Richard Stursberg presented a television programming strategy update in Toronto today that stressed the importance of entertainment programming at the CBC, especially during prime-time.

The vice president of English services said “television is mainly about entertainment.” He said American networks devote more than 90 per cent of their air-time to entertainment, even the BBC devotes more than 60 per cent of their air-time to entertainment. He said the CBC is, and has traditionally been, under-represented in the entertainment genre.

The biggest challenge facing the CBC is that traditionally Canadians have preferred American entertainment shows. “This is the sad circumstance we find ourselves in English Canada,” noting that all the top 10 TV shows in Canada are American.

But for the first time the CBC has started to produce some genuine hits and has been gaining audience share, “We’re the only network that’s growing,” he said.

To highlight the significance of that achievement he flipped through several decades of the CBC’s prime-time schedule. He said in the early 80′s, prior to the advent of specialty channels, the CBC enjoyed a 22 per cent audience share, but a lot of the schedule was filled with American programming. Most of the Canadian shows on the network at the time were news or current affairs shows.

^{The CBC’s prime-time schedule in 1981. The blue boxes represent foreign programming.}

He contrasted that to the mid-90′s, when the CBC had ‘Canadianized’ the television schedule, and the audience declined to 11 per cent. By  2003 the “share had continued to collapse” he said, ebbing to a 6.7 per cent share, “the lowest share in the history of the company.”

^{The CBC’s audience share in the 1982-83 season was 22 per cent. By 2003 the schedule had been ‘Canadianized’ and the share had dropped to a historic low of 6.7 per cent. Now the audience is coming back, the 2008-09 season share was 8.9 per cent. The fall of 2009 saw a 8.6 per cent share.}

Even more troubling during this period (2004), Stursberg said, was that CTV was beating the CBC in terms of Canadians tuning in to Canadian shows, despite CTV not airing any Canadian shows in prime-time versus the CBC’s all-Canadian prime-time lineup.

He said the CBC is now starting to reverse the trend, and the key to that reversal is to concentrate on creating Canadian entertainment shows.  “We have to respect the medium,” Stursberg said, “respect the medium for what it is, don’t try to make it something that it is not.”

Stursberg said that after the low point in 2003, he and Kirstine Stewart started concentrating on trying to make hit Canadian shows, including sit-coms, dramas and reality TV shows, “”We wanted to work within the conventions of television,” instead of trying to defy them, he said.

“What we know what it is, television is about entertainment shows,” he said from the stage at the Glenn Gould studio in Toronto.

He concluded by noting that the strategy is paying off, “for the first time, it’s not just that the share is good, but [the CBC has] genuine hits,” noting that a number of new shows had debuted with close to a million viewers, and that some shows like Dragons’ Den approached two million.

He said the CBC is now broadening the entertainment strategy by launching a feature film initiative, which he said has the potential to restructure the Canadian TV movie business. The CBC currently has three deals in development including an adaptation to the ‘The Book of Negroes’. The corporation is hoping to greenlight about eight projects a year.

What Stursberg didn’t address was how this strategy will impact the CBC’s news and current affairs division. Some of the corporations most-recognized current affairs shows have lost their favourable spots on the schedule. The Fifth Estate has been pushed Friday nights, while documentary programming has been slashed.

Stursberg said the success of this strategy rested with the employees, saying the CBC has gone through a “difficult and tumultuous restructuring” but the corporation made it through in better shape than we started, noting the gains in audience share. “You should all congratulate yourselves,” he said applauding the gathered employees, adding that the third quarter results are “very good.”

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