News Room Friends in the News

Letter from George Smith, Senior Vice President, CBC

Source : CBC

October 20, 2004

Ian Morrison
Friends of Canadian Broadcasting
Box 200/238
131 Bloor Street West
Toronto, Ontario
M5S 1R8

Dear Mr. Morrison:

We have received your letter of October 18 to Robert Rabinovitch, but he is currently out of the country. Your letter has been forwarded to me for reply.

First, I would like to thank you for sharing your thoughts with us on our scheduling of 'Movie Night in Canada' as a short-term substitute for Hockey Night in Canada in the wake of the NHL's lockout of its players. As you know, Hockey Night in Canada plays a crucial role in fulfilling our mandate as Canada's national public television broadcaster. Hockey Night in Canada generates revenues that contribute significantly to our ability to develop and maintain a schedule of Canadian television programming from every genre.

Replacing Hockey Night in Canada, even in the short term, prompted some very difficult decisions. We considered a number of different options for filling the timeslot, including repeats of hockey classics, other sports-related programming and rebroadcasts of CBC series and specials. The deciding factor, however, was the imperative of protecting our distinctive, high-quality, Canadian prime-time schedule throughout the week by maintaining audiences and revenues on Saturday night.

Our audiences have shown that they are significantly less interested in watching repeats of even exceptional sporting events in comparison to watching live competitions like those found on Hockey Night in Canada. A recent repeat of the World Cup final demonstrated this, attracting only 80,000 viewers. With regard to the Canadian Hockey League, we do not have the rights to their matches and would have to purchase them - with no assurance of attracting even moderately sized audiences. As for CBC series and specials, we have a limited number of broadcast windows for each of these, and would need to purchase additional broadcasts with no real guarantee of return. Whatever the circumstance, we simply cannot afford to spend money to lose money.

'Movie Night in Canada' is a cost-effective solution to a challenging and difficult situation. We have chosen the movies we are airing either from films for which we already have the rights or films we have acquired for this purpose - and which are suitable for the time periods in which they are scheduled. This keeps our broadcast costs to an absolute minimum. And while our audiences for 'Movie Night in Canada' will likely not match those of Hockey Night in Canada, they are respectable: this past weekend, the 9:00 p.m. movie drew almost the same number of viewers as game one of Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC 1.2 million; MNIC 1.115 million). We still broadcast more Canadian television than any other broadcaster, and we will still meet the Canadian content targets that we have set with the CRTC. But by continuing to attract significant audiences and advertising for our Saturday night time slot, 'Movie Night' helps us maintain our revenue base - revenue that is essential if we are to preserve the level of Canadian programming we provide throughout the rest of our schedule.

I would also like to emphasize that we have instituted 'Movie Night' as a short-term solution, one that we will evaluate on a weekly basis. None of us knows when the lockout will end. If the lockout continues into the New Year, we will revisit the 'Movie Night' approach with a view toward implementing a long-term solution.

We all agree that hockey is an important part of Canada, and an important part of Saturday nights on CBC Television. Nothing can truly replace it. We at CBC, and millions of Canadians across the country, look forward to its return to arenas - and to living rooms - from coast to coast to coast.

Sincerely,

George C.B. Smith
Senior Vice-President,
Human Resources and Organization
CBC/Radio-Canada