Rabinovitch wants government to reaffirm CBC’s role as deliverer of CanCon

The president and CEO of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. remains leery that Canada’s private broadcasters could ever fill the shoes of the public broadcaster in creating domestic programming. Robert Rabinovitch doesn’t buy claims by the private broadcasting industry that it is working toward a system pillared on the production of Canadian content. "We’ll have to see it to believe it (that the private broadcasters would create more domestic shows)," he told reporters March 14 following an appearance before the Canadian Heritage Parliamentary committee studying the broadcasting system. "The economics of broadcasting are apparent," he added. "It costs a lot of money to produce and the amount of advertising you can sell is highly limited. If you read the testimony of (Global Television Network’s founder) Mr. (Israel) Asper last week, he said bluntly, ‘I can’t afford to do it.’ I think it would be incorrect to say that if we just abandoned the field, they would do it." For example, Rabinovitch argues that private broadcasters would not bid for the rights to broadcast NHL hockey because league rules would require them to broadcast all playoff games, which would force them to "tear up their schedules from April to the end of May." Given these realities, Rabinovitch called on the government to reaffirm its commitment to public broadcasting and the role played by the CBC. The public broadcaster asked the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage to recommend that the government provide it with effective and predictable multi-year funding, continuous and equitable access to the Canadian Television Fund, and that there be a re-balancing of public policies in support of distinctive Canadian programming. Rabinovitch also asked that the Broadcasting Act be amended to reinstate the CBC’s place in the broadcasting system and to provide the CBC with flexibility to leverage its assets to reinvest in programming and to establish alliances and partnerships. While recognizing the CBC’s contribution to Canadian programming, committee members did not let the public broadcaster off lightly. Members questioned management’s decision to cut back on local programming, including reducing supper hour local newscasts, and wondered aloud how the CBC’s crime show Da Vinci’s Inquest differed substantially from Cold Squad, a detective series running on CTV Inc. Rabinovitch suggested that current Canadian content rules that emphasize "tonnage over quality" had to be reworked."We have to look at Canadian content rules from scratch," he told reporters. "We have to ask ourselves some very basic questions: Do we have the model right? My feeling is that the current model only works in one respect – it gets programs out there. It doesn’t work in terms of quality."

Rabinovitch wants government to reaffirm CBC’s role as deliverer of CanCon

News | 03/28/2002 5:00 am EST

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