TORONTO – CBC/Radio-Canada’s new strategy will result in a leaner, focused, more modern and financially sustainable public broadcaster by 2020, president and CEO Hubert Lacroix promised Thursday in a town hall session with employees.
That plan, dubbed 'A space for us all’, will “transform the Corporation from the traditional to the modern, and aims to better serve Canadians, through three fundamental shifts: the digital, the individual and the sustainable”, reads the press release.
Noting that the Corporation will have 1,000 to 1,500 fewer employees by 2020, in addition to the reductions announced to date, the strategy calls for cuts in fixed costs from support services, real estate and traditional broadcast infrastructure, to allow for a more local focus through digital, mobile and social media means. It will also mean deep cuts to in-house production, excluding news, current affairs and radio, but the Corp. pledged to continue to “promote acquired or commissioned entertainment content from Canada’s independent creative sector.”
Two key targets of the plan involve doubling its digital reach so that by 2020, some 18 million Canadians (one out of two), will use CBC/Radio-Canada’s digital services each month, and deepening Canadians engagment with its content so that three out of four will answer that CBC or Radio-Canada is very important to them personally.
"In the past seven years, the most painful and frustrating task for me has been to implement one round after another of reductions to respond to a changing environment and balance the budgets," said Lacroix in the release. "We need to find a path to sustainability. This time, these changes – and some of them will be difficult – will allow us to end up in a better place. They will allow us to ensure that we build a new CBC/Radio-Canada that will be a great place to work, that will be a champion of Canada, and it will be sustainable."
Acknowledging that the “strategy itself doesn’t have all the answers”, Lacroix did not mention plans to ask the government to increase its appropriation, however, he did imply that the plan relies on no further cutting to the CBC’s budget.
“I am confident that, come 2020, we will have secured our ability to serve future generations of Canadians, and we will be a model of modern public broadcasting worldwide”, he added.
Canadian Heritage Minister Shelly Glover’s reaction to the plan zeroed in on the bottom line, and she pressed CBC/Radio-Canada “to take advantage of new and more efficient ways of doing business”.
"CBC/Radio Canada receives significant taxpayer funds to assist the broadcaster in meeting its mandate under the Broadcasting Act, to the tune of over a billion dollars per year”, she said in a statement. “While CBC/Radio-Canada must adapt to changing technology, demographics, audience preferences and competition for advertising dollars, our Government believes CBC/Radio-Canada can and should do so within its existing budget."
– Lesley Hunter
