Good morning, everybody.
The CBC needs adequate, stable, and permanent funding if it is to have any hope of fulfilling its mandate to be distinctively Canadian, to reflect the regions, to contribute to the flow of cultural expression, to contribute to national consciousness and identity, and to reflect the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada.
Only with permanent A-base funding can the CBC plan for the future in terms of development, production, and infrastructure, not to mention allowing it to take advantage of new opportunities as they arise. For example, it usually takes several years to develop and produce a prime time episodic series. The pilot script for Little Mosque on the Prairie was commissioned in June 2004, produced in June 2006, and aired in January 2007.
Financial uncertainty means the CBC can't develop many series because they don't know if they'll have the money necessary to produce them when they're ready. They also don't have the necessary funds to develop many projects. Well-funded U.S. broadcasters know they have to develop many projects in order to produce only the best and to thereby ensure a chance of audience success. In Canada, broadcasters—and particularly the CBC—don't have a very high development-to-production ratio in episodic series.
Adequate funding could have many positive impacts on the CBC's programming and overall health. With sufficient funding, the CBC can return to its pre-1999 levels of production of one-hour dramas—once the cornerstone of the schedule. In 1999 the CBC licensed six one-hour dramas, for a total of 79 episodes or 79 hours of television. In 2006 the CBC was down to two one-hour dramas, for a total of only 26 episodes. That's a fairly stunning 66% reduction over seven years.
Canadians have demonstrated time and again that their favourite programming is the one-hour drama. In a recent BBM listing of the top 30 programs in Canada, 19 were one-hour dramas, despite the American Idol juggernaut and several highly rated hockey games that fell into that period. There will always be room for event programming and sports programming, but the audience's primary commitment to television is to one-hour dramas, like the American programs Grey's Anatomy or House.
The only way Canadian one-hour dramas can hope to penetrate the top 30 is if enough series are produced with adequate budgets and if they are aired in consistent time slots and receive adequate promotion.
The CBC's Intelligence was critically acclaimed, but couldn't find an audience because it ran against the highly rated House, which is not only very expensively produced, but is also, like all U.S. TV, promoted to within an inch of its life. Intelligence also failed to resonate because it only had 13 episodes to build an audience; U.S. series have between 20 and 24 each season, giving them lots of time to grow and maintain their audiences.