CBC asks for $400M in increased government funding to go ad-free
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
What's your proposal to me? I'm supposed to pay $45.71 so other people can listen to the radio ad-free? When they can already listen with ads and basically pay for it themselves?
I find they're way too politically slanted in their news coverage and I'd rather deal with the ads than pay them $45/year for the few programs I watch occasionally.
Going ad-free and getting sixteen extra minutes per hour of additional television content isn't worth an extra $9 every year?
And no, it isn't remotely because I don't consume it. I'd rather the whole amount be removed.
CBC should be running in the private marketplace just like everyone else, considering the type of news coverage they tend to provide and the generally low quality entertainment they create. Tax payers paying for it seems like a complete waste of money. Just flushing money down the drain.
What next? Universal healthcare!?
However, it's very easy to predict CBC consumption desires.
I remember them criticizing the Chretien and Martin governments pretty heavily, then saw them do the same for Harper, and am seeing them criticize Trudeau quite heavily now that he seems to be dragging his feet on electoral reform.
A few elections ago, I remember a CBC host (can't remember which one) giving Jack Layton a hard time because he kept repeating talking points instead of actually answering questions.
I've voted for all three major parties at various points in my life, and I've watched CBC news criticize them all, which seemed fair to me.
But I completely understand that they way they cover things comes across differently to you.
I also find their non-political news coverage to be more calm and balanced than most alternatives. I was living in Ottawa during the Parliament Hill shooting a couple of years ago, and I remember following the coverage on both CBC and CNN. CNN had Wolf Blitzer flipping out and talking about multiple gunmen, while CBC had Peter Mansbridge staying calm, trying hard to separate fact from rumour. There were lots of remarks later on about the differences between the CBC and CNN coverage of the event[1].
It's fair to ask if the cost is worth it, but it's also fair to remember that it not being worth $45 a year for you doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. I pay more tax than the average Canadian, and lots of it goes to things I'll never benefit from personally. I'm sure some it even goes to things I personally dislike. But I find that life is pretty decent overall, and what's best for me personally is not necessarily what's best for the country.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/canad...
Realistically, the CBC's left leaning is a balance to all the conservative leaning of the other broadcasters.
There is value in providing content that isn't 100% profit incentivized, especially as a predominately left leaning country (relative to the USA).
The stories are different too, which might come from an incentive to provide a public service rather than a sensationalization of what is happen as a profit motive.
I'm willing to listen to that economic argument when it's hard to calculate the value you get from something or when you may have a large unexpected cost, but with things like this that have a clear use to value proposition and are completely optional, it's pretty clean cut.
Do you have any evidence to support this position? Especially with a biased source like CBC, it seems a pretty big claim.
Quality in media is hard to define, but I'd say it means delivering a decent awareness (in the aggregate obviously) of current affairs, sufficient cultural literacy to know a basic history of art, science, and nations, and somewhat greater familiarity with the history of the home country, stuff like that. It would be nice if there were no bias or ideological slant, but that's probably an unachievable goal, and only through the lens of history can we have much certainty about who was objectively right on any given topic. A charter should aim to minimize bias, while accepting its existence as an unavoidable trade-off of media organizations in general, and aiming for measurable improvements in functional knowledge among its consumers.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2013/10/1...
Yes. It's part of the basic compact we call a civil society where we don't insist on a direct line between tax dollars paid and personally-felt value gained, because we trust that the larger, more comprehensive value of a strong civil society is worth more than $45.71.
After the number of times I've paid hundreds or thousands in extra property taxes to fund a stadium I'll never visit, where people I'll never befriend enjoy a sport I'll never play, I'm okay with this. More happiness all around benefits me generally.
As an aside, I think it's reaching quite a lot to say that an ad-free CBC is somehow equivalent to a "strong civil society". I get that you're saying it's an ingredient, but unless you quantify the value then it's an argument you could apply to absolutely everything under the sun. (The government should fund my blog for $0.01 per person, after all a strong civil society is certainly worth a penny each!)
I do think that there's probably a good argument that a strong civil society requires a public broadcaster, but my analogy was more about relative equity--I'm okay with your sports stadium, if you're okay with my public broadcaster, because our civil society is better when there's public goods for both of us. And that doesn't even get into the direct economic benefits that are the mainstay arguments for sports stadiums and public broadcasters.
It provides no indirect benefit either. Instead it misguides and misinforms people. The problem is that something like CBC provides no benefit to anyone in society who doesn't share it's biases. A government mouthpiece is absolutely not necessary for civilized society. Nor does it truly provide a benefit to anyone, but a detriment to society at large. I don't believe society should be forced to pay to pander to a specific political niche.
But if you're making this argument, why stop at socialized media? Certainly some people could benefit from socialized food or cars? Why do those things deserve consumer choice, but media doesn't? The market arguably does an even better job with media than those things.
Second, we do have socialized food, it's called welfare, and going forward, that situation will only increase under the name 'guaranteed basic income' because we're automating away all the jobs people might have.
Third, you have media choice in Canada: elsewhere you say CTV and Global are better. Good choice.
> It provides no indirect benefit either.
This is silly. It provides a lot of jobs that pay well or offer good security or both, which benefits the economy generally in a number of ways. It provides funding for the arts, also economically beneficial but also culturally valuable, to some at least. It provides a media outlet directly subject to government controls, which takes some heat off CTV and Global to meet policy goals that the CBC can fulfill, like Canadian Content. It provides a public good for people like me so that when a new levy for a stadium comes around, I'm okay with paying the levy even if I'll get no direct benefit myself.
> Instead it misguides and misinforms people.
Okay, you don't like seeing a viewpoint you find wrong and harmful to be funded with your tax dollars; if the gov't funded a version of Fox News up here, I'd probably feel the same way. Whether or not I actually opposed that public Fox North would depend on my feeling about whether I can tolerate it as part of the broader program of public spending--maybe I'd be fine with it if the CBC was then allowed to drift even further left.
The point remains that we collectively compromise in order to ensure that the public good reaches the broadest number of citizens. If you're unable to tolerate $45.71 a year going to something that your fellow citizens enjoy, suck it up: I'm sure there's lots you're enjoying now that they'd prefer not to fund.
I was merely trying to draw a comparison to things we can agree shouldn't be socialized, where consumer choice matters, not that one leads to the other. I believe slippery slope fallacy requires the implication that in this case, publicly funding CBC leads to socialized cars. Which I didn't mean to imply is true if it came off that way. Just to draw a comparison to see how you thought of it differently, because I find them fairly comparable personally.
Even in welfare or the mincome proposals you have consumer choice over where to spend and exactly how much to spend on food. Which you don't in this case with CBC's media. That's the part I have a problem with.
> I'm sure there's lots you're enjoying now that they'd prefer not to fund.
And I'm quite confident there's not. In fact, there are very, very few things I feel that the government should be funding. I'm more than willing to give up just about anything the government provides me if they're willing to do the same.
Why is the opposite proposal of saying we should remove these things rejected outright? How about we all just pay for the stuff we use instead of paying for other people's stuff? If we had a mincome-style system, would you be more okay with this sort of proposal?
I'd be much more open to mincome proposals if we could get rid of cruft like this we're paying for. I think it could generate real economic efficiency in cases like this.
It's an app for your mobile device that streams NPR stories one by one, podcast style, starting with live news updated hourly, followed by anything else of significance, and continuing with stories related to your listening preferences.
On each item you can click "Interesting" to indicate your preference for more similar material. They are typically mini-segments analogous to a single news article, on the order of 2-15 minutes, though some go longer. There are also specific podcasts to follow such as "Planet Money", "Hidden Brain", and "All Things Considered".
Here's a particularly memorable segment that came up on my steam: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-f... - 7:50 story of the unexpected and unconventional economists who saved Brazil from (worse) hyperinflation by introducing "virtual currency". Lately it also has a ton of political content.
If you're interested in business, politics, world events, with a bit of science/technology and culture thrown in, then NPR is an excellent listen. It's not usually an activity that I sit down to listen to deliberately, but it does a fantastic job of filling the time while getting dressed in the morning, on the ride to work, etc.
Furthermore, following podcasts normally is kind of a pain in the ass, but NPR One makes it easy: just open the app and press play, and it streams segments until you tell it to stop. It's good for hours of content weekly, and has a large back catalog of past stories as well, which it will stream of it exhausts recent segments.
I'm not sure if it's available outside the US, but for US audiences it's completely free and has very few ads.
Just a few most compelling arguments:
1. Every $1 invested in CBC contributes to $2 to the Canadian economy as a whole (+ 7.200 jobs created, even though it's debatable if this is a good thing if these jobs are really as unnecessary as some of the contributors here comment)
2. CBC is supporting local talent and culture of Canada, which is threatened by the hegemony of its southern neighbour. It offers its viewers differing views to topics such Syria refugees or economical plight America's rustbelt towns that influence political dynamics in the U.S. election. Not to mention the value it brings to French or indigenous speaking parts of the country.
3. The whole advertising business model for traditional media is breaking down, as explained in Chapter 3 of the Strategy. Without government funding of the content that matters, we risk of being left in the world where a handful of Silicon Valley corporations make billions in advertising profits from people sharing self-made fake news. This is also an argument for redirecting the ad money to CBC's private Canadian competitors - they are going to need all the help they can get to survive the disrupting media landscape.
4. Chapter 4 offers a showcase where similar strategies made a considerable difference in both quality of programming and its sustainability - that of BBC.
5. Digital innovation is an integral part of the laid-out strategy, offering hope that this is not a short term plan to get more money from tax payers to fix a leaking bucket.
All in all, I find the strategy thought out, well-researched, and worthy of support.
(edited for formatting)
Some perfect examples: pot holes and road maintenance, tree care in your city, national parks, etc. etc. You could sit home and use nothing and still pay, and rightly so.
To address your point more directly, many of those things benefit everyone generally. CBC however is neutral or even harmful to public knowledge. It benefits no one, except for those who share its biases. Media consumption needs to be a consumer choice to prevent the government promoting a certain set of biases that favor them.
For the same reason we don't have socialized food or cars, we shouldn't have socialized media. The market does a very good job sorting the wheat from the chaff when it comes to media as it does in most other industries.
Worse still, this creates an environment for socialized propaganda. We don't need a government mouthpiece we're forced to pay for. It's harmful to civilized society at large. Media is the very last thing we should socialize and the fact it's partially paid with tax revenue is enough of an insult to Canadians already. This is a negative value to citizens.
The thought also occurs to me that if CBC could make headway into immigrant and minority communities with their programming somehow, it could serve as a cultural bridge.... or something. Just a thought.
I don't mind also funding arts but IMO they shouldn't be lumped together.
"The CBC was born out of similar circumstances many years ago when there was a media monopoly and a feeling amongst people that it was necessary to have an alternate source of information and intelligence for the Canadian people. And now in exactly the same times I think it is really essential. The CBC is a threat because it's able to warn us of things that are going on in Canada that some of the other private corporate interests in Canada wouldn't want to warn us of because they may benefit from them.
"So I think we are really on that train. But I do think that there are a lot of people out there who are passionate about the CBC and curious about what's going on too because there have been so many changes, a lot of them not for the better. And we frankly need to figure out some way to get more funding back into the corporation while at the same time looking who in the CBC is making the big decisions."
[0] Tristin Hopper: Maybe CBC could use its resources to do something other than steal other people’s ideas http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/full-comment/blog.html?b=ne...
Why do people say this? CBC doesn't speak to the world; where are their broadcast towers in Europe or elsewhere? They're a Canadian broadcaster whose habit is to talk at the Canadian public in a voice betraying contempt and impatience. The CBC certainly doesn't speak for me.
In general; I'm not a fan of states forcing people to pay for things they don't want.
I wouldn't mind paying some tax but there is a point where you're paying for your own propaganda / chains.
I hate it then. I also hate all the avoidance the UK and US enable.
Further, unlike the BBC, the CBC answers directly to parliament. This means that the ruling party has direct control over the network and, should they desire, they can make it show only news and programs favorable to them. This makes the CBC a threat to Canadian democracy.
Is a broadcasting company that's accountable to private corporations really preferable to one that's accountable to the public?
Assume that the CBC is ad-free with this money(grant?) then what stipulations may the government make regarding what they may or may-not run?
I am fine with things being ad-free, it just seems like a request like this would be rife with manipulation/corruption... even if not day-one -- but even within five years - the narrative is then owned.
they are publicly funded anyway.
edit: They also have a separate recommendation
http://future.cbc.ca/recommendations.html > Depoliticize CBC/Radio-Canada funding so that it is predictable and stable, tied to the existing five-year licence cycle, indexed to inflation, and separated from the election and annual government budget cycles. This would be similar to how the BBC now operates. Indexation is critical – without it, inflation of just 1.5% per year would erode the new government funding of $150 million to zero in just six years.
To have anything resembling a similar amount of say about how a privately funded media company operates, I have to boycott all of its advertisers, which likely entails long-term lifestyle changes.
Advertisers are almost completely in charge of what shows makes it to TV - that's what they do at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upfronts - they show advertisers proposed shows and the ad execs pick which ones make it to market.
The advertisers can't pick the specific content of news type shows, but they can pick which news shows are broadcast in the first place.
Personally, I've voted Conservative, Liberal, and NDP in various elections at various times. Every election, I print out each party's platform, make notes, watch the debates, and only then make a decision.
Approaching the CBC from that perspective, I've found them to be quite fair overall. They actually seem a bit hostile to whoever is currently governing. I've seen the hosts of some of CBC's political shows give government ministers and MPs from all parties a hard time, asking them tough questions and pointing out when they contradicted themselves.
I think you concern is valid, but I haven't observed it happening even though CBC already receives lots of government funding.
Aside of the obvious (private) joke, that simply sounds like bold-faced wealth redistribution in the wrong direction: get the gov (at the expense of the taxpayer) to sub the movement of money to the private sector.
Not that consumers really benefit financially either way. Still the rich get richer.
Thats the basis of pretty much all government services, and even government itself. Its not for their direct financial benefit, just as purchasing a cable subscription isn't to one's direct financial benefit. But its moving where the money goes towards something more accountable to the people.
We have private papers like The Telegraph, whose chief political editor resigned due to pressure from advertisers:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/peter-oborne/why-i-...
But the BBC is part of the establishment, regularly running property porn shows and glossing over the financial crisis.
I have no solution, I just wanted to point out that national broadcasters are not "for the people" all the time. The BBC basically got beaten down by Blair who made the BBC chase ratings which was the perfect way to dumb it down and neuter it after they opposed the Iraq war. Having a "popular" national broadcaster is truly pointless because if they can compete on ratings they can derive their revenue from adverts. Just another thing in the UK that has been subtly eroded.
http://www.cbc.radio-canada.ca/en/explore/strategies/dtv/cov...
Content on CBC just isn't what it used to be. All the local anchors try to hard to be hip and with it.
Gone are the days of Peter Gzowski.
they continue to struggle to understand the digital era, and the executives have gone on record plenty of times in their own town halls expressing their confusion and dismissal of "that thing called the internet".
and while the CBC continues to compare itself to BBC at every turn, that is not a fair comparison, more like a toad contemplating itself a deer.
Yet somehow despite corporations mismanagement they still are more productive than many a small business.
Not anymore. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/canadas-tv...
When it comes to programming, I get that they want to have a 'Canadian voice' -- but the shows are always so cheesy. I'd rather they air some of the stronger programming from the BBC.
I'm not in-the-know, but they really messed up by losing Hockey Night in Canada.
"Depoliticize CBC/Radio-Canada funding so that it is predictable and stable, tied to the existing five-year licence cycle, indexed to inflation, and separated from the election and annual government budget cycles. This would be similar to how the BBC now operates. Indexation is critical – without it, inflation of just 1.5% per year would erode the new government funding of $150 million to zero in just six years."
Yet, let's also look at the cultural arguments being made (page 29) [1]:
"Our focus would be more firmly on the needs of citizens, creators and our industry partners without the constant preoccupation of monetizing each of our initiatives.
It would create greater opportunities to find and nurture new talent. It would create more room for distinct Canadian programming, made by Canadians, featuring Canadians and telling the stories Canadian creators want to tell.
We would focus less on commercial return and more on cultural impact, exploring more ways to help Canadian content and creators thrive and grow. We would be able to commission programming that takes risks and has the time to find an audience without being overly driven by the need to deliver immediate success."
Advertising can take many forms. Let's take a closer look at the BBC, whose model is frequently referenced. Does this proposed "ad-free" model include a restriction on the shows themselves to avoid product placement? Does this include an obligation to blur, mute, bleep, or cut brands? The BBC allows product placement [2]. Does this proposed model restrict sponsorships and sponsored messages? The BBC also allows sponsorships, sponsorship credits, and limited messages by sponsors [2].
Now, with broader questions: will there be a ban on home shopping shows (think QVC)? Will there be a ban on infomercials? Will overlay commercials (the small banners that run during shows) be banned?
If other forms of advertising, such as those permitted by BBC, are still allowed, the broadcaster will still have commercial pressures. If shows are allowed to sell product placement and sponsorships, Canadian creators will still be under pressure for short-term monetization. What restrictions does CBC actually propose? I wish I could answer, but there are none. Without closing the earlier mentioned loopholes, CBC will not be ad free and will therefore be unable to fully achieve its cultural goals.
I wonder if they would also eliminate their house ads?
First, why wouldn't they just keep the ads and ask for more funding. It would be a smaller ask.
Second, why do they want taxpayers to effectively fund the private media? Maybe the GlobeandMail should ditch their crappy pay wall or maybe the National Post shouldn't auto-play videos.
Third, if CBC had no ads, it'll be a better experience and it would gain customers from the privates. It's a fairer playing field if CBC has to fund itself. The whole problem of govt funded corps is that they have an unfair advantage against privates, but they're saying the opposite?
(I guess it's not as bad as the NDP in Alberta taking $1.3B of taxpayer money and giving it to the electricity producers.)
Second, why do they want taxpayers to effectively fund the private media?
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is publicly owned. Doing basic research is a great way to avoid looking foolish before commenting on the internet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Broadcasting_Corporat...
EDIT: regarding "worst of both worlds", CBC gets to fulfill it's mandate at a cheaper cost with ads.
They are not considering "funding" private media so much as no longer undermining it to some (I think small) extent. (I am largely undecided on this point myself.)
Consider the possibility that company X advertises on CBC and 3 other private broadcasters. CBC stops showing ads, but it doesn't follow that company X will now increase its ad spend at the other vendors. Now it's true that the privately owned outlets might raise their ad prices a bit now that there are fewer ad slots available across the media as a whole, or they might increase their ratio of advertising to programming - at least up to the point where consumers get sick of hearing so many ads.
Anyway, private media outlets might make more money out of this...but then again they might not. It's no sure thing and so it's inaccurate to claim that ad spending will automatically shift towards the remaining market participants.