There is a very real danger of focusing on the transmission of the programs, whether it's by iPod, radio, or YouTube, and forgetting about the content. At the end of the day, it's the content that counts, the programming that counts.
It's a necessary condition that we make the content available in ways Canadians want to receive it. The beauty of the new technologies is that we're discovering new audiences. People used to say you'll never get those people below 50, but they're coming to us, and they're coming to interesting programs. They can go somewhere else for their rock music, but they're coming to us for their new music. They're coming to us for bands that have yet to be discovered. They're coming to us for programs like Ideas, which are very thoughtful discussion programs. The new technologies allow us to do that. That's why we must be in the new technologies, because we can't predict, and nobody can predict, how people are going to get programming in the future.
We can never lose sight of the fact that our first objective is program production. And it is program production that is becoming more and more expensive. We're not even treading water; we're losing ground regularly in our ability to do quality programming, to take the risks necessary, to have failures, but also to have great successes.
This past week we had a wonderful success with the Canada IQ program. We had over 1.5 million viewers. Programs like Tout le monde en parle and Les Bougons all draw over 1.5 million viewers. Nobody would take on a program like Les Bougons when it was offered, other than Radio-Canada; it's a risky program, and we were all a bit nervous at the time. Little Mosque on the Prairie could have gone the other way. The fact is, it's now seen as a very successful program.
Let's not lose sight that at the end of the day, it is programming and the funding for programming that count. We can talk about transmission systems. I'd love to talk about them, as I think they're fascinating, but we also can make the big mistake of focusing on that area only.