The renewal of the broadcasting licenses of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (SRC), as proposed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in June, obviously does not pass. Dozens of organizations have seen it as major slippages in the mission of a public broadcaster. Last Thursday, the Governor General, in Council, called on the CRTC to redo its homework so that the national public broadcaster “continues to make a significant contribution to the creation, presentation and dissemination of local news, children, original programs in the French language and programs produced by independent producers.
This decision is something to rejoice in the Canadian production community, and we are delighted. However, it leaves private broadcasters empty-handed, as it does not address the advertising revenue that the CBC is aggressively arrogating to itself, nor the need to tighten the CBC’s mandate to ensure that its programming is complementary to that of private companies. , organizations essential to the ecosystem of the Canadian audiovisual landscape. However, it is their sustainability that we must worry about. Canadian production has never been better off, and that’s good.
The Minister of Canadian Heritage is missing the ideal opportunity here to carry out the mandate entrusted to him by the Prime Minister, namely to grant “additional funding so that the public broadcaster is less dependent on private advertising, the goal being to ‘eliminate advertising during news and other public affairs programming’, reads the mandate letter of the Minister of Canadian Heritage dated December 16, 2021. Yet it is a necessary first step towards the complete abolition of revenue public company advertising.
For too many years, the Crown corporation has drifted completely away from the mandate set out in the Broadcasting Act. While benefiting from funding of over a billion dollars taken from the public treasury, the SRC acts more and more as a private broadcaster by competing for ratings and advertising dollars. To this increasingly fatal environment have been added the globalized GAFAMs, which vampirize and crush regionalities without even realizing it.
Is it necessary to remember that advertising is the only source of income for generalist television? By adding advertising revenues to its substantial public funding, and doing so without any accountability, the SRC enjoys financial means that no private company has. These allow it in particular to sell its advertising space at a derisory cost, an unfair competition which borders on “dumping” and which only accelerates the fall, or even the disappearance, of private broadcasting companies.
Is it in the public interest, in the interest of Canadians, that the CBC and foreign digital companies be, in the long term, their only sources of information and entertainment? Isn’t it the mission of the state, the government and the CRTC to protect the diversity of information sources? To ask the question, is to answer it.
The government’s inaction is seriously damaging the entire Canadian broadcasting system and, in particular, the private companies that are its pillars. In order to restore the balance, we must immediately abolish advertising on SRC platforms, as has been the case for its radio for several years, which is a delight for listeners. Several other public broadcasters are in the same boat.
Let’s protect diversity and create a public broadcaster worthy of the name.