Source : National Post

OTTAWA - As taxpayers poured nearly $10-billion into the CBC over the past 10 years, the government broadcaster's audience share in the English language has declined steadily to under 6%.

According to a Senate report on the media in Canada, CBC's share of the English language TV market had dropped to 5.8% by 2002, down from 8.4% in 1997.

The interim report from the Senate looking into media concentration in Canada also says that, even though the CBC more than doubled the money it spent on news and information programming from 1998 to 2002, it lost ground to CTV and Global for local supper-hour news viewers.

The CBC's all-news channel, Newsworld, has remained steady at 1% of the overall audience share, while the share for the U.S. all-news channel CNN has more than doubled to 2.7%.

The interim report from the Senate committee on transport and communications contains no conclusions or recommendations. The committee said it released the interim report to help "inform Canadians about what we have discovered through research and heard in testimony."

Audience figures for 2003 were not included.

The Senate report does not include details on government subsidies for the CBC, but the annual public accounts show taxpayers kicked in $8.7-billion over 10 years by the end of the 2002-03 fiscal year. Annual spending estimates show the government planned to give the Crown corporation $997-million over the 2003-04 fiscal year.

The Liberal government under Jean Chretien began cutting spending for the broadcast giant in 1996, under restraint measures imposed by then finance minister Paul Martin. By 1999, the government subsidy had declined to $879-million, but has since climbed steadily to the point the government has forecast an expenditure of $1-billion over the next fiscal year, over and above the CBC's advertising revenues.

Based on information from the CBC as well as the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the Senate report shows the corporation's spending on Canadian news and information programming mushroomed from $106-million in 1998 to $230-million in 2002, compared to the $288-million spent in the same area by all the privately owned broadcasters combined. Private broadcasters, however, now dominate supper-hour news audiences across the country.

© National Post