Source : Globe & Mail

Broadcaster's president sees national service rather than reliance on local TV stations

Toronto – The identity of the CBC has become the subject of an angry feud in Ottawa, with president Robert Rabinovitch pushing the broadcaster toward being more of a national service, while the federal regulator argues that it should rely more on its string of local stations.

Senior officials said Mr. Rabinovitch reacted angrily this week at a meeting with officials from the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, in preparation for the CRTC's Jan. 6 release of the CBC's new broadcast licence.

The CBC president was told that the licence would require the CBC to spend more on local TV programming.

Since taking office in October, Mr. Rabinovitch has planned to make the CBC more of a national service.

Earlier this week, he announced a high-level task force to reduce the CBC's reliance on local stations and transmitters in order to devote more resources to national programming. This plan has collided headlong with the CRTC's objectives, which would tie the broadcaster permanently to its 22 local TV stations.

Apparently this was not the only CRTC licence requirement that angered Mr. Rabinovitch, who would not comment on the dispute yesterday. A senior CBC executive said the president was also "not too happy" about several conditions of the licence, including a requirement that the CBC stop broadcasting Hollywood films on its Quebec stations.

When Mr. Rabinovitch, a Montreal businessman and former senior federal official, agreed to take over the troubled national broadcaster in October, he sought guarantees from the Prime Minister's Office that he would be given free rein to operate the broadcaster without government interference. His colleagues said he had no idea that the CRTC, another federally appointed organization, might also have its own plans for the CBC.

"He says he's got a special mandate from the Prime Minister," a CRTC official familiar with the meeting said yesterday. "Well, so do we."

This is not the first time that a CBC president's ambitions have collided with those of the CRTC; however, Mr. Rabinovitch was apparently among the first to angrily demand that the CRTC alter its plans.

"He was a bit cocky ... he seemed to feel that he could change things however he wants, even if the Broadcast Act says otherwise," the CRTC official said.

The CRTC and the CBC are both required to follow the federal Broadcast Act, which says the CBC must "reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences, while serving the special needs of those regions."

The current group of CRTC commissioners has interpreted this to mean that the CBC should operate separate stations in each region. CBC executives, on the other hand, have interpreted it to mean that the CBC should provide coverage of all the regions in a national package.

The difference is significant: Under the CRTC's interpretation, the CBC must continue to spend its money on 22 distinct TV operations and bureaucracies, while some CBC executives would prefer to devote that money to journalistic bureaus and production facilities in the regions, feeding into a single national service.

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