By Denis Carmel
GATINEAU – While day one of the hearing into the renewal of the CBC’s broadcasting licences was devoted to the 40,000-foot view with the chairman, days two and three flew a little lower, even skimming the regulatory weeds.
The second day of the hearing – and a little bit on Wednesday morning – were devoted to news at CBC/Radio-Canada.
“When I started at CBC/Radio-Canada, I was reminded that Canadians have two jobs—their own, and running the CBC,” said CBC president and CEO Catherine Tait. That is especially true of news at the corporation, so it was the topic that CRTC vice-chair broadcasting Caroline Simard (pictured above in a screen cap of the virtual hearing) covered in her hours of questioning.
There was much discussion geared towards understanding how editorial decisions are made, about how resources are dispatched and, of course, what happened when the regional supper hour was temporarily suspended at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
It was fascinating to hear how, for example, Indigenous communities are covered in various languages, how specific programs to provide news have been developed both in French and English and the various programs that are offered to those communities as well.
Also fascinating are the efforts to recapture audiences in various age groups that have abandoned the linear platforms by adapting the news for their age groups and needs. CBC distributes news on Snapchat, for example (at right is an example of what could be found in Snapchat’s “Discove
r” on Tuesday).
But the crunch was, in our estimation was when vice-chair Simard asked: “Many intervenors have noted the decrease in spending for news in absolute dollars. According to the financial information submitted by CBC Radio-Canada spending on news as a percentage of revenues and funding has also gone down, indicating that news expenditures are falling faster than revenues and funding. Could you explain those declines?”
To which Tait replied: “You know… that comment speaks specifically to a shift in dollars between platforms. And what I just said is that the lion’s share of the digital spend is on news. And as we said several times in this hearing, we’re spending on news across all of our platforms and so, and I don’t want to say it’s an accounting challenge here, because we have our way of allocating our resources, but… this is really a great example of how the regulatory framework is not perhaps in sync with the reality of the business that we’re running at this time.”
Then there was a discussion about various services and whether they were regulated like linear; exempted such as the various on-line platforms; and non-regulated such as the alphanumeric the “dot-cas” and there was discussion about definitions and clarification. More on this later, in the week.
Programming
On Wednesday morning, Monique Lafontaine, regional commissioner for Ontario and someone with a deep regulatory background went into the nitty-gritty details of the CBC’s Canadian content levels, exhibition against financial levels and so on for television, radio and on-line platforms.
For example, commissioner Lafontaine hesitantly ventured in the deep regulatory discussion when she asked about the CBC’s online audio services: “Would the CBC/Radio-Canada accept an expectation for minimum requirements for the four types of (musical) content categories that it is proposing to maintain in terms of the traditional platforms would you accept an expectation on the on-line platforms, and if so what those minimums be?”
Responded Tait:” I would just say that we did not feel that this kind of approach was necessary for nascent service such as CBC Listen and Audio and in fact limit our ability to really innovate and grow those services.”
Further clarification established that this was meant that “No” the Corporation does not want to accept such an expectation nor provide current levels.
Lafontaine continued to push in such directions referring to proposals from intervenors, and the corporation agreed to provide information and reports, but was reluctant to commit to further thresholds in a departure from their proposal.
As Tait offered that her motto is “excellence through flexibility,” which explains the CBC’s core proposal of regulatory flexibility but knowing that the next licence term, in principle five years, but historically, it is much longer and so much could happen.
Essentially, the Corporation is saying “trust us and judge us on our record of making and airing more Cancon than anyone” but some intervenors are not as trusting and worried about what the future holds.
The Commission may well have scheduled the all-CBC-execs portion too tight with commissioners Simard and Lafontaine going longer than projected, which might explain that the hearings will start earlier on Thursday and Friday at 9 a.m. instead of the 10 o’clock start we’ve had so far.
We expect that the Tandem controversy and the issue of diversity levels within the CBC will be dealt with in the coming days.
