CBC plan’s emphasis on mobile not ‘logical’: analyst

CBC/Radio-Canada’s re-focusing of its priorities on its digital and mobile presence is “not a very logical thing to do,” said Barry Kiefl, president of Canadian Media Research Inc. The public broadcaster said in a strategy paper released Thursday, called "A Space For Us All," that its priorities will be completely reversed from the current pecking order of TV followed by radio, online and mobile. “What we’re saying is we need to invert that, and start to say, ‘Let’s start producing for mobile first, and digital, then radio, then television,’ ” Heather Conway, CBC’s executive vice-president of English services, said in a conference call with journalists Thursday. That means “not taking a traditional television product and just having it be smaller on a smaller screen,” she added. “It means actually producing content that is for that mobile device,” something that the public broadcaster hopes to start doing in the next 12 months. Kiefl said in a phone interview Thursday that the problem with that approach is that “we have no idea today if such services are going to be used in a significant way.” He noted that, for television, “you’ve got this vast audience available to you,” where competition is essentially limited to “a couple of dozen” of the most popular channels. “In the mobile environment, you’re competing with thousands and thousands of choices,” including those from other countries, he said. “So what’s the point of that? It’s not a very logical thing to do,” he said. “I just don’t understand what they’re driving at when it comes to that.” In response to a question about how the broadcaster is planning to monetize this approach, CEO Hubert Lacroix said during the conference call that “in the foreseeable future, we think that our digital revenues are going to be about 12 per cent to 15 per cent of our overall revenues, and that’s the target we’d like to achieve.” The Wire Report reported last year that online video advertising is growing, but remains a fraction of television advertising. In its strategic plan, the CBC said it expects to double its digital reach by 2020, with 18 million Canadians — or about half the population — accessing its digital services at least once a month by then. “The idea of going to mobile and web-based services, that to me is just a way of camouflaging the fact that you don’t have any money,” Kiefl said, asking whether the point could be to produce “really inexpensive programs for mobile instead of the more expensive things that have to be shot in a high-quality way and so forth for television?” He noted that the CBC currently has access to a mass audience through radio and television “in every household, in every car, in every office.” “Why would you be abandoning that market?” he asked. The broadcaster’s strategic plan includes a chart outlining how its relative resource allocation will change between now and 2020. It shows content intended for mobile will be higher-priority than it is than now in just about every category. The only exception is music and sports, which will be de-emphasized across all platforms in the coming years. The relative amount of resources set to be put into local news on conventional and specialty TV is slated to decline in the next five years, while national news will get a similar proportion of resources for TV and radio. The only category that's marked for getting a larger share of investment for conventional TV by 2020 is arts and drama, which includes comedy and drama. Content for mobile distribution will get a bigger share of the resources in most categories, which includes arts and entertainment, documentaries and current affairs, kids' programming, as well as national and local news and talk content, the report said. Ian Morrison, spokesman for advocacy group Friends Of Canadian Broadcasting, said in a phone interview Thursday that the Canadian population is aging, and “anything that relies primarily on digital to distribute is discriminating, in general, against older people.” “It sounds nice but what it involves is a reduction in the emphasis on over-the-air broadcast radio and television in favour of digital platforms, so it’s cheaper, but it leaves out a lot of Canadians.” Other announcements included in the CBC’s plan Thursday included a reduction in the workforce of 1,000 to 1,500 staff by 2020, which Lacroix told reporters Thursday amounts to about a maximum of 20 per cent of its 7,500 staff. In the report, the CBC noted that about 1,000 employees are currently eligible for retirement and about 300 leave every year through attrition. The broadcaster also announced a “significant” reduction in “in‐house production across the organization, excluding news, current affairs and radio,” which it said would enable “CBC/Radio‐Canada to evolve from an internally focused content creator and traditional broadcaster, to that of a modern media company at the heart of a dynamic, independent creative sector.” In April, CBC announced a separate round of job cuts and other reductions throughout the organization. The announcements followed a cut of $115 million in CBC funding over three years in the 2012 federal budget, as well the ending of a $60-million content-creation subsidy that the CBC had been getting every year since 2001. — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca

CBC plan’s emphasis on mobile not ‘logical’: analyst

News | June 26, 2014

Unlock all the Canadian telecom, broadcasting and digital media news you need.

FREE TRIAL

SUBSCRIBE

Inside The Wire Report

Information

Hill Times Publishing

Get in Touch With Us

CBC plan’s emphasis on mobile not ‘logical’: analyst

News | June 26, 2014

Unlock all the Canadian telecom, broadcasting and digital media news you need.

FREE TRIAL

SUBSCRIBE

Related Stories

Dasko seeks survey data from CBC in Senate

CBC committee needs more francophone minority participation, senator says

Housakos and Gold battle over CBC in Senate

Éric Forest defends CBC to colleagues in Senate debate

Reuse & Permissions

Inside The Wire Report

Information

Hill Times Publishing

Get in Touch With Us