Full Comment - As CBC defunding looms, the network doesn’t know what to do

00:00:00.000 conservative leader pierre balieff certainly takes a great deal of delight in talking about

00:00:13.380 defunding cbc it's something that gets the crowd going as well at his rallies across the country

00:00:19.540 there was a time when saying you would defund cbc would be something that would well make a lot of

00:00:25.780 canadians sit up and take notice maybe make them angry nowadays though it's something that delights

00:00:31.640 conservatives while much of the rest of the country kind of shrugs their shoulders hello and welcome

00:00:38.660 to the full comment podcast my name is brian lily your host and today we're going to take a look at

00:00:43.720 canada's national broadcaster will it be defunded is it a good idea to defund it and what would it

00:00:50.780 look like if we tried to fix it instead of just scrapping it our guest on today's program is

00:00:57.260 someone who knows all about cbc the good the bad and the ugly richard stirsberg is a former broadcast

00:01:04.440 executive he was vice president of cbc radio canada from october 2004 until august 2010 he was in charge

00:01:13.040 of english services both the radio and tv side he tried to bring about changes to cbc but

00:01:20.360 well as you'll hear in the conversation it didn't always go so well he's also the author of the

00:01:27.060 2012 memoir the tower of babel that spent a good deal of time talking about his time at cbc richard

00:01:34.220 stirsberg joins us in toronto today richard thanks for the time my pleasure before we get into the state

00:01:41.420 of cbc and a certain apple munching politicians views on it um i did want to ask you about you know

00:01:48.220 your time there because you were hired for a specific purpose you were hired to do what you'd

00:01:54.020 done at telefilm canada to go in and make shows that canadians wanted to watch you had some success

00:02:00.400 you had a lot of blowback before we get into the blowback and the internal pushback tell me about

00:02:06.440 the success what was it like going into cbc with a mandate to make shows canadians actually wanted to

00:02:12.800 watch well uh the the backdrop to it is that uh the cbc had been losing uh cbc television is what

00:02:22.620 i'm talking about now cbc television had been losing market share uh oh i don't know for the

00:02:27.360 last 30 years and share had been consistently dropping and uh the general view at the time

00:02:34.540 and certainly was my view was that the cbc was paid for by all canadians so it should make things that

00:02:40.520 were broadly popular and it should make things that were canadian that neither cgv nor global

00:02:46.080 nor anybody else could really afford or you know had the desire to make and so um there was i think

00:02:54.460 it's fair to say a certain resistance because there was a kind of theory within the cbc at the time 0.93

00:02:59.220 that if you were to make popular shows then inevitably uh they would be kind of uh stupid or of low quality 0.82

00:03:07.760 uh and that if you were to make clever shows inevitably uh they would not be popular because 0.95

00:03:14.880 um the audience wouldn't get it now i i thought this was this was completely wrong-headed and that

00:03:22.700 uh the great challenge of television like the great challenge of movies is to make beautiful

00:03:26.780 shows that are clever and popular and that there's no inherent contradiction so part of the difficulty

00:03:35.060 was that there was this kind of uh culture within the cbc and the culture was corrosive in the sense

00:03:41.820 that you know you could never win with a culture like that if you made popular shows that meant that 0.94

00:03:47.060 you were stupid and if you made uh shows that nobody watched then you had a different problem so part of 0.90

00:03:54.960 the difficulty was to renovate the culture and at the same time to change the entire strategy with respect 1.00

00:04:01.440 to how we were making shows so we started uh a process of making shows within the kinds of conventions that television

00:04:11.500 that canadians like in television which are essentially american conventions um so canadians like to see

00:04:19.440 shows that were structured in particular kinds of ways all particular kinds of formats we opened up uh there was a huge uh

00:04:29.440 you know business that the cbc had ever wanted to touch in unscripted shows

00:04:34.520 and uh they were looked down upon too as kind of reality shows

00:04:39.640 and what came out of that was uh a series of of new kinds of shows that uh the cbc had not really done

00:04:48.080 before so we did little mosque on the prairie uh we did things like dragon's den which is on to this day

00:04:54.660 um and we we started building um shows that were either you know traditional procedurals or situation

00:05:02.080 comedies or uh unscripted shows of one variety or another and the response was was interesting the

00:05:09.160 response was great uh at a certain point we had uh managed to position cbc television as the number two

00:05:18.720 uh watched television service uh in prime time in the country after ctv with all canadian lineup

00:05:26.640 whereas ctv's lineup was you know basically almost an all-american lineup yeah so they they bid on the

00:05:33.860 big popular shows out of the states that's been their business model for years so you're you're up

00:05:39.040 against shows that are part of the the wider zeitgeist and you managed to say bypass global which

00:05:46.320 buys up the the secondary shows out of the u.s and and and and we were very successful and so

00:05:53.120 a number of interesting things happened as the cbc's shows got more popular uh we we would survey

00:06:01.360 canadians on a regular basis and see what they thought of the corporation in terms of you know

00:06:05.780 whether it mattered to them whether they thought it was distinctive and so on and so forth and as the

00:06:11.100 numbers got better canadians attitudes towards the cbc became more and more uh positive and the other

00:06:18.800 thing that happened which was fascinating to me was that uh we also surveyed our own employees to find

00:06:23.820 out what they thought of overall strategy and not surprisingly i think um as the shows got more popular

00:06:31.900 um they had they became uh happier uh in terms of their work inside the corporation so um it's uh and

00:06:42.720 i don't think that's altogether surprising i mean people like success you know nothing succeeds like

00:06:47.360 success and when they feel like they're working for a place that's successful and that's engaging uh

00:06:52.700 you know uh canadians then that they feel better about their own work and they feel better about the

00:06:57.500 place so that's what it was i want to ask you about that that antipathy that you know that idea that

00:07:05.000 oh popular is going to be bad i mean the most popular show for decades on cbc was hockey night in

00:07:11.800 canada you don't get more base and more popular than just saying here's a hockey game guys have at it

00:07:17.620 but that's right like it and it was good quality broadcasting at the same time so how where did this

00:07:25.700 idea come from that well no we've just got to you know make something for our friends in the deepest

00:07:31.180 darkest annex in downtown toronto and to heck with everybody else i don't know brian i mean i think that

00:07:38.100 it's it's i found it i found it puzzling when i got there i'd never really kind of seen uh that sort

00:07:44.800 of a culture in any place i've ever been before so i don't really know how to account for it but i do know

00:07:50.400 that uh what happened was when we started to get successful then as i say the culture itself began

00:07:57.360 to shift and people began to say oh that's great we can actually do this and we can actually make

00:08:02.460 these kinds of shows and we're positive about the way in which the uh uh the strategies evolved

00:08:07.960 i i remember when your book tower of babble came out um interviewing you and you told me a story about

00:08:15.880 how you were touring the newsrooms and trying to tell them don't look don't be a stereotype and

00:08:24.100 then you got to one newsroom and they actually had the stereotype example that you were using

00:08:28.260 leading off their newscast do you remember that i can't remember what was i think it was about uh

00:08:34.680 goat goat farmers uh oh goat cheese goat cheese yeah they used to do things on goat cheese and i said i

00:08:40.840 don't you know yeah it's really going to be gripping enough leading off the six o'clock news with a

00:08:45.400 story about your local organic goat cheese maker um you know it's it's a different mindset than what

00:08:53.960 people were watching everyone and and what people people want to know for the number one thing they

00:09:00.280 want to know in terms of local news is issues that involve uh basically uh questions of security and

00:09:06.780 that's why people are interested in fires they're interested in you know crime they're interested in all

00:09:11.740 these these sort of questions uh as to how is their own community how is their own community doing

00:09:17.420 so you know we started to shift that around a bit the other thing that was uh interesting for me i don't

00:09:22.940 know if you remember this or not was but this links a little bit back to um the current criticisms

00:09:29.080 which is you know people said well the problem with the news department is

00:09:33.020 it's uh it's uh it's very left-leaning it advantages the liberals and uh it's full of communists

00:09:42.780 and uh so i i myself want to know was the what's the news uh particularly the television news was it

00:09:52.140 was it was it was it fair was it uh was it you know balanced and so we undertook a big study we

00:09:59.020 actually hired you know a number of top experts the people professors from ubc york university university

00:10:05.660 of washington the pew center and the university of amsterdam to design a study that would look at the

00:10:12.140 extent to which the news was in fact fair and the way we did it was to compare our coverage of the

00:10:18.940 conservatives with our coverage of the liberals uh against the baseline of how global and ctv were

00:10:25.740 covering and uh what we found much to my complete amazement um was that the belief about the cbc news

00:10:38.140 on the part of the conservatives and you know they were raising a lot of money uh um arguments that the

00:10:46.380 cbc was hopelessly biased against them was exactly the opposite that we uh in fact gave more coverage to

00:10:52.860 uh the conservatives uh than did either global or ctv and that we treated them slightly more

00:11:01.980 positively than we treated the liberals now was this before or after the change in government

00:11:07.180 because your your time it this is during this is during the this is during the harper government so

00:11:11.660 we did this around 2008 and uh but the thing that really struck me was so i i thought well this is

00:11:18.300 pretty interesting people will be fascinated because you know the general view i think

00:11:22.860 shared certainly within the conservative party was that we were unfair to the conservatives

00:11:28.700 so i thought well okay fine what we'll do is we're going to take all this research we'll put it up

00:11:32.780 all online and i'll put all the data online and people want to reanalyze the data they can do that

00:11:37.740 themselves and i'll make all the experts who actually designed the study and did the work

00:11:42.460 available you know people want to talk to them and find out what what really happened so i thought

00:11:48.540 this was gonna like be uh you know uh an enormously interesting kind of news uh piece and i became even

00:11:57.820 a little bit worried that the liberals would say that we were bending over backwards to be nice to

00:12:02.060 conservatives because of financing issues but the weirdest thing that happened was nothing happened

00:12:07.980 i don't even remember that story yeah absolutely nothing happened nothing happened we put it up we

00:12:13.660 put it right on the very front of the website we uh we did a big press release around it as i say we

00:12:20.380 put up all the data we put up all the experts and absolutely nothing happened nobody expressed any

00:12:27.020 interest nobody called and said they wanted to get briefed nobody said they wanted to talk to the

00:12:32.140 experts etc etc it was completely it was completely amazing but it but it went to one of the

00:12:37.660 kind of mythological things which is a lot of the talk i think and that i think is probably true

00:12:43.980 today a lot of the talk within the conservative party about the biases cbc is really talk that's

00:12:49.660 designed to raise money from um supporters of the conservative party rather than talk that is based on

00:12:57.420 you know some actual you know real thoughtful evaluation of how the news is treating people the

00:13:07.660 the idea that there is a bias at cbc though that there is a downtown toronto or montreal bias that's

00:13:13.340 not something new the oldest example i can find i think it's from 1964 it's on cbc archives and it's

00:13:23.100 then ccfmp doug fisher who went on to become a great columnist for the telegram and for the or for

00:13:29.900 the telegraph and for the sun um and he was elected for thunder bay and he was he was up there with the

00:13:37.580 ndp predecessor complaining about cbc and ottawa so cbc reporter went and interviewed him and his comment

00:13:44.460 was it's metropolitanism they care about what happens in downtown montreal and toronto and ottawa and then

00:13:51.660 there's the rest of the country is that fair well i think that uh it's interesting um

00:14:00.620 i was very much of the view that that that's a different kind of bias the metropolitan bias from

00:14:05.180 the kind of political uh you know an ideological bias that it was accused of one of the things

00:14:11.980 that's fascinating to me is that uh in terms of radio if you have a local radio station covering you

00:14:19.500 know as we have in toronto for example so you get metro morning in the uh you know in the morning and

00:14:24.940 then you get the afternoon drive show so you have heavy coverage of local stuff what happens is that

00:14:31.420 the uh the propensity of people in toronto then to listen to the national radio shows goes up and we

00:14:38.700 saw that in every single market in the country so that if there's a strong local presence then people's

00:14:44.060 enthusiasm for the national shows goes up as well so one of the things that became

00:14:49.180 important to me was actually to start rebuilding um the local uh supper hour television shows

00:14:57.500 and for two reasons one of which was that i thought that would also lift the national news uh in the

00:15:03.100 same way as it did for radio and secondly uh you know doug fisher is right it's very important to

00:15:09.180 uh to cover the country in its entirety and suddenly that would have given us more local stories that we

00:15:15.100 could play nationally and so on and so forth so i think that's a that's a fair point the difficulty

00:15:20.700 of course is that it's very expensive to do that it's extremely expensive to do that the french do it 1.00

00:15:26.780 more effectively than the english and that's in large measure because the french are much better

00:15:31.100 finance than the english and so on smaller region for the majority of their their audience yeah much

00:15:38.780 uh much much smaller region and uh and they have you know right now i think the numbers are that

00:15:47.500 the french health the french services are financed at the level of about 70 dollars

00:15:53.500 per uh capita and the english services are financed about 23 dollars per capita and so not surprisingly

00:16:00.380 they have better local presence uh because it's smaller and they have more money per capita

00:16:06.780 yeah but i mean look part of my problem with and and you know that i have many problems with cbc

00:16:15.100 um but one of them is that you know continually hearing well it's not financed properly enough and

00:16:22.620 we don't have money for it but then they go off and they have spent enormous amounts of money

00:16:29.820 um basically turning their website into a newspaper to compete they've spent a ton of money

00:16:36.620 on a cbc streaming music service that for years would you would go on it and i would do this for my

00:16:42.940 stories and it would promote the latest pop music and so there were essentially you know competing for

00:16:49.900 listeners for elton john and beyonce songs with spotify except cbc is free to the listener they still

00:16:57.820 have to pay for it free to the listener whereas spotify you have to pay for it um even on the local

00:17:03.020 news they've gone into markets that they never had a direct local presence like hamilton and built up

00:17:09.340 an online station competing with the private sector so there's all this attempts to compete while in in

00:17:19.020 new ways while not doing the core job in my yeah well i mean i think that uh would it be desirable uh

00:17:28.220 for cbc to get out of advertising yeah i think it would and i say that for a couple of reasons one

00:17:35.100 of which is that uh i think it's uh i think it's it's not wrong when people say that the cbc should not

00:17:41.900 be competing with the private sector for advertising revenue particularly given the sort of advertising

00:17:47.740 markets now but the other reason is you know when it comes to uh television more and more what we're

00:17:53.740 seeing is that people have been trained to not watch ads so whether you're pvring your way through

00:18:00.620 it or whether you're subscribing to streaming services there are no ads and when there are no

00:18:06.220 ads what it does it opens up certain ways in which you can make television shows that are more creative

00:18:12.460 that are more interesting and that are more imaginative so i think that would be desirable but

00:18:17.260 again it comes down to it comes down to a problem of money uh you know if i were to compare the amount of

00:18:22.620 money that cbc gets from the government to you know what the bbc gets i mean the bbc gets about seven

00:18:28.540 times as much money per capita so they don't have to have ads they don't have to look for other sources

00:18:34.140 if you go on a bbc website in the uk you don't get ads on the news story yeah that's what i'm saying

00:18:41.180 that's exactly what i'm saying that's exactly right but that's because it's much better financed

00:18:45.740 by the british government and has been historically than cbc i mean they have

00:18:49.020 if i recall the numbers correctly about seven times as much money per capita that the cbc has

00:18:56.860 so let's talk about this issue of of defunding it um it's do you think that pierre polyev is saying

00:19:03.980 this just to raise money or do you think that he will look at defunding i can't remember if his promise

00:19:10.620 is all of english services or just english television i think it might just be english television but english

00:19:16.540 television um that's what he was talking about do you think he's doing this just to raise money or

00:19:20.460 is this a real possibility well i think i think he he he certainly is doing it to raise money it's very

00:19:26.620 funny to tell you a story so doug finley you recall doug finley when he was the head of uh

00:19:31.180 a great character yes a great character fantastic character anyhow uh after i'd left the cbc it was a

00:19:37.740 couple of years two or three years later uh the senate and he was now a senator and he'd asked

00:19:42.700 they were doing a look at the cbc and asked if they'd come down and talk about it and i said uh

00:19:47.900 sure and uh so he said hello to me and he said oh i said it's nice to see you and he said i read

00:19:54.540 your book he said it was terrific and i said oh thank you thank you and i said you know you're in it

00:20:01.340 because you would spend all your time you know writing letters to uh your supporters telling them

00:20:05.980 what a terrible group of people we were at the cbc and raised money and he laughed and he said my he said

00:20:12.540 that's exactly right he said that was my best money raise money raise raising thing i could

00:20:18.780 possibly say every time i attacked the cbc money would pour in the door well what he would do is uh

00:20:25.260 without fail he would release those fundraising letters to the media before they landed in anyone's

00:20:30.220 mailbox so that he would get even more publicity out of it you know the entire gallery would write about

00:20:36.700 it was yeah so you know good politics well and and it was so you know we had a laugh about that

00:20:43.660 but i mean it clearly that was working extremely well for the conservative base and so i presume it's

00:20:48.380 working well for the conservative base now um you know i mean the problem i think so i'm sure that

00:20:56.300 that's part partly just a fundraising thing and uh seemed to work well in english canada and he knows it

00:21:01.500 won't work well in french canada that it would be in fact the catastrophe yeah if he were to if he

00:21:06.460 were to say anything like that about french canada so you know my guess is it's largely a fundraising

00:21:12.060 thing it's largely a way of animating you know the the base more than anything else but would anyone

00:21:17.740 notice if cbc television were defunded i mean the radio service is something different and i think there's

00:21:24.620 still some good parts on there it's you know i i may pine for the days of zosky but that's a long time ago

00:21:30.300 yeah but the tv side would anyone notice if they just lost their funding uh well i mean people will

00:21:37.820 definitely notice i mean there'd be no doubt about that you know every time that you turn around and

00:21:42.380 you say well maybe we should close a station in some small place that's not working well then the level

00:21:48.380 of screaming and carry-on just is like you know it goes on and on so i'm sure that people would notice

00:21:54.940 uh is it true that the you know the the numbers for english services have gone down in terms of

00:22:02.780 the number of people watching yeah the answer is yes and you know but again i come back to the same

00:22:09.980 thing like this there is something there's something very odd about what's going on right now you know

00:22:15.900 uh english television and the numbers for ctv the numbers for global numbers of everybody have been going

00:22:21.900 down uh and partly that's because of the level of competition that you know you have essentially

00:22:28.780 these very large very very well healed huge american services whether it's disney plus or whether it's

00:22:36.300 amazon or whether it's netflix you know operating uh in canada without really uh any obligations whatsoever

00:22:45.100 with respect to canadian television uh so it's been it's been it's been very difficult and it's the

00:22:51.820 difficulty is compounded by the fact that uh you know the organization remains dramatically under finance

00:23:00.540 but i mean i think they are losing viewers especially on the news side because regardless of your study

00:23:10.700 a lot of people who don't live in the downtown areas whether they vote conservative or not just

00:23:16.860 don't feel like it speaks to them anymore and those who do vote conservative feels like it treats them

00:23:23.180 with disdain i mean in the 2019 election they sued the conservative party for doing the same thing other

00:23:30.140 parties had done that they'd never sued and they they launched it but a week or so before

00:23:34.700 i i i don't know how you don't read into that that there was a a determined attempt to

00:23:43.660 besmirch the conservatives in that election campaign well i you know this is way after my time and uh so

00:23:52.540 i don't really have a view about that but uh but i would say that you know i i think that i i agree that

00:23:59.580 it's very very important that uh that the cbc not be patronizing that the cbc be exactly the opposite of

00:24:08.220 that that it be an organization that speaks to all canadians of whatever kind of ideological event they

00:24:15.020 happen to be and that it speaks to them respectfully without a doubt um but i come back to the thing you

00:24:21.500 know like it's there's a kind of you know big national cultural question that underpins all this which

00:24:27.260 really is what do we want by way of a public broadcaster if if we don't want one fine then

00:24:34.140 wind it all up wind up the french side wind up the whole thing on the other hand if you want one

00:24:40.380 if you think it's important that we have a great public broadcaster as the b as the british have the bbc

00:24:48.220 then you've got to fund it properly and you've got to make an arrangement whereby there's some kind

00:24:53.020 of understanding between the government and the corporation as to what's going to happen what they

00:24:57.660 do with the bbc which is very interesting is every 10 years they sit down and the government and the bbc

00:25:03.980 essentially make an agreement as to what it is that the bbc is going to be about

00:25:10.620 and then they say okay how much is this going to cost and then they agree on what the price is going to be

00:25:15.900 and then they strike the budget that way and the budget is struck for 10 years that's the so-called royal

00:25:21.420 charter approach the problem with the cbc right now is that there is no consensus whether it's from

00:25:28.060 the conservatives or from the liberals as to what they want the cbc to be right they say oh you should

00:25:34.220 focus on you know small towns you should not focus on your big metropolitan areas well if you start to

00:25:42.060 wind up you know metro morning in toronto people will be going crazy but so you know is it a broadcaster

00:25:50.220 of last resort is it supposed to do things that are uh you know only the things that the private

00:25:56.300 sector can't or won't do uh is it you know there's there's no consensus and and and at some point you

00:26:05.260 have to sort of say well if you really want one let's have an agreement as to what it is that it's

00:26:09.980 supposed to do and let's finance it properly all right let's take a break here and talk about that

00:26:15.340 because there is as you said the wider issue beyond just cbc the very survival of media in

00:26:22.220 this country as a whole is up in there so we'll talk about that when we come back

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00:27:39.980 think richard while we're talking about the future of cbc the fact is the whole media landscape is

00:27:48.300 well falling apart let's be blunt it's yeah we're all wondering can we survive and if we can then how

00:27:55.740 nobody has a clear answer um you know unless you're the globe and mail where you just okay well find the

00:28:02.860 richest family in the country that can lose money in perpetuity and still be wealthy yeah outside of

00:28:09.740 that model you know whether you're post media toronto star uh ctv global go down to the united states you

00:28:19.980 know there was some thought well jeff bezos taking over uh the washington post would save it well

00:28:25.580 they've had trouble too so it's we're trying to find a a new way to go about it so if you were

00:28:33.500 structuring cbc now and and i've argued that we don't need a national public broadcaster but you take

00:28:41.820 the other view and a lot of canadians you know especially on the radio side have a very uh deep

00:28:47.660 attachment but what should they be doing then because uh you know we we talked earlier about the ads um

00:28:55.980 there are all these services that compete with the private sector how how do we create a media

00:29:01.740 environment where one organization getting a billion plus a year from the government

00:29:08.060 isn't cannibalizing the private sector that still needs to exist and serve their markets as well

00:29:15.900 how do we how do we design that well let's uh i think it depends on the model that you want let's

00:29:22.860 say for example uh well just let me back this up for one second as you may or may not know i actually

00:29:28.540 wrote a book it was a lot of it was about this called the tangled garden which spent a lot of time

00:29:34.380 looking at the collapse of uh of news financing uh as a result of the loss of advertising revenue which

00:29:41.580 is what you're referring to and the and and and what it argued the book argued is that it's it's

00:29:47.580 fundamental to a democracy that we have strong and competing sources of news uh you know they did a

00:29:55.660 we had a long look at post media and post media obviously is in gigantic uh financial trouble and

00:30:00.540 has been in huge financial trouble for years and so one of the things that the book argued is that

00:30:07.820 what we should do is we should treat news private sector news in the same way as we true we would treat

00:30:14.620 you know the production of television shows by the private sector in other words that what we would

00:30:19.500 say is we would say well you know what we need to do is make sure that there are tax credits available

00:30:25.660 and the government went a small way towards doing this um so that you know is it more important that

00:30:33.100 we have news or that we have cooking shows my answer would be it's more important that we have news

00:30:39.740 so the government put in place some small tax credits now in quebec the quebec government has

00:30:44.540 effectively doubled the value of those tax credits um for news operations and so now uh

00:30:51.660 then and what do these tax credits go towards hiring people or is this the subscription tax credit

00:30:59.180 no uh no that's that's a smaller thing this is the digital subscription tax credit these are labor-based

00:31:04.060 tax credits and so the way they work is they simply take up a certain percentage of the costs of your

00:31:10.460 labor and the labor is defined as being the journalists the editors the people photographers

00:31:16.300 the people who are actually putting the news together uh i i my guess is that you know that's

00:31:24.140 going to be the sort of central way in which is this is going to work i mean there are some enormous

00:31:28.780 things that the new york times seems to be able to make enough money from subscriptions that they can uh

00:31:34.620 they can they can survive and they can make money i'm not sure that's going to be true in canada well

00:31:39.420 those fall off when trump's not in the news well they do they do fall off that is you know we we all

00:31:46.220 looked with hope towards what the new york times was doing and then as soon as they stopped bashing

00:31:51.820 donald trump rightly or wrongly that i mean that's what the audience wanted and they started to lose

00:31:59.420 you know we we've all looked at these models and they're all leaving us perplexed well that's why i think

00:32:05.660 that the better model to look at in canada is a model where we say okay how is it that we finance

00:32:12.220 television shows in this country how is it we finance movies and we finance them largely with

00:32:17.820 with government subsidies one variety or another so you know why we wouldn't say we'll put you on the

00:32:23.740 same footing the news on the same footing as we do cooking shows uh i don't know i mean it seems to me

00:32:29.260 that would be a sensible thing to do is there a way to do that where the public doesn't look and say

00:32:35.100 well you're just in the pocket of the government now because well i think i can tell you since the

00:32:41.820 um was it 500 million over four years spread it around all the mostly print um organizations

00:32:50.620 we get that thrown in our face all the time uh how anyone believes i'm in just intruder's pocket is beyond me

00:32:56.700 uh when you read my material but but they still that is still said to me and and by the way i know

00:33:04.140 people who are on the opposite side politically of me in their writings and and they get accused of

00:33:08.940 being in the side of everyone's pocket inside everyone's pocket as well it's it's part of it but

00:33:14.060 there is a perception that the news isn't being fair because the government is subsidizing everyone

00:33:18.940 yeah well i mean the the the truth of the matter is tax credits are automatic the government has no

00:33:27.740 say in whether you get the money or not you file it's the same way you would file a tax return the

00:33:33.500 tax department looks at it and says that's fine these are okay off it goes they're automatic there's

00:33:39.260 no subjectivity associated with saying you're going to get this amount of money but that person over there

00:33:44.140 is not going to get this amount of money so it's all nonsense i mean at a certain point it's all

00:33:48.460 nonsense um you know and and even if you look at uh if you look at things like just to come back to

00:33:55.420 the cbc news study we're talking about from 2008 you know people said oh well you know because the

00:34:00.620 government subsidizes the cbc's news therefore it must be in the pocket of the government and the

00:34:06.700 answer was no it's not and it never has been uh so you know i don't people could have perceptions

00:34:14.700 for whatever they want but when the perceptions are untrue there's not very much you can do about

00:34:18.860 it just say is that except to say that's not true and here's how they actually work well i mean and

00:34:26.300 maybe it comes down to is it a a partisan bias or that metropolitan bias that we were talking about

00:34:34.460 earlier there was um united conservative party held their big um annual general meeting in calgary over

00:34:43.340 the weekend and i happened to catch a big conversation on cbc about the very controversial parental rights

00:34:54.620 uh um agenda item that passed and i thought why do they keep saying that this is controversial every

00:35:01.980 single poll from leger from angus reed shows that vast majority of people support this it's about 14

00:35:08.620 percent are on the other side and 78 or so are on the the side of what the motion was about but every

00:35:16.460 time cbc brings it up they call it controversial and and we could go through a whole list of things where

00:35:23.820 maybe it's on a cultural side or it's the metropolitanism they just it's this view of

00:35:30.620 will explain what the world is like to you right well that's a slightly different point from the

00:35:36.620 point about you know whether people think that you're in the pockets of the government because

00:35:40.380 you're taking tax credits that that's that's that's a that's a different point altogether and you know

00:35:47.340 i i i don't disagree with you that like for example um i'll give you an example from uh from my own

00:35:55.900 experience there was the people had tended to be quite patronizing uh about um evangelical christians

00:36:06.060 and uh and you know i and i would i would say well why why are we why are we being patronizing about

00:36:12.300 evangelical christians the fact of the matter is eventual christianity in places like alberta had been

00:36:18.540 fundamental in terms of the social political environment of alberta for many many years uh

00:36:25.100 and continues to this day i said you know we can't we can't we can't adopt these kinds of

00:36:31.580 attitudes we have to treat everybody with respect and we have to respect you know what it is that

00:36:37.500 they're doing now if that's beginning to slip then i think that's an unfortunate thing and

00:36:42.540 i think your general point would be right yeah it's uh and look cbc is not the only media outlet

00:36:48.780 that does this and i'm sure you could find examples within post media as well but you're the one that

00:36:54.300 we all fund or not you anymore but cbc anymore i mean you can send me some money brian if you'd like

00:37:00.060 to i'd look forward to that yeah just uh put put the um the address in the chat here and we'll uh we'll

00:37:05.660 have a check on the way okay good so if you were advising any of the politicians on this issue

00:37:12.540 um what would you say to each of them to uh chagmeet singh to justin trudeau and especially

00:37:20.620 to peer polyev as as he's going to go into the next election saying he'll defund the cbc you know

00:37:27.180 that some cbc journalists are going to take the bait and yeah and be very aggressive towards them and

00:37:32.220 then he'll say see this is why we need to do it so what what would you say to each of them and then

00:37:36.940 i'll ask you what you would advise cbc these days uh well i would i would say that i would say to each

00:37:43.180 of them look you know the fundamental thing is what do you want you know right now the play it's kind of

00:37:50.940 riddled with contradictions what do you want do you do you want a cbc that is going to be a cbc that

00:37:57.180 doesn't compete for advertising dollars for the private sector do you want a cbc that is more focused on

00:38:03.900 national international and uh investigative news as compared to local news do you want a cbc that's

00:38:11.820 deeply local in character do you want a cbc that is actually a counterweight to all the american drama

00:38:17.420 and comedy that we're swamped with what do you want because it's you know at the end of the day

00:38:23.820 what matters is i mean i may have a particular view about that but what matters is that the that the

00:38:30.380 government and the parties have a view on those issues and then to be able to say fine this is

00:38:35.740 what we believe the cbc should be or if you don't believe there should be a cbc that's fine too but

00:38:40.380 then you know don't just say we're going to get rid of english television get rid of law right well

00:38:46.140 you should say that that would be detrimental in in quebec people would go nuts and uh but i mean i think

00:38:53.260 that at the end of the day my advice to them would be to say if you want we can talk through what the

00:38:59.900 options are and we can talk through what that would cost absolutely we can do that but at the end of the

00:39:06.380 day you know this is this is ultimately a political decision and people have to have coherent views on

00:39:13.420 and we haven't had a coherent view on what the future of the cbc should be from any of those parties

00:39:19.020 for the last 50 years you know we just haven't had it's neither fish nor fowl no that's what i mean

00:39:25.180 that's exactly what i mean and we say it's a counterweight to americanism and then we've got cbc's

00:39:29.660 version of family feud and there's nothing particularly canadian about it at least battle

00:39:35.180 of the blades you know we can all relate to it i love battle of the blades that was my show

00:39:40.700 it was your show but it was also a popular one hey you know what we got for battle of the blades

00:39:45.340 this is an unimaginable number now we were getting three million viewers a night yeah and i mean it

00:39:51.980 was like it was bigger than a hockey note in canada and um you know it had become a kind of national

00:39:58.140 sensation where everybody was talking about it and everybody was wondering who was going to get

00:40:02.540 eliminated and how it's going to work out all right but i you know but i but i but i come back to it

00:40:06.940 i think it's at some point what needs to happen it's that there needs to be a coherent conversation

00:40:12.700 about the future of the cbc and it's not something that we've had so you know i had a particular

00:40:19.420 view but my view is really neither here my view has always been i thought it should be a big popular

00:40:23.580 service like that if we can get out from under you know advertising so much the better uh what would

00:40:29.900 it cost it certainly will cost if you want to do it properly it would cost more than it costs now we

00:40:35.820 should you know but that's just one view i mean that's just one of you and ultimately it has to be

00:40:42.140 a political decision it has to be a decision that canadians collectively take as part and parcel of uh

00:40:48.220 you know voting on uh uh voting during an election what um what would be your advice to

00:40:56.460 the folks at cbc headquarters to people like katherine tate who uh has has been rather aggressive towards

00:41:04.060 towards towards polyev i mean look he's been aggressive towards cbc but she's been aggressive

00:41:09.420 in a way that i don't recall maybe a few times hubert lacroix was upset with me but you don't really see

00:41:16.940 you know cbc president lashing out so i and i think as i said the journalists many of them will

00:41:24.700 will take the bait what what would your advice be to them if you were having a a nice little coffee clutch

00:41:29.740 oh well i i think that i think that there's there's two these are two completely different

00:41:36.380 things the president of the cbc has a certain responsibility to defend the corporation that's

00:41:41.820 one thing journalists have a different responsibility which is to report the news in a way that's fair and

00:41:47.980 it's accurate unless it's being identified as some form of you know opinion piece um so i would say

00:41:54.620 that that as between the two you would expect slightly different levels of conduct and slightly

00:41:59.980 different preoccupations as to what their responsibilities are richard it's been a fascinating

00:42:06.780 conversation and uh i had not read your second your not your second but your recent book on the media

00:42:12.460 i'll have to look that up the tangled garden i recommend it to you brian actually actually interestingly

00:42:19.180 the uh you know the relatively uh conservative donner foundation shortlisted it for uh its prize

00:42:28.860 uh you know they give a prize every year for the best book on public policy written by a canadian

00:42:34.380 and so it was shortlisted for uh the prize the the winner was somebody who wrote a book about

00:42:39.340 pipelines which i thought was less interesting but there you go well you and i are media folks and

00:42:44.620 media folks like talking about media thanks so much for the time richard okay

00:42:49.020 i hope it's worthwhile full comment is a post media podcast my name is brian lily your host this

00:42:55.100 episode was produced by andre prue with theme music by bryce hall kevin libban is the executive

00:43:00.860 producer you can subscribe to full comment on apple podcast google spotify or amazon music listen

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00:43:13.260 friends about us thanks for listening until next time i'm brian lily

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Full Comment - November 20, 2023

As CBC defunding looms, the network doesn’t know what to do

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