COVID impact on CBC not as significant as expected, Tait says

The COVID-19 pandemic dropped CBC/Radio-Canada’s revenues by 11 per cent, but that impact was significantly less than public broadcaster’s leadership had feared, CEO Catherine Tait told the CRTC Monday. That meant six months into the current fiscal year, CBC revenue dropped by $25 million. “That actually was a better outcome than we anticipated with respect to revenue. We had planned for far worse,” Tait said on the first day of the CBC’s licence hearing, held virtually due to the pandemic. CBC also had to fill holes in their schedule as live events like the Juno Awards were cancelled, which Tait said the broadcaster “tried to do … as best as possible with Canadian acquisitions.” The pandemic also affected ongoing production, making for a “very challenging production environment.” “We worked very hard with independent producers to find solutions, oftentimes assuming higher costs on our side so we could make sure productions went ahead,” Tait said. That increased cost remains an issue as the broadcaster looks at next year. “One of the areas of uncertainty for us is that we are not clear whether or not there will be continued federal government assistance with respect to production insurance or other assistance at the provincial or federal level for the increased cost associated with shooting of television programming during a health crisis,” she said. That includes health and safety measures like testing and quarantine measures, which add time and cost to productions, Tait explained. CBC officials also spoke about their move to suspend local newscasts when the pandemic first began, a move that drew some criticism, including from senator Percy Downe, who wrote to the CRTC asking the commission to question CBC officials about the cancellations. “It was a confluence of challenges, some were technical, some were staffing… just the whole environment was shifting on us so fast,” Barbara Williams, CBC’s executive vice-president of English services said at Monday’s hearing. She said earlier in the day in the public broadcasters’ opening remarks that there were technical bottlenecks on some TV stations, mostly because of an unprecedented volume of live press conferences, which forced the CBC to suspend the newscasts. Tait told CRTC chairman Ian Scott the broadcaster has learned from the experience. “There were failures along the way in technology and we have addressed some of those through looking at redundancy,” she said. “What happens if you have a centralized system, it does put pressure, and you’ll remember Mr. Chair, my phone call to you in this regard, when you have what we described as an air traffic control problem in terms of the live news feeds coming into the Toronto broadcast centre,” Tait said. “With the exception of the very, very challenging local television supper hour situation, I think we have acquitted ourselves reasonably well.” Scott said the commissioners leading the licence hearing will have more questions about those newscasts in the coming days of the multi-week licence hearing, which continues Tuesday morning. — Reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Michael Lee-Murphy at mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca

COVID impact on CBC not as significant as expected, Tait says

Broadcast | January 11, 2021

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COVID impact on CBC not as significant as expected, Tait says

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