Nov 11, 1999
The CBC and its place in Canada - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
You ask a Reformer what they think the CBC’s place should be in Canadian culture and they’ll say something obscene. Whenever I think of Canadian television, I think of Traders, Mike Bullard, Lloyd Robertson, Hockey Night in Canada and Pamela Wallin. With the exception of Hockey and Wallin, the other shows are primarily done in private broadcasting. I hardly watch The National with Peter Mansbridge or Newsworld, I don’t listen to CBC Radio, 1 or 2, and I never make CBC.ca, a regular stop in my Internet travels.
There are problems I have with the CBC, and their not with the type of people that work at or listen to the CBC. It’s simply the fact the CBC is a crown corporation, meaning we fuel their coffers. Oops, wrong analogy, the Reform party would set the entire corp. on fire if it had that kind of access. Unlike the Reform party though, I don’t think funding should be cut. What the CBC needs is a clear mandate. Will it be a competing force in Canadian broadcasting, which it is seeming to do more and more?, or will it be a public broadcaster, like PBS in the US?.
I’m much in favour of the latter, but there are consequences attached to a solution like that. If the CBC were to revert to a PBS style institution, it will lose viewers and it will be prevented to do some of the shows that they do now, such as the material they do in news or entertainment. The CBC should not be in the same sort of ratings game as CTV or Global, but it has no other recourse in this day and age. I used to remember watching Sesame Street, Fred Penner or Mr. Dressup, and enjoying watching them on CBC, because there were no commercials. The industry is so damned competitive, that it just had to lose most of its American programming and try to be Canadian.
About 4 or 5 years ago, CBC television razed its schedule of American shows, and adopted a strict mandate of phasing out American shows. Although, The Simpsons is still on, they are doing a good job in adhering to that plan. What happened instead was that more Canadian content programming was put in. But, what was bad about that plan, was that this damned CRTC got in the way and implemented quotas, thus plain shit made the air. Now that they’ve laid off, superb shows like DaVinci’s Inquest, 22 Minutes and Air Farce are on. If the CBC were to revert to a PBS style of broadcasting, they’d still be able to do news and drama, even comedy. PBS has got one of the best newscasts (The News Hour with Jim Leher), it has superb dramas from the BBC and they can still offer the best dose of children’s TV. CBC Television could emulate that, but they’d suffer big time. They’ll lose a lot of viewers who’ll go to commercial TV.
Both the TV and Radio divisions have both got top notch news services. But that isn’t a good thing. How possibly can you have a news agency covering mainly the institution that funds it? Sure, it’s objective, but it’s so damned anally-retentive, it encourages puking.
At the heart of it all, is bureaucracy. The CBC and its counterparts in Canadian broadcasting need money and the laws changed. That’s another commentary, but I’ll wrap by saying the CBC is an institution that needs the support of the Canadian people. It has our tax dollars, sure already, but now it needs a reason. Let’s hope this new president something Rabinovich (Alexa McDonough, affectionately dubbed him Mr. Son-of-a-bitch), has got a mandate up his sleeve, that’ll make the CBC relevant in this country.
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