Speeches and Interviews

January 26, 1999

Our Commitment to Canadians: A New CBC in a New Environment

Presentation to the Vancouver Chamber of Commerce — Perrin Beatty

On a trip to Victoria last September, I was greeted by the sight of hundreds of lawn signs. To a former politician like me, lawn signs in British Columbia on a Fall afternoon usually mean one thing — an election in the offing. During an election, of course, coveted lawn signs are rarely in singular support for even the most popular candidate or political party. On this occasion, however, there were no politicians and no elections. Better still, even the lawn signs heralded good news. Each of them celebrated the opening of CBC's newest addition: a long-awaited service for the only provincial capital in Canada without its own local CBC radio.

Residents of Victoria were delighted to have a public vehicle to express and to hear their own distinctive voice — a radio service that the CBC provides in both English and French to 50 communities throughout Canada. The signs they placed in their front yards were more than a warm welcome. They were visible proof that the rough road Canada's national public broadcaster has traveled the last four years has finally turned.

Indeed in relative terms, the CBC is experiencing a positive reversal of fortune. We aren't rich, and we will never have all the money we would need to do everything we would like. But our emergence from an era of unprecedented cutbacks and massive reorganization allows me to talk, with pleasure, about the opportunities before us, as well as about the challenges the Corporation has met — and is prepared to meet — on the cup of a new century.

This change has not happened overnight. Nor has it been easy. So much focus has been on the size and nature of our budget reductions alone, that it can obscure the long list of changes and accomplishments during this four-year period of financial and structural renewal. Not one of those changes is insignificant for a corporation that has persevered, in all of its embattled and celebrated complexity, as a Canadian icon for more than six decades.

We have survived the reduction of $414 million a year that even our staunchest supporters feared would devour us. Instead of closing stations, we opened new ones. Instead of reducing services, we extended them — including a 24-hour broadcast day for Radio One, as well as services to French-speaking communities in New Brunswick, and to Newfoundland.

In the course of reorganizing, the CBC rebuilt and renewed its management team. I cut the number of vice-presidents from 13 to seven and reduced our head office by 60%, selling our Ottawa headquarters and consolidating our staff into existing production facilities.

While dealing with major cuts, we enriched the Canadian content of our English and French television schedules. With 3,000 fewer people on our payroll, we now broadcast more hours of Canadian content than ever before. And we took great care to preserve the quality that Canadians expect from their public broadcaster.

In fact, just last Fall the CBC won a total of 38 Geminis — the closest private broadcaster won seven — and 47 Gemeaux, more than any other network. In the latest audience performance rating, we ranked seven shows in the top 10 Canadian entertainment shows on French television. In the same category for English television, CBC clinched eight of 10 shows. One of those top-rated programs was launched with huge sucess only last Fall — the critically acclaimed Da Vinci's Inquest, shot in and featuring an unmistakable location familiar to you all.

There is a rich pool of talent in Canada and we want to keep it here. That talent base includes groups such as Theatresports, an infamous Vancouver improvisation troupe, as well as quality independent production companies the likes of the Vancouver-based Forefront Productions. Put those two groups together and you have yet another candidate for the Top 10. CBC is doing just that, with the launch March 6 of 11th Hour, a sketch comedy series that takes a gentle poke at life on Canada's west coast.

Canadians for the most part like what we are doing — and want us to do more. In a recent CRTC survey, more than 75% of respondents said that the CBC is fulfilling its mandate very well or well, that is, providing a place where Canadians can turn, with confidence, to hear and watch high-calibre stories about themselves.

Perhaps more importantly, we have rejected the call to become the broadcaster of last resort, doing only what no one else wants to do. We refuse to pull up our regional roots and simply give a snapshot of Canada as seen from the CN Tower in Toronto or Mount Royal in Montreal. If we are to remain relevant to Canadians, we have to be an essential part of their everyday lives, reflecting their interests and engaged in their communities.

To do that, the CBC must be ready to keep pace with the audience we serve. We must strive, with untied hands, to become more modern. For that reason, one of the most important — and personally satisfying — accomplishments of the last four years is our bold new foray into the midst of the technological revolution that has spawned the new media.

When I served as Minister of Communications in the federal government just a few years ago, laptops were a luxury and the World Wide Web a mere infant. Today, we live in a world of digital technology; of a whole world just a click of a key away; of fibre optic wizardry capable of downloading a three-hour movie in one-fifth of a second; and of satellites that unleash a multitude of channels. To succeed in this new world, CBC must present a constellation of services that secures its place as the cornerstone of Canadian content.

As leaders of the business community, you are well aware that there is no standing still: you move forward or you are swept aside by change. CBC's intention is to be nothing less than the premiere Canadian site for Canadian news and culture on the Web. Achieving that goal requires a fresh assessment of every aspect of our operation. It means turning the gateway we've entered into a core function — an integral and complementary addition to the CBC brand that is recognized for its quality, credibility and Canadian values.

Earlier this month, our Board approved a set of strategic directions that charts our course for the next five years. We will present those strategic directions to the CRTC when we go before them in a review of the full CBC portfolio at licence renewal hearings in the Spring.

But what about the bottom line? Why is it important for CBC, a public broadcaster funded from the public purse, to aggressively pursue a turbulent market already dominated by multinational giants like Microsoft and America On Line? Part of the answer lies in the question itself. First, new media is not a marketing ploy that will fade once the novelty has worn away. Even in its earliest stages, new media represented the way to the future — and the way of big business. Think then of this: both Microsoft and America On Line are US-based conglomerates that are neither asked, nor expected, to meet the needs of Canadians on anything other than a commercial basis.

A strong Canadian presence makes sense in both conventional and new media. It makes sense for both business and cultural reasons. Regardless of how we deliver the product, a new CBC must include specialty channels, innovative radio services, and a major presence of the Internet. It must be an integrated entity, a constellation of services that allows us to satisfy our established audiences and reach out to the generations that follow. We must be prepared to offer content and services that Canadians want, when they want them and where they want to find them.

When you think of it, that pretty much describes the kind of planning any smart business employs to satisfy its clientele and expand its markets. We need to push the creative envelope if we want to get full value for the investments Canadian taxpayers have already made on our content.

Four years ago, we debuted on the Web — cbc.ca and radio-canada.ca — the first broadcaster to pursue significant new shelf space. In 1996, the CBC was the first national braodcaster in the world to offer Real Audio on the Web, with live streaming of CBC Radio One and Two. In addition to offering about 50,000 pages of Web content, we now provide more streaming audio and video than any other site in Canada — some 7,000 hours are downloaded everyday. By staking out a piece of the Web in its earliest days, we have already laid the groundwork to carry us into the next millennium.

Some of that new media content, of course, is lifted with little expense from our conventional broadcast services. But much of it is uniquely designed programming for the Web and for satellite, material Canadians could not get anywhere else. Galaxie, a 24-hour spotlight on Canadian talent, is a 30-channel digital music service, free of commercials or any spoken word. CBC4Kids, our unique information, games and quiz site for eight-to 13-year-olds, recently won a Yahoo excellence award for features that include links to acclaimed Canadian-made series such as Theodore Tugboat.

Strategic partnerships outside the Corporation broaden our reach and our scope even further. By teaming up with like-minded partners, CBC was able to enhance our up-to-the-minute, riding-by-riding coverage of the 1997 federal election and the Olympic Games in Atlanta and Nagano. Those experiences gave us the depth and the breadth that were otherwise impossible to achieve. Canada's only national on-line arts magazine, Infoculture, for example, supports more than 500 audio-visual streams and draws daily arts comments, reviews, schedules and information from more than 20 arts reporters and at least 300 collaborating arts organizations across the country. A partnership with CultureNet, Canada's web window on Canadian culture, strengthens the CBC site even more with joint links and content exchanges in both official languages.

With good reason, many Canadians think of the CBC and think of news. We are proud of that reputation — and plan to keep it in our transition to new media. Our integrated web site — CBC News Online — is a one-stop navigation take-off point for all of our news services, with additional content prepared by a staff of eight journalists who work exclusively for CBC News Online. Newsworld's popular site provides in-depth news analysis, a context section and an e-mail bulletin service that delivers national and international news three times daily. Francophones accross the country and abroad can tap into Radio-Canada's rich reservoir of news, information and entertainment on our French-language site. And Radio-Canada International, Canada's voice overseas and a reflection of our identity to the world, maintains an Internet service in all seven of its broadcast languages.

These new media services, like the news itself, are in a state of perpetual evolution. In the weeks ahead, CBC Television British Columbia will participate as a partner in a new media literacy project, created here in Vancouver for Canadian students. And before long, British Columbians will have the latest local news and information onscreen from a BC News Web site, jointly created by CBC Radio and Television in Vancouver. These developments are not mere sidelines — they are what the new CBC is all about.

CBC is putting its name and its reputation on line because we believe Canadians expect no less of us. They are demanding more services and greater choice. In fact, for the first time, the newly empowered consumer is the boss. Broadcasters and policy makers can no longer assume that captive audiences will accept whatever programmers offer. Audiences insist upon content choices that interest them, at times that are convenient to them. In practical terms, that means getting the latest news from British Columbia, when it happens, wherever you are. That also means, by the way, being able to get The World at Six at three in the afternoon in Vancouver.

We can embrace the future or sit in the sidelines and be swept away by it. We certainly cannot stop it — it's already here. By mid-1998, an estimated 40% of Canadian households had personal computers. Recently, CBC Research and Nielsen Media Research conducted a survey of 3,000 Canadians, in one of the highest quality electronic studies ever undertaken in this country. The result, contained in the Canadian Media Quality Ratings Survey, reveals the explosive potential of new media. Twenty-three per cent of Canadian adults were hooked up to an Internet Service Provider in mid-1998, a dramatic increase of 77% over 1997. Overall, a total of 39% of Canadian adults personally used the Internet at some time by mid-1998 — a figure our survey predicts will reach 50% in 1999.

In the near future, Canadians will be able to download Internet data to wireless, hand-held devices. When that happens, the Internet is likely to become as pervasive and powerful — and as easy to access — as radio.

More telling, Internet access among select demographic groups is nearly universal. As many as 80% of Canadian students, for example, have access to the Internet for academic as well as personal use. As business leaders, you know how important the Internet and the Web have become for consumers and businesses alike. The Nielsen/CBC survey shows that 75% of managers and professionals employ the Internet to develop and market their products and services. Home subscriptions to Internet servers have increased from 13% in 1997 to 23% at the same time in 1998. Compare that to cable TV, a comparable telecommunications service, which never increased its penetration by more than five percentage points a year in its early growth period.

The birth of one medium, even one as powerful and all encompassing as new media, does not necessarily mean the death of the old. Canada's success in providing jobs in an information-based global economy, and perhaps even its ability to maintain itself as an independent country, will depend on how well this country balances the new and the old. But there is no turning back. While it may be tempting to drive into the future looking into the rearview mirror, trying to recreate a comfortable past, we would be better advised to concentrate on what lies ahead of us.

It is simply good business sense in a global cultural battle to build a strong Canadian presence in both conventional and new media. At CBC we've found that, instead of cannibalizing each other, the seemingly parallel universes can strengthen each other through cross-promotion, more efficient use of resources and creative synergy.

Ultimately, being on the Web, or for that matter in specialty television, is all about being distinctive and available. Sure, our competitors today are multinational conglomerates. We can no longer keep them out through regulation, especially not in the freewheeling environment of new media. But what we can and must do is build our own constellation of services that offer our audiences content, specifically Canadian content, and services they can't find anywhere else.

In an auspicious coincidence, perhaps, the CRTC is concluding an exhaustive examination of the entire structure of the Canadian television system. At the regulator's critical series of hearings last year, the CBC argued that such a system must provide high-quality, easily accessible, well-promoted and thematically Canadian programming. We argued forcefully that new media must not be constrained in its developing stages by stiffling regulations or legislation.

Ìn the Spring, the CRTC will review the full CBC portfolio in an unprecedented hearing of all our licence renewal applications — English and French Television Networks, our 24 owned and operated television stations, Newsworld, RDI, and our English and French Radio Networks — the entire CBC shop. That review includes a cross-country public consultation, beginning in March, to hear what Canadians in key centres, including Vancouver, want and expect from the CBC. This is a very open and public process which will allow both the CRTC and the CBC to hear the voices of ordinary Canadians, not just the usual industry intervenors in a series of hearings in Ottawa. I hope and expect that many here today might participate.

Far from recoiling from the challenges ahead of us, the CBC sees the beginning of what may well be the most creative, most stimulating — and certainly the most innovative — period in broadcast history. We have a clear sense of where we want to go. We have reorganized, rethought and renewed our very structure at all levels, but we have not forgotten our reason for being.

Canadians want value for the hard-earned tax dollars spent every year in support of their national public broadcaster. They want to turn on their televisions, their radios or their computers and be guaranteed they will be entertained or informed with superior products they not only trust but are proud of. Above all, they want the CBC to grow alongside them — reflecting their lives, leading them to new and invigorating places and ideas. And that, quite simply, is what CBC wants for itself.