CBC CEO Catherine Tait not worried for broadcaster’s longevity

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has made slashing CBC/Radio-Canada’s funding a mainstay in his talking points this year. But CBC CEO Catherine Tait says she is not worried about the broadcaster's survival if his party gains power in the next election. “The corporation has been around for 88 years,” Tait told The Wire Report in an interview. “We have survived many Liberal governments and many Conservative governments.” “I certainly try to tell my team not to be too distracted by politics,” added Tait, whose term as CBC’s head is set to finish in early 2025. Poilievre has said he would defund the English side of the organization while maintaining programming on the French side if his party wins the next federal election, which is set to occur by the end of October 2025. Though Tait does not claim concern over a potential Conservative government, she said the public broadcaster is facing other challenges — similar to those faced by private broadcasters in this country — with a major disruption being the influence of foreign players in the Canadian broadcasting landscape. “Not just the streamers, — Netflix, Amazon, Apple — but also the big giants like Google and Meta,” she asserted. “And the domination of those players has put real stress on the revenue model of the domestic broadcasting system.” Budget shortfall According to corporate figures, the broadcaster is facing a $20 million budget shortfall. It was granted an additional $42 million in the last federal budget and was exempted from the federal government’s directive to cut 3.3 per cent of spending. The company also cut jobs, announcing in December that 600 union and non-union positions would be cut, and 200 vacant positions would be left unfilled. In January, Tait told the House of Commons heritage committee that merit pay for upper levels of staff might go ahead despite the shortfall and layoffs, after being pressed on the matter by members of Parliament. That issue has been seized upon by Conservatives in their calls for the defunding of the CBC. CBC is adamant that the money doled out is not a bonus, but rather performance pay. A portion of its non-unionized staff have money withheld from their salaries until certain goals are achieved. Tait would not say at the time if she or other CBC employees would be getting their extra payments at the end of March. A total of 1,194 employees were eligible. “Despite the financial headwinds that the corporation faced in 2023-24, CBC/Radio-Canada met the performance indicators as approved by the Board of Directors at the beginning of the year,” a review of the payments by CBC’s board, dated June 25, states. In May, Tait told a Commons committee that the corporation’s finances are on an even keel and additional cutbacks would not be necessary. While the firm may be on steadier ground until the end of the fiscal year, what the future holds is uncertain. Tait knows that her competitors face similar problems to the corporation. “People have a hard time understanding that television revenue, both advertising and subscription, is declining for all broadcasters, CBC, Radio-Canada, CTV, Global. All of us are experiencing this downward pressure on that core revenue,” Tait told The Wire Report. “Obviously we as the public broadcaster have this enormous privilege and benefit of having public funding which mitigates the impacts, so we haven’t had the same level of cuts that you’ve seen in other media companies.” BCE Inc. has cut more than 4,500 jobs in recent years; Corus Entertainment Inc. recently announced it is getting rid of a total of 800 positions by the end of August. Another cause for concern for Tait is the growth of misinformation and disinformation on social media. Users tend to exist in a bubble, where they only get news from sources that reflect their viewpoints, she said. Also on her radar is the influence of artificial intelligence, which Tait calls “truly the next wave of disruption.” As a public broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada has problems which are unique to it. The company has streaming services and cable channels, as well as over-the-air stations and radio networks in English and French, but has not seen funding keep pace, Tait says. “We’re operating all these platforms with the same budget as we had 30 years ago when we only had to do traditional TV and radio,” she noted. “So we’ve multiplied the platforms, multiplied the output with the same base budget, which happens to be one of the lowest amongst all the countries.” Tait attributes loss in audience numbers to changes in how and when Canadians access content. Families no longer gather in the den to watch television together — they are just as likely to watch or listen to something on a streaming platform as on old style media, she averred. She says The National still draws one million viewers a night, but some are taking it in from YouTube or CBC Gem, the broadcaster’s streaming app, rather than local stations or CBC News Network. Looking to the future One reason Tait is hopeful about the future is the committee struck by Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge on the viability of CBC/Radio-Canada. There are seven members on the panel, some of whom have experience at the public broadcaster. Marie-Philippe Bouchard spent 27 years at Radio-Canada. Jesse Wente was with CBC from 1996 to 2022. Jennifer McGuire put in 11 years at CBC, retiring as editor-in-chief at CBC News. Loc Dao worked on the English side from 1994 until 2006. Minister of Canadian Heritage Pascale St-Onge speaks with reporters in the House of Commons foyer before Question Period on Nov. 29, 2023 (photo by Andrew Meade/Hill Times). Tait’s term is set to expire next year. St-Onge has already appointed a committee to look for a replacement for her. The CBC leader is thinking ahead to the next phase of her life. “I’ll take a little bit of a holiday and then I will probably go deep into areas that I’ve really, really appreciated getting close to during my tenure at CBC,” she said. She points to the “#NotOk” initiative launched in 2021, which seeks to combat online harms for journalists. She would also like to make things better for marginalized communities. “So I think I’d like to dedicate the next chapter to figuring out how to make the internet a safer place for young people, for women, and for underrepresented people,” Tait remarked. “That’s a big, big objective but that’s kind of one of the ideas that I’m floating around right now.” – Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca

CBC CEO Catherine Tait not worried for broadcaster’s longevity

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By Paul Park
| August 6, 2024

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