CBC president Hubert T. Lacroix spoke to Parliament’s Heritage Committee Thursday afternoon. I was recording the speech on my computer as it streamed but, uh, I ran out of hard disk space. <sigh>

Never mind. The federal government probably would have asked me to take down video of the committee hearing.

(UPDATE: As Mike mentioned in his comment, the Heritage Committee has now posted the video online.)

After the jump, the text of his speech.

Relax, enjoy, and smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

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	6 Comments »	See also: Executives, Our Mandate, Parliament, Programming
	Email this	Posted at 8:15 pm (01 May 2008)

(reproduced verbatim)

Canada’s national public broadcaster welcomes CBC/Radio-Canada: Defining Distinctiveness in the Changing Media Landscape, the report issued this morning by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

“It’s positively encouraging to see the Committee recognize the value of public broadcasting to Canadians - on all platforms, old, new and emerging,” said Hubert T. Lacroix, President and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada. “In the face of sweeping cultural, technological and industrial change, Canadians need a place for distinctive Canadian content. This report to the Government asserts the meaning and importance of public broadcasting for all Canadians, and shows how it improves our democratic and cultural lives.”

From the report itself: “The Committee regards CBC/Radio-Canada as an essential public institution that plays a crucial role in bringing Canadians closer together… The vast majority of the evidence stressed the distinctiveness of CBC/Radio-Canada, reflected in the quality, originality and creativity of its programming. Being distinctive should not however mean being inaccessible. Its services must be accessible to the various elements of the Canadian public.”

CBC/Radio-Canada is especially pleased to see that the Committee’s report calls for a new relationship and a renewable arrangement between Canadians and their public broadcaster: their proposed Memorandum of Understanding would establish a seven-year plan which would set out what services Canadians could expect from their public broadcaster and the resources necessary to provide them.

“The proposed seven-year cycle - with increased, committed funding indexed to the cost of living for its duration - would go a long way to help fulfil a new promise to Canadians and ensure that people’s expectations of public broadcasting may be measured and met against collectively set goals,” said Mr. Lacroix. “In all, the Committee’s report has very aptly captured the challenges facing public broadcasting in Canada and provided valuable recommendations for the future.”

CBC/Radio-Canada looks forward to working with this Committee, the Government and the public to develop a new long-term arrangement. Meantime, the Committee’s report recognizes that the continued health of public broadcasting requires a more urgent response on a couple of fronts, including the funding of the transition to HD, and the financing of new digital content.

“I commend the Committee for having produced a thorough and, more importantly, a truly actionable blueprint for the future of public broadcasting in Canada,” said Mr. Lacroix. “And I think I speak for all who believe in Canadian public broadcasting when I say that we look forward to the Government’s response.”

	2 Comments »	See also: Our Mandate
	Email this	Posted at 2:39 pm (28 Feb 2008)

The federal Heritage Committee is recommending that the CBC’s funding be increased from $33 per person each year to $40 — and that the funding increases each year as per the cost of living. It further recommended CBC-TV be less dependent on advertising revenues.

(The CBC has not had a permanent funding increase in more than 30 years, not even to account for inflation.)

In its long awaited mandate review report, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage says the CBC’s mandate should cover seven years. It will begin public consultations on the recommendations soon.

It also recommended that the CBC and federal government “work toward decreasing CBC Radio-Canada’s relative dependency on advertising revenues for television programming.”

The committee has also given its support to a plan to increase the number of regional radio stations throughout the country, and wants the Broadcasting Act kept up with the times, including digital media and emerging technologies as a way to reach out to Canadians. It further wants resources put in place to provide closed-captioning for 100% of its television programming.

Canadian Media Guild Response

The Canadian Media Guild, which represents the majority of CBC employees, says it “strongly supports” recommendations and urges parliament to move quickly to implement the committee’s recommendations, particularly those that call for enhanced
funding.

“This feels like the first real moment of optimism for the CBC in recent memory,” says Lise Lareau, national president of the Canadian Media Guild. “An all-party committee has said yes to the CBC, yes to expanded radio coverage, yes to more CBC programming, including on the internet, and yes to more money to properly fund these important initiatives. Let’s get on with it.”

The CMG took credit for some of the recommendations, saying the report “echoes many of the proposals the CMG made when it appeared before the committee last spring, including an increase of per capita funding from the government.”

Conservative MPs Reject Recommendations

The Conservative Party wrote its own opinion rejecting, among other things, a proposal to keep the CBC’s television prime-time schedule all-Canadian. It said it considered recommendations like it (like the requirement of submitting a detailed HDTV implementation plan), amounted to micro-managing. “If CBC/Radio-Canada was [sic] bound to follow this particular recommendation they would not be permitted to show classic Christmas movies during prime-time on Christmas Eve, unless it happened to fall on a weekend.”

The party also rejected many recommendations seeking additional funding for specific projects, like HDTV implementation, saying that “stable-long term funding” was more appropriate than one-time grants for specific things. However, it also rejected the long-term funding proposal recommended in the document, saying it wanted to see a proposed budget from the CBC first. “Our members are disappointed that the report doesn’t recommend that CBC/Radio-Canada be invited to provide a full costing of the other recommendations of the committee report. We believe that responsible leadership involves costing out these recommendations before assigning fixed amounts to fund them.”

New Democrats Seek “Skill-Based” Approach to Hiring Presidents and Selecting Board Members

NDP members, in a supplementary report, said Board members and the CBC president should be hired based on skill and competence-related criteria, and that Board members should be non-partisan and better reflect “the regions of Canada, majority and minority language communities, First Nations, men and women, and ethnic and other minority groups.”

Currently, while the gender split is even among board members, all come from major cities. All but three of the 12 are from the Toronto/Montreal/Ottawa regions.

Highlights from the report are still ahead
or have your say in the comments.

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	9 Comments »	See also: Our Mandate
	Email this	Posted at 12:13 pm (28 Feb 2008)

Over the holidays, public broadcasting blogger Justin Beach said he thinks it should be legally banned against the law for Canadian programs to ignore their Canadian settings in order to make the show more ’sellable’ to American audiences.

He notes that while the first line of the CBC’s mandate says all CBC shows should “be predominantly and distinctively Canadian,” the popular sit-com Little Mosque on the Prairie deliberately excludes any references to Saskatchewan, where the show is filmed.

Justin quotes from an interview in the Regina Leader Post in which LMOTP producer Zarqa Nawaz tells an NPR reporter that they write out any Canadian references because “they hope an American audience will reference it as taking place in North Dakota and because ’sales are important.’ ”

Just feels this practice should be banned. “No program that receives tax subsidies should be able to do alternate takes to disguise the fact that it is Canadian.”

The issue, I think, is whether or not Canadians are seeing programming that references Canada. I don’t have a problem if the show shoots different takes for different audiences (”That’s why it’s always cold in Saskatchewan” for the Canadian version; “That’s why it’s always cold here” for the American version).

I would have a problem if the show shoots one version sans Canadiana then airs it here. Does anyone know which way it is?

What do you think?

	22 Comments »	See also: Little Mosque on the Prairie, Our Mandate, Saskatooon
	Email this	Posted at 1:17 pm (27 Dec 2007)

Robert Rabinovitch, Richard Stursberg and Sylvain Lafrance appeared before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage today to discuss “the role of a public broadcaster in the 21st century” and to “make the case for a new contract between Canada’s national public broadcaster and the Canadians it exists to serve.”

Rabinovitch’s opening remarks and the CBC news release are available online. One focus of the discussion was the integration of media and media lines:

We can no longer think of ourselves as a Television and Radio company with an Internet presence. The fact is: we are a content company. We need to create content that, from its inception, is designed for multiple platforms. We are working hard to entrench this philosophy in all of our services, and to have it guide us in all that we do. French Services’ integration is well underway and is yielding results, and much the same can be expected to follow from the recent announcement concerning the integration of English Services.

Rabinovitch suggested the CBC needs a 10-year mandate and firm funding commitments to make such changes. And he suggested that up to $150 million more should be added to the budget to cover expenses such as high definition service.

Richard Stursberg was questioned about his suggestion that CBC needs to be more like Tim Hortons and less like Starbucks.

“The purpose of the metaphor is to capture what the CBC is trying to do,” Stursberg said. “Hortons is … the service that has broader public appeal.”

More on the story at CBCNews.ca Arts.

	33 Comments »	See also: Our Mandate
	Email this	Posted at 5:24 pm (27 Nov 2007)

Well, it’s begun.

Federal politicians started meeting this morning to develop a report for the Heritage committee on the future role and mandate of the CBC.

The CBC is currently operating under the mandate approved by Parliament sixteen years ago. That Act tells the CBC it should provide programming that:

• Is predominantly and distinctively Canadian.
• Reflects Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences, while serving the special needs of those regions.
• Actively contributes to the flow and exchange of cultural expression.
• Is in English and French, reflecting the different needs and circumstances of each official language community.
• Strives to be of equivalent quality in English and French.
• Contributes to shared national consciousness and identity.
• Is available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and efficient means and as resources become available for the purpose.
• Reflects the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada.

Why does it need changing? Partly because of the large-scale changes in media technology, the Internet, media concentration, and so on. The world is pretty different today than it was in 1991, when the Broadcasting Act was passed.

The Toronto Star says it believes several major questions are on the minds of politicians through this process:

First, should CBC television focus all its energy on trying to win large audiences as Richard Stursberg, the current executive director of English programming, believes? Last year, he cancelled a raft of Canadian drama shows because he didn’t believe their ratings were high enough and veered away from public broadcasting with a series of reality shows and lusty dramas such as The Tudors, a co-production with Ireland about the life of Henry VIII. Such shows draw bigger audiences and ad dollars but tell Canadians little, if anything, about themselves.

Second, should it stick with part of its mandate by running programs like the Royal Winnipeg Ballet even though they are ratings disasters?

Third, how much money should Ottawa give to the CBC? Now, the broadcaster gets $950 million a year from the government. Another $550 million comes from advertising and other revenues. The amount of tax money is substantial, but Ottawa’s grant has fallen by 20 per cent in the past 15 years when inflation is taken into account. Indeed, only the United States and New Zealand give less government money per person to their national public broadcasters.

Fourth, is a public television broadcaster needed any longer now that private broadcasters, although dominated by foreign content, produce some popular Canadian shows such as CTV’s Corner Gas?

The Star noted that the Commons committee will likely study a 2006 Senate report that recommended “CBC Television should be more like CBC Radio, focusing on high-quality news and information programming, services not available on other stations and better regional programming.”

What do you think about the current mandate? Would you like to see changes?

NOTE ABOUT COMMENTS: This post/thread is about changes to the mandate. Not about how the CBC should be shut down, etc. The usual “I hate the CBC” comments will not be approved.

	12 Comments »	See also: Our Mandate, Parliament
	Email this	Posted at 11:50 am (20 Nov 2007)

I’ve been trying to decide if I’d weigh in on the debate currently underway at the CRTC. The question: Is continued media consolidation good for Canada or bad for it? I’ve hesitated because I’m afraid of being revealed for the left-wing pinko commie bastard that I am.

Richard Stursberg, CBC’s head of English television, told the commission that the Canadian media industry has reached levels that “in any other country would be considered unacceptable.”

‘Hogwash,’ replied the Canadian Association of Broadcasters*, a lobby group representing most of Canada’s private/commercial broadcasters. “We see no diversity deficit in the Canadian system,” said Glenn O’Farrell, president of CAB, pointing to the many ethnic and cable TV channels that exist on the dial, despite all the mergers going on at the corporate level.

So far this year alone, three major mergers/acquisitions have occurred in the Canadian media space:

• CTVglobemedia Inc. bought CHUM Ltd for $1.4-billion
• CanWest and the Goldman Sachs Group bought Alliance Atlantis Inc.* for $2.3-billion
• Astral Media Inc. bought radio giant Standard Broadcasting Corp. Ltd. for $1.1-billion

The CBC’s position is this: Public broadcasting needs to provide a counterbalance to consolidation of large commercial broadcasters. But it needs more money to do that. Also, Stursberg said there should be, restrictions on the amount of market share that cable companies can amass, since they can control access to TV sets and Internet distribution.

(The CBC receives less than $1 billion from the federal government each year to operate. It raises about $400 million on its own through television advertising. The CBC has not had an increase in funding for 30 years — not even to adjust for inflation — and yet is expanding its reach for Canadians into many more platforms including satellite radio, podcasts, and the web.)

The CRTC is trying to decide if it needs to tighten up the rules.

The Globe and Mail recently talked about a system in Australia where media concentration is measured using a points system.

Each media operation in a given market – including newspapers, commercial TV stations and radio stations – is worth one point. If any company owns multiple outlets, its collection of media assets counts as one point combined.

If a particular market in Australia is found to have less than five points in total, it is deemed to have an “unacceptable media diversity situation.” In smaller, non-metropolitan markets, the threshold is set at four points.

As well, if any single person or company controls a TV station, a radio operation and a newspaper within a given market, that is considered an “unacceptable three-way control situation.”

Australia’s government reserves the right to prevent future media deals in any market it considers to have an unacceptable ownership situation.

Personally, I don’t understand why alarm bells aren’t ringing at the CRTC.

Major media firms in this country keep trying to widen their pie. But how much profit does a company need? I know very well that they need to continue to increase shareholder value (hell, I used to be CEO of a publicly traded company) but, really, is that all there is? Is that the only value that matters?

I guess that’s what keeps me at the CBC.

We tell stories for and about Canadians, not shareholders.

But, as Dennis Miller used to say, “That’s just my opinion; I could be wrong.”

What do you think? Where does the CBC fit in this consolidated media landscape?

* Disclosures: I have given a keynote address to the Canadian Association of Broadcasters. I used to produce a weekly web TV show on technology for Alliance Atlantis’ now-defunct blogtv.ca. I was paid for both of these.

	8 Comments »	See also: Our Mandate
	Email this	Posted at 11:16 pm (23 Sep 2007)

John Cruickshank, currently publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times and chief operating officer of the Chicago Sun-Times Media Group, has been picked to to lead CBC News as publisher.

He is expected to take up his new position within the next three weeks.

The newly created position will report to both the VPs of both radio and television.

Cruickshank has been with the Sun-Times organization since 2000. From 1995-2000, he was editor of the Vancouver Sun. Prior to that, he was with The Globe and Mail from 1981-95, from 1992-95 as managing editor.

	20 Comments »	See also: Executives, Our Mandate
	Email this	Posted at 1:41 pm (19 Sep 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.

	Add Comment »	See also: Board of Directors, Financial, Our Mandate, Parliament
	Email this	Posted at 4:09 pm (29 May 2007)

An editorial by Knowlton Nash

The CBC is confronting the biggest crisis it has faced in its more than 70 years of existence. In spite of CBC executive cheer-leading assertions that the public broadcaster is “by no means beleaguered,” it nevertheless is under assault from a horde of fateful challenges:

• From sharp-elbowed private broadcasters who lust after CBC-TV sports and other money-earning CBC programming;
• From the skepticism bordering on contempt of Prime Minister Harper;
• From the suicidal inclinations of some inside as well as outside the CBC who seem to have limited understanding of the purpose of public broadcasting;
• And from a shrinking and largely discontented creative staff.

Altogether, it’s far from an encouraging environment for the CBC and certainly smacks of beleaguerment.

I hate to sound like a grumpy old sourpuss prattling on about the so-called “good old days,” but to me, as an ardent but saddened advocate of public broadcasting, the odds these days appear to be running against the CBC.

It won’t collapse with a big bang but rather, I fear, with a painful whimper as it is dismembered, piece by piece, with target number one being English language television. The CBC’s basic problem is that it is under-funded and over-mandated. The reality of that dilemma is now being studied by the House of Commons heritage committee, which is examining “The role of a public broadcaster in the 21st century.” CBC President Bob Rabinovitch says he’d like to see such a study done every 10 years to spell out what Canadians expect from the CBC and with a government commitment to finance those expectations. Not a bad idea. Actually, we’ve been doing this kind of CBC role examination since the Aird Report of 1929, followed by the Massey Report, the Fowler Report, more recently the Lincoln Report and a dozen or so other major reports, studies and Royal Commissions. But for the most part, the recommendations have carried a price tag the politicians are reluctant to acknowledge and rarely, if ever, provide.

To help strengthen our sense of nationhood, we need to develop a sharply defined public broadcasting mandate with a realistically calculated budget. The prospects are limited, however, because the political and public support that gave birth to the CBC in 1936 is hard to find today. No longer heard are the 20th century voices of influential CBC champions such as Mackenzie King or Mike Pearson, Graham Spry or Alan Plaunt, Davidson Dunton or Leonard Brockington. They recognized that to maintain cultural independence from the giant next door, Canada needs a publicly-financed broadcast system that tells our own Canadian stories, showcases our own music, drama and comedy, and provides news and public affairs with a Canadian perspective.

The purpose is not to prevent Canadians from watching American TV, but rather to provide a home-grown creative experience.

That experience has been haunted by government budget cuts amounting to 20 per cent in the past 15 years. Canada, in fact, is among the world’s lowest per capita spenders on public broadcasting. This at a time when publicity is needed more than ever because of the fierce competition on our fragmented airwaves. As a result, we have a pallid star system and a reduced awareness of what CBC programming is available.

But the ultimate question is: Is the CBC worth what it costs?

Are we content to save the money, relax and succumb to the lure of the mostly American shows that private broadcasters offer in prime time? There is nothing wrong with our thirst for American shows, but are we satisfied with being a little Sir Echo to American programming displaying all the lifestyles of our southern neighbour and little of our Canadian culture?

Culture defines a nation and a country that does not respect its own culture is a country that is for sale.

Knowlton Nash, a member of the Osprey Writers Group, is the former anchor of CBC’s The National.

What do you think? Do you agree with Nash’s essay?

	10 Comments »	See also: Our Mandate, Personalities
	Email this	Posted at 12:01 pm (23 Apr 2007)

The federal government will commit $60 million for Canadian programming to CBC for each of the next two fiscal years. The Corporation has received this money each year since 2001, but it’s always been positioned by the government as “one-time funding.”

News of the funding came Friday when CBC president spoke to the Heritage committee. He told them if CBC is to “reach its potential and be the public broadcaster Canada needs, it needs a new contract with Canadians.” This contract would lay out the obligations that CBC/Radio-Canada owes to its 32 million owners over a ten-year period. It would be based on the following:

1. The broadcasting system should remain a mixed public/private system;
2. The public broadcaster should have programming independence;
3. Its programming should be distinctive;
4. It should serve all Canadians;
5. It should have the resources needed to meet the agreed-upon requirements.

“CBC/Radio-Canada is at a turning point that no one-year answer, no one-dimensional response will resolve,” Rabinovitch said.

What do you think of that proposed five-point contract with Canadians? Should CBC’s programming be distinctive, or should it offer programming similar to the current fare offered by private broadcasters? Should CBC continue to find private sources of funding to supplement its programming needs, or should Parliament offer more money to the Corporation?

	4 Comments »	See also: Our Mandate, Parliament
	Email this	Posted at 10:33 am (26 Mar 2007)

The NDP’s heritage critic Charlie Angus has weighed in on the CBC’s mandate, in an interview conducted by CARTT:

What would you like to see done with the CBC, considering the review the committee has planned?
I definitely think a review is needed. The CBC has done some things very well but where are we challenged today? English television.
     It costs a lot of money to put on good domestic content and we have a situation where we are beside the biggest cultural industry in the world, and we don’t even have a full market because out of the 30-some million Canadians, nine million (in Quebec) are watching a completely separate market. So about a third of our market is watching their own programs, which is great for the Quebec market but it puts further challenges on English television.

And you’ve been on record asking for more or stable funding for the CBC.
Since the cuts in the mid-’90s, the CBC just can’t fulfill the job it has to do. We wanted to set a standard for domestic drama, but how is it going to do that when we also want it to be a voice in the regions, where it does play a very vital role.
     We’ve talked about the need to return to CBC television’s roots - the supper hour shows have basically disappeared - and to compete in the multi-channel universe as well and get ready for high def.
     It simply doesn’t have the money to do that, so I believe we have to increase the funding. Next to the United States we provide about the lowest level of support of any of the western nations for (public) broadcasting.

From bottom up I think goes to U.S., New Zealand and then Canada, per capita.
So it’s an issue, because when CBC-TV does well it’s like CBC radio, where everybody listens to it.

And then you’ve seen the loss of local programming in your own riding firsthand. When I was growing up there, we had a separate hour newscast based out of Timmins. It was done around the corner from my house, actually, because I lived in the shadow of the old CFCL towers, but as you know that’s all gone now. There’s a reporter there still for CTV but I’m not sure there’s a CBC reporter based there anymore.
Radio-Canada has one there but they don’t even have an English CBC radio reporter in the region. So, it’s a challenge, especially in terms of regional programming, I’ll tell you. A couple weeks ago one of the transmitters went down and so they were feeding my part of the region the morning show out of Toronto. I don’t know what else you can do quicker to get an audience to turn off but waking up in the snow and hearing about the Don Valley parking lot - people won’t listen.
     At the end of the day, viewers at some level want to see themselves reflected - whether it’s domestic drama or whether it’s regional news programming.

	5 Comments »	See also: CBC Television, Our Mandate, Parliament
	Email this	Posted at 2:40 pm (19 Dec 2006)