The CBC once imagined its audience as a single community, bound by shared interests and a common national purpose. In the 1960s, producers like Patrick Watson were taught to ask of every program: “How will it serve the audience?” That question presupposed a public that was coherent, if not always unanimous — a public that might quarrel over facts and policies, but still inhabited the same civic space.
That assumption no longer holds. The ideal of a singular Canadian audience has shattered. A dramatic fragmentation has occurred, and Canadians now divide on first principles. Where there was once consensus, there is now dissensus.
