To put the $1.1 billion CBC parliamentary appropriation in perspective, it is less than eight percent of total revenues for television in Canada and less than twelve percent of total public expenditures on culture. – Wade Rowland, Saving the CBC (Linda Leith Publishing), Introduction, page 2
At the end of the book, Wade Rowland presents ten proposals for a new CBC, based on the premise that CBC Television will eliminate advertising.
Proposal 2: In return for providing substantial new advertising revenue to private broadcasters, increase the CBC’s $1.1 billion parliamentary appropriation by an equivalent amount to be taken from the various subsidies currently provided to private broadcasters. – Wade Rowland, Saving the CBC, page 101
Wade Rowland is Associate Professor in the Department of Communications Studies at York University, and has spent many years in television news at CBC and CTV.
How reasonable is it to expect that CBC Television will eliminate advertising now that CBC Radio2 has been authorised to advertise four minutes every hour?
Mike Duffy is the best thing that has happened to the CBC of late. Good for ratings and the CBC is well off the radar for the next year or so.
Horace is right. Wade, a charming man, is dreaming.
As to Wade’s dreams, I share them. I expect that events will occur — such as the CBC’s loss of Hockey Night in Canada — that will lead to a rethinking of fundamentals and make it clear that yesterday’s CRTC decision was a step in the wrong direction — a view shared by the CRTC’s dissenting Vice-Chairman.
Fred, Horace, how very nice to hear your comments. Each of you played important roles at different stages of my career, such as it is, and I remain grateful for that.
Let me reframe my “dream.” Instead of suggesting that CBC “eliminate” advertising, what I am suggesting is that the Corporation “relinquish” advertising, thus satisfying the commercial broadcasters’ perennial complaint that they have to compete with a government subsidized organization. Giving up hockey can be rationalized in the same way, making a virtue out of an inevitability. In fact it would be reasonable for whoever gets the new NHL contract to claim they are providing a service to the nation on the same basis that CBC does.
The cash bonanza that would follow for the commercial broadcasters would be substantial, making it reasonable to insist that some of it be returned to the CBC to support it at a level that would allow it to not only survive, but flourish. This could even be framed in a context of eliminating the odious public service obligations imposed on the commercial networks by the regulator from time to time. They don’t produce results, anyway.
This is not to mention the existing, very substantial, subsidy currently being paid to commercial broadcasters every year (estimates run to $1 billion), which is based on the obsolete, early 20th century idea that the private broadcasters are somehow providing public service comparable to the CBC. Some of that should also be clawed back for the public broadcaster as well.
It seems to me that there is a real potential to not only “save the CBC,” but to put television on as sound and creative a footing as radio established once it was freed of advertising back in 1975.
Eric, you have a distinguished readership.
Wade, thank you for your elegant solution, so well-explained. It may be too rational and sensible for Ottawa to embrace, but we can live in hope!