CBC News Network: 329 employees, average salary: $100,707

There might be more than 500 channels to choose from, which cater to pretty much every interest imaginable, but the vast majority of people who watch them have one thing in common: We can’t help but wonder how much money the people who get to do this for a living are paid.

The figures released by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on Wednesday for 2013 provide an indication of how much the channels have spent each year on programming and how much money is going to salaries, among other things.

News and Information

BC News 1 Vancouver: 23 employees, average salary: $88,541

Business News Network: 77 employees, average salary: $86,118

CBC News Network: 329 employees, average salary: $100,707

CP24 Toronto: 87 employees, average salary: $90,021

CTV News Channel: 88 employees, average salary: $122,923

Sun News Network: 128 employees, average salary: $83,234

The Weather Network: 198 employees, average salary: $80.237

Read the full story here.

CBC compensation ranges for upper management

Four employees involved in CBC broadcasts earn more than $300,000 a year, taking home on average about $485,667 annually in total compensation. But the public broadcaster won’t identify who they are.

The numbers are contained in a document sent to a Senate committee that is studying the challenges facing the CBC. The document includes the salary ranges and total compensation ranges for upper management, as well as how much those executives could earn in the private sector.

Those four make up less than one per cent of the 1,286 on-air personnel at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Radio-Canada, as of April 1. About 83 per cent of on-air talent at Canada’s public broadcaster earn less than $100,000, not including overtime.

Read the full story here.

PS - as per the numbers above, this means that 17 per cent of CBC on air talent earns MORE than $100,000 a year!

Air Canada Attacks CBC ‘Bias’

Air Canada has taken to social media to air a grievance with the CBC, and the airline is pulling no punches.

In a Facebook post and Tweet on Friday from its corporate accounts, the airline presented what it called "confirmation" of biased reporting at the CBC.

The confirmation appears to be an internal email in which CBC Sunday Edition host Michael Enright tells a CBC producer that Air Canada's reply to a series of questions about boarding procedures was "bullshit."

Read the full story here.

CBC management thinks commercial sponsorship is right thing to do

Here is the good news: the CRTC has ordered CBC/Radio-Canada to end paid advertising on Radio 2 and ICI Musique. The ban begins immediately.

The bad news is that CBC management still seems to think it was doing the right thing when it opened the two radio networks to commercial sponsorship three years ago, with the CRTC's wary approval.

A corporate spokesperson said Wednesday the withdrawal of permission shows "a lack of understanding about the reality of public broadcasting," and "does not help CBC/Radio-Canada serve Canadians."

But the "reality" of public broadcasting, in principle at least, is that it exists precisely in order to provide a service that is not a commercial, for-profit undertaking. It is intended to be distinctive, to be free from the influence of vested interests either commercial or governmental, and to serve its audiences as citizens rather than as consumers.

Read the full story here.

CBC paid an actor to sell racist shirts

It seems that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Marketplace show was unable to find a racist Trump supporter. Instead, they hired an actor named Mike to portray one as you shall see. Mike's job as a racist Trump supporter was to sell a couple of White Power T-shirts along with a "Make Canada Great Again" T-shirt. It was their laughably unsubtle attempt to link Donald Trump to racism.

The CBC paid an actor, using your tax dollars, to sell racist shirts (that you also paid for). 

Marketplace used to uncover scams in business, like unscrupulous contractors, and bring them to justice. Now Marketplace is the one perpetrating scams.

Read the full story here.

Ratings off sharply from the CBC’s own projections provided to advertisers

Five months after the heavily promoted relaunch of The National, ratings for CBC Television’s flagship news program are down about 10 per cent from last season’s average, but executives with the public broadcaster say they are unconcerned because they had anticipated a period of churn after its overhaul last fall.

The show has been pulling an average of 460,000 viewers on the CBC’s main network since its overhaul, which included the introduction of four reporter-hosts replacing Peter Mansbridge, and a shift to providing deep context on a few key stories rather than a faster-paced review of the day’s events which typifies evening newscasts.

That audience number, provided by the CBC’s research department from the national TV ratings agency Numeris, has held steady over the past five months.

But it is down from the 525,000 average viewership of the 2016-17 TV season, which concluded at the end of last August. And it is off sharply from the CBC’s own projections provided to advertisers, which forecast viewership at a more robust 532,000.

Read the full story here.

CBC Host Awkwardly Mistakes Navdeep Bains For Jagmeet Singh

A veteran reporter confused Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains for NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh on Monday, inadvertently providing a reminder that not everyone who has a beard and wears a turban is the same.

After Twitter users called out CBC News host Susan Bonner for the post, she deleted her tweet, acknowledging that it was posted in "error and haste."

Read the full story here.

Radio-Canada Reporter Arrested

Radio-Canada says it is standing behind a reporter who was arrested this week after the subject of a story he was working on lodged a complaint with police.

The CBC's French-language network said the complaint against Antoine Trepanier stems from calls and emails he sent seeking reaction to a story about the head of the chapter of Big Brothers Big Sisters in western Quebec.

Accompanied by two managers, Trepanier was arrested and released on a promise to appear in court June 20.

Gatineau police said it would be up to the Crown to decide whether charges would be filed.

Read the full story here.

CBC goes ad free; sort of

New CBC TV App Will Let Viewers Pay To Watch Shows Without Ads.

The broadcaster said in a memo that the new app, which will also be available for free in an ad-supported version, will allow users to live stream CBC TV, watch episodes on demand on the same day they're released, see ad-free children's programing and see series not aired on the network.

The broadcaster said it will cost $4.99 for the ad-free, premium version of the new CBC TV app.

It says the app is part of its expanding offerings to new digital platforms as customers get more of their content from digital services such as Netflix.

Read the full story here.

Netflix more influential brand than CBC

Tim Hortons' decline in the rankings — dropping to 16th place this year, from ninth the year before — was at least partly due to the bad publicity the company experienced over the past year, says Ipsos' chief operating officer for Canada, Steve Levy.

Levy says the companies that perform well are often the ones that change consumer behaviour. For instance, Netflix is changing the way people consume television, and this year, the streaming service entered Canada's top 10 brands for the first time.

Sitting at ninth place, Netflix now ranks as a more influential brand than the CBC, which fell four spots to 14th in this year's survey.

Read the full story here.

CBC report accused of being malicious, unfair, defamatory and sensationalized

The CBC must pay one of the largest defamation penalties ever imposed on a Canadian media outlet after being denied its final avenue of appeal. 

The Supreme Court of Canada announced Thursday that it will not hear the case. The top justices never give reasons for refusing to hear appeals. 

Two years ago, the CBC was ordered to pay close to $1 million in damages to medical scientist Dr. Frans Leenen of the University of Ottawa because of a story that ran on the investigative program the fifth estate. 

It was also told to pay another $200,000 in damages to a Toronto cardiologist, Dr. Martin Myers. 

The two doctors had sued the CBC over a story about the safety of heart medication that had been broadcast in 1996. 

They accused the investigative report of being malicious, unfair, defamatory and sensationalized. 

"I remain disappointed that the CBC pursued this matter until the bitter end. In doing so it has wasted millions in taxpayers' dollars fighting a case which could have been settled years ago with a simple on-air apology and $10,000 in damages." 

Read the full story here.

CBC to act more like a YouTube network?

After CBC-Radio Canada leaders last year told employees to fix their focus on tomorrow and the fast-changing media landscape, newly installed English services head of digital Richard Kanee was last week blue-skying about YouTube as one possible way to get the pubcaster round the digital bend.

We’re not just talking about the CBC distributing its content on YouTube.

Noting that it’s still early in the game, Kanee floated the idea of CBC acting more like a YouTube multi-channel network (MCN) on the digital side, with the pubcaster curating Canadian talent and privately made content for the online universe.

This digital transformation diverges from the mobile-first strategy first unveiled in June 2014 by CBC-Radio Canada president Hubert Lacroix, which has more to do with news-gathering and delivering content to phones and tablets, he explained.

Read the full story here.

LEAKED: CBC’s Digital Strategy and Employee Q&A

CANADALAND has obtained internal CBC documents illustrating how the organization is dealing with employee tension, rage and confusion.

The CBC work atmosphere has by all accounts hit a new low since the town hall, where employees hoped to learn whether or not they would be keeping their jobs. Instead, they were forced to endure President Hubert Lacroix’s “Vision 2020” unveiling, a smokescreen of digital futurism bafflegab that obscured the painful truth, that 1500 unspecified positions will be eliminated over the next 5 years. While each employee waits to find out if they’re getting the axe, they are expected to internalize and execute the CBC’s “digital mantra”, which will result in news content designed for phones and tablets, somehow (it has to do with “pillars” and “planks”).

Employees were assured that all queries would be answered if submitted via email. The results of that process have since been posted to the CBC’s iO! employee intranet and then leaked to CANADALAND.

The full document is a slog of mendacious, obfuscatory doublespeak.

Read more here.

New CBC/Radio-Canada president

Canadian television and film executive Catherine Tait will become the first woman president and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada.

Tait, 60, will replace Hubert Lacroix, 62, who was selected by then Prime Minister Stephen Harper's heritage minister, Josée Verner, in 2008.

An internal audit in 2014 found Lacroix had been wrongly claiming accommodation costs, totalling about $30,000, since his 2008 appointment.

Prior to taking on the role, Lacroix practised law for three decades in Montreal.

Read the full story here.

Letter to the CBC - story is neither balanced nor accurate

I am writing because of my concerns with your recent CBC TV News story about disbarred lawyer Richard Chojnacki. The story is neither balanced nor accurate.

I am disappointed and dismayed that where the program's producers had access to additional facts that did not fit their storyline, they chose not to use them. There were opportunities to provide the viewer with more recent facts that bear significantly on the Law Society's role in the protection of the public interest.

The Law Society of Upper Canada takes very seriously its responsibility to protect the public interest, and to do so in an open and transparent manner. The events at the centre of your story began in 2004. Since then the Law Society has sought, and obtained, increased statutory authority in the managing of cases where a lawyer or paralegal is being investigated for professional misconduct. This significant fact, as I explained in my interview with the CBC, was ignored. Similarly, the Law Society has sought, and obtained, increased statutory authority permitting us to alert authorities in cases of imminent risk. Again, you failed to balance your story by letting your viewers know about these important developments.

Your story relies on things as they were several years ago, without the counterpoint of what has been done since then, and continues to be done, to enhance the protection of the public interest.

Read the full letter here.

CBC Launches Live TV Streaming Service to Rival Netflix

The CBC TV app, which Canadians can download for free as the broadcaster is taxpayer-funded, will enable 14 regional linear TV channels to stream live alongside new content being made available direct to consumers. Canadians will be able to watch full current episodes of CBC series like Schitt's Creek and Murdoch Mysteries, and complete seasons, on demand, with new episodes added daily.

And cord-cutters or on-the-go consumers can pay $4.99 a month for an ad-free, premium version of the latest CBC TV app, which includes live-streaming of the CBC News Network.

The number of Canadian households cutting back on their cable subscription expenditures, or ditching traditional cable TV altogether, is gathering pace as Netflix, Amazon Prime and other U.S. digital platforms continue to make deep inroads into the Canadian market.

Read the full story here.

CBC's "unfair" presence in media markets

From its inception nearly a century ago, the CBC has been the object of animosity among private for-profit broadcasters, who resent competition in the market for audiences and advertisers from a publicly-subsidized service.

These days the complaints of unfair competition extend to newspaper publishers, who are desperately trying to reinvent themselves as digital services, scrambling to catch up with the migration of their advertisers to the internet.

The solution to the CBC's "unfair" presence in media markets, one often proposed by the private media industries and their political supporters, is to either dismantle or privatize the public broadcaster by withdrawing its subsidies.

Read the full story here.

CBC creates a distortion in the news market

By providing content that appears to be free, the CBC creates a distortion in the news market. It may seem like a fair fight to the naked eye, but private industry actually has to compete with its arms held behind its back. Subscriptions, paywalls, and other strategies to monetize online news consumption compete for audience and advertisers not only with other private-sector news services, but also with the publicly funded CBC news service.

The solution to this problem will not be found in universal subsidies, which would simply create many CBCs. Rather, the answer is in reforming the existing public institution. The Mother Corp. should not be continually boosting its output of “free” digital media in competition with print, radio, and television outlets. In exchange for its state funds, the CBC’s mandate should be limited to programs and initiatives of public value that the market cannot serve, whatever those might be.

Read the full story here.

New CBC new strategy that could equal the 1992 viewership disaster

Looking back, it really began in 1992 when CBC TV took a gamble that ignored its most important asset, the public. Then-president Gerard Veilleux and his board of directors moved the flagship national news program from 10 .p.m to 9 p.m. The president claimed preposterously that people were going to bed earlier; research showed that was untrue, and managers thought there were enough internal checks and balances to stop the move to 9 p.m. They were wrong. The change was made and the audience plummeted to new lows.

CBC has announced a new strategy that could equal the 1992 disaster of moving The National. CBC is making Internet services the top priority and CBC TV the lowest. Radio, too, will be less important than Internet services.

Read the full story here.

Call to cut off digital revenue to CBC

A public-policy group has issued 12 recommendations to revive the Canadian news industry, including cutting off digital revenue to the public broadcaster.

The report by the Public Policy Forum maintains that the decline of traditional media, audience fragmentation, and fake news are undermining faith in Canadian democracy.

"Free cbc.ca of the need to 'attract eyeballs' for digital advertising, which can run contrary to its civic-function mission and draw it into a 'clickbait' mentality," the report states.

As things stand now, the CBC generates about $25 million in annual digital revenue, according to the report.

Read the full story here.

Double dipping at the CBC

Evan Solomon is the latest tall poppy to be lopped off at Canada’s public broadcaster, following allegations he used his position as a TV host to broker lucrative art deals.

That has journalism ethics experts shaking their heads.

“There doesn’t seem to be a very clear understanding of conflict of interest,” said Carleton University journalism professor Chris Waddell, a former CBC News producer and parliamentary bureau chief.

Solomon was let go after a Toronto Star investigation revealed he’d brokered the sale of artworks between collector Bruce Bailey and such powerful figures as former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney and Research in Motion (now BlackBerry) co-founder Jim Balsillie. In a written apology on Tuesday night, Solomon said he did not consider his art business a conflict with his journalism.

The CBC has faced increased scrutiny following the criticism that several high-profile hosts, including The National‘s Peter Mansbridge, business reporter Amanda Lang and Cross Country Checkup host Rex Murphy were blurring ethical lines by accepting fees for paid appearances.

Read the full story here.

Time to reform the CBC for the digital age

Canadian journalism is in the midst of industrial and market failure. Print and broadcast journalism are struggling to adapt to both the economic models of the digital economy as well as the media consumption habits of digitally-enabled citizens.

We simply do not have a digital ecosystem in waiting that will be able to replace, at scale, the reckoning that is looming in the traditional media space.

As a recent Public Policy Forum report (for which we were research principals) argues, it is time that Canadian media policy adapt to the realities of the digital age.

Rightly or wrongly, many people that we spoke to for this project, in both the traditional and new media, described the CBC as a “predator.” This should concern all proponents of the CBC. At a time when Canadian civic journalism is both in decline and needed most, Canadians should expect our national broadcaster to be able to work with, rather than compete against, Canadian journalism. Moving to a Creative Commons model would be a big step in this transition.

Read the full story here.

Average CBC online visitor only spends 35 minutes per month

The CBC launched its “Strategy 2020″ initiative three years ago, making digital the pubcaster’s top area of investment.

President and CEO Hubert Lacroix told MiC that CBC’s digital strength lies mainly in its news and factual properties.

Data shows the average CBC online visitor currently spends 35 minutes per month across its digital properties, and CBC aims to increase the amount of time users spend on the site and how actively they migrate from one piece of content to another.

Audience analytics is another big priority for 2018. “We are spending a lot of money and a lot of time trying to figure out how we can better read and understand who’s coming to us,” Lacroix said.

Read the full story here.

Radio-Canada reporter arrested for alleged harassment

The CBC’s French-language network said the complaint against Antoine Trépanier stems from calls and emails he sent seeking reaction to a story about the head of the chapter of Big Brothers Big Sisters in western Quebec.

Gatineau police wouldn’t discuss the particulars of Tuesday’s complaint.

“The alleged victim wrote a formal statement indicating fear for her safety as a result of threats received and repeated communications from a man,” the force said in a release.

“Judging the statement credible and following analysis of the evidence, a police officer telephoned the individual to inform him he was the subject of a criminal harassment complaint.”

The complaint was filed later that day and the reporter was called to the police station in the Hull district.

Accompanied by two managers, Trépanier was arrested and released on a promise to appear in court June 20.

Read the full story here.

Is the CBC a public or a commercial broadcaster?

Here is the good news: the CRTC has ordered CBC/Radio-Canada to end paid advertising on Radio 2 and ICI Musique. The ban begins immediately.

The bad news is that CBC management still seems to think it was doing the right thing when it opened the two radio networks to commercial sponsorship three years ago, with the CRTC's wary approval.

But the "reality" of public broadcasting, in principle at least, is that it exists precisely in order to provide a service that is not a commercial, for-profit undertaking. It is intended to be distinctive, to be free from the influence of vested interests either commercial or governmental, and to serve its audiences as citizens rather than as consumers.

Read the full story here.

President practice proving disastrous for CBC

For over a decade CBC Presidents, who, along with the CBC Board of Directors, are appointed by the government, have hired outsiders to manage CBC English Radio and TV. Hubert Lacroix, the current President admitted when he accepted the job he knew very little about the CBC. For the President to in turn rely on outsiders to manage the programming services is a departure from a long practice of relying on staff who came up through CBC ranks to become vice-presidents.

This is proving disastrous as the CBC once again has suffered government funding cuts and is trying to maximize other revenues. But it is evident to me that the current senior management team knows very little about the organization they are in charge of, the result of broken management systems and practices.

Read the full story here.

CBC The National’s still can’t break top 30 in national ratings

‘We have a good foundation, and we’re continuing to build,’ says Rosemary Barton.

Ten weeks into the CBC The National's revamped newscast, host Rosemary Barton says the program continues to evolve, but internal numbers already show growth in younger demographics and digitally. “I don’t think we’re satisfied yet, but I think we’re moving in the right direction, and by that I mean we’re trying to push the boundaries a little bit, we’re trying new things.

Read more here.

CBC pushes fake news

As much as I like to rip into CBC, I normally expect better from veteran reporter David Common. He’s normally much more on the ball than his latest story on the Gerald Stanley/Coulten Boushie file that has sparked claims of a racist justice system and promises by the prime minister to change the justice system.

This story, which aired on CBC’s The National – Canada’s third most watched national newscast – and was aired on the much more listened to World at Six radio program was so riddled with holes that it had to be be corrected multiple times on the web and now the state broadcaster will air brief corrections. The full excuse, including blaming the Mounties for shoddy journalism, is down at the bottom of this article.

But the damage from CBC’s original reporting is done. It pushed a completely false narrative and helped inflame race relations in an already tense situation.

Read the full story here.

The day I lost all respect for the National

The date was July 7, 2011 — the day Canada pulled its troops out of Afghanistan after nine years of brutal war ending without even a truce. One hundred and sixty-one Canadian soldiers and civilians died in that war. At a financial cost of some $18-billion. By the close of this day we’d lost more troops per capita in Afghanistan than any of the 21 other coalition nations — including the United States which started it.

July 7, 2011 was the end of Canada’s longest-ever war. An historic, momentous day for our nation. A day to remember. A day to show respect. A day to mourn. A day to celebrate, perhaps.

Yet you wouldn’t have had a clue about this day’s significance if you watched the CBC’s flagship news program on the evening of July 7, 2011.

The National devoted its entire first section to coverage of Will and Kate smiling and shaking hands at the Calgary Stampede.

So the thirteenth day of the Will and Kate tour was lead story on The National. Then, after a commercial, a murder trial in Florida, floods in China, a stadium collapse somewhere and a dust storm in Arizona.

Only after all this entirely meaningless celebrity-adoring, foreign crime and weather did The National report on the end of Canada’s mission to Afghanistan — the sixth story in its lineup, not from brutal, battered Kandahar, but voiced-over from Toronto, using free pool video.

July 7, 2011 was the day I finally lost all respect for The National.

Read the full story here.

CBC workplace is unhealthy

Many employees of Canada’s national broadcaster believe the CBC workplace is psychologically unhealthy and managers do not deal effectively with issues that may threaten or harm them, according to an internal survey carried out following the Jian Ghomeshi scandal.

“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.

Concerns were also raised by survey respondents over whether the CBC deals effectively with “situations that may threaten or harm employees.” Almost a third (29 per cent) said the CBC does not.

The survey, conducted for CBC in the summer by Gallup, also showed that “pride of association” in the national broadcaster 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.

Just over one half of the CBC’s 7,600 full- and part-time employees completed the survey. The questionnaire asked people to answer the questions on a 1-5 scale from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.”

Read the full story here.