LAST WEEK THE Cable Public Affairs Channel celebrated its 15th anniversary of bringing Canadians the nitty gritty of politics.
As the only place where you find federal Parliamentary debates, committee meetings, inquiry hearings, political talk shows, some international flavour and of course, Question Period, it’s also just about the only Paris Hilton-free media outlet in the world, which perhaps explains why it’s often on in our house…
But, just because Canadian cable companies created it, own it, and politicians on the Hill love it, CPAC still, like any other traditional media outlet, has its challenges. While it was a pioneer in streaming almost all of its content to the web, it remains a lone channel in an exploding media universe and recently was booted to the nosebleed sectors of the cable lineup by its two biggest backers, Rogers Cable and Shaw Cable.
Given its often dry content, CPAC isn’t necessarily a ratings leader but it is necessary as a channel, the only channel, that gives Canadians a wide open, detailed window into their national government.
To talk about CPAC’s 15th birthday, Cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien chatted with president Colette Watson (who, pictured below, does double-duty as vice-president of Rogers Television). What follows is an edited transcript.
Greg O’Brien: I think we last did a formal interview when the channel passed the 10-year mark. So, what are some of the changes that CPAC has gone through over the past five years?
Colette Watson: Well, we haven’t really changed all that much. We locked onto a formula that works for our viewers so we’re just keeping to that. To deliver wall to wall election coverage during election campaigns – and frankly we’ve done a lot more of that than we thought we were going to because with minority governments, we’ve had probably two more elections that we had planned.
And then trying to deliver in prime time some analysis or recap of what went on in politics. Then the rest of the time we try and give (viewers) gavel to gavel that they can’t get anywhere else (such as the Air India Inquiry).
GOB: I think you’ve got the best actors on any channel during Question Period… I mean that’s where the drama and all the prima donnas are.
CW: We were there yesterday with the board, when the Speaker recognized us yesterday in the House of Commons. So the board had lunch with the Speaker and then we went in the Speaker’s gallery to watch question period. When you’re in there, it’s surreal, it’s a totally different thing. You have to wear the microphones or you don’t hear it.
GOB: Because they’re hollering and banging on things?
CW: And the acoustics in the room – you know it’s a century-old building.
GOB: I’ve been there a couple of times for question period and it was always pretty funny. I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not…
CW: Yeah. It is what it is.
GOB: What do you see the facing CPAC, say, in the next five years? What are the things that you’re concentrating on in terms of the changes or challenges that you see right in front of you?
CW: I worry about distribution in the long term – as the whole industry does – about how consumers are going to consume entertainment or information programming. Will everything be online? Will everything be on demand? What will PVRs do to us?
All of the things – all that existential angst that every other programmer has, we have. I have no idea what the world in this industry will look like in five years, because right now it’s changing so fast.
GOB: But for CPAC, since it’s all your original content, you’ve had the ability… to be online for a long time now.
CW: We were the first in North America to stream 24/7. So, that’s sort of old news, lots of people do that now. But streaming 24/7 is the same as having a different TV channel, right? The way people are now consuming – they’ll say, "I want to watch the committee that you aired eight weeks ago and I want to watch it now." So they want archival footage, they want video on demand. And so everything will probably have to be compartmentalized.
GOB: And are you proceeding towards that?
CW: Yes. We’ll have to build the infrastructure to support that and I believe that’s where it’s going. And I have a fabulously supportive board and so we’ll start building that infrastructure because that’s just the way everything’s going. So, we’re going to be doing on-demand programming. We’re sharing on-demand programming with our cable owners as it is now.
And then we’ll just try and work with the House of Commons to archive more and more committee footage and proceedings footage.
GOB: Okay, so when Charlie Angus mentioned Cartt.ca back in (February), I could go back and find that then?
CW: Yes.
GOB: In the future, I suppose.
CW: Yes, not now, but hopefully I’d be able to deliver that to you yes.
GOB: What have you learned from being online for so long? Have you been able to track tendencies? Are people watching more online than on TV or how have the viewership patterns changed?
CW: The viewership patterns have changed. We have fewer watching us on television, more watching us online – particularly more watching us online when we have to stay with the House of Commons and there’s something going on that conflicts with that schedule.
Take the Air India inquiry, for example. Over the last few weeks, tons of people are wanting to watch that, so we’ll run it to eight in the morning, then we’ve got to do Senate stuff… you’d be right in the middle of really interesting testimony and oops we’ve got to go to the House of Commons.
There a lot of people who call us and say, boy are you ever idiots, not understanding that we have contractual and license obligations that say the House of Commons must go first. Even when the House of Commons is on and there’s a really interesting committee a few weeks back, you may have read in the paper how the RCMP was making life exciting at Committee.
GOB: Sure.
CW: But the House was sitting. So the news, in terms of what was to watch in politics, was all about the public accounts committee and what was going on within the RCMP. So, those we would stream online and then the viewership would spike.
… Whether it’s a television or a computer – as with ABC and watching Lost when you want it either on a DVD or through your PVR or through ABC.com, that’s how people are going to watch it. They’re demanding more autonomy over how and when they watch television.
GOB: So do you envision like having a clip service of the exciting five minutes of question period or is that a little too far out?
CW: We haven’t envisioned that yet, maybe five years from now we’ll think that’s a great idea. Everything’s timing. What we are doing now, exclusively online, is scrum. After every Question Period, the cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister gets scrummed outside the chambers, and we never could put it on right away because you never know – sometimes it’s 12 minutes, sometimes it’s 29 minutes. But it is fairly popular, if you want to see the entire exchange with the reporter rather than the seven seconds they’ll put in their piece, you can go online and watch today’s scrums after every QP and that’s exclusive to the CPAC.ca service… and we’re going to try and build that kind of stuff up.
GOB: Earlier, you mentioned your fears about distribution in that. With so many more channels coming online, there’s more on demand, there’s more HD – Rogers and Shaw and ExpressVu have all shuffled their channels recently. Is there any fear for CPAC that you’ll end up in a less desirable spot as to where you are now?
CW: Do you know where we are now?
GOB: Channel 11 in my system (Cogeco).
CW: Well in Rogers’ systems we’re on channel 104 and in Shaw systems we’re on 102. It’s already happened (the switched happened in the past 4-6 months).
GOB: I didn’t know that.
CW: It’s not ideal, so our job now is to let customers know where we are.
GOB: How do you do that?
CW: We’ve got billboards in those markets where we moved to let them know where they can find CPAC.
GOB: Any plans to move to high definition?
CW: First, we have to secure the spectrum, because you know (soon) all Sony will sell is HD cameras. But we have to make sure our owners/distributors have factored that in with respect to their spectrum plans.
GOB: Okay. What about any plans for new channels? Additional CPAC spin-offs or anything like that.
CW: They’ll all be web based but we are planning some, yes.
GOB: Can you expand on any of them?
CW: It’s a bit early for that – but we’re definitely looking at it. But they’ll all be web based.
GOB: What sort of things are you planning for the 15th anniversary?
CW: Yesterday we had our events on the Hill with the members of Parliament and Senators and it was just awful weather. Cold driving rain and winds. But we still had 127 parliamentarians come out. We had the Speaker’s lunch yesterday with the board. We’re having some staff and alumni events throughout June. And then in the fall, it will do more retrospective stuff on air.
GOB: Do you plan on any big changes with your fall programming?
CW: We are planning just a little bit of tinkering but not a whole lot. We plan to add more committee coverage in daytime time slots on the weekend.
GOB: When I think of CPAC, it’s as a serious news place to turn to – one of the only Paris Hilton free zones anywhere in the media.
CW: Yes. And that won’t change.
