Broadcasting Corporation rated lesser mention in the 2010 budget than the tariff on duvet covers.

Source: The Hill Times

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation rated lesser mention in the 2010 budget than the tariff on duvet covers. Naturally this drew whispers on Parliament Hill.

The CBC is a predictable target for cost cutting though MPs know this will take time and tact. No federal bureaucracy has displayed a keener sense of self-preservation.

In an age of media upheaval, regulatory turmoil, and mammoth deficits, only political amnesiacs expect the net-
work to coast on its annual $1,170,814,000 Parliamentary grant and a TV mandate written in 1952. Former Liberal Cabinet minister Judy LaMarsh prophesied, “With satellite communication beaming world-wide pro- grams to the home, the CBC may be obsolete in 20 years.”LaMarsh made her prediction in 1967.

The corporation received scarcely a nod in Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s Economic Action Plan. A gratuitous reference on page 305 noted the CBC “undertook strategic reviews” and seemed “aligned with the priorities of Canadians.”

The timing was notable.

That same week the CBC’s old mentor, the British Broadcasting Corp., volunteered $155-million in cuts and closure of two radio stations as the U.K. grapples with its deficit. “The public pick up the bill for the BBC,” its chairman said, “and it is right that it constantly evolves to meet their expectations.” A review by directors concluded the British broadcaster must “sharpen its focus,” “improve the value for money it provides” and “stop doing some things that it doesn’t need to do.”

CBC-TV executives by contrast have opposed any serious change in mandate even as viewership dwindles. Audiences for The National flagship newscast have declined 50 per cent since 1989, from 2.28 million to 1.13 mil- lion on their best week—a trend so frightening the network hired U.S. consultants to coach its performance. “Attracting an audience is really the only thing that matters at the CBC these days,”noted former CBC Ottawa newsroom
manager Andy Clarke. Writing in an Ottawa Citizen commentary, Clarke concluded the network “is increasingly uninterested in policy, politics or process.”

Yet the corporation has proven expert in defending its budget, going so far as to use airtime to needle politicians for more money.

When Cabinet last year declined a CBC request for extraordinary loans to backstop ad revenues, the corporation announced 799 job cuts—about eight percent of its workforce—and invited Heritage Minister James Moore to an interview on Newsworld.

Once on the air, Moore was subjected to this performance by host Suhana Meharchand:

MEHARCHAND:“You know on a day like this I know how I’m feeling. My guts are in a knot, I’m worried for my colleagues, I’m worried for myself; when we hear about news, current affairs, sports, drama being reduced or cut, radio programs being reduced or cut – how do you feel today?”
MOORE: “Well, I mean, of course when there’s job losses or the threat of job losses obviously it’s a source of uncertainty and discomfort and certainly sadness. We don’t want to see job losses. But look, all broadcasters in this country...are facing a change in this entire business model.”

Meharchand kept her job.

Even more instructive for cost-cutters was the corporation’s response to restraints in 1995, when then-prime minister Jean Chrétien took steps to balance the budget. Chrétien raised taxes by or to $940-million, privatized air traffic control, cut the army by one-tenth, abolished Prairie grain growers’ freight subsidies dating from 1897—and trimmed CBC funding four per cent.

“We cannot spare anybody including the CBC,” Chrétien said. Then-finance minister Paul Martin was almost apologetic: “The cuts to the CBC were less than most other agencies and departments of government.”

The corporation’s response was disproportionate and near- hysterical.

CBC president Tony Manera resigned; “You’ve given your heart and your soul and your time to the CBC,” anchorwoman Pamela Wallin told the nation the night Manera quit.The network’s Prime Time News in a single telecast broadcast four stories on its own funding.The flavour of coverage was captured by journalist Carol Off:“It seems large and complex, and it’s been criticized for trying to be all things to all people, but it’s in an effort to meet CBC’s obligations, to put Canadian programs on the air.”

More entertaining was an appearance by the late CanWest Global founder Izzy Asper, who remarked in an interview with Wall- in the four per cent cut was peanuts.

ASPER: “The finance minister should have gone a lot further.”

WALLIN: “But what do you mean? On the CBC! This is not— you want them to cut further on the CBC?”

ASPER: “Oh, I go even further than that. I believe that he should have given the CBC one-year’s notice, that one year from now it will have no grant, that the CBC is no longer appropriate as a state-owned broadcaster.”

They didn’t, of course.

The CBC budget has survived Izzy Asper, Liberal cutbacks, Tory freezes, the internet, fractured market share, record deficits and the recession of 2009-10.

They whisper on Parliament Hill, how much longer?

© The Hill Times