(Visual: Joey Sabourin/Hill Times Publishing)
CBC’s ‘fast pivot’ strategy to capture new audiences online could prove difficult without reprioritizing resources, says media expert
Broadcast | |October 24, 2025
CBC releases strategic plan outlining need for ‘increased focus’ on where some people are increasingly getting their news: online and on social media.
Making a “fast pivot” is one key to demonstrating CBC/Radio-Canada’s “essential value” to Canadians, according to the public broadcaster’s new five-year strategic plan. While one expert on Canadian media agrees, he wonders if the Crown corporation is ready to make changes to its business to prioritize new forms of media.
The CBC, helmed by newly installed CEO Marie-Philippe Bouchard, observes in its 2025-2030 plan that it needs to gain the attention of youths, newcomers to Canada, non-users of the CBC and those who are not satisfied with the broadcaster in order to grow its audience.
According to the strategy, the CBC “cannot afford to rely solely on existing users and fans as confirmation of its value to the public,” its strategy document states.
“The corporation needs to focus on segments of the population who currently under-value or do not use its services. It should build for the future with an emphasis on areas of growth, in audience segments that are currently underserved,” the broadcaster states. “To be a more inclusive and sustainable public service media organization, CBC/Radio-Canada needs to listen to these audiences and address their needs, program and market to them, and deliver services where they consume media.”
Alfred Hermida has spent years of his career taking stock of how people get their news, including at the United Kingdom’s public-service broadcaster, the BBC. To him, a key point in the CBC’s strategy is more often making available its reporting where consumers are already getting their news. He particularly points out that being present on the online platforms used by Canadian youths would be a big and important step.
Now a professor of journalism at the University of British Columbia — who spent five years as the school’s director — Hermida has, for the past several years, been focused on the transformation of the media landscape and emerging technologies like social media.
In Hermida’s view, making a “fast pivot” to capture youths, newcomers, and dissatisfied users as audiences, as the broadcaster’s strategy indicates it must do, is not likely to be quick or easy for the CBC. It will have to change what kind of content it prioritizes, he says, and stop putting so many resources into forms of content that primarily serve an aging population.
Hermida pays close attention to the news habits of Canadians, including Gen Z and Gen Alpha youths.
In an interview with The Wire Report, he cites the 2025 Reuters Institute Digital News report which found that social media and video networks were used by more than 40 per cent of young people aged 18 to 24 years as their main source of news in all markets studied, and almost 40 per cent of people aged 25 to 34 years. People in those age groups did still get news via news websites or apps or by watching TV as their main source, but their older counterparts rely on those methods more. The report found that while 15 per cent of people older than 55 years used social media for news, 48 per cent of them mainly get their news by watching TV. Print, radio, and podcasts were not widely used by any of the age groups, nor were AI chatbots.
In his own experience, Hermida explains that he recently asked a class of second-year undergraduate university students how many of them get their news from social media and video platforms. He said about two-thirds indicated they go to those sources, while about one-third go directly to news websites. He said none of them indicated they go to radio or TV broadcasts to consume news.
“This is the challenge for CBC, and what we know from history is that the media habits you form growing up are the media habits you continue into life,” Hermida said.
“You’re seeing that, essentially, younger generations are growing up accessing news primarily through third-party places, not through traditional media. And yet, CBC, most of its resources go into traditional media, and this is where the disconnect comes in.”
Priority on shifting audience requires ‘redirection of efforts and resources,’ says CBC
The CBC itself says that it needs to redirect efforts and resources, “and an increased focus on audiences using digital and third-party platforms,” noting in its plan that will mean “stopping or transforming some activities….”
Hermida wonders if the CBC might deliberate on whether it has the right people with the right skills in the right positions to execute on its strategy.
“So do you retrain those people? Do you change priorities?… What can we learn from YouTube creators that are amassing mass audiences to reach those audiences?… Are there people there we could work with? Are there people we should hire and bring into our newsrooms and put in editorial positions of power so they can make decisions?
“Looking at this strategic plan, it’s all very well saying ‘we want to attract younger audiences.’ But what wasn’t there is a commitment to say we need to change the culture of working at the CBC. We need to change our approach to understanding the media. We need to move away from products that date back from the ‘60s in terms of how the media operated.”
Andrew Chang’s About That CBC show, in which Chang explains recent headline-news stories in videos that rarely exceed 15 minutes, is available to view on CBC’s Gem streaming platform and on YouTube. Hermida cites it as an example of CBC trying to do something different.
CBC CEO Bouchard told a conference hosted by the Canadian chapter of the International Institute of Communications on Oct. 21 that Chang’s show is very popular, and that the people who watch it are significantly younger than people who subscribe to the CBC News Network.
“Kids don’t just consume video; they also read, they also do all sorts of things. So we can catch them in various ways but, in order to be relevant, we have to get out of the formats that their parents and grandparents used, because it’s not relevant to them,” Bouchard said.
Bouchard added that CBC’s flagship news broadcast The National’s viewership on YouTube is larger than the viewership the show gets via linear TV broadcast distribution.
“So, we can use the same products and put them in different places, and people will find them, and they’ll get the same quality,” she said. “But that’s not enough. We have to use formats that people understand and use, so short form, vertical video, more explanatory.”
In Hermida’s view, broadcasting The National on TV and later uploading it to online video platforms is not truly “going digital,” just like posting clips of local news on the popular short-form video social media platform TikTok would not be an adequate strategy for attracting younger audiences – “it doesn’t work, it’s embarrassing,” he says.
“When you try to basically shoehorn [traditional radio and TV content] into a digital format, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t appeal to that audience.”
“What you need to do is completely reorganize CBC and say ‘we need to move resources away from television and radio into producing digital-first content that follows the media logic of these third-party platforms.’”
“These platforms have a different media logic, a different way of working. So for CBC to then adapt, it means a change of culture, a change of financing… and really reorienting the workforce to think digital-first and to understand what are the rules of these platforms.”
Changing company culture ‘incredibly hard’
Hermida, who was part of the founding team of the news website created for the BBC in 1997, recognizes that “the hardest thing to change in any organization is culture.”
“Radical change in a massive organization as established as CBC and other major news organizations is incredibly hard,” he notes.
“Digital can’t be something you do on the side while you still carry on steaming through with radio and television,” he says.
“If you are a truly digital organization, you need to put digital at the centre. Digital has to come first, and that means having people in charge who are essentially prioritizing digital…. Radio and TV come second, because the audiences are all growing in the digital space.”
“It’s not my opinion, it’s facts. You look at any study, TV audiences are not growing. They skew older, they’re in decline. Yes, you’re not going to stop doing The National. But my question for CBC is, do you still need to do an hour of The National?”
Overall, Hermida believes the right intentions are there for the CBC, in attracting younger audiences, newcomers, and regaining the attention of dissatisfied users, and noted the same challenges exist for every traditional outlet.
But he also notes that the strategic plan does not outline specific goals for the company to meet in the five years it covers, or how it might reallocate resources. Hermida said without knowing that information, it will be hard to tell if CBC is doing enough to change its priorities.
“For me, the way to see if this has made a difference is if we see significant change in the CBC, stopping doing some things and doing things that are new.”
“The one question is, what are you going to stop doing? Where are you going to move resources and people, and how are you going to shift power away from forms of media that come from the ‘60s into a form of media that resonates in the 2020s?”
CBC spokesperson Emma Iannetta told The Wire Report that the point of the strategy is “delivering public value for Canadians.”
Iannetta said in an email that that will be measured in several ways:
“- From the perspective of individual users – both their usage and their perception of the service;
– The benefits we provide to our society;
– Benefits to the creative sector and the Canadian economy;
– And benefits to the broader economy;
– Our ability to deliver value for money and the responsible use of public funds;
– And the experience of our employees.”
“This public value will be measured with short-, medium- and long-term indicators over the life of the strategic plan,” Iannetta said. When asked whether there are specifics available on what exactly those indicators will be and where the goalposts have been set, Iannetta said “that’s all the information I have, for now.”
