Speeches and Interviews

December 17, 1998

New Media, New CBC

To the Metropolitan Halifax Chamber of Commerce — Perrin Beatty

It is always a pleasure to be in Halifax, even if the chances are that much greater that Marg Delahunty is lurking somewhere in the audience, poised to rattle the china with her sly wit. As each of you knows, Nova Scotia has provided the CBC, and the country, with a rich and continuous source of creative talent over the years — from Don Messer's Jubilee to the Salter Street cast of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, from Anne Murray and Rita MacNeil to Ashley MacIsaac, the Rankins and The Barra Macneils, to name just a few.

These Canadian artists are part of a deep pool of singers, painters, writers, performers and producers who are as familiar to CBC's audiences as the enduring landmarks they celebrate. Throughout 62 years of CBC radio and television, they have carried the voice of a strong and culturally rich province to the rest of Canada. Talent and a sense of home may remain constant. But the world around us is changing at a pace that few could have predicted. The information and knowledge-based revolution that will determine Canada's place in the 21st century has already transformed this country and touched the life of every Canadian. It transcends borders, defies the familiar constraints of time and distance, and changes the way we work, live and communicate with each other.

As the world around us has changed, so has CBC. In fact, the past few years have seen more change, and change at a faster pace, than ever before in our history. It hasn't been easy, but it has been successful :

• We have survived the $400 million-dollar-a-year reductions that many people predicted would devour us. Instead of closing stations, we have opened new ones.

• We have Canadianised our English and French television schedules at the same time as we were dealing with these major cuts. We are the only broadcaster to do so and we  have demonstrated that Canadians do want to watch Canadian programs.

• We have kept our reputation as the home of quality and continue to win record numbers of awards for both our English and our French services.

• And we have set a new course for the future. I am pleased to report to you that, on Tuesday, our Board approved the set of strategic directions that we placed before it. We will be presenting those strategic directions to the CRTC when we go before them for our license renewals in the Spring.

We have rejected the call to become the broadcaster of last resort, doing only what no-one else wants to do or to pull up our regional roots and simply give the view 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 a part of their everyday lives, reflecting their interests and engaged in their communities.

You don't shrink your way to greatness. In this new world, CBC must present a constellation of services that secures its place as the cornerstone of Canadian content. On other days, to other audiences, I have talked about some of the new broadcasting services we want to offer. Today, I want to talk for a few minutes about the role Canada's public broadcaster will play as a leader in the technological revolution that has spawned the ‘new media.'

Many broadcasters recoil from the challenges posed by the Internet, the public face of developing communications technology. Not so the CBC. We see new media as a natural, indeed crucial, extension of our mandate. Our task, quite simply, is to provide Canadians with the kind of high-quality news, information and entertainment that reflects the Canadian reality, and shares our stories, in our own words, with each other and with the world. That mission has not wavered throughout our history, nor will our commitment to it in the future. What has changed is the cold, hard fact that many of the conventional tools our country has used to support and enrich its culture are fast becoming obsolete.

Regardless of how we deliver our product, a strong Canadian presence makes sense in both conventional and new media. A new CBC, however, includes specialty channels, innovative radio services, and a major presence on the Internet — the integrated elements of a constellation of services that allows us to satisfy our established audiences and reach out to the generations that follow. As leaders of the business community, you know the drill. To do that, we must be prepared to offer content and services that Canadians want, when they want them and where they want to find them.

At the same time, we are aware that Canadians expect CBC to uphold the four cardinal points that guide all our activities as a public broadcaster: service, choice, high-quality Canadian content and innovation. The development of new media only enhances those commitments.

This is not something we plan to start in some distant future. No one, least of all CBC, can afford to dither on the sidelines. Four years ago, the CBC launched its first Web presence — cbc.ca and radio-canada.ca — because we realized we would fall behind if we refused or failed to evolve alongside our audiences, stake out new shelf space and push the creative envelope. In 1996, the CBC was the first national public broadcaster to offer 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 every day.

CBC's new media content is much more than spillover from our broadcast services. Much of it is uniquely designed programming for the Web and for satellite, material that Canadians could not get anywhere else. Galaxie, a 24-hour spotlight on Canadian talent, is a 30-channel audiomusic satellite service, free of commercials or any spoken word. CBC4Kids, our unique information, games and quiz site for 8 to 13 year-olds, recently won a coveted Yahoo excellence award for features that include links to the acclaimed series of Pingu and, of course, Andrew Cochran's Theodore Tugboat.

To many Canadians, CBC is synonymous with news. That's a reputation we are proud of — and plan to keep in our transition to new media. 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 across the country and abroad can tap into Radio-Canada's rich reservoir of news, information and entertainment on our French language site. And last month, I presided over a major relaunch of our cbc.ca site with an integrated news site — CBC Online — a one-stop navigation take-off point for all our news services, with additional content prepared by a new staff of eight journalists who specialize in Internet
technology.

New media is not a sideline. It is a core function, a necessary one, for Canada's public broadcaster. That's why we have also created a new position of executive director of new media. Nor are we shy about reporting about ourselves. Canadians have a right, and a responsibility, to know what goes on behind the cameras and the microphones. Our sites include the full annual report, CRTC submissions, press releases, speeches and a discussion forum.

Strategic partnerships outside the Corporation allow us to broaden our scope even further. Canada's only national on-line arts magazine, Infoculture, for example, supports over 500 audio-visual streams and draws daily arts comment, reviews, schedules and information from more than 20 arts reporters and at least 300 collaborating arts organizations across the country. Earlier this month, CBC forged a partnership with CultureNet, Canada's web window on Canadian culture, that strengths the site even more with joint links and content exchanges in both official languages.

Partnerships that enhanced our up-to-the-minute, riding-by-riding coverage of 1997 federal election and the Olympic Games in Atlanta and Nagano taught us an important lesson: not only must CBC become more entrepreneurial and supple in this new environment, we must also seek out and develop projects with like-minded partners. There's no need to go it alone.

Cutbacks and restraint have made us leaner, but they did not cloud our vision. 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.

As business leaders, you might well ask: what about the bottom line? Why is it important for CBC, a public broadcaster funded from the public purse, to aggressively pursue a brand new market already dominated by multinational media giants like Microsoft and America on Line, in a field where other broadcasters tread lightly, if at all?

One compelling reason is that new media is not a fashion trend or a marketing ploy that is going to fade away or disappear once the novelty has worn away. We have to capture our piece of the Web early and invest for the long-term future. We need to be there if we want to get full value for the investment taxpayers have already made in our content. And unlike many private broadcasters who are ruled by short-term priorities and revenue gains, the CBC can take a longer view of what audiences want.

Consider how massive the playing field and the stakes involved actually are. Canadians are among the world's most advanced users of personal computers and the Internet. Typically, we are unafraid to try out new products and relish being ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting new developments in technology. Our research and science community embraced the Internet as a useful information tool when it was first introduced in the 1960s, just as more and more Canadian businesses and households have turned to the consumer-friendly World Wide Web as it revolutionized the communications industry in 1991.

Some of you might have seen a Wall Street Journal article describing how an Inuit-owned company, Nunanet Communications Inc., is developing a growing business as an Internet service provider in the Canadian arctic. According to the Journal, "many Inuit who follow traditional customs find even they need the Net. In Clyde River, hunting and fishing guide Levi Palituk, 33, hunts seals the traditional way — with teams of dogs, who sniff out the seals through their breathing holes in the ice. He says he doesn't intend to buy a computer any time soon because he has heard that ‘computers are going to crash in the year 2000.'"

"Yet Mr. Palituk uses the Internet, publicising his business via a Web site. Nunanet maintains the site and sends him his electronic-mail messages by fax. Having a Web site is ‘the only way to be competitive,' Mr. Palituk says."

It isn't a phenomenon that is limited to the far north. 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 media research studies ever undertaken in Canada. 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 a staggering 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 leaders of the Nova Scotia business community, 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 5 percentage points a year in its early growth period.

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.

'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.

The birth of one medium, especially one as powerful and all encompassing as new media, does not necessarily herald 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.

CBC is putting its name and its reputation on line because we believe that's what Canadians expect of their public broadcaster. On the Internet, as in conventional broadcasting, the CBC brand is recognized for its quality, credibility and its celebration of Canadian values. But in a multi-channel universe, Canadians are demanding new services and greater choice. Broadcasters and policy makers can no longer assume that captive audiences will accept whatever programmers offer. Audiences are insisting upon content choices that interest them, at times that are convenient to them. In practical terms, this means getting the latest local Halifax news, as it happens, while in either Paris, Ontario or Paris, France. It means getting The World at Six at three in the afternoon if you happen to be in Vancouver.

For the first time, audiences, and not the media companies are in control. This empowered consumer is hardly threatening. To the contrary, we may well be entering the most creative, most stimulating — and certainly the most innovative — period in broadcast history. We can either resist the future or we can embrace it. We certainly can't stop it.

As any good business would do, the CBC has chosen an aggressive approach to the future. Four years ago, the prospects for Canada's valued public broadcasting system were rather bleak. We have come through hard times, made the adjustments required for our very survival.
Having made those changes, for the first time in a decade and a half, we base our plans on our opportunities, not on our limitations. And what opportunities they are.

A critical series of hearings before the CRTC will lay the groundwork for CBC's future. The regulator's Television Policy Review has examined the entire structure of the television system — a system that CBC contends must provide high-quality, easily accessible, well-promoted and thematically Canadian programming. As well, the CBC has applied for four French-language specialty channels to capitalize on a wealth of material that lies untapped. Importantly, the CRTC's review of new media in Canada has heard from a number of intervenors, including the CBC, that new media in its developing stages must not be fettered with regulations or legislation that will stifle its growth. In the Spring, the CRTC will review the full CBC portfolio in an unprecedented hearing of all of 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 — all at once.

No one knows for sure what the next five years will bring. But we do not have either the luxury or the desire to be shortsighted or hesitant. What we are asking of the government, and the CRTC, is not what most people would perhaps expect of a federally funded organization — Please write us a cheque, restrain our competition, give us a monopoly.

That's not what we seek. What we are asking, simply, is to untie our hands, allow us to change and keep pace with the audience we are serving, become more modern. Only then can we achieve maximum value out of every investment — and the full worth of every penny of Canadians' hard-earned tax dollars.