There is an audience for regional production. Above & Beyond aired in October-November, and it held the audience record for drama, beating out Intelligence and a number of shows, up until the Margaret Atwood movie beat us out in February. I mean, there is a demand for it.
In terms of audience, that's an ideology. If we go back to Slawko Klymkiw, I'll quote him, and I think I can quote him from speaking in front of you guys, “audience numbers is a mug's game”. He had a dollar amount that would cost them a point. He said he could spend $600,000 or $700,000 in off-network advertising and drive the audience share up one point. So the question becomes: Is that point important enough to displace that money being spent on programming?
Mr. Stursberg clearly set out that one million would be the benchmark for go or no-go for drama, and I'm prepared to eat a little crow here, because I was one of the people who said “You're nuts; those days are gone!”, until of course Little Mosque on the Prairie averages over a million per show and comes in at two million for its opening episode. So it's the art of the possible.
That's the decision they're going for, and I believe they feel it's important to meet the accountability requirements of the government of the day, which was, let's not forget, one of the pillars of the government that we have in Ottawa at the moment. In terms of broadcasting, accountability is how you spend your money and what you get for it. What you get for it are the ratings that come out, so there's clearly pressure on the CBC to get good ratings, and there is a management team in place with that as a goal. It's not for me to say whether that's good or bad. It's for me to try to produce programming that they want to buy that will meet those goals.