Taking aim at the CBC by Antonia Zerbisias

by Antonia Zerbisias

It's unlikely that those who have been around as long as CBC-TV – it's 50 this year – haven't at one time or another been part of a debate about its importance to Canadians.

That discussion has ranged from heated radio talk to op-ed pieces to panel programs on CBC-TV itself. It seems every time the debate occurs, charges that the public broadcaster is irrelevant, unwatched and unloved are made.

Are they true? Do Canadians really not watch CBC-TV? Would they not miss it if it were sold? Is it a bureaucratic fat cat unanswerable to anybody?

Lately, the debate has been amplified, thanks partly to Parliament's Standing Committee on Heritage, which is looking into the future of broadcasting. Last Thursday, CBC appeared before the committee, which heard from CanWest Global earlier this month.

Although there are many players in this debate, including all citizens of Canada, it has come down to CanWest versus CBC. It seems that, all at once, the full force of the mightiest private media empire in Canada has been thrown against the largest public media corporation – making it hard to believe that it is coincidence and not concerted attack.

Consider the evidence of the past few weeks.

At least 10 editorials, columns and news stories calling for the privatization of the public network have been published in CanWest-owned dailies. Among them: The National Post's "The Great Unwatched" (Feb. 2), the Calgary Herald's "Elitist TV?" (Feb. 10), the Ottawa Citizen's "Unplug CBC TV" (Feb. 18) and the Montreal Gazette's "Let's Pull The Plug On CBC" (March 7).

Most of these pieces cited Statistics Canada figures from 2000, showing that CBC garners a 5 per cent audience share – even though the industry relies only on Nielsen and/or BBM ratings, which are far more scientific.

On Feb. 13, CanWest Global's executive chairperson I.H. (Izzy) Asper appeared on a digital channel media show, hosted by Matthew Fraser, a columnist with The National Post.

During the interview, throughout which he went unchallenged, Asper claimed that CBC is "dangerous," "a sop by governments to the tune of one billion dollars a year" and "accountable to no one."

When CBC president Robert Rabinovitch reacted to these criticisms in a statement on Feb. 20, Asper fired back a week later in a news release.

He accused Rabinovitch of protecting "a huge bureaucracy, of which he is the leader, of overpaid, underworked CBC head office executives who are living well off the taxpayers of Canada." He then questioned Rabinovitch's contention that CBC provides an "essential public service" that treats Canadians "as citizens, not just as consumers."

On Mar. 3, Global Sunday With Charles Adler debated the privatization of CBC-TV, inviting viewers to vote on the issue.

The panel included former CBC-TV vice-president Jim Byrd; National Post columnist Andrew Coyne, who advocates that CBC become a pay-TV channel; Global MoneyWise anchor Peter Kent, an advisor to CanWest president Leonard Asper; and myself.

The discussion was loud and vigorous. (Okay, I was loud and vigorous.) That's because every myth perpetuated in the past two months about CBC was repeated by the CanWest employees on the show, including the host.

Those 2000 StatsCan numbers were used yet again, this time to show that private broadcasters were whomping the public network at its own game. Izzy Asper's charges of fat cat CBC bureaucrats were recycled. Coyne said CBC was founded to provide choice – although it was actually established to reclaim the Canadian airwaves from U.S. stations – in order to justify how the network is no longer necessary in the multi-channel universe. Kent suggested that CBC be consigned to producing the pricey, unprofitable programming the private networks won't – and to hold telethons for its funding. As for Adler, he made the outrageous claim that CBC gets only a 1 per cent share of the audience.

Can all these things be true? Here's a reality check, based on facts and figures on the public record:

MYTH: CBC-TV costs taxpayers a billion a year.

TRUTH: Last year, citizens paid $794,058,000 for CBC. That's for English and French radio, AM and FM, which operate commercial-free and coast-to-coast-to-coast, plus English and French TV and CBC North.

That parliamentary appropriation is about half of CBC's budget of just under $1.4 billion. The other half comes mostly from advertising.

While CBC-TV spends about $450 million a year, it takes in some $160 million in ads, ultimately costing taxpayers $290 million, almost all of which remains in Canada. That's because, unlike private networks, which fill prime time mostly with U.S. simulcasts, CBC-TV is 90 per cent Canadian. It also airs public interest programming such as Canada Day celebrations, political conventions and town halls.

Can CBC-TV sell more ads and lessen the taxpayers' burden?

Advertisers would love that. But it would mean commercials in the morning and afternoon children and youth blocks, the consumer program Market Place, The National's first half hour, news specials, "nation-building" series such as Canada: A People's History and the arts showcase, Opening Night.

MYTH: CBC-TV has lost audience share over the past decade, therefore it's irrelevant.

TRUTH: All conventional networks, Canadian and U.S., have lost viewers to specialty services. In Greater Toronto, over the past decade, the market has been fragmented by three-dozen analogue channels. Then there are the 60-plus digital channels that launched last year.

(For the record, much of the CanCon running on these privately owned channels was created by CBC.)

All the same, relative to the networks, CBC has been holding steady. For the 2000-2001 season, its all-day share of viewers was 7.3 per cent, while CTV's was 15.3 per cent and Global's was 7.5 per cent. CBC managed to maintain its audience with a homegrown schedule – not by inserting Canadian ads into the U.S. Super Bowl or the Academy Awards.

These figures are distilled from Nielsen Media Research, the industry standard. Nielsen ratings are gathered by electronic meters in a representative sample of TV households. While flawed, they are more accurate than StatsCan surveys asking people to recall what they watched when.

MYTH: CBC-TV's audiences are smaller than those of private broadcasters, therefore Canadians don't value the network and it should be privatized.

TRUTH: Not a single scientific survey ever published has indicated Canadians want to sell CBC-TV.

If there were such a beast, The National Post, long a proponent of privatization, would likely give it front-page play. Which could explain why, on March 5, The Post reported that MP Roger Gallaway, a member of the Heritage Committee, called for a survey – although he wants it to reflect how many people are watching CBC-TV.

But such a scientific survey already exists and it's conducted 24/7: the Nielsen ratings. Why not use them instead of spending more tax dollars?

So far, all publicly available scientific polls asking Canadians how much they value CBC-TV indicate that they think it's an "essential" national institution. Such polls were conducted in 2000 by the pro-CBC lobby Friends of Canadian Broadcasting and, in October 2001 by the CBC itself.

Interestingly, after that fractious Global Sunday show two weeks ago, 74 per cent of the 2,655 people who voted on CanWest's Web site said CBC should not be privatized.

While that's not scientific, it is kind of ironic.

MYTH: CBC-TV could work just as well if it aped the PBS "beg-athon" model or, alternatively, it could become a pay channel.

TRUTH: First problem is that PBS relies heavily on corporate sponsors – as in "This program has been made possible by ..."

Three years ago, when CBC's Mark Starowicz shopped the commercial-free Canada: A People's History to potential underwriters, he got only one bite, from Sun Life. Later, after the series was a hit, BCE, which owns CTV and the History Channel, also kicked in.

Even if there were a culture of corporate sponsorship here, it would compromise much of what CBC does. Aside from the occasional Frontline, very little PBS programming offends sponsors' sensibilities. So, slowly but surely, PBS is being privatized.

What's more, it produces no dramas. They're just too expensive to make. It buys all its Masterpiece Theatre, Mystery and other series from British networks.

So, if CanWest says homegrown drama is too rich for its corporate blood – and it has all but abandoned it for cheaper reality series (Popstars, No Boundaries) – how can homegrown drama be supported by the pittances CBC would get from corporate sponsors?

The economics are equally limiting on pay channels.

The single most lucrative specialty service is TSN, which rakes in $171 million a year, two-thirds of that in subscription fees. Even if CBC-TV could charge viewers equally high fees, and get the same guaranteed basic cable distribution TSN does, it still would not earn enough to make the expensive programming that CanWest says only the public sector can afford to do.

In other words, CanWest columnists say CBC-TV should be privatized – but still be forced to do what private networks say is too expensive for the private networks to do.

MYTH: CBC executives are overpaid and underworked.

TRUTH: The corporate administration for the entire CBC, French and English, accounts for $17 million, or about 2 per cent, of its parliamentary appropriation. Rabinovitch's salary range is $262,000 to $308,000 and includes no stock options.

That's a fraction of what the private network executives make.

At CanWest last year, president and CEO Leonard Asper made $520,000, Izzy Asper took in just over $2 million, while Gerry Noble, president and CEO of Global TV, earned $800,000.

Citytv president Moses Znaimer made $1.8 million in 2001, while Jay Switzer, president of CHUM TV, grossed a million.

CTV head Ivan Fecan made about $1.5 million in 1998. A more recent figure is not available.

MYTH: In a multi-channel universe, public broadcasting is unnecessary and obsolete. Private TV will pick up the slack.

TRUTH: In a world of concentrated commercial media, where the first order of business is selling soap, public broadcasting is more essential than ever.

For example, in 1999, on provincial election night in Manitoba, Winnipeg-based Global opted to run U.S. simulcasts rather than extended political coverage. CBC-TV picked up the slack.

There is almost no chance that a privately owned channel will ever present provocative programming that offends advertisers – just as there's little possibility, except in the most exceptional circumstances, such as the news coverage last September, that a commercial network will give up ad revenue to air programming in the public interest.

Why would it? It has shareholders to answer to.

CBC's shareholders are the citizens of Canada. The dividends it pays are on our screens, when we want – or need – to see them.

© The Toronto Star