Thank you very much.
Throughout this discussion we've been having across this country, there has been an underlying sense for many people that there was a glory period of CBC, especially in English Canada, and that now we've lost that. They tell us about how much people used to watch. Well, I remember those days too: we all watched because we had only one station. The shows weren't necessarily fantastic, but when that was all you watched, everybody watched.
Now we have a thousand-channel universe. So if we have 10% of that thousand-channel market, people say, “You used to have 40% of the market when you had two channels, and now you have 10% .” We're trying to find the validity of having a public broadcaster in the multi-platform, multi-channel, multi-station world. It seems to me that more than ever the need for a public broadcaster should be self-evident.
Take radio, for example. I live in my car mostly, because my riding is the size of Great Britain. I listen to the radio all the time. What I hear from private radio stations is that people listen to radio because they want to hear their own voice; they want to hear their community; they want to hear their announcements. In the morning and afternoon, there's lots of great local programming. And then it sounds like a switch is flicked, and suddenly that radio station sounds like 600 other radio stations across the country, because the owner of that station owns 600 other radio stations. We have vertical integration of media. Now we have the same columnists in 300 newspapers, because one owner owns 300 newspapers. Why have 300 columnists? Just have one, and he'll be in every single paper.
So there's a homogenizing of voice and a disappearance of place. It seems to me that radio with CBC and Radio-Canada has become extremely effective because of its distinctiveness. People listen to it because it has content.
I'm wondering again why, with television, we are still struggling to replicate what radio has done so well. In a world where all the voices are starting to be the same, and there's a flattening out of a thousand choices--meaning going nowhere--there is a need to have a strong broadcaster with distinctive programming that will actually naturally attract people, because people want content.
I'd like your perspectives on this.