The CBC as Barometer of Canadian Nationalism

For most of the seventy-five years of the CBC’s history, which we are celebrating this week, ratings did not exist. Historians will not find it easy to establish the size of CBC audiences, in relation to the private Canadian and American stations, in radio and television, until the ’seventies, even though the CBC’s research department evolved some measurements of its own. In the first decade of Canadian television, before there was any Canadian competition, there was a great deal of excitement about the CBC’s programs, to judge by extensive press coverage – far beyond anything today – and frequent indignant questions in the House of Commons. However, it is quite possible that audiences were much smaller than one would have thought.

In the absence of a reliable scientific method to quantify audiences during most of the last seventy-five years, one may be allowed to speculate, in a most unscientific manner, about the role the CBC and Radio Canada have played in their respective societies. The conclusion: when the country felt good about itself, the public broadcaster was held in high regard. When the mood was indifferent, as it is now, audiences did not feel strongly about it. The minority of loyalists has always been and will always be, loyal. By definition.

On the English side, the high points were the war and immediate postwar years and the ’sixties, culminating, on television, in This Hour Has Seven Days. In radio, the long-running Peter Gzowsky’s Morningside may be an equivalent.

There are many ingredients in the make-up of Canadian cultural nationalism. Excitement about hockey and about the Olympics is one ingredient; pride in the number of first-class Canadian singers in the world’s opera houses is another. Gratitude to the Canadian military, for example in Afghanistan, must also be high on the list.

But by far the most important cultural institution in English Canada is the CBC – specifically CBC Radio, which has remained relatively faithful to the original ideals, in spite of decades of budget cuts. CBC Television has chosen to respond to these cuts in a way that has reduced its importance: by making ratings, i.e., commercial success, the major criterion of program acceptability. This has blurred the line between it and the private, and American, competition. It is no longer as distinct as it was in the earlier years. It could have chosen another route – it could have sacrificed a mass audience in favour of the original mandate: to inform, educate and enlighten. But it is hard for public broadcasters, once they have a mass audience, and for governments that pay for their services, to give up the masses.

Whatever the appearance at the moment, thanks to new technologies, CBC Television will – especially if we all keep our fingers crossed – recover its former place on the cultural barometer in the next decade.

Other postings about the CBC and public broadcasting:

• CBC Funding Becomes an Issue in Canadian Politics
• The CBC: Now Would be an Excellent Time to….
• “Doing Something about the CBC” — But What?
• Truth, Beauty and Good Business