At a second quarter financial update that he labelled a “non-event” today in Vancouver, Richard Stursberg said the CBC is weathering the economic storm. “It’s a better story than we had anticipated,” Stursberg said concerning the recession and staff layoffs. He said the advertising revenue picture has not been as bad as expected, “the numbers have held up and are quite good.”

The Executive Vice President of English Services said it’s good when the updates are “non-events.” He said it indicates fewer concerns about the state of CBC finances.

Stursberg spoke at length about the general media environment in Canada prior to focusing on the CBC’s situation. He said the advertising market in Canada is facing a “structural decline” because of the recession. He added that the impact of the economy has been most acutely felt at Canwest, of which some units are now in receivership. Stursberg said the current economic environment strengthens the argument broadcasters have been making concerning the fee-for-carriage debate. It’s a “very very difficult environment, very tough economically,” he said.

Nevertheless he said CBC Radio has had the best summer on record, while on TV the numbers have “generally gone up,” based on the averages of the first three weeks since the fall TV season launched. He highlighted the ratings for Dragons’ Den, Heartland, The Rick Mercer report, and Battle of the Blades.

He also touched on the relaunch of CBC News, saying it has been a “gigantic undertaking,” while calling the criticism “pathetic” saying it “revolves around whether people are standing or sitting.”

“One thing we should remember is that the papers are owned by our competitors… so I think you can draw your own conclusions about where they are going,” Stursberg said.

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	Financial	Posted at 2:14 pm (30 Oct 2009)

The CBC pulled in more advertising revenue than expected last quarter, despite a punishing recession that is pushing some broadcasters to the brink of bankruptcy.

“It looks like the advertising revenues will be ahead of plan by the first quarter,” Richard Stursberg said during a surprisingly upbeat financial update held in Toronto to present the first quarter results. The executive vice-president of CBC English services said “”The sales department has done an outstanding job. It looks like the first half will be ahead slightly of where we need to be.”

The news will come as a relief to CBC employees who have faced 393 layoffs and retirements in English services over last few months, in large part because of the collapse of the advertising market last summer and fall. He also noted that the corporation was on track with its cost reduction targets.

Stursberg said he is pleased with the audience growth for both CBC Television and CBC Radio. CBC Television’s audience numbers have improved in the last couple years in pretty much “every single time slot,” he said.

Since the recession hit last fall, the CBC has been facing a massive $171 million revenue shortfall. Stursberg said there were a couple unexpected events are helping the corporation tackle the shortfall, such as cost-cutting measures and a new local programming fund which provided some unexpected revenue.

Nevertheless the central plank of the corporation’s recovery efforts remains the sales of a number of real estate holding and assests. For these sales to proceed the CBC needs approval from the government, a process Stursberg describe as more than difficult. “Dealing with the government is not just difficult, it’s a nightmare,” he said, adding that the process was “on track it’s just slow. “

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	Financial	Posted at 1:31 pm (14 Aug 2009)

To celebrate Earth Day, the CBC’s HR department is asking employees to switch to electronic pay stubs.

Every year the CBC prints and distributes 338,000 paper pay stubs, at a cost to the corporation of $44,000 a year. The goal is to cut the number of paper pay stubs in half by May 31, 2009. The electronic pay stubs will be available online.

To switch to electronic pay stubs all you have to do is send an email, for the email address and more information go here. Everyone who makes the switch will be entered in a draw to win an 8G iPod Touch, or four $25 gift certificates to the Keg restaurant, oh, and you’ll also get the sweet feeling of moral superiority for having done something good for the environment.

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	Financial, Human Resources	Posted at 8:16 am (22 Apr 2009)

CBC’s senior management team is holding a third-quarter update on the state of CBC finances tomorrow. The update is expected to address how the CBC plans to deal with a large drop in revenue.

According to an email from CBC President Hubert Lacroix, ad revenues were 17 per cent lower than forecast for fiscal 2008. The note says: “we are now projecting a shortfall in advertising revenue that will be in the $55-$65 million dollar range.”

And it gets worse.

Lacroix added “The more pressing issue is our budget for 2009-2010. The combination of a severe slump in our commercial revenues, coupled with rising costs of production, is a menacing test that will demand some tough choices on our part.”

According to the note some of the choices may affect jobs, services and programs but “Nothing has yet been determined,” Lacroix wrote.

The update will be held in the Glenn Gould Studio, in Toronto, Tuesday, Feb. 24, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. ET. Employees that can’t make it in person can tune in on the in-house channel or dial in. For more information on that click here.

Lacroix ended the note by addressing Greg Weston’s story in The Sun from yesterday.

Lacroix said Weston “horrendously distorted the facts and suggested we’ve been looking to Government for “hand-outs,” which is precisely what we HAVE NOT been asking for.”

A CBC press release added Weston did not check any of his facts with the CBC before publishing the article. Having read the article this morning I was surprised that it made it past the editing desk, giving the single source and inaccuracies.

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	CBC Television, Executives, Financial, The Media Landscape	Posted at 2:36 pm (23 Feb 2009)

In the last couple days both CTV and Global have announced layoffs. The question on many people’s mind is wether the CBC will follow suit.

Last week Canwest Global announced it is cutting five per cent of its workforce. Which works out to 210 broadcast and 350 publishing jobs. Today CTV announced a hiring freeze and some layoffs.

Both blame the global economic downturn, sagging ad sales, and a recent CRTC rejection of extra fees for the three main networks.

With CBC currently facing a budget shortfall many employees are wondering if a hiring freeze, layoffs or some belt-tightening is on its way at the Mother Corp.

Currently senior executives seem to leaning in favour of maintaining current staff levels but reducing some costs. I’d expect an announcement on that in the coming days. Stay tuned.

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	, Behind the Scenes, Financial	Posted at 11:00 pm (19 Nov 2008)

At a conference for the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television last Thursday, Hubert Lacroix pointed out that the CBC can not accurately plan its programming on 12 month cycles, and requires a seven year funding plan. The full text of the speech is available here.

He also reiterated that the CBC needs an extra 215 million dollars to maintain quality programming, or $40.00 per capita rather than $33.00 per capita. These requests are based on the February 28 report of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

Other highlights of the speech were the fact that he plans to strengthen relations between management and the CBC union, and the fact that the CBC is reliant on ratings and advertising revenue in order to stay viable. The funding increases would help offset some of that reliance.

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	Executives, Financial, Programming	Posted at 11:06 am (26 May 2008)

The deadline to enroll in the CBC’s 2007 Payroll Savings Plan Program or make changes to your existing plan is tomorrow, Wednesday.

Information about the savings plan can be found on HR @ my fingertips.

(If you are a Short-term Temporary employee (less than 13 weeks), and are interested in participating, visit the Shared Services website for more information. Please note that if you are paid through Artist Payroll, the Payroll Savings Plan is not available to you at this time. However, you can purchase Canada Savings Bonds through most financial institutions this month.)

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	Financial	Posted at 10:51 am (30 Oct 2007)

This is most of the Q&A session from this morning’s questioning of incoming CBC Chairman Timothy Casgrain. (I missed the first 20 minutes because my computer and I were having a disagreement about who’s boss.) You can listen to it here (click the play icon above) or download it and move it to your audio player of choice.

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	Board of Directors, Financial, Our Mandate, Parliament	Posted at 4:09 pm (29 May 2007)

Incoming CBC Chairman Timothy Casgrain appealed for an increase in Parliament’s allocation to the CBC, and for long-term stable funding at his appearance this morning in front of a Parliamentary committee.

The network has improved its use of existing resources, including its real estate, over the last few years, he said, but there is a limit to how much more can be done with existing resources.

Casgrain appealed to the committee, which has been considering how much commercial advertising should be on CBC television, to strike a balance between a fully commercialized network and a network supported solely by taxpayers. “Should we gain the rights to a show like Hockey Night in Canada and not sell advertising? Can we ask the Canadian taxpayers to underwrite that?” he said.

Canadian taxpayers now pay an average of $30 each to have a public broadcaster that broadcasts in five time zones, two official languages and several aboriginal languages. The BBC, which broadcasts in one time zone and one language, gets $80 from each British taxpayer.

Casgrain, a veteran businessman, is chair of Skyservice Investments. Several MPs on the committee had questions about how Casgrain, who has no background in broadcasting, was appointed to head the CBC, however, committee chair Gary Schellenberger confined questions to the CBC mandate.

• Casgrain’s opening statement to the committee
• Full story on CBC.ca

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	Board of Directors, Financial, Parliament	Posted at 3:42 pm (29 May 2007)

The CRTC’s decision yesterday to let broadcasters air more commercial minutes is “a great day for broadcasters airing U.S. programming,” says a statement from the CBC. “But the future of Canadian programming is much less promising.” It says:

By increasing the number of advertising minutes in American programming aired by Canadian private conventional broadcasters, both English and French, the CRTC has effectively increased the value of this programming, and removed the incentive for private broadcasters to create more Canadian drama.

The statement, which isn’t signed by any particular CBC executive, continues on to comment on the CRTC’s denial of a CBC/Global TV request to charge cable and satellite TV operators fees for carriage of their local conventional television signals. “While recognizing their full jurisdiction in this area, the Commission has missed another opportunity to help ensure a sustainable future for Canadian programming,” the statement says. “CBC/Radio-Canada is disappointed in today’s decision. Over the longer term, the net result will be fewer opportunities for Canadian stories to be told.”

What do you think? Was the CRTC right in its decision? How do you think this will affect “opportunities for Canadian stories to be told” — or will it?

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	Financial, Programming, The CRTC	Posted at 11:55 am (18 May 2007)

From the Canadian Press [full article]:

The federal heritage minister says the government is willing to give CBC long-term funding, but first wants to ensure the national broadcaster is in tune with Canadians. Bev Oda told the Senate transport and communications committee yesterday the Conservatives support a strong public broadcaster equipped with adequate resources.

“Long-term, stable funding is something that has to be worked towards,” she said. “But first of all let’s ensure that the service we’re supporting with our public funds is that which is going to be meaningful and relevant to Canadians.”

Oda noted young media consumers want entertainment in portable and easy-to-access formats in the new digital environment. “Let us not underestimate the depth of that change,” she said. “The CBC has to take into consideration these technologies and the new platforms.”

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	Financial, Parliament	Posted at 9:29 pm (19 Apr 2007)

Saying it faces a “financial crisis,” CBC/Radio-Canada will not proceed with its television drama strategy or proposed HDTV transition if “additional new funding” is not provided by the federal government, according to the CBC’s five-year Corporate Plan, released this week.
     For the past five years, the CBC has relied on annual $60 million grants, but those grants have always been disbursed as special “one time only” payments. “If this funding is not made permanent,” the Plan states, “Cuts will have to be made to existing services. In the absence of additional new funding, several initiatives will not be able to proceed as planned. In particular, CBC Television’s drama strategy, the proposed HDTV transition, and the regional expansion plan all require additional funding.”
     The CBC also stated that it plans to ask the Minister of Finance to let it take loans out to enhance its ability to meet its mandate. According to the Broadcasting Act, the Corporation can borrow up to $25 million dollars, provided the projects funded generate enough revenue to achieve a positive rate of return.
     In addition, over the next five years, the CBC says it plans to:

• Add full-length regional morning and afternoon shows on CBC Radio One in Kitchener, Red Deer, Hamilton, Barrie, Kingston, Nanaimo, Kelowna, Chilliwack, Saskatoon, Peterborough, Cranbrook, and Kamloops.

• Explore the viability of establishing a foundation to which Canadians could offer direct financial support to key CBC|Radio-Canada programming initiatives
• Commission drama series based first upon research about what “specific audience segments” want to see on television
• Focus on comedy and performing arts, commissioning three new half-hour comedy series
• Program television using emerging forms of narrative, including single-camera shooting, mockumentaries, and animation for adults.
• Revitalise Canada Now, its national-regional supper hour news program, by increasing coordination and cooperation between the regional programs

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	Drama, Financial	Posted at 10:56 pm (09 Nov 2006)

In a speech delivered earlier today to the Economic Club of Toronto, CBC executive Richard Stursberg reported that the bulk of CBC’s English television funding no longer comes from the taxpayer.
     ”English television now costs about $580 million in total, which includes Newsworld,” Stursberg said. “Of that, about $275 million comes from the public subsidy, and about $305 million comes from earned revenue. In other words, about 55 per cent of our total revenue is earned and about 45 per cent actually comes from government.”
     ”Although we are the public broadcaster, we must rely on private revenue for more than half our budget,” he said.
     Stursberg noted that only the New Zealand and American governments spend less money per capita on public broadcasting than Canada does.
     Canadian taxpayers spend about $33 per year for all CBC and Radio-Canada services. In Britain, residents there pay more than triple that amount. France, Germany and Italy spend an average of $81 per capita on public broadcasting and “have intensely vibrant national cultures and are under no cultural pressure from the USA” said Stursberg.

Blog reaction:

• MHP’s Musings: “Next time you complain about CBC-TV programming and use the “And I pay your salary” line, it’s only 45% of that salary you’re paying.”

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	CBC Television, Financial	Posted at 10:08 pm (07 Nov 2006)

EDITORIAL

First, let me say these three things.
1. I really like the Gill Deacon show.
2. God knows, we need the money.
3. t’s not like our competitors aren’t doing it.

With that out of the way, let me confess that I gently shudder when the Cranium product-placement comes up on Gill Deacon’s show. For those of you who haven’t seen it [video example], it’s a regular segment where an audience member plays a question from the Cranium board game.
     Seems only yesterday when when CBC contents were ones that we made up ourselves (though, honestly, if I hear another “Make Your Own Regional Limerick” contest on any radio morning show, I’m going to keel over). But now, why make our own when we can charge a company for it.
     Actually, it’s not the product-placement itself that gets to me. As I mentioned, we need the money — Gill’s show is otherwise excellent, and the CBC just isn’t well enough funded to produce that kind of material on its own.
     Rather, what bothers me is we seem to have taken a page from (read: “stooped to the level of”) the private broadcasters and are no longer even trying to be transparent about the financial transaction going on. Gill recently introduced the game recently like this: “It is time to play Canada’s favourite game, Cranium for Cash. You all know why I love this game: Because it asks you to think from all four corners of your brain.”
     Great description. Er, perhaps little too great. I have a feeling the Cranium folks could use that as a tagline on their next box printing. And, really… is Cranium for Cash really Canada’s favourite game? Is even Cranium? Somehow, I think even Monopoly still outsells Cranium. (Even though Settlers of Catan should. But that’s another story.)
     There’s nothing wrong with product placement these days, imho. But — call me old fashioned — I think the line between paid-placement and genuine editorial recommendation should be made much more obvious. Especially on the CBC.
     Remember, in the minds of our viewers, they do not separate the CBC into its programming divisions like we do (News and Current Affairs vs. Arts and Entertainment). They just see CBC Television as one entity. And if viewers begin to think that on Arts/Entertainment programming we’re willing to say or air things because we’re paid to, that affects the credibility of the entire brand. If we blur that editorial vs. promotion line in one branch of our programming, who could blame the viewer for wondering why Peter Mansbridge did two stories about a particular vacuum cleaner company in one week.
     And that — not funding, not mandate issues, not regime changes — will truly be the CBC’s undoing.

     Then again, I could be way off base here. What do you think?

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	Financial, Gill Deacon Show	Posted at 10:43 am (07 Nov 2006)

Today the CBC tabled its annual report in Parliament.

I have no idea what that means – who gets it, and where’s the table? So I asked Wendy Duschenes, Manager, Writing & Publishing Services, Corporate Communications (which means she worked on it all year, but her name doesn’t appear anywhere in the 86 pages. “I did get cookies from my boss.”)

She says the printed copies are delivered to certain MPs and key stakeholders, and the report becomes an official, publicly available document. But the online document is now the key.

“We don’t actually print a lot of copies,” Duschenes says. Approximately 1,800 copies are printed for politicians, government departments and libraries – everyone else is directed to the online copy. In the past, CBC printed as many as 10,000 physical copies.

The document is “a way for CBC to account for its money spent, and get some key messages across,” says Duschenes. “This year’s theme is ‘Striking the right balance’ – how to balance the need to provide programming for traditional audiences as well as new ones, and maintain traditional media while adding new technologies.”

It’s a surprisingly pretty document, with an opening photo essay on CBC’s perceived audience (a sort of “These are the people in your neighbourhood” theme.) CBC show photographs and bright colours are used throughout (“But in the printed copy, it’s a lot more red than orange!”) as a way to grab attention.

“There are a lot of annual reports that cross everybody’s desk every day,” Duschenes says. “They question is, how do you get your message across in an interesting way?”

This is Duschenes’ seventh annual report. “You can survive these things. I’ve already started working on the next one.”

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	Financial	Posted at 1:59 pm (06 Oct 2006)