Evidence of meeting #27 for Canadian Heritage in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was media.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Geneviève Rossier
One example where you can really see a difference is with news. When I was a news reporter, you had news at eleven in the morning. You'd sit on it until six o'clock, or ten o'clock if it was really big. Today you just put it on the web and things move much more rapidly.
Conservative
Scott Armstrong Conservative Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS
You're on your fourth version of that story by six o'clock at night.
Conservative
Conservative
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
I just want to say welcome to you both and let you know that I've been a big CBC fan, both radio and TV, for forever and ever. I want to congratulate you, as well, for evolving as your viewers and listeners change, and your demographics change and evolve.
Just following up on Mr. Armstrong's questioning, do you view yourselves as net content providers, creators, or broadcasters, and how has that role been changing?
General Manager, Media Operations and Technology, CBC/Radio-Canada
I think part of the problem we're wrestling with, and everybody's wrestling with, is that the language doesn't always help us. Are we broadcasters? Yes. Are we net content providers? Yes. Are the two things the same thing? Sometimes they are. Are they different sometimes? Absolutely.
It's understanding both the intersections and the places where those descriptions diverge that's at the core of much of the exploration that media is doing around digital media, and trying to understand what that is, particularly conventional media companies.
You know, it all comes down to fundamentals. We're going where Canadians go. As their public service media provider, we need to be there. We have a mandate and a mission to be there, where they are. So that's an imperative.
As a business that is funded largely through public funds, we have a responsibility to be smart, accountable, and effective and efficient with those funds and that delivery. So that's an imperative.
At the end of the day, I've been at the CBC for 30 years. I started at the CBC by climbing transmission towers. I understand broadcast very well. I find myself in a space wondering what that term actually means any more. I think what it means is public media, where the public is.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Right, exactly.
I guess sometimes with some news stations, do they define the news, do they report the news, or do they create new news? It's all the same.
In your corporate plan, you talk about increasing your investment in new platforms by 8%, and that's all content available to watch or listen to on the Internet, mobile devices, cellphones, or video, iPods, MP3 players, etc. How will this investment happen? Can you tell us, what's the value of 8%? How much is that in dollar terms? Do you know how you will prioritize that investment? What will it be spent on?
General Manager, Media Operations and Technology, CBC/Radio-Canada
I can't tell you what the dollar number is. We can get back to you with that number, for sure.
Liberal
General Manager, Media Operations and Technology, CBC/Radio-Canada
Well, 8% on.... It depends how you count our budget.
Geneviève Rossier
The 8% isn't on the total budget; it's on the digital budget. Digital budgeting is very tricky because it all depends on how you count. If I take the radio stream and put it on the web, it's helping the web, but do I count all the costs of making that radio stream? So it's difficult.
The number we had in the report last year was 8%. What is clear in my department, I think in Fred's as well, is that we're augmenting. We're in croissance.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Exactly. Have you prioritized where that money will be spent?
Geneviève Rossier
L'entretien, how do you say that? The upkeep of the platforms is a lot of it. I'm assuming it's the same thing at the CBC. It's keeping up with all the tools. You want to be modernizing all your interactive and publishing tools all the time. It's a very rapidly growing and rapidly going thing.
You want to be creating content. You want to be paying, also, for la bande passante, the bandwidth, which is always going up as we're putting up more video, so it's growing in pretty well all the areas we're managing as managers of the Internet.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Just switching gears, if I could, what mechanisms are in place to determine what's available for download from the CBC, and do copyright infringements enter into the equation for determining what is available?
General Manager, Media Operations and Technology, CBC/Radio-Canada
Copyright always enters into consideration. We don't put content on any platform without having paid appropriate consideration to copyright.
Liberal
Bonnie Crombie Liberal Mississauga—Streetsville, ON
Did you want to jump in on the other question? Sorry about that. I cut you off.
General Manager, Media Operations and Technology, CBC/Radio-Canada
I'll just come back to it in a second.
In terms of copyright, that's the answer for both of us. How do we determine what goes on download? Really, we look at it as a programming exercise. What is it the users want? How will they use it? These are considerations. There are revenue and cost considerations as well that go into it.
If I could come back to the question about the investment for a second, what's clear is that more and more Canadians are building this technology into their lives and building digital media experiences into their lives. Our spending will move with that over time. What will guide it will be the strategic principles the corporation takes.
Conservative
Bloc
Roger Pomerleau Bloc Drummond, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to both of you for coming to meet with us.
Ms. Rossier, you told us how it is increasingly easy for Canadian francophones to talk to each other across the country. Personally, I'm watching TFO television more and more, programs that I previously had virtually no access to.
In your long-term strategies, are you considering the fact that there are really large francophone pockets in North America? In the United States, across the northeast, and other places, there are francophones with French roots who want to maintain those roots. I have family there who no longer really speak French, but who are interested in the French phenomenon.
I worked in Texas and Louisiana. I was really surprised to see the number of people who still speak French and who still understand it very well when someone talks to them. It's not folklore; it's really a language they regularly use. Unfortunately, they are not served directly in French.
The same is true in Los Angeles; I have friends who live there, and I go there from time to time. I realized that there were at least 100,000 Canadians of francophone origin living in Los Angeles who enjoy services that they pay for themselves, such as French lycées, community television and so on.
Does Radio-Canada intend to serve that clientele—perhaps not in the immediate future but eventually?
Executive Director, Internet and Digital Services, CBC/Radio-Canada
We have the Radio-Canada International service, which has been around for some time and offers some programming in French elsewhere in the world, and which moreover has to be modernized.
People outside Canada represent between 10% and 13% of traffic on the www.radio-canada.ca website. These are often Canadians who live outside the country and who use www.radio-canada.ca. I imagine the same is true of the CBC. People are very familiar with the site and know they can find information on it.
Approximately 50% of programs on TOU.TV are accessible around the world. These are the ones for which we own the rights, which enable us to make them available everywhere.
The Internet can definitely be used to meet the needs of francophones who are outside Canada.
Can we really conduct campaigns to tell these people that we are there? I'm not sure.
