The financial crunch is in full force at the CBC and next week staff and the public will hear the new plan.
My bet is that it will look like this:
- CBC will cut costs by further centralization and consolidation - Such as Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI will be served by one main office with at best stringers. All production will be focused in Toronto and Vancouver
- While cuts to the front line will be extensive - the bloated head office will be less affected
- Ads maybe on radio
- CBC will be on a death spiral
I think that death is inevitable for the CBC because the real challenge for the CBC is not the government. It is not the economy alone but it is in fact its culture and hence its unresponsive structure. Being a top down, one city focused bureaucracy, it cannot be saved. There is no one to talk too who can make changes who wont hold onto power in the old way.
Here follows a quick rant and then two paths that I think may offer a future - for the audience that is!
It is already run by fiat from its Toronto bureaucracy. The local stations have no local control at all.
It is a Broadcaster - it pushes out - it sets the agenda - it is the sole taste-maker - it prohibits any kind of local innovation - it is hardly open at all to participation in a real way by the Canadian public.
It's approach to News is very conventional - No Planet Money kind of offering of real context - No Bill Moyers - No All things Considered.
It's approach Magazines (10 - 4pm) is beyond sad and low brow - failed Oprah.
It's approach to music is authoritarian - Here is the Canadian Content that we choose.
It has alienated its loyal audience in search of a youth segment at does not exist and that laughs at what is on offer.
So what is to be done? I don't see how the CBC as a central bureaucracy can be saved or redeemed. The bureaucracy will defend itself to the death.
But there are two related ways forward that would offer Canadians a really excellent local and national public service. But this idea is based on a paradox as you will see.
The 30 million plus people that live in Canada live close to the US Border. Along that border just a few miles south is the best public radio and TV system in the world. Already in some markets such as Buffalo, Canadians are the largest audience and WNED TV has an office in Toronto!
I think that the border pub radio stations offer a platform that we can build on in Canada.
If the border stations were to have a web based Canadian strategy, my bet is that they could do the following - let's look at one undeserved Canadian city and one US border station to se what might be done.
Kingston has a population of about 100,000 plus maybe another 50,000 in the hinterland. CBC does not serve them. The most local they get is Ottawa. Kingston is a university town with one of Canada's leading universities, Queens and Canada's "Westpoint" RMC. NCPR serves upstate New York and has a very special team in place at the station. NCPR already has some strong support in Kingston.
What if NCPR set up a web based hub in Kingston that acted as an attractor for the local bloggers and neo citizen journalists? By Hub, I mean it offers its brand, NPR and its local content (The API will enable this anyway) And support services to a local Canadian Kingston Pub Media COOP. Like Visa and a local bank. The two are separate. The local group is LOCAL. But Visa offers the access to a larger system.
I think that local groups will spring up anyway. But on their own - it would be very hard. But with the NCPR Brand and the staff and the programming behind NCPR, (A Kind of Visa Deal) I think a very good local Kingston "station" could emerge.
For NCPR, it could mean a doubling of audience in a couple of years. For NPR, if this happened along the border, it could mean going form 30 million to 40 million in 2-3 years.
Brandon Manitoba is the epicentre of this struggle to maintain a local news centre. Prairie Public Radio is juts a few miles away south. No Canadian wants to play.
The CRTC of course currently blocks conventional radio and TV. It also does its best to block web radio and TV from outside Canada. But if there is no local service, I wonder how long this position can hold?
In the interim I think that there is a work around that is good for all of us. In the next 5 years conventional "ait" is going to diminish anyway. All content will use the web. Radio and TV will converge and will converge I think locally.
For the border stations and NPR, PBS and CPB to experiment with an all web idea in Canada might offer up a beta that may work well back in the US and then offer a global solution to how best to keep the news, democracy and local local alive for the world.
I know that this is just a germ of an idea but what do you think?
I can see how for instance Maine Public Radio could offer "services" to PEI Public Media.
I can see how a group of us could set up a truly local system here on PEI if we had some help for MPR. I can see how some of the current staff of CBC could fit in. I can see that when the Guardian, our local paper, dies, that this local "station" could really thrive.
I would like to try this - would you?
