So — a couple of alternative models to consider. One would just be to funnel all public funding through Telefilm, ie to fund programs, rather than networks, on the principle that we want to see “Canadian stories” (I don’t, but supposing I did) at any point on the dial, not just on the CBC.
- The other would be to put the CBC on pay, as Newsworld is currently. I don’t think you could get enough people to pay enough money to support the existing CBC network. But if you divided up the network into several specialty channels — Artsworld, Sportsworld etc — you could probably persuade people to pay the smaller fees they would presumably require. As a transitional measure, you could put these channels on the basic service tier, meaning cable (and satellite) subscribers would be obliged to pay for them, but with the understanding that at some point viewers would be given a choice whether to subscribe or not. It’s interesting in this regard to note the current management’s addition of several channels to the CBC’s portfolio.
- At the very least, subscription fees should be used to get advertising off the CBC. But it could and should also replace some or all of the funding it receives from the government. Perhaps there are some purely public services it performs that its viewers should not be asked to fund. But generally speaking there is no longer any public good case for public funding: that is for making everyone else pay so that the CBC’s supporters don’t have to.
- It’s traditional at this point to make an exception for CBC radio, and I suppose I could as well. It doesn’t take advertising, its audience seems to care more about it, and it doesn’t cost all that much. But satellite and internet radio is making the case for CBC Radio largely obsolete as well. You can find just about every conceivable form of programming on the ‘net, with lots of Canadian content. So I’d make the case for reforming CBC radio as well, though with rather less urgency.
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If they want to kill it off, then do it quick and tastefully. Not that will happen as years of bad management and gradually strangling cuts force viewers of mind and taste away. Hmmm upon further inspection this has been taking place for most of my lifetime and still the debate of CBC’s relevance continues. It was never meant to make money, it should never have been competing for advertising dollars. It should have been held to Canadian content only. It was never possible but cabinet interference should have been prevented.
Alas the bloated corpse of The Canadian Broadscorping Castration will slug forward providing fodder for politics and critics.
This is off-topic I know – but generally speaking, journalists/columnists are not well-paid. Like many artists – they do not retire in style unless they write best-sellers like Stephen King.
Also off-topic – sort-of – it sure is interesting to hear other opinions on a topic that’s dear to my heart. CBC? I’ve been mad at the producers many times but I admire and respect the people who bring us great documentaries and programs of substance and merit and interest. Okay. Maybe they don’t all appeal to all of you – but you have to admit we “socialists” also have a right to good TV, or a hearty laugh [Rick Mercer] or some solid dramatizations [even a Canadian story or two.]
Pat
I disagree whole-heartedly. The CBC attracts journalists who want to delve deeper into stories than other outlets are willing/able to go. It is an institution and the fact that it is free to all Canadians is paramount.
I believe Coyne would agree that though, as he says, “government should do only what government can do”, you won’t find the same level of investigative journalism on private networks, and were you to find one that did, there is the inevitability of that source being compromised by ownership (ie. 60 Minutes constantly producing stories stemming from books published by fellow Time-Warner owned firms, as well as CNN cross-over content).
So perhaps in the case of quality programming, only the government, through its publicly funded television, can produce the high level of journalism that this country both desires and requires.
Rex Murphy on why the CBC matters:
http://www.friends.ca/news-item/5067
Andrew,
why do you not go after the comments of your colleagues on these subjects. Chantel feels it is her duty to remind English Canada that we are held hostage in our own country by the Bloc and Quebec on a weekly basis. Her comments on the show about Radio Canada and Stephen Harper were irrelevant to the conversation and just reinforces her own agenda. As for Alan, he is a train wreck as well. Each week we watch him long for the days of Pierre Elliot where the Liberals ruled the country and taxpayer money was held to the highest bidder. Their comments were outdated, lacked any substance or vision, and they attacked your comments without batting an eye. The future of the CBC is either PBS style funding (donations by viewers) or Pay-feed, where you can watch, download, podcast, stream, or other available forums. I agreed with you 100%, to bad the other 2 on the show have old style Liberal and Bloc mentalities.
Two points:
1. I noticed your haircut right away and thought you looked younger and more handsome than you have looked in many, many months. For a change, you didn’t look tired. (I have not missed a single episode of AT ISSUE in years.)
2. Leave the CBC alone! I like it just the way it is. It is my only source for news on television. (I get other perspectives online.) ALL the DOCUMENTARIES are FANTASTIC and I never miss The Fifth Estate, Marketplace, The Nature of Things, Rick Mercer…well, you get the idea.
Lucy-
Why do you want a 100% of the tax payers forced to support a non-essential entity who’s viewership is in the rating basement. Because you like that miserable little troll Rick Mercer, isn’t enough for me.
I have no problem with a continuation of a non- commercial CBC radio, but even its leftist perspective must be addressed.
Well Glak…it is because so much of the information on the CBC is very valuable and maybe, just maybe, so many of the Canadians that would never subcribe to it (if that became the delivery system), might stumble upon one of the amazing programs and actually learn something “by accident”!
And how odd that you refer to Rick Mercer in such a negative light…what exactly has he and his 30 minute programs done to deserve that? Perhaps you enjoy the kind of trash spewed out by Fox and the Red Eye comedy show instead. If that is the case, there is little need to dialogue further.
Not that this is the central point of discussion but why pick on Rick, Glak? Rick Mercer’s show has a huge following among my twenty-something friends which makes it an exception in CBC programming. Rick spends time with politicians of all stripes, Olympians, artists, students, the military, businessmen and blue-collar folks and treats all with the same mix of respect and gentle kidding. In his travels he performs capably one of the core missions of the CBC: He makes all of Canada seem connected like distant family and illuminates just how blessed we are to live here with each other. In what seem like pretty dark times, RMR reminds me that not all the news is negative.
Andrew,
You and Peter Mansbridge were the only reasons I watched the CBC, but I have stopped even watching that. The ‘National’ comes on too late and interferes with other Prime Time shows. I now watch Global National for the news, mostly for the visuals because the rest is far easier to read and watch online! Chantel Hebert is nothing but another Quebecois with an agenda and she is hard to look at as well. The rest of the ‘At Issue’ panel, excepting Kady O’Mally, are also boring. Kady is a fireball and easy to listen to.
The CBC could best be used nowadays for airing their Pet Moron Don Cherry. Maybe rename it to the ‘Canadians Beating Canadians’ network. Hockey is anything but a sport. The WWE would be proud.
Mercer’s show is good for the Rant, beyond that…BORING! Now that Air Farce is gone that leaves THH22M which is not even funny anymore.
Sorry, but the CBC is not what it used to be and need be no more.
As to some other comments. If I want ‘intelligent TV’ I watch PBS, National Geographic, Discovery, History, A&E, Discovery Civilization for real informative programs, and in High Definition. We also watch TSN in HD for curling.
The CSI (original and Miami, not NY) shows get watched, but again in HD and they are really worth it, especially ‘CSI: Miami’ which has matured into top grade entertainment
The Montreal and Halifax Comedy Fests are also regullar programs we will either watch or record on our DVR. We tried HBO and it is crude and not at all funny to our tastes.
Jon Stewart is ALWAYS recorded and watched the next day and is the best satire and news show on TV IMHO. I stopped watching Colbert because there is just too much nauseating Colbert!
‘24′ gets watched as do a few other dramatic shows, as well as ‘Dancing with the Stars.’ Forget the Survivor and Idol shows…BORING and mind numbing.
None of the above are on CBC!
The rest of TV is, as was said decades ago, ‘A Vast Wasteland!’ of meaningless tripe and fluff. All the channels we have with satellite and so few worth tuning to. Sad!
Lucy:
I’m with you!
Pat
If Harper and Cannon and Mackay and etc. – or Mr. Coyne – are interested in what’s going on in Pakistan in relation to the Afghanistan mission they should probably have been watching CBC News this week; specifically Adrian Arsenault’s on the ground reports. Here’s an example:
http://www.cbc.ca/video/popup_nlp.html?http://www.cbc.ca/mrl3/8752/news/features/arsenault-taliban090401.wmv
Today’s report from Karachi is equally singular. This on the spot reporting, intelligent and thought provoking is entirely absent from CTV, Global, or any of the United States networks. This quality of work alone makes the case, in my view, that the CBC is unique and the value it provides to Canadians cannot and will not be replaced should Canadians have to rely on private sector or subscription news sources.
Over to you Mr. Coyne.
When you publish someone’s name, make sure you spell it correctly; “Adrienne Arsenault.” My apologies to Ms. Arsenault.