A Reflection on Publicly Funded Media in Canada
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The Value of CBC: A Reflection on Publicly Funded Media in Canada
Jiyaa Sidhu
McMaster University
CMST 1A03: Introduction to Communication
Dr. Dilyana Mincheva
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), which was founded as national public broadcaster of
Canada, is the key figure of the Canadian media scene. Financed by taxes levied on the public, the CBC offers numerous services involving television, radio, and streamed content. This article will be looking at the significance and contributions of having the public broadcasters such as CBC in a time in which private streaming giants like Netflix are the leaders. It covers the issues for and against the public financing of CBC, touching on the role and benefits of CBC to Canada, CBC’s challenges of popularity and relevance, and why CBC can never beat Netflix.
CBC fulfils an important role by being the primary means for preserving and developing the Canadian identity and culture. The CBC through the production of content reflecting Canada’s diversity and dual nature, plays an unspeakable role in keeping a nation geographically large and culturally diverse intact. The Corporation's mission to promote, educate, and entertain ensures that it cater its programming to the needs and interests of the country. Indeed, television's
initial function was not only commercial in nature. While commercial companies are driven by the market demand for the products which maximize their profitability, CBC has a mandate to provide informative and educational content. It is composed of detailed news reporting, documentaries that depict our history, politics, and culture, thereby molding a well-informed society (House of Commons, 2008). CBC offers Canadian artists, writers, and creators a medium
where they can have their works displayed and this reduces the chances of the market getting saturated with the American made films. This support is indispensable not only for nurturing the Canadian entertainment industry, but also for the purpose of seeing through Canadian filmmaking visions (Oberman, 2019). Although the opponents claim that the CBC is not skilful in competing for ad dollars with the private broadcasters, particularly concerning its online
content, this does not stop the broadcaster in pushing the limits further towards the top (Ahearn, 2021). Therefore, competition between networks and internet streaming services is viewed as impeding the range of private Canadian media organizations’ development. With the widespread typification of the international offerings through online streaming platforms such as Netflix, CBC and other public networks become more and more in demand among the Canadian viewers. The possibility of the government to influence CBC while the latter as an organization is funded by government concerns many people. The question arises that this may generate partisan media or news that is aligned to the current government interests (Kline, 2023). The opposite effect would be that news reporting is in over this media platform and makes the independent journalism unstable. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is extremely important in promoting Canadian culture and identity, it is a way of representing country's multicultural aspect and duality. While it has overcome the obstacle of not being one of the global champions of online streaming and facing serious competition from well-known giants like Netflix, it has still managed to endure. The CBC’s programming budget is in a difficult situation simply because the media production costs are increasing, ad revenue is declining from television, and competition from digital platforms is growing, which have fewer series renewals and new series and it has a poorly impact over the viewership base of the CBC.
Additionally, the way the CBC's programming works, centered around its public mandate, differs from the usual coverage of Netflix. Whilst the CBC endeavours to inform, enlighten, and educate individuals in a manner that is distinctly Canadian, Netflix provides services on subscription-based schemes, without such civil mandates that enable it to opt for a wider, more commercially driven content base. This makes Netflix a subscription-based model
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which is free from any such mandates and subsequently; it has a wider, more professionally oriented art selection. This business model has allowed Netflix to attain numbers as high as 41%,
in terms of subscribers in Canada in 2015, which can also help emphasis the firm's established presence in the Canadian media landscape and the viewers' attraction, particularly for the 96% of
YouTube users under the age of 35 (Heydari, 2024). Participation in co-productions with national
public TV channels like the BBC is among the strategic approaches by CBC that reveals the platform’s devotion to working together rather than competing against global streaming services. This kind of collaborations aspires at making the most of available talents and producing content,
whether nationally or internationally, that can people related to. In the face of these attempts, there is a question of the “locking” of users’ behavior once they have screened and watched Netflix as a service that gives them the chance to see many special programs and movies that the Canadian public can access them without the same use of broadcasting regulatory environment as that which the traditional TV networks use (Joonas, 2023). Hence, with CBC being essentially
the center of Canadian culture and public service broadcasting, its capacity to accommodate both
the reach and diversity of Netflix is limited by the fact that its nature itself is conversant with the terms of its mandate, financial constraints, and the shifting media consumption environment.
Furthermore, from the statistical point of view, while the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is becoming a valuable instrument in promoting Canadian culture and public service broadcasting, it is difficult for it to compete with Netflix in terms of popularity and number of other contents. Netflix initial and current spending budget for content making and acquisition is many times greater CBC. In 2021 alone, Netflix estimated to have spent more than $17 billion on content, which certainly compares to the CAD 1.2 billion that were placed on
CBC by the government for the fiscal year of 2020-2021 (CBC/Radio-Canada, 2020; Shaw, 2021). The massive financial superiority of Netflix enables it to produce and publish an enormous storehouse of shows and films addressing a cross section of viewers worldwide, covering different genres, languages, and tastes. Netflix strategy which relies on the subscription model with which it can continually invest in new content without having to rely on ads as the source of revenue or the need to be accountable to their audiences as in the case with public broadcasters. This model is paving the way to for the making of original high-grade content which has resonated favorably with the critics and has an unbelievably growing number of loyal viewers across the globe. On the other hand, the objectives of CBC, which include supporting the
national content and culture; are fundamentals for the national identity and thus its programming must meet the cultural and educational criteria, which can become the limiting factor for the audiences around the mass (CBC/Radio Canada, 2020). The data on audience demographics prove that young adults are more attracted to this platform. For example, Netflix recorded a global subscriber base of over 221 million at the end of 2021, and a large fraction of them are from Canada (Netflix, 2022). At the same time, CBC's audience expanse, though remarkable in Canada, is less than Netflix's, which receives an international attention. The digital transition in people’s behaviors towards viewing content further adds to the complexity of this issue, as well as the fact that more viewers prefer the benefits of streaming services such as convenience and variety than that from broadcasted content as per a survey done by Statista in 2021. As can be observed, the structural, financial, and strategic confines of CBC that are caused by the differences in their models with that of Netflix consequently render CBC tedious in competing with the latter on a global level. The CBC is key component in national media landscape, but it is
hard to neglect the external market factors and the preferences of consumers, where Netflix is ruling the play now.
The debate over the value of CBC in the modern Canadian media landscape is multifaceted, encompassing issues of national identity, public service, and competition in the digital age. While the CBC provides an important component to Canadian culture and society’s well-being, it is also confronted with the hurdles of staying relevant and feasible. These challenges need to be tackled judiciously, that is, realizing the role of public media in spurring informed and unified society as while modifying to the changing media consumption patterns of the Canadians.
References:
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Ahearn, V. (2021, January 19). Private Broadcasters’ Group argues CBC is disrupting the market by selling ads | CBC news
. CBCnews. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/crtc-
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Government of Canada, C. R. and T. C. (CRTC). (2022, December 22). Broadcasting decision CRTC 2022-165 and broadcasting orders CRTC 2022-166 and 2022-167
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Government of Canada, C. R. and T. C. (CRTC). (2023, September 29). Broadcasting regulatory
policy CRTC 2023-331 and broadcasting order CRTC 2023-332
. CRTC. https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2023/2023-331.htm
Heydari, A. (2024, January 24). Netflix reports the money is rolling in - and so are advertisements for Canadian subscribers | CBC News
. CBCnews. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/netflix-results-q4-adfree-plan-gone-1.7093595
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Kline, J. (2023, April 17). CBC offended to learn it is funded by the Government . National Post. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/cbc-offended-to-learn-it-is-funded-by-the-government
Oberman, J. (2019, June 1). Canadian cultural nationalism: A casualty of Netflix
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