Taras/Waddell: The End of the CBC?

by David Taras, Christopher Waddell

The End of the CBC? is about three overlapping crises: the crisis that has enveloped the CBC, the crisis of news, and the crisis of democracy. The emergence of platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Netflix, the hyper-targeting of individual users through data analytics, the development of narrow online identity communities, and the rise of an attention economy have changed the media landscape in dramatic ways. Describing the failure of successive governments to address problems faced by the public broadcaster, this book explains how the CBC lost its place in sports, drama, and entertainment. Taras and Waddell propose a way forward for the CBC - one in which the corporation concentrates its resources on news and current affairs and re-establishes a reputation for depth and quality.

240 pages, Paperback

Published February 18, 2020

About the author

David Taras was professor in Communication Studies and Ralph Klein chair in Media Studies at Mount Royal University. He was co-editor of Orange Chinook: Politics in the New Alberta. Through a distinguished career, David was a respected scholar, public intellectual, and generous mentor.

Reviews

[Julian Dunn]

I worked at the CBC for eight years of my career (between 2003-2011), and that was probably about five or six years too long. I was young, and had I been more aware of the fact that the management dysfunction inside the CBC directly correlated to macro-level, existential issues facing the CBC and its place in Canadian society, I would have pulled the rip cord earlier. As I matured, I came to understand these things, and Taras & Waddell do a great job explaining to Canadians the substantial headwinds facing the CBC. 13 years after I left, the CBC is in even more of a precarious position: irrelevant to the majority of Canadians, given the massively fragmented media universe in Canada.

Taras and Waddell are (as might be expected, given their background) incredible researchers and writers, and provide a clear point of view on where the CBC needs to go if it is to survive. Unfortunately, the odds are long on this, as most of the media universe in Canada has passed the CBC by. The CBC is hamstrung by both an impractical mission (a Broadcasting Act that was issued in 1991, when Microsoft Windows didn't really even exist, much less the World Wide Web) and a poor governance framework that incentivizes political meddling (an annual, politicized appropriation from the federal government that makes up the bulk of its revenue; a board whose composition is a result of political patronage appointments; the CEO of the corporation being a political appointee rather than being appointed by the board). Even if management was halfway competent at developing a good strategy that focuses the remaining husk of the CBC on one or two areas where they can still win and not always looking over its shoulders at whether they are going to piss off the party in power (a terrible place for a public broadcaster to be in), there is no way they could execute on such a strategy without violating some tenet of the Broadcasting Act to howls of anguish from some corner of the country. The CBC is mandated by the Act to "peanut butter" its resources across dozens of categories of content and do nothing well.

Given that governments worldwide, including the Canadian federal government, seem to have abdicated their responsibilities to build and maintain strong institutions (and then are shocked, SHOCKED, I TELL YOU! when the population questions the value of democracy) there is no lifeline coming for the CBC. It is doomed. Now, will it completely disappear within the foreseeable future? No, because the government needs to at least pay lip service to the need for a public broadcaster. It will limp along as an entity, but probably what will happen to it is something along the lines of what happened to Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), another once-great organization that is nominally still a Crown corporation but is now, for all practical purposes, an operating subsidiary of SNC-Lavalin. So it will go for the CBC.

One of the reasons I left Canada is because governments at all levels were ultimately conservative in nature, regardless of the nameplate of the party in office. (You could reasonably regard this conservatism as representative of the mindset of Canadians generally: the New Democratic Party is not conservative, but has not and never will win power in Canada.) Canadian governments were very good at instructing the civil service to study problems and write lengthy reports about what should be done but then doing absolutely nothing to execute on those well-researched reports, i.e. doing the hard work of actually governing. (Or worse still, doing the opposite of what was recommended.) The only time I ever saw Canadian governments acting quickly was to destroy things (like the Stephen Harper Conservatives). Ironically, maybe that's what they should have done to the CBC while they were in power. If no government, "Liberal" nor "Conservative", actually has the motivation to fix the CBC, then perhaps the merciful thing to do is to shoot it in the head quickly, rather than leaving it to suffer and die slowly.

[Sam]

Excellent comprehensive analysis of the atrophy of one of our public institutions. A strong plan and recommendations for how to improve the network going forward. The tremendous political scholar, David Taras (rip), is prescient. He should be read nation wide.

[J Earl]

The End of the CBC? by David Taras and Christopher Waddell was a very informative read that educated me about the history of the CBC as well as its current plight.

I'll preface my comments with the statement that I am not Canadian so my opinions are based largely on this book and the questions I asked my housemate (who is Canadian). I have no doubt that someone with memories of the CBC as well as being from the country will have more nuanced views than I do.

I was a little surprised at just how much I enjoyed learning about both the CBC and broadcast programming in general in Canada. I won't go into detail on the plight but the current state of affairs for the CBC is not good as far as future prospects. I saw one reviewer who thought the book was overly critical of the CBC. My perception isn't that the writers were overly critical of the CBC so much as they present statistics and research that illustrate the precarious position the broadcaster finds itself in. But that, to me, is different from simply being overly critical.

Like many broadcasters globally there are a lot of challenges facing the CBC. Couple those with the additional mandates under which the CBC has to operate, it is no wonder that it is near a make or break decision about its future.

I like the suggestion they come up with, which is to take the limited funding they have and focus it more narrowly on an area where they have both a foothold and a reasonable chance to thrive. That area is news and journalism. Not clickbait, not sensationalism, but thoughtful and comprehensive journalism. Where a lot of the news that people get have no or very little Canadian perspective, doing this would offer the citizens a reliable source for Canadian perspective on global stories while also serving as a rational location for political, cultural, and societal debate and investigative journalism. With the tendency for private news sources to lean too far in a direction, the CBC could offer voices from across the spectrum.

I recommend this to any Canadians who have an interest in the future of the CBC. I also think some of the issues facing the CBC are the same ones affecting broadcasting and news everywhere, so readers who want to get additional perspective on both what is happening and the types of things that can be done in response should get something from the book as well.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Sayo -bibliotequeish-]

I felt as though this was an overly critical look at the CBC.

With broad comments like the network not having a hit comedy for "at least a decade", completely ignoring the success of the Emmy nominated comedy "Shitt's Creek". Briefly mentioning the show only to say that Canadians couldn't identify the lead actors.

This book read like a long biased wikipedia article

[Stephanie Cook]

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I found this book to be very informing. It was a great read! I may be American and this book involves Canada, but I believe that it can relate to everybody around the world.

[Pavan Singh]

Check out our Books in 5 review of The End of the CBC!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysj0t...

[Myla]

This book was incredibly informative but a tad dry.

[Sayo -bibliotequeish-]

I felt as though this was an overly critical look at the CBC.
With broad comments like the network not having a hit comedy for "at least a decade", completely ignoring the success of the Emmy nominated comedy "Shitt's Creek". Briefly mentioning the show only to say that Canadians couldn't identify the lead actors.
This book read like a long biased wikipedia article