CBC Rebuts the National Post

[AmericanErrorist]

First let me say that ratings alone are a lousy measure of how well a public broadcaster is fulfilling its mandate. If all we were after was ratings, we’d put on a bunch of US programming like the private networks do and people would quite correctly call for us to be dismantled for using taxpayers dollars to do what the private sector can do better. That is not our role.

Our role is to host the Canadian conversation. To give voice to Canadians in all their diversity, telling our stories, celebrating our heroes and educating our kids through news information and high impact distinctive programming. I hasten to add that private broadcasters do some of this programming as well and, in exchange, they are licensed to build profitable businesses around broadcasting popular, mostly American, programming. But for us it is our raison d’être and the most telling measurement of the success of this kind of programming, whether at CBC or Global, is not necessarily market share. Programming of this kind needs a more flexible instrument.

...<''Post'' columnist John> Ivison points to the fact that CBC Television does not do well on the list of Nielsen list of top 20 programs. In fact, Canadian programs generally do not do well in the overall top 20. Why? One reason is that a big US drama program, like West Wing or ER, will spend between three and five times more to make an hour of programming than it costs to make a top end Canadian show.

What he doesn’t perhaps know, is that 12 of the top 20 Canadian drama series and 18 of the top 20 Canadian drama specials in 2003-04 were CBC programs. Given our mandate, that is the list that measures our success.

...The ultimate question in all this, however, is whether television is solely entertainment or whether it can serve a public purpose. If it is only amusement and diversion then, as your columnist says, bring on Fear Factor. But if, as some believe, television can play the role in twenty first century Canada that the railroad played in the nineteenth and twentieth century, tying us together against forces of geography and economics, then we should invest in it and make it strong.

http://www.cbc.radio-canada.ca/htmen/newsreleases/20041119.htm

[Maple]

1. Finally!

Someone who talks back about the CBC!

[BUSHOUT]

2. Amen. National Post is a rightwing rag. n/t