Juno News - December 07, 2019


CBC's ＂business model＂ lives in Fantasyland


Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

165.68483

Word count

675

Sentence count

44


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Andrew Lutton argues that Canada's state broadcaster, CBC, is living in fantasy land. He argues that it's hard to imagine a world where the government subsidizes a media company that doesn't make money.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Canada's state broadcaster gets away with living in absolute fantasy land.
00:00:10.240 As originally reported by Blacklock's reporter, CBC's television ad revenues have dropped significantly in the last five years.
00:00:19.160 After having $90.9 million in the first six months, as far as ad revenue is concerned, of 2019, this marks a 53% decrease over what CBC was pulling in and advertising in 2014.
00:00:34.900 Which means that advertising, which is the primary revenue tool for most television companies and media companies, has been slashed in half.
00:00:43.960 But for CTV, for global, this would be catastrophic.
00:00:47.680 For CBC, it's merely a rounding error, given that the majority of the state broadcaster's funding comes from the state.
00:00:54.920 To the tune of almost $1.3 billion each year, in fact.
00:00:59.520 But a CBC executive has said that this declining ad revenue means the company needs to basically reinvent itself.
00:01:06.660 And they're trying to cry poverty about this and how difficult it is.
00:01:10.360 And a very stark admission that the role of CBC is not to make money.
00:01:14.860 While that may be true, the role of CBC, like any other organization, state or otherwise owned, should be to run a convincing business case.
00:01:24.780 And the business case for CBC just isn't there.
00:01:28.180 Hence the fantasy land charge I made at the beginning of this video.
00:01:32.160 You see, CBC is unconstrained by the market realities that impact other media organizations in Canada,
00:01:38.260 but nevertheless tries to compete with those very organizations.
00:01:42.800 Take a look at CBC bidding on the Olympics, for example.
00:01:45.860 There's no argument that the private sector couldn't adequately, or in a better way, in fact,
00:01:50.680 deliver the service of airing the Olympics to people.
00:01:54.160 But CBC is still competing with private companies that would love to get a piece of that action.
00:01:58.760 Even though, regardless of whether CBC succeeds or not, it's getting that money from the government.
00:02:05.900 Its existence does not depend on advertising revenue.
00:02:09.940 And this is where we have to look into the cost-benefit analysis for Canadians.
00:02:14.140 Not just ad revenue is going down, but viewership as well.
00:02:17.940 That's the reason it's more difficult to get advertising, because fewer people are watching it.
00:02:22.620 Fewer people are interested in the product, but even so, the government subsidy never goes down.
00:02:27.840 It only ever goes up, which is more likely to happen now that Justin Trudeau's Liberals have been re-elected.
00:02:33.860 So let's just recap here.
00:02:35.020 CBC is not pulling in advertisers.
00:02:37.260 It's not getting audiences.
00:02:39.360 It's immune from some of the big trends that have been pushing other media outlets towards massive layoffs.
00:02:45.400 And we're still supposed to feel sorry for CBC.
00:02:49.540 Now, listen, I feel for people that work in that, that aren't ideologues,
00:02:53.020 that work for the organization just because that was the job that they had available.
00:02:56.980 But I'm sorry, there is no argument in this day and age for Canadian taxpayers to be subsidizing an outlet they don't want
00:03:05.200 that is cannibalizing operations that they do want that are existing in Canada, in private sector media.
00:03:12.540 This is just plain wrong.
00:03:14.240 It's also why it's never been more important to support independent voices in media, of which True North is one.
00:03:20.200 We can't do the work that we do without you because we aren't getting the $1.3 billion CBC is.
00:03:27.160 We aren't getting the $600 million media bailout fund that other media organizations in Canada are getting.
00:03:33.900 The only way we survive is by investment from the people who like what we do, which is the way it's supposed to work, by the way.
00:03:41.800 Who decided somewhere along the way that you should have to pay for something you don't want?
00:03:46.680 But that comes with a call to action.
00:03:48.800 If you like what we're doing and think it's important to break through what CBC is doing that the stats say you aren't paying attention to,
00:03:56.160 please do chip in a few dollars.
00:03:57.800 You can join my Heritage Club or make a one-time contribution.
00:04:01.300 Either way, we appreciate it.
00:04:02.940 For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.