CBC caught deceiving Canadians on viewership numbers?

Reviewing my copy of the weekend Globe and Mail revealed this rather stultifying article about the state-run CBC, in which it is shown that the state-run media may be, oh, let’s say “spinning” its viewership numbers to make it appear to Canadians like it’s succeeding in attracting viewers with its fabulous programs. (At taxpayer expense, in competition against private citizen-owned broadcasters…)

Remembering that the state-run and state-owned CBC is by definition a “Crown corporation”, with its president and board members appointed directly by the government and the Prime Minister himself, this is rather important. Deceit or “spin” is not acceptable.

Read the full story here.

More questions than answers at CBC

Hockey, politeness, quaffing Tim’s, and a smug sense of multiculturalism. This list of beloved and familiar national pastimes should be updated to include issuing opinions on the future CBC, on how it should update itself to remain a current and viable national public broadcaster and how, in essence, it can live up to “Canada Lives Here.” The national discussion on the future of the CBC has been reawakened with renewed fervour this year, in light of a new federal government and promises of increased funding in a faltering media landscape.

At the heart of this debate is the digital platform and its inevitable association with youth who, accurately or not, are seen as its natural occupants and, therefore, must be pandered to in order to achieve success on the Internet. At odds with the CBC’s current key audience demographics, which skew heavily towards the latter end of 25 to 55 years of age, a focus on creating content intended for young people could backfire and place it in the realm of legacy media who foolishly rush in to engage with new technology, not realizing it’s already outdated by the time they get there; the Toronto Star’s awkward venture into a tablet version of the paper exemplifies this.

Exactly how the CBC can most effectively bring its core qualities to the digital sphere is a question that has yet to find compelling answers.

Read the full story here.

The problem the CBC faces ...

The problem the CBC faces is that whatever their motives might be, its antagonists are, on the whole, right (you should pardon the expression). They are right in terms of the immediate controversy, i.e., whether the corporation is obliged to comply with access to information requests, even from its competitors: clearly, under the law, it must. While the law makes exception for certain types of documents, it cannot be up to the CBC alone to decide which documents qualify for this exception, as a court has lately ruled.

And they’re right in their more general proposition: that it is long past time for fundamental reform of the corporation’s mandate and structure. Put simply, the case for a publicly funded television network has collapsed. It has done so under the weight of three inescapable realities.

The first is the CBC’s own woeful performance, at least when it comes to English TV.

The second is that the conditions that once justified public funding are no longer present.

This is the third point: network television, of any kind, is doomed.

Read the full story here.

CBC revenues include Parliamentary appropriations

The six largest television broadcasters accounted for 86% of the sector’s total industry revenues in 2015. In the determination of the top 5 companies, Shaw and Corus were counted as one entity.

The “percentage of total revenue” calculation is based on total revenues reported for each service controlled by the broadcaster. Control was determined where the broadcaster had greater than 50% direct and indirect voting interest as of 31 August 2015.

CBC revenues include advertising, subscriber, and other commercial revenues and Parliamentary appropriations.

See the complete report here.

CBC TV finds itself today in a very fragile position ...

Decades ago CBC was the only Canadian TV or radio station most Canadians could receive. It was a necessity, not a convenience. A handful of private radio stations existed in major cities in the 1920s; but in the 1930s Parliament created the CBC and rapidly it became the most important radio broadcaster in the country.

By the late 1950s CBC Radio began suffering audience losses, as private popular music stations were launched. Rock ’n’ roll, aided by the invention of the transistor radio and car radios (as well as TV), crushed CBC’s comedy and variety programs. By the late 1960s the audience numbers had so deteriorated that CBC even considered shutting down its radio services.

CBC TV finds itself today in a very fragile position, as desperate as radio’s was 50 years ago. Today CBC TV is only one (two if you count its news channel) of hundreds of channels, with less and less to distinguish it from private channels.

While chasing elusive ratings, CBC TV and, to a lesser extent, CBC Radio have been distancing themselves from the basic principles of public broadcasting. For example, CBC TV and Radio have journalistic policies dealing with the expression of opinion. The policy states: “CBC journalists do not express their own personal opinion because it affects the perception of impartiality and could affect an open and honest exploration of an issue.”

Read the full story here.

The CBC should make a TV drama about the CBC

The Broadcasting Act, which guides the CBC, was last amended in 1991. This means the CBC mandate was forged in a year when Brian Mulroney was prime minister, the GST was introduced and the average Canadian surfed about 20 channels.

There were no DVDs, PVRs, on-demand video, satellite radio, content streams, smartphones, tablets, Apple TV, YouTube, Pandora, Netflix, Amazon or even the Internet as we know it.

As technology reshaped media, CBC TV has tried to be all things to all Canadians.

And it has failed.

Read the full story here.

CBC has lost reams of reach, respect and relevance

The CBC, as useful as it once was, needs a long, hard look. We may have outgrown Mother Corp?

In recent years, the tax-guzzling network has lost reams of reach, respect and relevance.

Worse, it has now betrayed its puffed-up claim to be the country’s conscience and moral compass.

You can’t be sanctimonious after you dismiss years of dark rumours about your radio golden boy, allegations of sexual violence, until they bite you in the ass.

As a Watergate veteran might wonder: What did the CBC know and when did it know it?

Read the full story here.

CBC TV has an audience crisis

CBC TV has an audience crisis, according to the most recent data released by CBC. CBC is required by the government to report on its financial and audience performance on a quarterly basis. Quarterly reporting began in 2011-12. Reports are issued for the first three quarters of the year and the annual report presents results for the full year.

The metrics CBC uses to measure performance run the gamut from content percentages to revenues obtained from advertising and other sources. To measure audience performance CBC uses audience ‘share’, ‘listening/viewing hours’, ‘average minute audience’, ‘subscriber counts’, ‘unique visitors’ and opinion scores. One needs to be an expert in audience measurement to work their way through this maze of information. I doubt that many CBC Board members or senior managers understand or could explain it all.

There has been some public debate about whether or not CBC is in crisis. The CBC’s latest report confirms that many programs on the main TV service, despite efforts to be more “popular,” have fallen to audience levels not much greater than many specialty channels. Those who deny the crisis fail to realize that Canadians prefer Duck Dynasty to most CBC shows, including the national news. The most important and costly CBC service has an audience crisis and CBC needs to respond to it. Is it time to rethink the role of CBC TV?

Read the full story here.

CBC for the cats ...

Interesting tweet we found from "Stats Canada" ... just for a giggle!

83% of CBC's viewership comes from people leaving the TV on for their cats during the day.

See the tweet and see what people are saying here.

Are CBC managers deceitful about audience performance?

CBC is like a crazy, old aunt, unwilling to accept the reality of her circumstances. In CBC's case it is the reality that its radio audience is comprised mostly of older Canadians. CBC senior managers have recently boasted about the record high audiences of CBC Radio.

While CBC Radio is undoubtedly the jewel in CBC's crown and virtually a necessity for a large number of Canadians, managers have been close to deceitful about its audience performance.

Yes, the CBC share has grown since 2000 but the base for the calculation of share, hours spent listening, is down by as much as 40 per cent. The CBC share has increased because many non-CBC listeners have abandoned radio for other music alternatives, while CBC's mostly older, beleaguered listeners have stayed with CBC despite the diminished service. In effect, CBC has a larger share of a much smaller pie.

Read the full story here.

CBC almost utterly ignored by most Canadians

This is the Canadian (english-language) viewership ranked from number 1 to 30 for the week of November 14 to November 20, 2016.

1 BIG BANG THEORY – CTV
2 BULL – Global
3 NCIS – Global
4 SURV:MILLEN VS GEN X – Global
4 DESIGNATED SURVIVOR – CTV
6 CRIMINAL MINDS – CTV
7 LUCIFER – CTV
8 GREY’S ANATOMY – CTV
9 HAWAII FIVE-O – Global
10 HNIC PRIME EAST – CBC
11 NCIS: LOS ANGELES – Global
12 THIS IS US – CTV
13 CTV EVENING NEWS – CTV
14 MACGYVER – Global
15 AMER. MUSIC AWARDS – CTV
16 BLUE BLOODS – CTV
17 MURDOCH MYSTERIES – CBC
18 CHICAGO PD – Global
19 THE FLASH – CTV
20 CHICAGO FIRE – Global
21 MADAM SECRETARY – Global
22 BLINDSPOT – CTV
23 CONVICTION – CTV
24 TIMELESS – Global
25 HOW TO GET AWAY/MURD – CTV
26 CTV EVENING NEWS WKD – CTV
27 GOTHAM – CTV
28 BIG BANG THEORY(RERUNS) – CTV
29 DAVID BLAINE – CTV
30 CFL PLAYOFFS – TSN+

As you can see, the state-owned media is almost utterly ignored by most Canadians. Just why it is that so many Canadians insist on paying for it anyway — is beyond me. Logic flies out the window on this one.

The CBC pops up on line number 10 but it’s a hockey game. You can make your own mind up as to whether we need to provide $1.5 BILLION per year to the state-owned CBC in order to broadcast hockey games. Others can do it just as well or better I think.

Read the full story here.

CBC President Hubert Lacroix Hails Netflix Deal ...

Streaming giant Netflix is shelling out $500 million for original Canadian productions, but what does that mean?

What will we get for that money in terms of TV?

Perhaps a new, improved talking Littlest Hobo?

For more laughs, CBC (subsidized to the tune of $1.5 billion annually) pooh-bah Hubert Lacroix, hailed the deal as “levelling of the playing field.”

“The levelling of the playing field, so that everyone ... contributes to the ecosystem, is key,” Lacroix said. “We’re too small in this world to be doing this by ourselves.”

Read the full story here.

The CBC is now a pygmy amongst giants

The CBC’s Place and Role in the Networked Media Universe.

Today I participated in a panel debate at the Manning Centre’s annual conference. It’s a big conflab that attracts a whose who list of the Conservative Party and party faithful.

The question we debated was, “Is it time to pull the plug on the CBC?” I debated the question with James Baxter from iPolitics and Brian Lilley, a co-founder of Rebel Media and all about town commentator for various conservative-type talk shows, publications, etc.

So, should we pull the plug on the CBC?

The CBC is now a pygmy amongst giants. It’s share of the total media economy dropped from 5% in 1980s and early 1990s to less than half that amount today.

Based on revenues in Canada, Google is now bigger than the CBC, while Facebook is about half its size.

While the CBC is the number 1 internet news source in Canada, it is crucial to stress that it does not dominate the internet news environment. People get their news from many internet news sources — old (e.g. CBC, Postmedia, Toronto Star, CTV) and new (e.g. iPolitics, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed), domestic and foreign (e.g. BBC, Yahoo!-ABC, the Guardian, New York Times).

Read the full story here.

The CBC's answer to its privileged status ...

Here’s how thinking works in the upper echelons of the CBC.

Canada’s public broadcasting network has been under fire for months over its efforts to build a digital presence in direct competition with private newspapers and other media, which are struggling to survive in the face of remorseless technological change. The private operators maintain it’s unfair that the CBC gets generous subsidies to steal business from them. In a world of shifting readership habits and murderous competition, every penny of revenue is vital. The CBC, they note, already enjoys a federal subsidy of more than $1 billion a year, including a $150 million annual boost introduced by the Trudeau Liberals. Private operators, meanwhile, are haemorrhaging money as the strive to keep the wolf from the door.

The CBC’s response: Ask for even more money from the public purse.

Read the full story here.

CBC Criticized Over Digital News Strategy

The publisher of the Globe and Mail newspaper, Philip Crawley, told members of Parliament who are examining Canada’s beleaguered news industry that the Globe’s ownership isn’t seeking “handouts or subsidies — but we do like to play on a level playing field.”

“It’s not level if taxpayer dollars directed to the public broadcaster make the competition for digital ad dollars more difficult. The CBC is the Globe’s largest competitor in the digital ad space amongst Canadian-based media.”

Read the full story here.

CBC unseated in ratings

Central Okanagan radio listeners are apparently changing their habits.

Long-reigning top station CBC Radio 1 has been unseated by not one, but two Kelowna stations in the latest top-line radio statistics released by monitoring agency Numeris.

Sun FM and K-96 topped the fall rankings in the broad age 12 and up demographic, each with a 14.3 per cent share of the listening audience.

Individual stations focus on narrower demographics to suit their audience, but to compare them fairly, the 12 and up stats put all stations on equal footing.

CBC fell to second place with a 13 per cent share, down from 16.2 in the spring ratings book.

Read the full story here.

CBC no longer represents ordinary Canadians ...

With the CBC’s TV ratings down 40% to a specialty channel-like 5% share of viewers even before it lost its NHL contract, according to Canadian Media Research, it’s worth asking again what has gone wrong with the Mother Corp and what should be done about it?

The answer to the first question is that it no longer represents ordinary Canadians to themselves in a way they like or even recognize. So when its funding comes under scrutiny, it is not surprising that most Canadians collectively yawn while watching any of the myriad other channels available to them on various media platforms.

Read the full story here.

CBC workplace is psychologically unhealthy ...

A survey conducted for CBC in the summer by Gallup showed that “pride of association” has plummeted from 92 per cent of employees feeling proud to be CBC journalists and support staff in 2012 to 69 per cent in 2015.

“Psychological health and care for individual well-being are significant concerns,” says a report released internally to CBC and obtained by the Star. The results show 43 per cent of survey respondents said they would not describe their workplace as psychologically healthy.

Read the full story here.

Why is CBC still in the advertising game?

CBC has boasted that 50 per cent of the cost of its TV services is paid for by advertising revenue. No more.

In the year ending August 2015, CBC English TV ad revenue fell off a cliff and was barely $100 million, well under 20 per cent of TV revenues. Funding from taxpayers is now four times greater than ad revenues, an outcome that was predicted here.

To make matters worse the cost of selling ads and promotion on CBC TV represented $62 million last year. Administration costs, some of which are for sales, were another $78 million.

After deducting these overheads, there is no meaningful profit to be made from advertising, which begs the question: why is CBC still in the advertising game?

Read the full story here.

CBC Staff Demand Changes

Last summer, CANADALAND published a story on the lack of diversity among CBC staff, citing an internal company survey taken between 2011 and March 2016 showing that about 90% of its employees were white.

In June, the union’s Joint Employment Equity Committee published a bulletin stating that over the previous year, the CBC had renewed its commitment to equitable hiring practices — and crediting the CANADALAND article with sparking the conversation.

The piece “exposed years of virtual inaction,” wrote the CMG, and led CBC staff “from across the country” to send a pair of letters to CBC president Hubert Lacroix and CBC News editor-in-chief Jennifer McGuire demanding changes in hiring practices.

Read the full story here.

CBC President Hubert Lacroix thinks the CBC's business model is broken ....

CBC president defends ad-free proposal, asks Ottawa for $400M to 'unshackle' broadcaster.

Hubert Lacroix thinks the CBC's business model is broken.

Broken means that even if the current federal government has reinvested $75 million for the first year and $150 million for the next four, those dollars do not allow us, over time, to actually fix the issues that are about ensuring that we can continue giving services to Canadians, as Canadians expect.

Read the full interview here.

Open letter to the CBC in response to "Medicare Schmedicare"

When I first read about the CBC decision not to air the Tommy Douglas documentary, I could see a certain logic to that position, though I didn’t agree with it.

Your subsequent decision to run “Medicare Schmedicare” is worse than irrational and incoherent. It is an utter repudiation of your very reason for existence: a voice for the public interest, across the whole country, and for the majority of the public.

The CBC owes Canadians better balance, and it can’t come soon enough. You have an obligation to reflect the public interest as it affects all citizens. That includes those who have fewer choices by virtue of their earning power, and who have so much to lose.

Read the full letter here.

CBC being irresponsible

CBC is getting in the op-ed game. But every dollar it spends on having someone explain the news is another it doesn’t have to pay someone to actually go and find it

Coming this fall to CBC.ca is an opinion vertical, a space devoted exclusively to commentary and analysis of the day’s news.

As with almost anything the CBC tries, this shift has already drawn criticism. The most consistent has come from media circles, a variation on a common theme against most of CBC’s digital properties – that they have an unfair advantage over their competitors. With the sort of stable funding most media organizations can only dream of, the argument goes, the CBC’s ability to give both writers and advertisers a major national platform makes it much, much harder for smaller, independent news organizations to find a foothold, much less grow to stable size.

That is a point you could pretty easily level against the entire CBC apparatus, if you were so inclined. The whole discussion, though, is bit of a canard. Embedded within it, is a far more salient point, albeit one that is trickier to parse out. Namely that, in this media climate, it is irresponsible for the CBC to be offering commentary and opinion, particularly when it is doing so out of its own news budget.

Read the full story here.

CBC to appeal another defamation judgment

The Globe and Mail recently carried a story by Margaret Wente about two defamation judgments against the fifth estate,most recently one by Mr. Justice Douglas Cunningham of the Ontario Superior Court.

The CBC has filed notice that it will appeal this judgment, which could have a dramatic effect on Canadian journalism.

Our story, The Heart of the Matter, dealt with Health Canada's Health Protection Branch and questions about a medication called nifedipine. It followed previous fifth estate stories about questionable practices at the Branch.

No one from Health Canada or the drug's manufacturers sued the CBC, although the program focused on them. The two doctors who did sue came into the story only because of their participation at a Health Canada committee meeting.

Read the full story here.

Non-profit company suing CBC

A non-profit preventive medicine company founded by Calgary Flames co-owner Allan Markin is suing the CBC for what it claims is a series of defamatory articles.

Pure North S’Energy Foundation is seeking $6 million in damages from the national broadcaster and two of its reporters, Charles Rusnell and Jennie Russell.

In its statement of claim, filed in Calgary Court of Queen’s Bench, True North says it has repeatedly asked the CBC to remove from the Internet what it says are inaccurate articles.

“Pure North has repeatedly requested that the CBC change its reporting to publicize accurate facts, and Pure North has supported its request with multiple pieces of scientific research and practice guidelines for medical practitioners which supports Pure North’s practices and operations.

“But CBC has refused to retract, correct, or apologize for its inaccurate reporting which it continues to publish on the Internet.”

Read the full story here.

CBC’s Marketplace apologizes

CBC-TV’s Marketplace is apologizing for errors in an episode about supplements and vitamins.

The apology comes in a lengthy post on CBC’s website and Facebook page.

Marketplace says it relied on a Michigan lab to test samples of a popular vitamin C product and several protein powders last summer.

The current affairs show was trying to test the accuracy of the manufacturers’ claims and found the vitamin and protein content to be lacking.

But “Marketplace” now says “the lab got some of the results wrong.”

The show says it apologizes to the companies involved, as well as viewers.

See the full story here.

CBC Criticized By CRTC Chairman

Jean-Pierre Blais spared no criticism of the government and the communications industry Tuesday in his final speech as chairman of Canada’s telecom and broadcast regulator, blasting both for trying to preserve the status quo despite the disruptive force of broadband.

Blais went out with a bang, lobbing barbs at wireless providers, cabinet, Minister of Cultural Heritage Mélanie Joly, media creators, broadcasters and the CBC during the lengthy address.

As for the CBC, he said it plays a critical role in providing trustworthy information in the digital space, but should focus on news instead of commentary and “stop chasing clicks.”

Read the full story here.

CBC Direction Questioned

In 2014, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation released a five-year plan entitled A Space For Us All. The plan outlined a bold new vision for the Canadian public broadcaster, placing digital mobile content at the forefront of the corporation’s priorities.

This article examines the shifting priorities of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation against established principles of public broadcasting. It also interrogates the relationship between mobile digital media and legal obligations of the public broadcaster under current Canadian broadcasting regulation.

Drawing upon Canadian broadcasting history, contemporary data and recent examples from sport and politics in Canada, the article questions this new direction for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and argues that despite the significant new opportunities in mobile digital media, traditional broadcasting methods remain the dominant tool to reach mass audiences and will provide a significant forum for public information and debate for the foreseeable future.

Read the complete article here.

CBC is secretive and misleading

CBC claims to be open, transparent and accountable for the $1 billion dollars in taxpayers' money it receives. The $1 billion is spent on English and French radio and TV and miscellaneous other services.

If more funding is needed to serve Canadian audiences, especially in TV, CBC needs to be far more transparent about how it spends its money and explain more convincingly why more dollars are required. The problem: CBC is too secretive and misleading.

Read the full story here.

CBC Sports on the brink of extinction

CBC Sports, once a vital department, is now on the brink of extinction.

The conventional wisdom is this latest bloodbath — the third major staff reduction in five years — was precipitated by the loss of Hockey Night in Canada, the venerable franchise Rogers will control starting this fall.

The truth is, existential threats have been gathering like storm clouds over the CBC for more than a decade, especially in the fiercely competitive arena of sports media.

It’s easy to forget the Grey Cup was broadcast on the CBC for more than a quarter century until TSN gained control in 2008. That was the same year TSN assumed coverage of the Brier and Scotties in curling.

In 2015, Bell Media becomes the exclusive Canadian broadcaster of the FIFA World Cup. Since 2007, CBC Sports has lost the Toronto Raptors, Toronto Blue Jays, Toronto FC and, after Thursday, any hope for long-term survival.

There is a reason Brian Williams, once the face of CBC Sports, jumped to TSN.

Read the full story here.