TORONTO – The CBC is looking at cutting back on its ad load, even allowing Canadians to watch hit shows online without commercial interruption, as TV viewers gain more control over the medium.
"We're doing an analysis (of having fewer ads), right now. We have an outside consultant and are looking more closely at that," Sally Catto, general manger of programming at the CBC, told Cartt.ca on Thursday as her network unveiled its 2016-17 fall and winter schedules.
For Catto, despite needing to rely on commercial air-time revenue to supplement the pubcaster’s parliamentary appropriation, CBC must experiment with limiting its ad load in order to target younger viewers increasingly going to Netflix and other ad-free or ad-light online alternatives.
Just how to realize that balance has yet to be nailed down.
"We need to look more closely at the ad load on our OTT play. To me, that's very future-forward, to really examine that, particularly for serialized dramas, because that's where audiences are going," she added.
For this, blame Netflix, where young audiences go to avoid ads. The video streaming giant has top CBC execs, like broadcasters everywhere, eyeing new ways to reach and engage young audiences digitally. In fact, the messaging most heard from CBC programmers of late is the need to be more "creatively ambitious."
For Catto, with an eye to indie producers, creative ambition means "we want to be irreverent, we want to be bold, we want to take risks, we want you to tell stories, we want you, creators out there, to feel we will protect your creative space." On the unscripted side, it means treating challenging contemporary issues, while also entertaining and engaging young Canadians.
"We've never done anything like this before in this country," Jennifer Dettman, executive director of unscripted content at CBC English Services, said as her network goes back to school with This is High School, a six-part reality TV series from Paperny Entertainment.
Capturing the ups and downs of high school aims to spark a national conversation about education, not least with blanket multi-platform extensions of the factual series. "It could be the smallest conversation, in the home where you're raising your own kids, or a meta-conversation about the state of our education system," Dettman said.
On the scripted front, creative ambition means taking risks with edgy fare to engage cable audiences, yet also retaining existing, older audiences with shows like Murdoch Mysteries and The Rick Mercer Report. "We're looking for a nice breadth of types of shows across the network," explained Tara Ellis, executive director of scripted content.
When you hear “pushing the edge”, some people tend to think, okay some new shows fit the edgy model, like Shoot the Messenger and Pure, a mini-series about the Mennonite drug trade. However, others are more blue sky and heart-felt, like the comedies Kim's Convenience and Workin' Moms from Catherine Reitman.
The CBC is also looking to make itself an online destination, beyond its primetime TV schedule. For that, the network is driving innovation with a slew of original digital programming, mostly comedies and short documentaries. Here the CBC eyes more video clips of comedies like 22 Minutes and the new Baroness Von Sketch Show to be viewed online.
The bottom line: CBC programmers insist the network needs to make itself sufficiently distinctive for Canadians, and stop playing it safe in programming and scheduling, if it wants to ensure its future.
As well, the CBC has to collaborate across the network to drive the best value from its production dollars. That's happening first in news, where the CBC's mobile-first strategy was launched two years ago, and has made the most progress. "We knew we had a competitive advantage in news," said CBC head of English Services Heather Conway, which has made it easier to have video journalists filing breaking news across a range of platforms.
And people readily consume news on their smartphones.
Getting the CBC to collaborate more on the scripted and unscripted series front is more challenging. Conway responds, however, that with most Canadians still watching TV the traditional way, the network has time to evolve.
Here the CBC is beefing up its VOD catch-up viewing on the CBC player – and as the network experiments to engage audiences on new platforms, Conway insists the CBC needs to offer content increasingly in a world where the viewer has control.
"It's not about what you want,” she said. “It's all about what does the audience want, how do I meet their expectation.”
