As tiring as it is to complain about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, it's even more exhausting to listen to CBC executives demand more government money while sticking it to the privately-owned news media across the country.
The latest galling request came last week, a proposal for almost $400 million in new government funding to pay for the national broadcaster to drop advertising throughout its operation, as the British Broadcasting Corporation has done. The BBC receives $114 per year from each U.K. citizen, according to the proposal, while the CBC gets just $34. The increased funding would boost that to $46 per Canadian per year.
CBC brass say it would put an end to criticism that it is taking ad dollars away from struggling private media outlets, not just newspapers, radio and TV but digital-only news operations as well.
It all sounds so reasonable, particularly compared to Conservative leadership hopeful Kellie Leitch's suggestion to gas the CBC in its entirety, forcing it into some kind of not-for-profit operation that gets some government grants but relies mostly on fundraising like the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio in the United States. CBC loyalists dismiss the idea, even though it would give them the independence from government oversight that they crave.
The CBC cries for more public money and complains how poor it is compared to national broadcasters in other countries even as it throws money at its star talent. Peter Mansbridge gets paid more than what Lisa Laflamme at CTV and Dawna Friesen at Global earn combined to do the same job of hosting an evening national news program, even though they kick his butt every night in the ratings.
CBC leadership also start from the premise of they're already doing a good job and could do great work with more money, rather than conducting an honest assessment of whether the organization is actually meeting its mandate to Canadians and how it could better allocate the resources it has.
If the CBC needs $400 million, it could raise most of that by selling its broadcast centre in downtown Toronto, which includes a museum in honour of itself. Retain studios and a newsroom to serve Toronto and relocate the corporate headquarters to a much cheaper location that would force its leadership to really engage in Canada. How about Brandon, Manitoba? It's roughly halfway across east to west, it's large enough that it has all of the modern urban amenities but, like Prince George, it is small enough to provide a daily connection to rural Canada.
The CBC also needs to get serious about funding bureaus outside of the metropolitan centres and spreading its studios and reporting far and wide, particularly into rural Canada. Canadians would be better served if provincial bureaus did more and Toronto and Ottawa did less.
Along with getting out of Toronto and getting out of paid advertising, the CBC also needs to drop professional sports. With two national, privately-owned sports networks, the country does not need the public broadcaster to show the National Hockey League game of the week. If the CBC wants to show hockey, show junior or university hockey, again focusing on the regions and providing valuable content private broadcasters can't or won't show.
The last thing the CBC could dump to help raise that money and refocus on its core mission would be to drop its television network and plow that money into its 24-hour TV news channel. The private broadcasters already produce their own Canadian comedies, dramas and reality programming.
The CBC needs to think small, not big. It needs to be more rural and less urban. It needs to far less Toronto and far more Brandon in its outlook. It needs to be less coast to coast to coast and more regional. It needs to reject huge, national audiences in favour of small, devoted pockets of viewers and listeners listening to their stories, not Toronto's.
Start with that and then we'll see about that extra money.
