XPost: can.politics, bc.politics, ont.politics   
   From: "@nyet.ca   
      
   Let's test the leadership candidates for the next election on the   
   subject of funding for the CBC.  Harper we can ignore.  How would Justin   
   Trudeau or Thomas Mulcair handle public funding for the CBC?   
   ___________________________________________________   
      
   Contributed to The Globe and Mail - Thursday, Jun. 26 2014   
   by Wade Rowland   
      
      
   The CBC’s a service, not a business   
      
      
   The CBC’s strategic plan to shift priorities from broadcast to digital   
   services and outsource virtually all but news and current affairs   
   programming is, on the whole, a sensible strategy – from a purely   
   business perspective. It saves money by reducing production and   
   distribution costs. Shedding more jobs will further enhance the bottom   
   line between now and 2020; as many as 1,500 positions will be eliminated   
   in the plan announced Wednesday.   
      
   The thing is, however, that the public broadcaster is not a business in   
   any conventional sense. It exists not to make money or to satisfy   
   financial goals, but to fill a public need – one that is not being   
   served by private media outlets. The CBC is a public good, like the   
   school system, like medicare, like our universities and colleges, our   
   public museums and galleries.   
      
   In a world of commercial sponsorship of media, both broadcast and   
   online, the CBC’s purpose is to serve its audiences as citizens, rather   
   than as consumers. Its purpose is to create news, information and   
   entertainment that’s judged for its creative, intellectual and artistic   
   integrity, rather than its ability to attract large audiences that can   
   be sold to advertisers.   
      
   What CBC management has delivered is not a public broadcasting strategy   
   but a business plan, one that further distances the corporation from its   
   public-service mandate.   
      
   For example, most people who study digital online media recognize that   
   one of its impacts is to atomize audiences. Where traditional   
   broadcasting creates a kind of congregation, a community of interest,   
   the fragmented, specialized nature of Internet content tends to   
   encourage individuals to focus on their own established interests. There   
   is certainly a place for this, but it runs counter to the   
   community-building remit of public broadcasting.   
      
   Another example: Nowhere in Wednesday’s in-house town-hall webcast, nor   
   the accompanying documentation, was the issue of whether the public   
   broadcaster ought to be carrying advertising even mentioned. The best of   
   the world’s public-service broadcasters (PSBs) carry no commercials.   
   Their involvement means engaging in the ratings game, which pushes   
   programming toward the lowest common denominator in tastes and   
   interests. This is why commercial-free subscription television services   
   such as HBO and Netflix, like true PSBs, tend to produce superior   
   programming.   
      
   One of the reasons why CBC is anxious to accelerate its shift to online   
   services is because that’s where advertising revenue is moving. It hopes   
   to cash in on the bonanza.   
   But a reliance on ad revenue from online services is just as corrosive   
   to PSB values and goals as it is in conventional TV and radio, for the   
   same reasons.   
      
   If 70-odd years experience with the CBC to date proves anything, it’s   
   that the public broadcaster can’t serve two masters. It should leave   
   commercial sponsorship to the private media, which exist to serve   
   advertisers, and it should focus on its public-service mandate exclusively.   
      
   Can the CBC survive without advertising revenue? That’s like asking   
   whether the public school system can survive without corporate   
   sponsorship. Of course it can – as long as that’s a public priority, as   
   it ought to be.   
      
   At present, the CBC receives an annual parliamentary appropriation of   
   about $1.34-billion. This puts Canada third from the bottom of the list   
   of OECD nations’ support for their PSBs. A subsidy of $3-billion would   
   boost us to around average. That level of funding would make it possible   
   for the CBC to produce television programming matching the highest   
   international standards, and to continue to finance an exceptional radio   
   service while providing online services as the market – rather than   
   internal balance sheets – dictates.   
      
   A dedicated 5 per cent to 7 per cent impost on what the CRTC calls   
   Broadcast Distribution Undertakings – the big, vertically integrated and   
   enormously profitable Internet/wireless/telephone/broadcast providers   
   like Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Quebecor – could bring CBC funding up to a   
   level that would allow it to properly do its job of providing an   
   alternative to commercial media.   
      
   It could put the CBC back in the business of being an authentic   
   public-service broadcaster, beholden to no vested interests, commercial   
   or political. It’s what the country needs and deserves as a culture and   
   a community – more so than ever in the evolving digital era.   
   ______________________   
      
   Wade Rowland is the author of Saving the CBC: Balancing Profit and   
   Public Interest. He teaches in York University’s communication studies   
   department.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)