Canadian Heritage Committee on Sept. 27th, 2006

[Richard Stursberg]

I've been very preoccupied by the situation with respect to local news. Local newscasts in the CBC have been in decline for 15 years, for whatever reason. At the same time, we know a couple of things about Canadian viewers: for them, local news is exceptionally important.

When we did those pilots last year, we attempted to see whether we could figure it out. What we did when, as Bob said, we tested them was actually take them out and show them to people, and we did focus group tests on them to see which ones we thought would work and which ones would not. One worked out, and the others didn't.

We understand that what we need to do is to think about where CBC news is going overall, not just with respect to local news but also with respect to what Bob was talking about earlier, the fact that Canadians increasingly consume their news on non-television and non-radio platforms. They consume them very heavily on the Internet, and it's going to be on mobile phones by and by. We thought it would be a good opportunity to think very hard about how we ensure that over the course of the next three to five years we deliver news programming to Canadians that is as compelling, as deep, as pertinent, as relevant as we can possibly make it across all platforms.

This turns out to be a fairly complicated thing to think about. That's why I said in my opening remarks that we've done that. We're kind of half-way through it. We expect to have it concluded to a point where we can discuss it with our board towards the end of November, so that we can begin to roll it out probably sometime at the beginning of the new year. It's something Jane and I have been working on very closely together, to figure out how to deal with the kinds of platform integration issues Sylvain was referring to earlier.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

I'm assuming, Ms. Chalmers, you want to talk about this as well.

[Jane Chalmers]

That's fine.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

What I don't quite understand.... I see what you're saying in an overall programming sense, and I wholeheartedly agree. But when you say to me that after 15 years supper-hour newscasts have declined, my question is, where? Where did it decline?

I think you're looking at it one way, and I'm looking at it another way. In St. John's, it's a success. In Edmonton, it may be a success, but we still don't know. I'm worried when you say it's an “overall strategy”, because that's what happened the last time, when they went down to a half hour. You looked at the overall and decided it needed to be cut in half. Lo and behold, regional programming suffered in some of those areas.

[Richard Stursberg]

Today is actually my second anniversary working at the CBC. Some of these decisions go back a little before my time.

To be honest with you, I agree with you. I think the only way to look intelligently at local offers is to look at them in terms of their local markets and local communities. The idea that you do something as a cookie cutter that applies to every single place across the country in exactly the same way strikes me as being absolutely inimical to the notion of locality and localness.

One of the things we are thinking very hard about is precisely how to get to a situation, with the kind of organization we have, where what we do in each individual area reflects the individual requirements of that area. I have to tell you, I think radio has done an outstanding job of this over the course of the last number of years, and I know Jane is pushing harder and harder in that direction.

It's not something we've done in television. Television, traditionally, we've managed in a relatively centralized fashion. I think in this particular area there's a lot we can learn from radio, and there's a lot we're trying to learn from radio as we move forward, to try to get a better hand on the local issues.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Mr. Simms, I've given you overtime.

Mr. Malo.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Madam, gentlemen, thank you for coming this afternoon.

When I heard that CBC/Radio-Canada was going to broadcast certain events under the auspices of FIFA, I remembered a discussion that I had had with some paralympic athletes on their return from the Olympic Games in Turin. They shared the fact that they were very disappointed with the coverage that those games received, particularly on the French network. In light of that, I am thinking that perhaps there might now be more sports broadcast by French television on Radio-Canada.

[Sylvain Lafrance]

That is certaintly a good way to look at it. When we consolidated the services, we announced the creation of an integrated sports service. We are therefore in the process of rebuilding it, for all of the services. To be honest, we had dropped several franchises and were operating somewhat outside of the group. And so we decided to recreate a sports branch, which would bring together all of the people working in sports, that is to say some fifty people at Radio Canada.

As far as the right to broadcast FIFA is concerned, I must say that this is really good news, as much for Radio Canada as it is for CBC, for several reasons. First of all, this interests more and more Canadians. It has the enormous advantage of interesting Canadians of all origins. Currently, if there are any sports that bring people of all kinds together, it truly would be those represented by FIFA. We are, of course, extremely happy to have acquired that franchise. Within the sports service, people were of course extremely happy.

The French service is, for us, a starting point. We do indeed wish to build up a franchise that will centre on FIFA, on amateur sport and on sports news. Soon, we will announce the main strategic directions the new sports service will take, but I can tell you that it is already taking shape. Those who are watching us are beginning to have some understanding of what what this strategy will be; it will also be based on amateur sport.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

It will not come as news to you that there are still some regions in the Abitibi that do not get Radio Canada signals. I am simply wondering if an antenna, which people want and which is desirable, will someday exist that will cover all of the sectors that currently still do not receive the signals.

[Sylvain Lafrance]

Are you talking about television or radio?

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

I am referring to radio at La Sarre.

[Sylvain Lafrance]

La Sarre does not have radio reception? Pardon my astonishment, but I believe that it does.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

There are still certain sectors that do not.

[Sylvain Lafrance]

There are still areas that do not?

We will check on that. I was not aware of the problem. I truly believed that everyone got the signal now, because five years ago, we opened our station in Rouyn-Noranda that broadcasts over the entire territory. I truly believed that signal was picked up across the entire territory, but I will certainly check on that.

[Robert Rabinovitch]

If there are areas with no reception, that must be corrected.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Therefore, in your opinion, according to the information you have in your possession, the signal is consistently avaible across the province?

[Sylvain Lafrance]

Honestly, I knew that there was a problem at one point in time in Témiscamingue, but I thought that we had settled it. As far as La Sarre is concerned, I am very surprised, and I will check on it.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

So much the better if that problem has been solved.

Currently, the committee is studying the issue of copyright. I was wondering if, with the integration of radio, television and Internet services, this was posing new challenges for you as far as copyright requirements are concerned.

[Sylvain Lafrance]

Yes, huge ones.

We signed an agreement with l'Union des artistes approximately six months ago. In fact, technology is evolving so quickly that as we were signing the agreement, new gadgets were being invented. For example, podcasting is not part of the agreement with UDA, because it came into existence during the negotiations.

There are therefore a lot of talks with the artists' unions. These are going quite well. In many cases, we have agreements that allow us to do a bit of research and development on the products, but it is complicated, first of all because we are talking about the entire country. It is international, it affects all of the platforms and evolving economic models. Therefore, there is a very high degree of complexity, but we will be successful.

Up until now, this has not prevented us from doing a lot of development in the area of new technologies, while still respecting all of the agreements that we have, without rushing things. We have managed to move forward at a good rate, but it is an enormous challenge, and one of extreme complexity.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

You spoke earlier about podcasting. Can you comment on people's response to this new service, its use and your results?

[Sylvain Lafrance]

I can say that the service is working very well. I do not know the numbers offhand, but we are very pleased with our podcasting service, including audio podcasting, which can be found on the Bande à part service. The service is also available on Les premières à la carte, a program that revisits the highlights broadcast on la Première Chaîne. Some programs, including Christiane Charette's, are available as audio podcasts.

We now offer video podcasting. The latest example was a public affairs program on the events of September 11, from a Canadian perspective. The program was video podcast, and we are quite impressed with the results. Video podcasting allows us to reach a younger audience, which is extremely important to us, but it is especially helpful to better understand such emerging technologies, which are very different from what we have been doing until now. So we are very pleased with this development.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Schellenberger]

Thank you very much for that.

Mr. Fast.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all four of you for coming here. For some of us it's our first opportunity to have a face-to-face meeting with you.

Staff were kind enough to provide members of this committee with some background material, and included in that material is a table that shows the decline in CBC's viewing share, certainly by station group, between 1993 and 2004. It shows that share dropping from a little under 13% to about 6.5%. That's a dramatic decline. That's in all provinces except Quebec. Quebec has a better experience and I won't touch on that this time. But it does highlight some of the challenges that CBC faces.

I had an opportunity to review the Lincoln report, which is a report, I believe, of a previous iteration of this committee. It certainly highlighted some of the challenges you face, the rapidly changing face of technology, as well as, and perhaps more importantly, the audience fragmentation you face.

I believe it was Mr. Lafrance who referred to the fact that there are some people who want CBC to be all things to all people. I certainly don't subscribe to that view, and my guess is that most of us on this committee acknowledge the fact that it's just an impossibility. Given the fact that we have these huge challenges and that I believe that Canadians do see CBC as having a much more focused mandate than many of the other competitors, such as CTV, CBS, NBC, ABC, the pay and specialty channels, I'd be really curious to hear the president's and the chair's comments on his vision for the future of CBC.

We don't have a lot of time--you probably have maybe three minutes--but perhaps you could give us a glimpse of where you see CBC going to try to fulfill the mandate that you believe it has.

[Robert Rabinovitch]

As I mentioned when we started, the mandate is very broad and a mandate review would be very helpful, given the new environment, in terms of focusing on what Canadians want us to do. I should note, to start with, that the drop from 13% to 6.5% is now approximately 7%. If I look at my...I shouldn't even call them competitors, because we are different, but we are conventional broadcasters. If you look at Global, they're at about 9%; if you look at CTV, which is by far the leader, they're at about 14%. If you compare them back to the 1990s, we were all in the 30% or 40% range. The world has changed dramatically with fragmentation. Even on the French side, it's amazing how well Radio-Canada has done, given the amount of fragmentation, the number of channels. We're up to 90 channels in some communities, some highly specialized.

This is the reality of the world we live in. Add on to it, of course, iPods and all those things. I think our role is not that complicated. It's complicated in one sense, but it's not that complicated in another sense. I think we have to be the best in news, in local, regional, and national. We have to do Canadian drama; we have to focus on those programs that other broadcasters won't do because of the cost involved. These are very expensive programs, drama, and we have to focus on that. We have to focus on children's programming. And I still believe that we have...there's a French word, rassembleur, and I can't think of an English word that makes as much sense. We have to focus on events that pull the country together.

Sports play a unique role in that, whether it is amateur sports or professional sports. I see us focusing on those areas, and that's why, as Mr. Stursberg was talking about before, it's so important that we re-evaluate the news product we give today, given the dramatic changes on how people receive the news. By ten o'clock, if you're interested in an issue, you have probably picked it up on the Internet. You've probably picked it up somewhere else. So a ten o'clock show is not so much a fact show, it is a factual but an analytical show, a show that puts things into context. These types of changes have to develop over time, and those are the types of things we have to do with the changing environment.

I would say Canadian drama, Canadian news and current affairs, be it local, regional, or national, are critical elements of what we must do on the English side. On the French side we have a whole other role, in terms of serving les communautés francophones hors Québec. We have a very real responsibility for that, whether it is news or whether it is simply connecting them and bringing them together. Our responsibilities are different, but they are in some ways the same.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Just so you know, Monsieur Bélanger and also Monsieur Angus said that perhaps the CBC mandate review wasn't going to take place. I don't believe the minister has actually said that. In fact, the minister directed the CRTC to conduct a review specifically of broadcast technologies to create a context for any further reviews that might take place and to establish policy in the future. I think that's probably an appropriate approach to take, because the information you'll be able to assimilate from, say, a CBC review will be much easier to understand when it's placed in the right context.

So, not to discourage you, although I don't know that a CBC review is coming, we certainly haven't foreclosed that possibility.