Without Hockey, the CBC Will Be Better

By Wade Rowland, Professor in the Department of Communications Studies, York University, in Huffington Post Canada, November 27

As predicted in this space several months ago, the CBC has lost the rights to NHL hockey. As nobody could have predicted, Rogers Media has purchased all rights, across all platforms, in all languages, for twelve years, for $5.2 billion.

CBC will be carrying Hockey Night in Canada for the next four years – a total of 320 hours of hockey programming a year. After that, presumably, it’s all over for the iconic program, and Rogers becomes the sole NHL broadcaster via Sportsnet.

Those final CBC broadcasts will be under the editorial control of Rogers, with CBC providing behind-the-scenes production facilities and expertise. Rogers will sell all advertising spots and keep all ad revenue.

CBC loses about $100 million in advertising revenue, but saves about the same amount in NHL contract costs, and an additional $25 million or so in production costs. (These, presumably, will be paid for by Rogers.) There will also be a saving of sales and promotion costs related to hockey broadcasts, perhaps another $30 million. On paper, this looks like a net gain for CBC of about $55 million a year – the former HNC expenses of $155 million minus the $100 million in ad revenue now in the hands of Rogers.

Whether this is a good deal for Rogers is a concern for Rogers shareholders. Whether it’s a good deal for the CBC is a matter of concern for all Canadians.

It’s questionable, in fact, whether such an arrangement is even legal, given the CBC’s public service mandate. What the deal means in practice is that the public broadcaster will be turning over about 40 per cent of its prime time air space during the hockey season to a commercial broadcaster, without retaining editorial control. What the CBC carries during those hours will be determined entirely by Rogers.

Is that what the citizens of this country expect for the $1 billion in public broadcasting subsidies they provide each year? Should the CBC’s parliamentary appropriation be subsidizing Rogers Media by providing a training ground for their producers and technicians in the finer points of hockey telecasting?

We can safely leave that to the CRTC to sort out. Meanwhile, the deal actually sounds like good news for public broadcasting, because it means that in four years – perhaps sooner – the CBC will be free of hockey.

And why is that a good thing? Because it moves the CBC one step closer to getting out of commercial sponsorship altogether, and becoming a true public broadcaster.

Without hockey and the 320+ hours of Canadian content it provides, CBC will now have to go back to square one and figure out what it is supposed to be. It has the opportunity, now, to become what it should have been all along: a publicly subsidized broadcaster serving its audience as citizens rather than as consumers.