Source : Globe & Mail

Advocates are horrified that Radio-Canada has killed the six o'clock news and is dumbing down the broadcaster, writes KONRAD YAKABUSKI. But it's hard to argue with the ratings spike

MONTREAL -- There are not many sacred trusts left in Canadian public broadcasting -- what with budget cuts, ferocious private-sector competition and questions about its continuing relevancy in a 500-channel universe. But not long ago, almost no one in Quebec could have predicted the demise of the six o'clock news.

Yet, Radio-Canada this week ended one of the longest traditions in network television by replacing its suppertime newscast with a light-hearted talk show hosted by a popular blond starlet and Chatty Cathy of Quebec's celebrity circuit.

On the one hand, who can blame the network? Radio-Canada's news broadcasts had been getting hammered for years by the private competition, especially the TVA network owned by medias colossus Quebecor Inc. Replacing the news with Véro, the variety hour hosted by Véronique Cloutier, appears to have been a brilliant move. In its first week, Véro drew almost twice as many viewers as Le Téléjournal got in the same time slot last season.

Still, Véro and a slew of other programming changes at Radio-Canada, the CBC's French-language service, illustrate a trend that has advocates of public broadcasting outraged and competitors calling for the CBC's privatization. Under current programming director Mario Clément, Radio-Canada, which was already much more populist than its English-language sister, has gone unapologetically commercial.

For some, Radio-Canada's programming has become even trashier than the blatantly populist shows of TVA and TQS, Quebec's third-ranked network. The latter this fall put a new twist on its traditional late-night newscast: One anchor reads the news, while a second attractive host named Isabelle Maréchal gets to say what she thinks about it.

Instead of resisting such trends, Radio-Canada -- whose own news broadcasts have veered toward the sensationalist, most recently with a much-hyped exclusive chat with murderer Karla Homolka and stories of human tragedy -- appears to have embraced them.

"You can no longer call it public television. It's a caricature of public television," said Florian Sauvageau, director of the Centre d'études sur les médias at Laval University in Quebec City, who co-chaired a federal task force on Canadian broadcasting in late 1980s. "It's as if the people who run Radio-Canada had never read the Broadcasting Act [which outlines the mandate of the network]. The idea of public television is to do something different that raises [standards] across the broadcasting sector. Radio-Canada is doing the opposite."

Indeed, Véro is not an isolated case. A slew of recent Radio-Canada programs illustrate Sauvageau's thesis.

This summer, Radio-Canada broadcast a show in prime time called Tout le monde tout nu! (Everbody Get Naked), in which Quebec celebrities revealed their sexual secrets and hang-ups. The theme of one episode: Is it true what they say about black men? That program was only slightly less controversial than another summer show, En attendant ben Laden (Waiting for bin Laden), a satirical take on the news that was accused of making light of the terrorism threat.

This week also marked the debut of La Fosse aux lionnes (In the Lionesses' Den), another chatty offering that bears a striking resemblance to ABC's The View. Three women hosts and their celebrity guests express not always well-informed opinions on just about any subject or person under the sun. The show has been highly criticized not only for its celebration of opinion over objective analysis, but also because it occupies the after-school time slot that had long been reserved for progressive youth-oriented programming.

Next month, meanwhile, Radio-Canada will launch Le match des étoiles, a variety program inspired by the current amateur-dance-show trend south of the border. One of the first guests, former federal cabinet minister Sheila Copps, will do the salsa.

Of course, la pièce de résistance of Radio-Canada's programming schedule is Tout le monde en parle (Everyone is Talking About It), now in its second season. The two-hour Sunday-night gabfest hosted by comedian Guy A. Lepage can make heroes or laughing stocks out of its guests, largely depending on how they answer Lepage's mostly loaded questions. Quebec Premier Jean Charest refused to appear on the show last season, prompting Lepage to call him a coward. When the unpopular Premier finally relented, appearing on last Sunday's season opener, he had to endure digs from Lepage about his chubbiness.

"It saddens me to see politicians lend themselves to that," lamented Sauvageau, "because it turns political debate into something glib, facile."

Still, despite the critics, no one can deny Radio-Canada programming director Clément, who declined to be interviewed, has made the public network a ratings contender much-feared by the competition. Tout le monde en parle drew 1.14-million viewers last Sunday, compared with the 200,000 spectators Radio-Canada used to draw on Sunday night with highbrow cultural programming. What's more, Tout le monde en parle managed to generate such an impressive score even though it was up against the season première on TVA of variety/reality show Star Académie, the hottest franchise in the history of Quebec television. StarAc, as it is known, was watched by 2.5-million Quebeckers.

Both programs illustrate the dynamism of homegrown television in Quebec, where the province's six-million francophones remain overwhelmingly loyal to TVA, Radio-Canada and TQS. As a result, Radio-Canada can rightly claim to be more relevant (if relevance is measured by ratings) to the lives of Quebeckers than the currently locked-out CBC could ever pretend to be in English Canada.

But does that mean the $383-million Radio-Canada's television operations got last year from the federal government was well spent?

Radio-Canada officials have justified their programming choices, in part, on the grounds that the network needs to generate additional advertising revenues to make up for steadily declining subsidies from Ottawa. They have also pointed out that viewers who want more news can watch RDI, Radio-Canada's all-news cable service, while those who want ballet can watch ARTV, the network's cultural channel.

Collette Brin, a communications professor, also at Laval University, thinks those are weak excuses: "When I heard they were doing away with the six o'clock news, I thought it was a joke. RDI and ARTV are not taxpayer-subsidized services. We pay for them via our cable bills. And not everyone in Quebec has cable."

Indeed, because of the overwhelming dominance of the three main French-language networks, cable penetration is lower in Quebec than elsewhere in the country. That raises questions about whether Radio-Canada is violating its mandate by off-loading some of the obligations imposed on it by regulators -- especially public affairs and cultural programming -- onto cable services unavailable to thousands of Quebeckers.

What's more, Sauvageau worries, it's happening right under the noses of the network's masters, including CBC president Robert Rabinovitch, because too many CBC board members are either unilingual anglophones or not bilingual enough to understand the colloquial French of most Radio-Canada shows.

Sauvageau predicts that if Véro proves to be an enduring hit, it will force TVA either to spice up its suppertime news, or abandon the format altogether for lighter fare.

So, even though as many as two-thirds of francophone Quebeckers will set aside tomorrow evening to watch a domestically produced show -- a ratings performance unimaginable in English-Canada, where CSI and Law & Order rule the roost -- it's a toss-up as to whether Radio-Canada has anything to crow about.

© Globe & Mail