CBC caught between mandate and will of politically appointed management

Auditor general Denis Desautel’s report on the state of the management of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp paints a picture of an organization caught between its mandate as an arm’s length entity, and the political reality of a management overseen by a board, and a president appointed by the Prime Minister. The report, initial details of which were obtained by CCR earlier this summer (CCR, June 22/00), says the CBC has difficulty dealing with the government, the CRTC, and its stake-holders because it wants to remain outside the influence of politicians. However, by doing so, it is cut off from the people who have the power to solve many of its funding problems. As well, since the Prime Minister appoints the chair and the president, there is a fading of the boundaries between the two jobs, the report states. "Normally the Chair manages the affairs of the Board while the CEO manages the day-to-day operations of the Corporation. In the past, however, the relationship between these important players was described as very stressful," the auditor general writes. "Another contributing factor in building a relationship of trust between a CEO and a Chair is the participation by the Chair with the Board in appointing the CEO. While the Governor in Council (cabinet) has ultimate responsibility for these appointments, for a number of other Crown corporations, selection committees comprising government and Corporation officials are used. For the CBC, this is not the case." The CBC board itself has identified skills that new board members should have, such as broadcasting, change management, accounting and board experience. However, "there have been concerns that, when new members are appointed by the Governor in Council, identified needs are not met." While board members say they don’t get enough information about the CBC’s strategic plans, management told the auditor general it is overwhelmed by demands for information from members of the board. Friends of Canadian Broadcasting spokesperson Ian Morrison says the report uses bureaucratic language to describe a corporation in need of serious retooling. "It’s actually a bombshell in disguise," he told CCR. "After you’ve read it, you realize that all is not well in the CBC. The auditor general’s report was bang on." Morrison says the auditor general was correct to criticize the way the board and president are appointed, the tension between chair and president and the loss of control over programming rights. The report says the CBC has become a complex organization that has trouble with internal communication, priority setting and performance monitoring. "There are shortcomings in the Corporation’s external accountability structure, its governance relationships and its performance information. These are critical in developing a balanced strategy, securing support for it, sustaining and updating it, and reporting on performance. The absence of a comprehensive, relatively simple performance reporting framework that links programming results to programming and non-programming resources constrains accountability and oversight of key management initiatives," the report says. According to the report, the biggest problems continue to be funding and management. The report cites "declining staff morale, a lack of focus, increasing rounds of cutbacks and layoffs, increasing workloads for those who remain, threats to programming quality, excess facilities, and erosion of audience share and advertising revenues. In a business where ownership of programming content is critical, the CBC finds itself losing control of programming rights to independent producers. " The CBC is losing much of its power over programming to private producers, and the auditor general is right to warn the corporation not to farm out all of its production, says Morrison. "The CBC (is) becoming the slave of the production industry lobby in the sense that it doesn’t have the option to make a buy (in fiction programming). They don’t have that any more. In effect, they’ve lost control of the intellectual property and the revenues to be raised internationally out of the sale of that intellectual property have been divested. It’s like mortgaging your house." Sally Southey, the CBC’s senior director of corporate communications and public affairs, says the corporation plans to do "absolutely nothing" in response to the auditor general’s report. "We didn’t find it particularly critical. I think that, generally, the auditor general was quite positive about all the progress that had been made in the last five years, and that, given the changes that the CBC has been through, it’s done extremely well." But Arnold Amber, VP, Canadian Media Guild, says he believes the report is a warning that the CBC "is at a very risky state in its history, and it has to figure out what it’s going to do and how it’s going to do it. It said the CBC has improved in five or six key areas (of management) but in most of them, there’s a way to go, and in some areas there are real, crucial problems." He says the amalgamation of most of the CBC’s unions in the 1990s helped solve some of the ongoing labour problems that were cited in the 1995 auditor general’s report. "Some of the unions, and particularly the one I used to be in, the producers’ union, pointed out ten years ago that taking production of things like drama and variety out of the CBC, and the kinds of documentaries you can sell abroad means they will have nothing, they will own nothing, and they will have nothing to sell. In the early 1990s, we said the 500 channel universe is coming, bring things back in house, and they kept saying that we were only trying to get more work for our members. But we were only saying what this audit is saying: the CBC has nothing else to sell." The auditor general wants the CBC to define and balance its "expected results: … the type of programming CBC should deliver, expectations for share of viewers and listeners, extent of ownership and control of programming content, regional production and regional reflection. It would also lay out objectives for support of such things as arts and culture, education, leadership and risk taking in programs." As well, the CBC should look at the way it reaches its target audience groups and provides accessibility to programming. And it should identify ways "to configure human, programming, technical, information and capital resources" to reduce costs and focus on core competencies. The auditor general also wants more dialogue between the CBC and the Heritage minister, the CRTC, the Treasury Board secretariat and other powerbrokers.

CBC caught between mandate and will of politically appointed management

News | 08/17/2000 4:00 am EDT

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