Source : Globe & Mail

Let's shut down the old Corp. Then we can seek tenders for a new public broadcaster, says former CBC chairman PATRICK WATSON

The CBC's current paralysis has displayed to the whole country a profound management ineptitude of which the industry at large has been aware for a long time. It is interesting but not surprising to find that millions of citizens are relatively indifferent to the absence of CBC television: It has been so busy behaving like, and competing with, the private sector that for most of us it was often difficult to know when we were actually tuned to the allegedly public service. Old American movies in prime time on Saturday evening -- movies that you can rent cheaply at your local video shop -- are a prime example of the network's attitude toward public service. And the French network's recent replacing of the 6 p.m. news with a popular sitcom is an indication that the ratings-and-revenue-driven mentality isn't confined to the English television service.

I hasten to add that a good Canadian sitcom can be a delight, and is right up the public broadcaster's alley. And that ratings and excellence are not mutually exclusive. But the first obligation is to serve citizens with a view of Canada and the world that will assist us to be effective citizens. Killing that Radio-Canada news service shows arrogant indifference to this obligation.

In a consumerist culture where the majority rules, excellence and the challenge to power are always at risk. The real public broadcaster will seek out and program the best that Canadians have to offer, in the arts (including the full range of music), science, journalism, documentary, policy discussion, comedy, and theatre (when did you last see anything from Canada's prolific regional stages on CBC?). Oh yes, and the best of the specialty channels, say one selection a week. There is a lot of fine, original stuff on Vision TV, iChannel, History and others, and that is very much a part of the national excellence referred to above.

The new public system will offer a constant, reasoned, informed and diligent challenge to power, and a questioning of the civic values promoted by commerce. It will leave big-ticket sports to the private broadcasters who need the revenue, while taking its cameras into the myriad wonderful sports venues that really occupy citizens -- like children's soccer.

In this jillion-channel universe, it will recognize that the only way to be genuinely accessible to a constituency that also wants its time with Bravo!, CNN, the Health Channel, History Television and PBS, et al., you have to radically reduce the amount of new production, and go heavily into repeats, at different times of the day and week, so that different sectors of your constituency can find you when they need you. Six months of that kind of programming and the now-vanished constituency will have returned in a horde, ready to fight for its survival and the growth of the public broadcaster.

Producers across the country who in the last decade or so have had to negotiate with the CBC for the programs that are commissioned from the independent-production sector tell bitter stories of the damp blanket of committee-think that enshrouds the Corporation's decision-making. It has been clear for years that anything like rapid, courageous, individual-centred, effective decision-making no longer has any home inside those massive walls.

The Broadcasting Centre in downtown Toronto has been an absurdity since its conception, a frivolous monument to a former CEO and a serious drain on resources. It should be sold, as should all the real estate across the country, and all the other physical assets that are not clearly part of the huge cultural heritage invested in what remains of the program archives.

The mass indifference to the television service is not shared by CBC Radio listeners. Right now, during the lockout, they are, by the hundreds of thousands, feeling seriously deprived of news and discussion programming, upon which they have counted for years. But at the same time, many are complaining of the increasingly rapid slide into the pop mode that they have been hearing on CBC Radio over the past few years. Listeners have the impression that both the smart, experienced broadcasters and the new breed of chatty pea-brained hosts are constantly being interrupted by an obsessive commitment to pop-rock musical transitions (virtually never a classical voice or instrument on the Radio One basic AM service, just bang-bang-bang drumbeats, other percussion and guitars, reflecting the mythology that broadcasting now is all about the teens-to-30s consumer, and citizens can just go read the papers). Loyal old CBC Radio listeners want this fixed.

So, yes, let's put public broadcasting out to tender. The disaffection of citizens is at a level now where the government can close down the whole institution without electoral risk, publish a clear description of what it expects a genuine public broadcaster to do (see above re: excellence and telling truth to power), remove this totally inappropriate competition with the private broadcasters for ratings and commercial revenue, and declare that the licence will be given to the lowest bidder whose proposal convincingly meets the requirements.

The CBC's current management would have to have the right to tender, along with the dozens of experienced private broadcasters and specialty-channel operators, many of whom have been saying quietly for years that they would love to get their hands on the dinosaur, to show the country what a really distinguished public-broadcasting service would look and sound like at, say, 30 per cent of the present cost.

Any bidders?

It would, of course, take a certain amount of ingenuity, thought and bravado for a Canadian government to take this step. But saving more than half-a-billion bucks a year should be an incentive.

Patrick Watson is a former chairman of the CBC and creative director of Historica.

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