CBC Calling

Alright, I admit it. The CBC is a part of me. Like Obélix, I fell in the caul­dron of elixir when I was young. I was brought up with the CBC. I remem­ber Sun­day morn­ings in our liv­ing room, my brother and I play­ing while my par­ents read. We all lis­tened to Sun­day clas­si­cal music pro­gram­ming on CBC radio. And then there were tele­vi­sion pro­grams like Pépinot and Marie4poches… It seems so long ago! But it’s clear that the time for nos­tal­gia has passed. We have changed, and the CBC too. The world of com­mu­ni­ca­tions is a uni­verse away from where it was even a decade ago.

The CBC, to me, is also a place where I worked on and off over the past 30 years, be it in Ottawa, St-Boniface or Mon­treal. In 1999 I was one of those who worked on the French tele­vi­sion licence renewal. So much has hap­pened since then. Issues that were only emerg­ing then are now a part of our every­day lives.

Con­trary to my intro­duc­tion, we at the CCA are con­scious that this is not the time for nos­tal­gia. Sev­eral com­ments from CBC’s friends will argue that it should reverse to what it used to be or what it rep­re­sented for them.   We want the CBC to evolve, yes, but we have trou­ble let­ting go of the good old days when for­eign broad­cast com­pe­ti­tion did not yet exist, and one could count radio and tele­vi­sion sta­tions on their fin­gers; when the Inter­net was new and only used by tech­no­log­i­cal wiz­ards. But one has to admit that despite the man­date given so many years ago, the man­ner in which the CBC serves the Cana­dian pop­u­la­tion has shifted. One thing is left unchanged, and that it is that the val­ues of the CBC has incar­nated since its cre­ation have not changed, and ought not to.

It is on these deep-rooted val­ues that the future of the CBC is being built. This future is going to play out across var­i­ous planes; polit­i­cal, reg­u­la­tory, eco­nomic and tech­no­log­i­cal. What we want to present to you today is a quick overview of the issues fac­ing our national pub­lic broadcaster.

Our fea­tured mem­ber fits right into this theme: Hubert Lacroix has just had his man­date renewed for another five years and he describes the Corporation’s vision mov­ing for­ward. I also inter­viewed Pierre Bélanger, pro­fes­sor of com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Ottawa Uni­ver­sity, who was also involved in the CBC’s licence renewal in 1999 and who guided the pub­lic broadcaster’s first steps into the dig­i­tal world.

Thou­sands of sub­mis­sions were writ­ten over the course of the CBC’s recent license renewal, and we con­firm within that much is still being said on this topic. Tamara Dolan, one of ours interns, has com­piled excerpts from com­ments sub­mit­ted to the CRTC over the course of this process. We close this spe­cial issue with opin­ions about the Corporation’s request to broad­cast national com­mer­cials on its Radio 2 and Espace Musique sta­tions, and as you will see, it has not been popular.

-Anne-Marie