Are there lessons for the CBC in the BBC?
Source : Globe & Mail
October 18, 2005
CBC president Robert Rabinovitch was interviewed by one of his own journalists yesterday, and the conversation did not make for encouraging listening. On the CBC Radio One news program The Current, host Anna Maria Tremonti aggressively pressed Mr. Rabinovitch to justify the eight-week lockout of 5,500 unionized staffers, a group to which, as she acknowledged, she belongs. He replied with familiar platitudes about management's need for flexibility to meet the demands of the digital age and apologized to Canadians that the labour dispute greatly reduced services for two months, but he remained unrepentant about his decision to lock out the technicians, reporters and producers. Forced by Ms. Tremonti to rehash the rights and wrongs of the lockout, he did not succeed in articulating any clear vision for the CBC as it emerges from the dispute.
On the other side of the table, the veteran journalist sounded not merely skeptical but downright angry. While it would be impossible to have asked her for journalistic objectivity on the issue, a more dispassionate tone would have been welcome. The interview left the unfortunate impression that, as the CBC returns to regular programming, neither side is ready to get on with the job of rebuilding the broadcaster and defining its future.
In once again making his pitch for the ill-defined concept of flexibility, Mr. Rabinovitch made comparisons with the BBC, where he said only 44 per cent of staff are unionized. (At the CBC, 90 per cent of staff are unionized and, after bitter negotiations, management has just won the right to increase the number of unionized contract workers to a mere 10 per cent of the number of permanent staff.)
But there's a lot more than that arrangement which Mr. Rabinovitch must envy. The BBC receives six times the funding of the CBC -- through the television licence that all Britons pay for their sets -- for a population that is only about twice the size. The CBC receives almost $1-billion from Parliament to run multiple television, radio and Internet services in both French and English, but that appropriation has not kept pace with inflation and few observers were expecting any significant increase even before Mr. Rabinovitch was banished to the political doghouse for triggering the lockout.
The BBC, on the other hand, is asking the British government for an increase in the annual licence fee to £180 ($375) from £125 ($260), and is expected to get a good part of that in a decision that will be handed down later this month. While the CBC has difficulty fulfilling its parliamentary mandate on the budget it is given, the BBC has successfully argued that it needs extra money not only to keep pace with inflation but also to proceed with two initiatives the British government has demanded. One is to acquire the new technology the BBC will need to participate in the conversion of the entire British broadcasting system to digital signals by the year 2012. The other is to relocate about 1,800 jobs to Manchester as part of a scheme to move its operations out of London.
The BBC faces exactly the same problem as the CBC: How does a public broadcaster remain relevant in a multi-channel digital universe on the one hand, and in a multicultural society on the other? It is also routinely described by its critics as an organization that suffers from too many managers at the top and too much deadwood in the ranks. BBC director-general Mark Thompson is faced with similar problems in a much larger organization and, not without controversy and criticism, is currently managing a much riskier but much bolder plan than Mr. Rabinovitch. He is shedding thousands of jobs to free up money for the digital and Manchester initiatives, and to spend on improved programming that will reinforce the BBC's reputation as the highest-quality public broadcaster in the world.
For example, on BBC One, the broadcaster's primary television channel, the plan is to increase current affairs and news programming in prime time, offer a wider range of drama and provide more arts and music programming while decreasing repeats. Meanwhile, Mr. Thompson recently announced that viewers will soon be able to download BBC television programs to their cellphones once the shows have aired.
Britons are no less fond than Canadians of dissecting the failings of the national public broadcaster, but Mr. Thompson appears to be winning in a battle that requires much more Draconian cuts -- BBC unions responded this summer with a strike that lasted 24 hours -- because he articulates a much clearer vision for a vibrant network that opts for smarting up rather than dumbing down.
