I think this is very fundamental. The question of what's been going on over the course of the last number of years, in terms of attracting English Canadians to English Canadian programs, I think reflects a very interesting structural problem within the industry.
Over the last 15 years, literally hundreds of new specialty services have been licensed in Canada and are authorized for distribution in Canada. We've put in place very significant financing, for instance through the Canadian Television Fund. The overwhelming bulk of this effort has gone towards strengthening the private broadcasting industry. As the president said, during the course of the last 15 years there have been, essentially, no new channels of any consequence for the CBC. Its financing has not been increased and in fact is down almost $400 million in today's dollars from what it was.
The result of all that, interestingly, is that if you compare where we are now to where we were even five years ago, you see that overall viewing of Canadian programming on English television accounted for 31% of the whole day in 2004-05 and 22% during prime time, down from 34% and 26% respectively five years previously. In fact, what's been going on is that we have been slowly losing more and more ground. We've made essentially no progress whatsoever over the course of the last 25 years in terms of the most important categories of programming.
When I came to the CBC, I came because, as you do, I believed absolutely, passionately, and deeply that the most important thing was for us to be able to make programs in the most important medium that there is that would connect and resonate with English Canadians. Not only is it not happening on a large enough scale, but we're actually losing ground.
I think in part the reason we're losing ground is that the CBC itself has been essentially set to one side for a long period of time, while we've increased the number of licences to the private broadcasters. As well, the bulk of the new financing has also gone to them.