Evidence of meeting #51 for Canadian Heritage in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was programming.
Executive Director, Canadian Broadcast Museum Foundation
The CBC members on our board and Madame Rabinovitch both support this intervention strongly.
Conservative
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
I'll try to make my questions quick.
Mr. McHattie, in terms of the Hamilton market, normally 700,000 people in a prairie city would have their own morning show and an afternoon drive home show—at least on radio, notwithstanding television.
You mentioned how much listenership there was for the present morning show, Andy Barrie's show, for CBC. I've never heard Hamilton mentioned on Andy Barrie's show; it might have been, but I've never heard it.
How many people are listening to that presently, and what kind of business case would there be to have a morning show coming out of Hamilton?
City Councillor, City of Hamilton
The CBC Toronto show has a very small listenership in Hamilton, I think because of the irrelevance of much of what is covered on CBC Toronto. There's wonderful music and interesting traffic reports, and those sorts of things, but it really doesn't have the Hamilton content. I'll go as far as saying that Ontario Morning covers a lot of rural areas and other communities across the province, such as London, and particularly southwestern Ontario, and it has a lot more Hamilton content.
We, of course, don't have access to Ontario Morning in our jurisdiction. We've actually had discussions with CBC and asked them, if they were to get a frequency in Hamilton in the short term—if, say, an AM frequency became available—to put Ontario Morning, the Ontario show, on the Hamilton station.
The talk radio show I mentioned, CHML in Hamilton, is the one that people listen to in the mornings, rather than CBC Toronto.
Maybe, Sonja, you could add to that.
Director, Centre for Community Study
In terms of their coverage area, the CBC has placed Hamilton in with the Toronto frequency. So, as Councillor McHattie stated, we get the 99.1 feed, which is the Toronto morning radio show, which, as you correctly state, does not reflect Hamilton—although their traffic reports are now expanding, and I don't know if that has to do with our community or with the fact that traffic is expanding in the region.
But beyond that, I think one of the other issues is, as Councillor McHattie said, that the Ontario feed is, well, two things. The first thing is that the Ontario CBC, which is a provincial service, does provide greater opportunity for stories from Hamilton, yet we don't have access to that because we don't have the frequency where we can pick that up in our community.
The other thing is that when we started this effort several years ago, one of the first things we did was to seek out comment from our community in terms of whether this was something they were interested in. We received hundreds of responses from Hamiltonians saying they loved the CBC; they loved to be able to connect, particularly in radio, to the CBC national network, but they hate the fact that they don't hear themselves, and they're very tired of hearing all about Toronto, because it isn't of relevance to them, and they don't know the cultural significance of activities going on in their community if they don't have that access.
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
Thank you.
I'll turn to Mr. Taylor and Ms. Wilkinson now for a quick question.
Mr. Taylor, you'd mentioned the treasure troves that are basically hidden away. We're not talking about the obvious iconic relics, but pieces of tape, old shows. I think it was the Battle of Ortona on which we heard radio coverage played recently, of the CBC coverage at the time, and it was absolutely breathtaking, basically putting us right there.
I'm thinking of what's going to happen to all this, because you present a very dismal picture in terms of a lack of resources to digitize, to chronicle. In particular, we talked this morning about the wardrobes and the sets. You're telling us that, basically, the two museum staff are gone this year. We don't know what's going to happen to the value of that. Could you give me a sense of what's at stake if it's just left to whatever whim comes along?
Director, Canadian Broadcast Museum Foundation
I think you're creating an accurate characterization of the situation, because it's just not on the radar screen for people who are trying to do other things. The priority is down the ladder, and I think naturally enough. If you're sitting in a corner office and you have to do some new programming and you have new media, heritage just doesn't get to the top of the pile.
When you start to think of things that have been squirrelled away in the various departments and that people have in their files...many people have said, “I have to preserve this, because this is too important to let it go somewhere else”, and all of a sudden you find that across the country the CBC and other organizations are just resplendent with these little treasure troves that have to be ferreted out. This is why we suggest that there needs to be a strategy for the CBC to be able to unearth this and then provide a means of using it and making it accessible.
With respect to the museum, we have been advised that the museum will close. If you are on a tour, you'll see the museum itself, which is open to the public, but you'll see that there are also two vaults that house a number of other artifacts, among the many others that reside within the system.
I think the message is not clear, but the message is that we, the CBC, hope to try to use some of these artifacts in new spaces that we may be creating, but the route of that is very clear, and who's going to look after the artifacts, administer the artifacts, keep track of them, and look after their preservation is not at all clear.
Executive Director, Canadian Broadcast Museum Foundation
If I might, Mr. Angus, that only covers the artifacts and the heritage material that's sitting here in Toronto, in the broadcast centre. In each station and in each region of the country where the CBC exists, there are similar treasures, perhaps on a smaller scale but of equal cultural and social importance.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Schellenberger
Thank you for that.
I must say that I've enjoyed this immensely. Museums are close to my heart, and so are community events.
I think that the media should cover community. This is something we heard in Yellowknife and right across the country. Not only in the spoken word, but also in newspapers, the local media has taken a backseat. I have seen it in my community.
I used to be a paper boy; I delivered papers for five years.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Schellenberger
There were a lot more reporters out in the community. In talking to ordinary people now, it seems that our papers and news airwaves are full of national and international media and we forget about the local people.
Coming from Stratford, as I do, and talking about costumes and artifacts—with the Stratford Festival's 50 anniversary a couple of years ago, I know their archives are very important.
Also, when I looked through your brief, referring to the Plouffe Family, I can remember watching the show as a youngster. I have been told that they are all gone. There are three left out of that series.
I know when I first came on this committee, we were putting the library and the archives together. There was quite a debate. I know how much in disrepair some of our archival places were and how some of our national treasures have been lost.
So I applaud your initiatives in those cases, and I hope we can put something forward for the people of Hamilton and the district.
Thank you very much for your presentation.
We will recess until 2 o'clock.
