CBC: Reform The Mandate Or Watch It Die

On How To Save The CBC

If this Canadian Parliament goes its full term, there are 19 months and a couple weeks to the next election, which means in reality there are 18 months left before this government’s actual ability to enact policy runs out. There’s a lot of fronts on which the Government has to act, both to try and reverse its political fortunes but also just to enact left wing policy before the clock strikes midnight on this Parliament.

One of the areas of contention that could use rethinking is the CBC, which is in the firing line of a future Conservative government anyways. The CBC as currently constituted is both a Canadian institution and a completely incoherent mess, a disaster and yet somehow a necessity. And that’s where this comes in.

We need to entirely rethink the CBC if we are to defend it. The status quo of a broadcast network trying to compete on merit with the corporate opposition without access to American shows isn’t working. It’s also not really worth it. So, let’s have an honest conversation about the point of the CBC’s commercial vision – is the CBC as currently constituted fit for purpose?

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Let’s start with what this column isn’t about – it’s not about CBC Radio, it’s not about the News Network, and it’s not about the local newsrooms across Canada. We need local journalism more than ever, with the hollowing out of our local papers by Postmedia and the general state of advertising-based media. But let’s be honest – that’s not what anyone is talking about when they talk about the CBC.

None of the people who complain about the CBC’s political slant are actually listening to Q and being mad that Tom Power has Margaret Atwood and all her lefty politics on. They’re mad their guy gets criticized, which is why a non-trivial amount of Liberals hate the CBC for how they handled the WE scandal. But that’s the price of doing business in the news space.

What matters is the broadcast network, because that’s the majority of the cost. In 2022, they spent bang on $1B for English language radio, TV, and digital. They don’t seem to delineate those costs out between those three, which is aggravating (though, on some level, sensible – does a local reporter who writes for the website but also does hits for radio and TV locally count as a TV expense, a digital one, both, neither?). But let’s be honest, between the Olympics (whose price to taxpayers we don’t know) and the cost of running programming for a broadcast network, it’s probably a majority going to CBC TV.

And what, pray tell, are we getting for it? Hockey Night In Canada is just Sportsnet renting the CBC’s airwaves (but also getting the revenue back from it), the Olympics could be a good deal if we knew what it fucking cost, and outside of 22 Minutes and the National it’s a bunch of mediocre product. But worst of all, it’s a bunch of mediocre product that probably should just be on CTV’s cable networks. When was the last time any CBC original was appointment viewing?

If the CBC is to survive, it has to be different – and better – than its commercial competitors, which is both a high bar to hold it to but also necessary. We have a lot of unique Canadian stories and history to plunder for ideas, plenty of talented people to do it with, and a market inefficiency. Instead of using taxpayers dollars for shows that could easily be set in the US and be on CBS, we should tell better, distinctly and uniquely Canadian stories, and pivot away from mediocre sitcoms to prestige TV.

In any other self-respecting country there’d have been an 8-part miniseries the second Chantal Hebert’s book on the 1995 referendum The Morning After was pitched, let alone published. We tried an FLQ Crisis show in the mid-00s and seem to have given up on tapping the rich vein of our recent political history for examples. Hell, since Brian Mulroney died on Friday, just his tenure as PM has a rich tapestry; Meech Lake, Airbus, negotiating with Reagan on NAFTA, the dual crises he faced with the Senate on the GST and abortion, any of it would be nice. We got a made-for-TV movie on Henry Morgentaler, but that was more doc than drama.

Want to take it away from historical epics and period pieces? How about giving your platform to less established writers and filmmakers to try stuff? We all know that the best and brightest move to the US, in part because we incentivize them to. Sarah Polley got to write an adaption of an Atwood novel, but in 2017, after she was Sarah Polley. Instead of lucking out that someone of her talent stayed tied to Canada once they’re famous, why aren’t we trying to cultivate a vibrant creative community that will produce opportunities here?

Hell, if you really want to play up to the Canada of it all, there’s stories we can tell. I’ve wondered for at least a decade now why nobody’s written a Canadian Friday Night Lights drama, except instead of Texas football it’s Major Junior hockey in Kingston or Kelowna. You can take or leave any of these specific ideas depending on your taste, but the notion that the CBC is spending all of this money and filling primetime hours with procedurals nobody watches, the Great Canadian Pottery Throw Down, David Suzuki lecturing us, and then 2 hours of news content on Fridays. Oh, and this doesn’t count the fact that 7PM is Coronation Street and Family Feud Canada.

If this is what a national broadcaster should be to you, great. It’s not good enough, and the lack of utility to the CBC is why it’s dying its slow death. Reforming the mandate and focusing less on trying to Canadian NBC and more Canadian HBO will have two effects; it’ll make the products Canadians watch better, and it’ll justify the public broadcaster more. That it’ll also probably make it easier to get people to pay for some form of direct-to-consumer bundle – CBC and the News Network plus a streaming service of all the CBC originals – a lot more palatable if people feel like they have to watch Meech Lake or whatever else the night before.

You know what crystalized for me the Canadian TV failure? Line Of Duty, the British cop drama whose last season was utter dogshit. Every Sunday night when it aired I’d see about 100 tweets from British reporters, politicians, critics, and even friends about it. It captured the nation’s attention, and its contempt when it was shit. But it was the dominant culture product in the land. The last time something was that dominant here? Game Of Thrones.

The LPC have an opportunity to reform the CBC, make it worth its keep, and make it worth watching. I’m 27, and other than the occasional hockey game I don’t know the last time I turned the main network on. That’s a failure. CBC reform will give the left a leg to stand on when the inevitable fight over its future comes, because if left as is the current state of the CBC is hard to defend.