The third point we want to make is that the CBC should not be driven by ratings. Due to consistent and endemic underfunding, the CBC is now forced to rely on advertising revenue to operate, and by extension the current management team has been forced to chase ratings in an effort to increase advertising revenue. By chasing ratings, the CBC is now forced to act like a private broadcaster, which we feel hampers its ability to fulfill its mandate according to the Broadcasting Act, and therefore lessens the public benefit of the CBC.
The ideal solution to this problem is increased stable long-term funding. This is our preferred solution. If the CBC's funding is not increased or cannot be increased in this manner, we propose that the opposition between its reliance on ad revenue and its public benefit mandate be understood and recognized so that safeguards can be built into the CBC's mandate, which would not allow for it to be chasing ratings. We would like language in its mandate that basically downplays the importance of advertising dollars, and that says that the size of the audience should not be what drives programming decisions. If eyeballs were the driving force of the CBC, then it should basically just program Hollywood movies every night--as it does every summer--which are consistently the highest-rated shows on the CBC at this point. But we don't want to see our public tax dollars going down to Hollywood either, as our colleagues of ELAN were saying. That's not really the role of a public broadcaster.
Taking these facts into consideration, we feel that there's a danger in the coming months and years ahead that we could fall into this trap of confusing the public institution with its transitory management and the overall importance of public broadcasting. DOC is concerned that with all of the CBC's difficulties, if the institution of public broadcasting is shut down, it will never be started up again. That would be an enormous loss to the country, and to the film and television production industry. We feel that excluding ratings from the CBC mandate would help safeguard against any future management teams falling into the same trap the current management has fallen into.