CBC is “ripping out the silos”, Rabinovitch tells National Post
CBC’s senior management is “ripping out the silos and barriers that have segregated our activities,” according to an article written by CBC president Robert Rabinovitch and published today in the National Post.
He says the Corporation is “building an organization where programming is conceived for television and simultaneously adapted to other formats. Hockey Night in Canada is great TV, but it should also be a highlight reel on video-podcast, and Coach’s Corner should be on your cellphone.” He adds that he believes television is “most effective means of tying the country together culturally and democratically.”
His comments come in advance of next week’s CRTC hearings on the Canadian television landscape.
What do you think? Have you seen examples of silos being removed? Do you feel less segregated from your colleagues in other media lines? How should the CBC become even more internally connected?
(Read the full article by clicking the “More” link below.)
A CBC contract with Canadians
Robert Rabinovitch
Where is Canadian television headed? Next week, we’ll be closer to finding out, as the CRTC opens hearings on how to keep Canada’s television broadcasting system strong and growing. Canadians are changing their viewing habits as fast as new technologies can tempt them, and none of us watches television the way we did a decade ago.
None of us who make television, or radio for that matter, can continue to operate as we did a decade ago, either.
At CBC/Radio-Canada, we are in a period of rapid, exciting change. Yesterday, we had a radio service and a television service with some Internet activity. Today we are a content provider, supplying a wide array of news, entertainment and sports programming to Canadians on seven television networks, four radio networks, the Internet and cell-phones, through satellite radio and iPods, in one-minute episodes on your Blackberry and with Christmas-wrapped DVDs through the mail.
Tomorrow is coming into focus. We need to become an integrated media content provider whose raison d’etre is not to make a buck but to connect the country together by ensuring there remains a place where Canadians can share their stories, feed their culture and debate their issues in this new media landscape. Make no mistake: No other organization exists with that mandate. CBC/Radio-Canada is the single largest provider of Canadian media content.
To adapt, we are ripping out the silos and barriers that have segregated our activities, and building an organization where programming is conceived for television and simultaneously adapted to other formats. Hockey Night in Canada is great TV, but it should also be a highlight reel on video-podcast, and Coach’s Corner should be on your cellphone.
Times are changing and CBC/Radio-Canada is hurtling into the future fuelled by a combination of adrenaline and Gravol. Because while we know where we need to go, the regulatory framework to get us there is creaking.
In television, the advertising-based business model on which conventional broadcasting has relied is at risk due to the number of channels vying for the same revenue; commercial skipping and the migration of marketing spending to the Internet and other platforms.
Despite this, television remains the most pervasive medium and the most effective means of tying the country together culturally and democratically. Conventional broadcasters continue to be a nightly destination for 90% of Canadian viewers and the source of 75% of original Canadian programming. Conventional broadcasting will need to remain the cornerstone of the broadcasting system if we want to achieve the country’s policy goals in culture. That is why the CRTC hearings are so important.
But these hearings suggest another opportunity for the government to bring balance to an industry that has grown increasingly “unlevel” over the past decade.
This opportunity is to institutionalize a regular review of CBC/Radio-Canada.
But don’t we do that already?
No. Every seven years, the CRTC reviews how its broadcasting licenses serve the mandates of the Broadcasting Act, but it does not review the goals themselves. And one thing is sure: The goalposts of the broadcasting system are moving and putting unprecedented stress on broadcasters.
Earlier this year, the Hon. Bev Oda, Minister of Canadian Heritage, suggested the government conduct a review of our mandate. The Minister is absolutely correct. Right now, there is no official forum for such a deliberation. The 1991 Broadcasting Act is really the last setting of the rules by which the broadcasting system operates.
Since then, a handful of studies and reports have been commissioned on the future of Canadian broadcasting, but have led to no practical change in CBC/Radio-Canada’s status. I want to go one step farther. I believe we should create what I call a Contract With Canadians, following a regular, formally instituted government-led mandate review spelling out what Canadians should expect from CBC/Radio-Canada in terms of public policy objectives.
Both the process and the contract would be transparent and would have a fixed term. On a predetermined timetable, likely every 10 years, the process would automatically unfold.
CBC/Radio-Canada would be even more accountable to its shareholders, the public; it would also be more sustainable because it could plan its development with some certainty.
This concept isn’t new. Every 10 years, the British government holds policy reviews with the BBC, asking the big questions. In Canada, neither the public nor their representatives in government have the opportunity to ask the big questions and to decide the best use of the airwaves we own collectively.
A regularly mandated review would ensure Canadians are better served. But mandate review or not, the CRTC hearings next week are an essential first step in finding the new equilibrium in the system needed to ensure its continuing contribution to Canada.
- Robert Rabinovitch is CBC/Radio-Canada president and CEO.
|
Email This Post |
| Our Mandate |
Rabinovitch is right he and the managers are ripping alright but they are ripping the heart out of CBC not the cilos. CBC once set industry standards. The last 10 years of bad management and no leadership has ripped the CBC to the bones now its no money for this no money for that and its because the last years of leaders have failed to provide the Canadian puplic with a viable product that they value. The People should be proud of CBC not considering it a burden.
At what point will someone call shenanigans on podcasting? Video podcasting especially – even people who’ve gone to the expense of getting a video iPod don’t tend to bother with video podcasts (according to Neilsen anyway).
There seems to be this belief that the Web is another broadcast medium. It’s not, it’s a communications medium, and there is a difference. I’m just a n00b here, but it seems to me that if you want to support or supplement your programming with new media assets, you should focus first on effectively promoting said programming to get people watching in the first place, and then on building communities around those shows. That doesn’t mean a video podcast of stuff already available over the air, it means show forums and blogs (obviously, learning from the Studio 60 fake blog fiasco), and exclusive web-only content . This is what the Web is good for.
Even if there was a sizable market for podcasting, it’s not exactly the best scenario for someone’s only interaction with your new media infrastructure to be their copy of iTunes checking a feed every now and again. For one thing, that’s all they’ll check. If they’re hitting a program site via a browser they may go to other areas of the site, they might get involved in discussions, they might actually get emotionally invested in the show. Though I hate to say it, they’ll definitely cause a few ad impressions.
I do think there’s a more coherent argument for radio podcasts. The timeshifting argument applies more to radio, as there are now a lot more options for timeshifting for tv, and people are more likely to take the trouble to do so. There’s a gap there for radio that podcasting can fill. Also the nature of the medium is such that radio podcasts are as good quality-wise as the original broadcasts. The same is definitely not true for video, and won’t be until everyone has fibre to their house and ubiquitous wireless gigabit ethernet in the street.
There’s a tacit admittal of this in the article. Conventional broadcasting isn’t going anywhere any time soon, and the idea that it’ll be replaced by the WWW is old hat. They do different things, they can be used to complement each other, and all that remains is to find the smartest way to leverage the strengths of both, rather than trying to force them to work in ways that expose their weaknesses.
Covergence is old news, and it’s pretty much a dead idea: Time Warner/AOL went nowhere, merging CTV with the phone company didn’t accomplish anything either.
The biggest “silos” separating the net from everything else are copyright and licensing fees. And those issues aren’t getting ripped out anytime soon.
Ahh yes… all we need is Don Cherry speaking his mind out on a cell phone.
Actually, if Coach’s Corner ever does come out, you could try keeping up appearances by playing the segment on your cell phone, then mimicking with it like you’re actually talking to Don Cherry!
Oh, that’ll make Bell envious of every technological advance…
President Bob has failed to engage the Canadian public or legislators in Ottawa in any kind of debate about CBC issues. It amazes me that the corporation continues to move along inspite of his failed promises to seek more funding for the service.
When he arrived at the CBC 8 or 9 years ago, Robert Rabinovitch vowed to #1 create an efficient organization then #2 lobby Ottawa energetically for more funding for the CBC.
We have seen the armies of blue suits and consultants march through our halls. We’ve seen dubious real estate development decisions create fragmented and inadequate work places. We’ve seen a disastrous management lockout that continues to take a toll on our ratings. We have have lost the Olympics and are now poised to fritter away hockey. But so far not a hint of determination or courage from Rabinovitch in approaching his keepers in Ottawa.
The occasional piece in one of the national papers has failed to awaken the imagination of Canadians about the CBC. No passion, no power, no vision.
I heard a chilling story that Rabinovitch recently confessed to a group of senior radio and tv managers that there isn’t a damn thing that can be done for a now moribund CBC and that it is only a matter of 5 years max before the corporation will become financially untenable and will have to fold up its tent and hobble off into the sunset.
It is time to sack this nice, ineffectual man who has done nothing more than create a cozy career opportunity for hmself for the past decade at the expense of the future of perhaps the most important cultural instituation in Canada.
Remove Rabinovitch now!