The CBC of the Future

[lead] Finding its place in the digital age[/lead]

Hockey, politeness, quaffing Tim’s, and a smug sense of multiculturalism. This list of beloved and familiar national pastimes should be updated to include issuing opinions on the future CBC, on how it should update itself to remain a current and viable national public broadcaster and how, in essence, it can live up to “Canada Lives Here.” The national discussion on the future of the CBC has been reawakened with renewed fervour this year, in light of a new federal government and promises of increased funding in a faltering media landscape.

During last year’s federal election, the Liberal party ran with a campaign promise of increased funding for the CBC, restored after a decade of Conservative rule saw the CBC’s budget and holdings slashed time and again. Last week, the federal budget revealed that the Liberals are making good on their promise in the form of $675 million to the CBC over the next five years, as part of a $1.9 billion total investment into in the arts.

Speculation on what the CBC will do with this money began long before the amount was announced, and the conversation has had much to do with the sorry state of legacy media today. Canada’s Heritage Minister, Mélanie Joly, suggested in an interview with Q that the CBC needs to adapt as well to the digital age as it did to the new technologies of radio and television in the 1930s and 1950s, respectively. Joly cited Vice as a potential example for the CBC to emulate, praising their risk taking in regards to content and approach to “different subjects in a different manner.”

Canadaland’s media-critic host, Jesse Brown, stayed true to his nature and was critical of many of these recent developments. In conversation with National Post’s Jen Gerson, Brown criticized the CBC for not identifying its strengths and reorienting itself accordingly before this point, missing chances to use failures as springboards for reorientation and renewal. Brown also criticized the idea of using Vice as a model—the Canadaland segment fixated on CBC-unsuitable Vice content like “cat porn” which, for all of Vice’s virtues and successes in new media journalism, still remains one of its key offerings.

The CBC itself, however, might not scoff at this potential model as hard as Brown does. It has dipped its toes into the waters of millennial-aimed digital media by sponsoring Buzzfeed listicles like “22 CBC Shows Every Canadian Needs In Their Life,” under the “loveCBC” brand. The influence, however, goes both ways, and pieces like “12 ways you know you’re a Calgarian” have graced CBC News’s own front page. This, perhaps, is what Joly meant by “different subjects in a different manner,” and can certainly be interpreted as an attempt to generate content that is well suited—and unique to—the digital platform.

It does, however, prompt the question of whether this is the right direction for the CBC, whether integrating and emulating digital-native media platforms like Buzzfeed and Vice will be the winning strategy for bringing the CBC into the digital age. Brown certainly disagrees with this tactic, suggesting instead that the CBC should focus exclusively on news, and arguing that their commitment to quality reporting is especially valuable in light of the folding of many smaller news outlets, which can leave remote communities with CBC as their only source of news. The cash infusion provided by the government will likely influence the CBC to look favourably upon suggestions like those offered by Joly, but so far even those suggestions have fallen short of providing a true vision for a revitalized CBC.

At the heart of this debate is the digital platform and its inevitable association with youth who, accurately or not, are seen as its natural occupants and, therefore, must be pandered to in order to achieve success on the Internet. At odds with the CBC’s current key audience demographics, which skew heavily towards the latter end of 25 to 55 years of age, a focus on creating content intended for young people could backfire and place it in the realm of legacy media who foolishly rush in to engage with new technology, not realizing it’s already outdated by the time they get there; the Toronto Star’s awkward venture into a tablet version of the paper exemplifies this.

Exactly how the CBC can most effectively bring its core qualities to the digital sphere is a question that has yet to find compelling answers. The injection of federal money makes the question all the more pressing. With any luck, however, it will also give the CBC a moment of easy breathing and the luxury of a stable financial platform from which to launch experiments and explorations, finally allowing them to find their new home in the digital age.