Source : Globe & Mail

CBC Television's master plan to boost its ratings has run into trouble. Nobody watched The One, the American reality show that was supposed to prepare audiences for a Canadian version this fall, but which also forced controversial delays to The National. The ratings for this month's episodes were so low, ABC cancelled the series, leaving CBC facing the new season with a lame-duck concept.

So, maybe it's time for Plan B.

How about, say, a CBC-TV that does wickedly clever -- and totally original -- reality shows? How about a CBC-TV that not only offers the best national newscast but also a host of current-affairs programs, documentaries and shows about science and the arts? And how about a CBC-TV that specializes in Canadian comedy and smart little sitcoms that make a virtue of their low-budget necessity?

This CBC would stop trying to draw mass audiences to single events such as big-budget dramas, American movies or Saturday-night hockey games, but instead would offer a lineup of specialized Canadian programming that reached millions over the course of a week.

And this CBC would not have to chase the overnight ratings -- because this CBC would not take ads: That's right, the commercials would simply disappear.

"The CBC has been in identity crisis since I was reading The National in the 1970s," says veteran broadcaster and prominent Conservative Peter Kent, who has advocated an ad-free CBC since his days with the public network, and who now works as a news executive with Global. "I'd be delighted as a taxpayer to support a thoroughly public broadcaster, but that means coming up with a 2006 model, not a 1952 model."

Since CBC Radio dropped commercial advertising in the 1970s, there have always been those who say CBC-TV should follow suit. But until recently they were dismissed either as starry-eyed idealists or as right-wing ideologues looking to hand ad revenue to commercial broadcasters. As for those who say the ad-free BBC is the best broadcaster in the world, well, Britons pay for it through a licence fee on their tellies. Try telling Canadians there's a new tax on TVs. No, an ad-free CBC Television has been considered a non-starter for 30 years.

Increasingly, however, the issue is getting a real airing, driven by a sense that CBC English TV has reached the breaking point, and cannot continue to be all things to all people on an ever-shrinking budget. The idea was also given a major boost by a recent Senate committee report that specifically recommended the public broadcaster go commercial-free.

Meanwhile, observers in Ottawa say the current Conservative government is waiting for the day it wins a majority to reform the public broadcaster, speculating that the PMO recently squelched plans by Minister of Canadian Heritage Bev Oda for a CBC mandate review only because it didn't want to open that can of worms while still in minority.

Conservatives routinely say the CBC should not compete with the private sector. What they mean is (a) that it should stop producing local newscasts in places such as Toronto, Ottawa and Calgary; and (b) that it should not go head to head against the private broadcasters for the rights to air NHL hockey and the Olympics. And if the public broadcaster isn't going to air hockey games, the logic continues, it might as well go ad-free: Sports account for about half the CBC's ad revenue.

Critics of these changes say they would reduce CBC-TV to the status of a specialty channel just when Canadians desperately need a strong public alternative to private networks increasingly concentrated in a few corporate hands. But advocates say going ad-free could create a TV service as distinctive and independent as CBC Radio. "At some point you have got to close your eyes and jump, because the only thing that is certain is that the existing horse is not getting you anywhere," commented one private broadcaster who asked not to be identified.

The existing horse is a mongrel: Less than half of the $580-million budget for CBC English TV comes from government; about 55 per cent is earned revenue, largely accounted for by $200-million in ad sales, as well as program sales to other broadcasters, and the subscription fees paid to Newsworld and the digital channel Country Canada.

Those enraged by CBC's decision to delay The National newscast twice a week to simulcast The One say the semi-private public broadcaster doesn't know how to make decisions when its parliamentary mandate comes into conflict with the profit motive. "We see the tail wagging the dog there," observes Ian Morrison, of the lobby group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. It's for similar reasons that the senators recommended the CBC should both get out of sports and gradually wean itself off advertising with a 10-year mandate matched to an appropriate government budget. What they didn't say was how this would work.

Observers on all sides also point out that if you cut out ads, you free up 12 minutes an hour for which you would have to create new programming -- that's a 25-per-cent increase over the current 48 minutes, not to mention the hours currently filled by hockey games. At least a quarter more programming with half the money: That's why nobody at the CBC itself is seriously talking about dropping TV advertising. "I hear all these suggestions and I don't know what to make of it," says Richard Stursberg, executive vice-president of English television. "It's not the reality anyone at the CBC is dealing with."

On the contrary, Stursberg is attempting to create a broadly popular Canadian-programming mix that would drive up ratings and ad revenues right along with them. And he defends Hockey Night in Canada, pointing out that the program, which began life on CBC Radio in the 1930s, helps pay for news and drama.

Canadian governments have an appalling track record when it comes to delivering on promises of stable funding for the CBC, so it's no surprise that Stursberg is skeptical that Ottawa would simply replace the lost ad revenue. Outside observers are equally skeptical. So they toss around what they see as more palatable ideas for raising the money, including a levy on what would be increased ad profits for the private broadcasters, or maybe some kind of cable fee.

It's true that taking ads off both CBC-TV and the French-language Radio-Canada would, in theory, free up about 10 per cent of the $3.1-billion Canadian TV ad market. But those inside the industry warn that advertisers would be opposed to seeing an ad-free CBC simply because they would lose access to CBC viewers, and that, in any case, not all that money would necessarily flow directly back to the private networks and the specialty channels.

"It's more complex that a simple decision to carry advertising or not," says Jim Patterson, head of the Television Bureau of Canada, which markets the industry to advertisers. "It's unlikely the private broadcasters would support getting a dollar and giving it back." He also points out that CBC-TV has 14 commercial affiliates: local private stations that it does not own but which run some of its programming and which could not be converted to a commercial-free format.

Meanwhile, the most detailed proposal for a subscription fee calls for a new tier of basic cable made up entirely of public broadcasters (see sidebar). Any discussion of the idea, however, would have to resolve how the national broadcaster would then serve the estimated 5 to 15 per cent of Canadians who don't get either cable or satellite.

Then there are those, including Kent, who believe the CBC could drop ads, without finding a new source of revenue, if it eliminated costly regional stations. But advocates of public broadcasting point out that the Broadcasting Act gives the CBC a specific mandate to program from the regions as well as nationally. "How can you run CBC-TV on half the revenue? You'd stop programming in Alberta; it would be the Toronto Broadcasting Corporation," says Morrison.

He fears that talk of an ad-free CBC is merely a covert way of reducing it to a Toronto-based specialty channel, some larger version of TVO or the Knowledge Network, the ad-free educational broadcasters in Ontario and British Columbia. He wouldn't be much comforted by what Kent has to say: "TVO knows what it is trying to be and fulfills those educational and information goals because it doesn't have this bureaucratic overstructure."

The difference, however, lies in the size not just of the organization but of the audiences: CBC-TV reaches about four times the number of Canadian viewers as TVO reaches Ontario viewers. And ironically, TVO is considering whether its search for new revenue might include some form of advertising.

So the educational model would have to be significantly reworked if it were to provide a real alternative for the CBC. David Balcon, an independent TV producer based in Edmonton and Toronto, argues for programming that caters to a whole series of niche audiences, delivering the kind of high-quality shows on science or the arts that the specialty channels have largely abandoned in their quest for ratings.

As for whether that kind of CBC should carry hockey, nobody seems sure: On the one hand, critics such as Balcon and Morrison see the NHL season driving the whole programming schedule; on the other, they recognize there is something distinctively Canadian about hockey. "A good public broadcaster is not necessarily elitist," Balcon says. "It's not about a single program getting a million people -- it's assembling a range of programs that appeal to a million people across the course of a week."

All these models will be up for public debate as the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission begins its own review of the TV industry, due to be completed in 2007. But any direct government review of the CBC will no doubt wait until after the next federal election.

"The time has come, but until there is a majority government, I don't think the political will [is there]," says Kent. "Inevitably, something this big, in terms of culture and national identity, it will take a majority government."

So it looks like Stursberg has about a year to start drawing big ratings, before attempts at Plan B -- whatever form it takes -- might finally be rammed down the CBC's throat.

Hoping for some 'green space' on the dial

The most detailed proposal for a new funding formula that would underwrite public television comes from Bill Roberts, CEO of the multifaith channel, Vision TV.

Roberts has repeatedly called for a new version of basic cable: a "foundation tier" of cable or satellite that would cluster together, at the bottom of the dial, non-profit and government-funded services such as Vision, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, the parliamentary channel CPAC, and the provincial educational and legislature broadcasters.

Subscribers would pay a mandatory fee for this package, but it would be much lower than the current price of basic cable.

Only Canadian-owned services that aired Canadian content 60 per cent of the time, and spent at least half their revenues generating it, would qualify for this prime position on the dial and their share of the subscriptions.

Roberts argues that this would preserve a bit of "green space" in an increasingly commercial television-distribution environment in which subscribers will soon be able to pick and choose which individual cable or satellite channels they want.

The idea could be adapted to make room for a new, commercial-free CBC-TV, although when Roberts proposed the foundation tier to a Commons committee studying the broadcasting system in 2003, CBC president Robert Rabinovitch rejected it out of hand for the national broadcaster.

He said the CBC was a network, not a specialty channel, and that it was already providing its own "green space."

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has said the plan is impractical.

The cable companies have warned that people can never be forced to watch something they don't want, and will resent paying for it.

Even the committee, chaired by MP Clifford Lincoln, wondered if viewers would simply set their remotes to avoid this first level of channels, and worried about segregating the CBC in this way.

However, it disagreed with the CRTC that it couldn't be done, and recommended the regulator make sure audiences have fair access to the non-profits.

The idea will take on new urgency as the CRTC gets ready to unbundle cable services by 2010, a development which may banish public-service channels to financial oblivion unless some solution is found for them.

© Globe and Mail