1 Senate Standing Committee on Transport and Communications October 30, 2024 Opening remarks Christopher Waddell Ph.D Professor Emeritus School of Journalism and Communication Carleton University Thank you for the invitation to appear this evening . I regret that I am not there in person. I am in St Catharines, Ont. as my son had emergency surgery last Friday. It went well but I am now waiting for him to be discharged so I can take him back to his home in London, Ont.

I assume I was invited to participate based on the book The End of the CBC? that my late friend David Taras from Mount Royal University and I wrote in for University of Toronto Press. The book came out just two weeks before the pandemic lockdown in March 2020, but the trends David and I highlighted affecting CBC English television have only become more pronounced during the intervening almost five years. I believe our analysis of how CBC English television got to this point and our proposal for a new CBC are just as relevant today as when we wrote the book.

We need a radical rethink about the role of public broadcasting in today’s media environment. Sadly that’s something the federal government has consistently avoided. Meanwhile the federal government continues to subsidize the salaries of journalists in what was print media to offset some of its lost advertising revenue to Google and Facebook. At the same time, parliament allocates about $1.4 billion annually to CBC/RadioCanada so it can compete for advertiser dollars against the same media outlets that the government is subsidizing. That makes no sense.

The changes we have seen in media in the past decade and a half means media outlets can no longer afford to be everything for everyone. Each must make choices and tough decisions to stop doing things where they are no longer competitive. Each must concentrate on what it thinks it can do better than anyone else.

News, current affairs and information are the only elements of CBC television’s current activities where it maintains a competitive advantage- whether it is online, in local radio markets across the country or in the number of Canadian journalists CBC posts abroad to show and tell Canadians about the world through Canadian eyes. Except for the Globe and Mail, Canadian media have abandoned foreign reporting to cut costs. That means Canadians learn about the world through foreign media and wire services - their interests reflect the interests of the audiences in their home countries, not Canada.

A revitalized CBC must concentrate on news, information and current affairs, eliminate advertising and abandon everything else CBC currently does. The public broadcaster is no longer competitive in entertainment, drama, comedy and sports. Audiences are small and streaming services have the money the CBC will never have to spend on programming and buying rights to sports properties. Chasing advertising revenue distorts programming decisions and content. It creates a mentality within the CBC of competing against private media at a time when the CBC is needed to help rebuild private media.

Co-operation must replace competition. Getting out of advertising completely is the essential first step down that road. CBC radio did it long ago and it remains a strong presence in both urban and rural Canada with distinctive programming despite CBC management’s continuing cuts to radio budgets at the expense of television or online activities. The federal government’s new vision for the CBC needs to focus on how it can use its relative financial stability to work with private media - both the mainstream and the growing number of start-up online media organizations - to help them survive and grow.

But the CBC also needs to significantly narrow the range of what it covers in news, current affairs and information programming. That can help provide the editorial philosophy and approach it currently lacks. It would also clarify where private media can concentrate its attention without fear of being outnumbered by the CBC. We proposed a new CBC concentrate on six themes in news, current affairs and information. First is international news, placing more Canadian foreign correspondents in more countries that are important to Canadians, including putting more reporters across the United States.

In Canada, CBC news, current affairs and information programming would focus on five themes and sub-themes: • urban life in Canada; • business and the economy; • public policy at the federal, provincial and municipal levels; • health, science and technology, and • Canadians who are making a difference. 3 These themes should guide both CBC local television and radio news as well as national news, current affairs and information programming. CBC television should do what radio already does with regular programming about many of the issues under these themes.

That leaves room for local private media to cover police, crime and the courts, traffic, fires, sports, weather and entertainment without competition from CBC. They can also choose what to cover of the themes they know the CBC will focus on. CBC should also make its foreign and domestic reporting available free to any Canadian news organizations that want to use it. That means current broadcast competitors and all Canadian online news sites. Perhaps the Canadian Press can distribute that content.

Finally CBC online should also feature stories from small news startups, helping give those organizations the visibility for their work among a broader audience they lost when Facebook stopped posting Canadian news on its site. That would include encouraging audiences to subscribe to those small media outlets, helping them grow. So what happens to entertainment, drama and comedy programming? If the federal government believes telling Canadian stories is an important public policy goal, it should fund that programming directly to get Canadian content onto the global streaming services.

Then use another agency, perhaps the National Film Board, to market that programming to the streaming services. More Canadians would then see Canadian stories than currently view them on CBC. Sports provides a possible example of how that can be done. When Vancouver was awarded the Winter Olympics, government decided that Canada must not repeat the embarrassments of in Montreal and in Calgary when Canadian athletes did not win a single gold medal. So the federal government created Own the Podium and began funding sports directly, supplemented by the private sector, with a clear goal of more athletic success.

That paid off dramatically in Vancouver and continues to do so today. The dramatic transformation we propose would take place within the CBC’s current budgets. All English language television funding would go to news, current affairs and information. It’s a very different vision for public broadcasting - a fundamental change in the mindset of CBC management and employees - not competing with private media but helping save and rebuild Canadian media for the future. Thank you for the opportunity to present this vision to the committee. I look forward to your questions and our discussion.