Lacroix gets rough ride from CBC employees at annual meeting

MONTREAL — CBC/Radio-Canada employees grilled CEO Hubert Lacroix over cuts to the public broadcaster during its annual public meeting in Montreal Wednesday. Radio-Canada journalist Charles Tisseyre, host of Decouverte, on stage as part of a panel discussion, said the cuts have meant delaying the science magazine show’s season premiere and showing more reruns. “I have been with Radio-Canada for 40 years. I haven’t seen anything but rounds of budget cuts,” he said. “We went too far. We don’t have enough resources to do what we need to do and do it well.” Tisseyre noted CBC is currently in the process of re-focusing of its priorities on its digital and mobile presence, as part of a five-year plan released in June. He said other media outlets, such as newspaper La Presse, are also focusing on digital, but are making investments to do so. “What are they doing? They’re investing an extra $60 million. What are we doing? We’re making cuts,” he said, adding the government must support the public broadcaster. The audience responded with applause and cheers. The 2012 federal budget cut $115 million in CBC funding over three years. The government also ended a $60-million content-creation subsidy that the CBC had been getting every year since 2001. When the five-year plan was announced in June this year, Lacroix said the CBC’s workforce would be reduced by between 1,000 and 1,500 staff by 2020, which amounts to up to 20 per cent of its 7,500 staff. That followed a separate round of job cuts and other reductions throughout the organization, which was announced in April. Lacroix said Wednesday that the media environment is in the process of being transformed and the CBC, in addition to about $1 billion of government funding, must generate about $500 million itself, in an environment where advertising revenue is, as The Wire Report reported Tuesday, migrating from traditional television to digital. During the event, Lacroix faced questions about whether he would resign. Lacroix responded that he intends to finish his term as CEO and president, which ends in 2017, and added that there have been calls for the CBC president to resign throughout the broadcaster’s history. He said he hadn’t seen those calling for his resignation suggest another way for the CBC to finance itself. Lacroix also faced questions about why he doesn’t go to the government and insist that the CBC needs funding in order to do its job and fulfill its mandate, and why he doesn’t publicly ask for more funding. Lacroix asked rhetorically whether those asking the question really think the current government would agree to such a request. He did note the CBC’s recent appearance in front of the CRTC’s Let’s Talk TV panel where it asked that conventional broadcasters be paid fees from TV service providers. When asked by a reporter after the meeting whether he would consider a change of direction as a result of the meeting, Lacroix said what the CBC put forward in its five-year plan “is a direction. It’s a map of where we would like to land and where we would like to go.” “It’s going to always be subject to change. And if it can be improved, or if something in our environment forces us to change, the means that we have will allow us to do this.” During the event, panelists and Lacroix also talked about the new competition the CBC faces that didn’t exist a decade a ago, such as new streaming services that are being launched in Canada, particularly the increased competition that will result from the upcoming launch of a 24-hour news-and-entertainment channel by Vice Media Inc. in Canada, as part of a joint venture with Rogers Communications Inc. “We are far from the time when this industry was made up of TVA, CTV and Global,” he said. — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca

Lacroix gets rough ride from CBC employees at annual meeting

News | November 19, 2014

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Lacroix gets rough ride from CBC employees at annual meeting

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