Speeches and Interviews

February 3, 2005

Speaking Notes for Sylvain Lafrance to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage

Speaking Notes for Sylvain Lafrance, Vice-President, Radio de Radio-Canada and New Media, to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, Ottawa

(Check against delivery)

Madam Chairwoman, ladies and gentlemen,

I'm proud to speak to you today about public radio in Canada. Firmly rooted in our communities, Radio de Radio-Canada includes some 20 stations or regional production centres and 14 news bureaus around the country. It represents the most comprehensive French-language news network in Canada and is the only public radio service in French in the world to broadcast over the air across an entire continent.

With over one million listeners, our radio service has attracted record audiences. The latest ratings testify to this incredible success. Overall, Radio de Radio-Canada now has a 15.7% audience share. The fall 2004 results were Radio de Radio-Canada's best-ever in terms of reach and audience share, both for the première chaîne, which continues its upward trend with a 2% increase in listenership, as well as for our new music network, espace musique, whose audience jumped 43% compared to fall 2003.

And we have more than just quantitative data. I can also assure you that the qualitative studies conducted on our services show an increase in audience satisfaction as well.

Last may, we announced a major repositioning of our networks. Our goal was to do more for young people, more for culture, and more for music. Consequently, the hours devoted to culture on our second network were transferred to our mainstream network, which allowed us to both launch a major initiative for cultural diversity and increase listenership to our cultural programming.

We were deeply convinced that public radio is more than just a tradition. It also has to be a project: a project to improve the quality of our fellow citizens' democratic, cultural and musical life. This project may have disrupted old habits. But we now know that, as a result, we were able to both increase audiences for cultural programming, as well as get more people listening to and discovering Canadian and world music, thus reflecting the country's diverse range of musical creativity.

Première chaîne

Let's start with the première chaîne. It's Radio de Radio-Canada's main voice. Country-wide, its transmitters reach 98% of Canada's francophones over six time zones. During prime time, its programs are produced in the regions. As I've just mentioned, its programming focuses on news and culture.

On the news front, our première chaîne offers complete international, national or regional newscasts every hour, three current affairs programs a day, and four public affairs magazines each week.

The other aspect of its programming, culture in all its forms, is featured in some 20 programs produced by teams that, depending on their mandate, may explore such areas as the arts, literature, philosophy, or major trends shaping the society we live in today.

The Première chaîne proves daily that you can be a high-quality network while increasing your audience and respecting your mandate and individuality.

Espace musique

And so this past september, we launched Espace musique. This initiative is public radio's response to a major problem: the lack of musical diversity on the country's radio waves, the difficulty of getting airplay for homegrown artists, and the difficulty of hearing music of all backgrounds created today by the many ethnic communities that enrich the Canadian music scene.

With its lineup of classical music, jazz, chanson, world music and emerging artists, Espace musique is the most concerted and calculated effort in public radio's recent history to broadcast and popularize homegrown talent.

Espace musique offers a real choice to listeners and attests to the public's interest in a broader musical selection. Launched only three months ago, this venture has already met with resounding success and will continue to evolve.

We were thrilled with the bbm survey results for fall 2004, which showed that our new network now has 431,000 listeners — a 43% increase in its audience.

Canadian musicians will be among the first to benefit from this wider exposure. We can expect that, in the long run, espace musique will have a ripple effect on musical diversity, just as our première chaîne has had on news coverage.

Conclusion

Offering two public radio channels, both distinct and complementary, in French, and across the country has helped us focus on our three major areas of concern for Radio de Radio-Canada:

• Strong regional roots
• Openness to the world
• Canadian talent development.

Today, we can do more for Canadian culture, in all its forms of artistic expression and all its musical styles. Radio de Radio-Canada is more distinct than ever and more than capable of fulfilling its public service role.

Thank you for your attention. I would now like to introduce my colleague, Jane Chalmers, Vice-President, English Radio.