Leading The Way

The CBC will be at the cutting edge of journalism because it will have to be.

Former diplomat Jeremy Kinsman says there should be a new, ad-free, better-funded Canadian Broadcast Corporation that does fewer things that private TV networks can do well (hockey, horrible hockey-based dramas, and stupid, stupid hockey-related reality shows) and more to inform Canadians and nurture national cultures.

All Canadians have views about the CBC. Mine are pretty simple: the CBC should deliver programming that is essential to our experience as Canadians and which is otherwise absent from the commercial system.

Excellence in this case doesn’t have to mean elitist or even "worthy," as some CBC execs have derisively described such expectations in the past.

The criteria should be only what Canadians need to foster an intelligent national discussion and a window on our own culture.

So, Kinsman argues, kill the ads so the television network won’t be so marketing driven (or is that marketing drivel?). Then emphasize the things that CBC-TV already does well: Make better documentaries than the BBC and do better news reporting and analysis than anything on American TV. This is crucial to our democracy at a time when commercial news budgets are being slashed.

There are two reasons besides the ones Kinsman mentions that make this a good argument.

1. The World Needs More Publicly-Funded News

No, not this.

Public news (like this) sets the standard higher for news reporting. Kinsman cites examples in Britain and Australia of unbiased, high-quality national journalistic outfits, and we can also mention TVO here in Ontario.

I suspect that public news has always been important in Canada because it kept private broadcasters on their toes. Now, public news becomes even more important when we consider the generally fecal prospects of private, for-profit news. Corporate news sources aren’t making the money they once did and can afford neither regular great reporting nor pissing off their ad clients. That should rightly make viewers more suspicious of corporate news sources than public ones (at least in, you know, real democracies—fake democracies need not apply).

Despite the fact that news is increasingly valuable, it’s at least as expensive to produce as in the past, but much less profitable. And while paradoxes are cool to old dead Greek dudes, they suck when your democracy hangs in the balance. So as private news gets squeezed for ad revenue by Craig’s List and The Huffington Post, only public (or private non-profit institutions, which are highly dependent on government) can fill the gap currently occupied by attention-seeking, stupid people having too many children. That’s as good an argument as any for public intervention into a failing private marketplace.

2. The News World Is Going That Way Anyways

This stuff about how the Web will kill news is nonsense. Web advertising is killing newspapers’ profitability and will eventually take down traditional news networks. That means media barons don’t have a near-monopoly on proverbial soapboxes and loudspeakers they once did, so they can’t make as much money from them. Hence, there’s less of a profit incentive to do good reporting. But the future of the news looks better than the future of newspapers.

In fact, the Web is a very good medium for news. It’s better than traditional forms because journalists and editors can mix different media in different ways to target different users and uses, and because distribution is so easy. (Great so long as we don’t hit the delete button much. The Web makes the news easier to disseminate, yes, but also easier to erase.)

The question is really who gets paid to do it? And the answer, unless a miracle happens and someone figures out how to make people pay for the news again, is non-profit outfits for the public good.

That will most certainly include institutions modeled like private American universities—or even the universities themselves—taking the reigns from for-profit outfits. Americans are a) a little paranoid about state-run media, and b) very, very good at mobilizing private wealth for public good (not to mention mobilizing private wealth for public bad).

And, there will be a major place for public broadcasting. Except, it will be video and text and still photographs and documents and interactive applications via the Internet, paid for through taxes or some universal fee.

So the CBC won’t just be leading the way because it’s so good at delivering the news. The CBC will be in the driver’s seat because it will have to be. The news is too valuable, and the public—and their conscientious advocates—will demand it. While the profit motive disintegrates, the public motive only grows stronger.

My CBC wishlist | 09.10.16

The following things at the CBC would make me happier:

The Border is re-launched without the melodrama, dumbed-down writing and poor acting. Basically, they’ll switch to the old concept, cast and writers. And to the old title: Intelligence.

On the absolutely last episode of Being Erica (broadcast tomorrow), Erica finds out she is cousins with Osama bin Laden AND granddaughter of Robert Mugabe, thus destroying her relatability with the target demographic of bored, vacuous women aged 18-35. Having lost all her friends because of her terrorist ties, she spends the last 40 minutes of the series in front of the TV watching basketball and fixing up her resume. All episodes are banished from Canada and sold entirely to the Netherlands, where the show is inexplicably popular.

The Battle of the Blades moves to Fox, and turns into an actual battle involving blades. New competitors include Tom DeLay.

If—and only if—she promises to never do Celine Dion again, give Jessica Holmes her own show, this time targeted to a demographic under 70. End.