LILLEY: CBC wants to be a digital streamer; good, we can stop the subsidy

CBC has announced they plan on transforming into a digital streaming service. Good, can we please stop subsidizing them now?

We don’t subsidize Netflix, Prime or Disney Plus, services that Canadians actually watch, so why would we subsidize CBC as a digital subscription service?

“If we’re going to be audience first, we have to be digital first,” CBC President and CEO Catherine Tait told the Globe and Mail in an extensive interview.

Tait said they need to make the change “in order to remain relevant.”

Let’s be clear: CBC hasn’t been relevant to Canadians for years. Their shows rarely — if ever — appeared in the top 30 shows that Numeris used to publish on Canadian viewing habits.

Now, they want to become a digital streaming service when one of the few valid arguments for CBC to exist is that they provided radio and television programs to rural and remote areas without other options available to them. Without that as a rationale, what reason is there for Canadians to keep subsidizing CBC?

CBC’s audited financial statements show the network receives just over $1.2 billion in direct government subsidies each year. On top of that, CBC gets preferential treatment on the distribution and payment for specialty cable channels like CBC News Network, or it’s French equivalent.

The CRTC, the government broadcast regulator, not only requires that those channels be carried by every cable and satellite service in Canada, but insists that the CBC gets a higher fee per subscriber than their private competitors. That nice little, cozy arrangement netted CBC an extra $122 million in mandatory subscriber fees last year.

In addition, the CBC is the biggest recipient of funding from other government or government-mandated funding pools, like the Canadian Media Fund. Add all that up and suddenly CBC is getting a $1.5 billion head start on its competition.

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They also sell advertising, not only on TV but also online, where they compete with every single newspaper in the country with an unfair advantage. Now, CBC wants to use that unfair advantage, their $1.5 billion head start, to transform into a digital streaming service.

It’s time to shut this down.

Whatever reason there was for CBC to exist, it’s gone now. They produce shows Canadians don’t watch and radio few hear outside of urban centres, where they cater to a downtown left-wing agenda.

Doug Fisher, the late, great Toronto Sun columnist, was once a young CCF MP from Thunder Bay who had no time for the CBC. Appearing on their airwaves in 1964, Fisher said that CBC suffered from “Metropolitanism.”

“That is an over dominance of things in Montreal and Toronto and the particular atmosphere there,” Fisher said. “CBC isn’t really Canadian in the widest sense, it’s a special kind of Toronto.”

Fisher’s words are still true almost 60 years later; CBC is about satisfying specific urban, progressive groups, not broadcasting for all Canadians. That shows up in their programming now as it did then, especially in their news coverage.

Their flagship news program is the third most watched national news program in a three-horse race and has been for a long time.

So, as their competitors struggle with the always ongoing digital transformation, CBC remains immune thanks to its $1.5 billion head start and now, they will use that money to fund their transition.

I’ve been calling for CBC’s wings to be clipped for some time, but the Harper government wouldn’t do it and the Trudeau government only looks for ways to give them more money. One day, CBC may be the only media company left in Canada, funded by subsidies, paid for in part by the private sector companies it helped kill off.