CBC makes pitch for more money

TORONTO - Executives for the CBC, Canada's public broadcaster, made their
case for additional funding this week.

At a town-hall style gathering with CBC's Toronto staffers on Friday and in
a meeting with the Canadian heritage committee in Ottawa a day earlier, CBC
officials unrolled their plan, which is aimed at boosting the budget for
regional television and radio services.

The public money that the CBC receives for that programming was reduced five
years ago in a series of government cost-cutting measures.

"Faced with massive government reductions in our funding during the 1990s,
CBC/Radio-Canada was forced to make very difficult programming decisions,"
the network's president, Robert Rabinovitch, said on Friday.

"But we are committed to rebuilding our local and regional service and this
plan details how we would do that, and what it would cost."

The CBC's proposal calls for a three-year infusion of cash. It is asking for
$34.4 million in special operating funds in the first year, $61.2 million in
the second, and $82.8 million in the third. The CBC is also asking Ottawa to make permanent a $60 million annual boost that has been added to its budget, pegged at nearly $900 million, in each of the last three years.

The proposed increases were submitted to Parliament on Thursday by Richard
Stursberg, the newly minted executive in charge of English television
programming. He said that, in addition to bringing back late-night and weekend local news, the CBC intends to double the amount of time it devotes to drama shows and specials.

He added that the CBC is the only network willing to give over prime-time
hours to Canadian-made dramas. Stursberg also said that there would be some changes made to existing shows to free up the resources so the network could live up to its renewed commitment to the regions.

© CBC News

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