The CBC’s strategy has become “completely incoherent” given the lack of clarity about its role in the modern broadcasting world, says one of the public broadcaster’s former executives.
A presentation on Tuesday before the Standing Senate Committee on Transportation and Communications examined the challenges faced by the CBC. During the presentation, Richard Stursberg, who served as the CBC’s head of English services between 2004 and 2010, said that while claims the CBC faces considerable monetary, funding and technological challenges are all true, the biggest problem facing the broadcaster is that there is no clear consensus on its role.
“The CBC has been pulled in multiple directions for the entirety of its existence,” he said, noting that opinions have long differed as to whether it should offer highbrow or populist programming and whether it should cater to primarily rural or urban Canadians.
“These sets of contradictions… when left unresolved, create an enormous number of difficulties in terms of the governance of the Corporation,” said Stursberg, noting that a clear government mandate on its role would be “a gift” to the CBC.
In the form of a mock letter from the prime minister to the CBC’s board of directors, Stursberg outlined a future that would see the public broadcaster abandon local news and focus on international coverage, develop a primetime schedule built around “distinctively Canadian” programming across all genres and abandon sports entirely.
Stursberg told the committee that the CBC had consistently lost share for 35 to 40 years prior to 2004, when he took over with a stated objective to create programming that Canadians would like to watch.
The CBC’s audience share increased from 6.3% to 9.5% during his tenure, even beating Global Television’s U.S.-focused primetime schedule with its all-Canadian schedule for three consecutive years.
“The truth of the matter is that this can actually be done, and the kinds of shows you do it with are shows that are made within the conventions of television that Canadians already like.”
He pointed to shows like Battle of the Blades and Little Mosque On the Prairie as examples of popular shows that Canadians wanted to watch. “It’s expensive to do it,” he said. “But the first thing is you actually have to want to do it.”
Stursberg said Canadian broadcasters are unique in the cultural challenge they face from their U.S. counterparts. The Canadian market, he said, is “completely flooded” with U.S. programs that are well-made and compelling. “To put up credible Canadian shows against those shows is tough—and it’s expensive,” he said.
Stursberg admitted to mistakenly trying to bolster CBC’s local news efforts against “extraordinarily dominant” competition from the likes of CTV and Global Television, suggesting that going forward it would be better served by investing in areas where private broadcasters are retreating, most notably international news. “Why spend the money on things that others are doing extremely well already?” he said.
He also echoed the sentiment that losing NHL hockey rights to Rogers will have “serious financial consequences” for the Corporation. The impact will be twofold, he said: the broadcaster will not only lose the lucrative ad revenues that accompany hockey, but also the ability to sell its other programs a certain way.
“The way you would do it is you say, ‘If you’d like to have hockey, then you have to buy this dog over here that nobody wants.’ They’d say, ‘But I don’t want the dog’ and you’d say, ‘Well, I’m sorry—you’ve got to take the dog if you want the hockey.’
“Hockey is not only important in its own right, it’s important because it props up the rest of the advertising sales.”
Hockey also accounts for between 400 to 450 hours of Canadian programming, said Stursberg, meaning that its loss has significant financial implications if the CBC attempts to replace it with scripted programming.
