Source : National Post

Not 'just another study'

by Mark Stevenson

The CBC faces a major restructuring, including a possible end to local news services, as part of a management bid to make the public broadcaster more like a private-sector company.

In an internal memo sent to CBC staff yesterday, Robert Rabinovitch, the Montreal businessman appointed as president of the public broadcaster in October, said the CBC must prove it is a "cost-conscious operator that uses the best worldwide business practices," warning that the corporation's "re-engineering" would affect employees at all levels.

"This is not 'just another study' or a thinly disguised downsizing exercise," Mr. Rabinovitch, a former high-ranking bureaucrat, wrote. "The trip towards a fundamentally renewed and restructured CBC would not be easy."

The memo announced the creation of a "re-engineering task force" headed by Jim McCoubrey, the second-in-command and former president and CEO of Telemedia Inc., to look at how the public broadcaster can direct its declining resources to its main function: programming. The task force will focus on the redesign of English television, property management, transmission and distribution and sports, the memo says.

In an interview with the National Post yesterday, Mr. Rabinovitch said the CBC must be run more like a business to overcome a public perception that it is an inefficient bureaucracy that wastes money.

"I come from the private sector and I want to look at [the CBC] as a private-sector company," he said.

"So you may not like its programs but at least [it would] not be wasting money."

He said the CBC must focus on the programming it is good at, such as news, sports and current affairs.

The task force could conclude the public broadcaster should no longer provide other services, including local news programming, which, said Mr. Rabinovitch, are covered well by the private broadcasters. One way the CBC can become more efficient is by ending its current practice of sending multiple radio and TV crews to cover the same news event, he said.

"We have to look at how we collect the news and the most efficient ways of doing it," Mr. Rabinovitch said.

The CBC president yesterday assured his 9,000 employees that large layoffs are not coming.

Ian Morrison, a spokesman for the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, said Mr. Rabinovitch is focusing in on its core programming to appease the CRTC.

However, he said the federal regulator might not approve of any decision to end local news programming, which can be costly but is central to the broadcaster's mandate.

He said Mr. Rabinovitch "needs to be more focused on its core competencies and not just conveniences."

© The National Post

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See also: Message to Staff from the President & CEO (99.12.23)