CBC

CBC’s TV ad revenue dipped nearly 16 percent in the first half of 2023, according to the government-funded broadcaster’s newly released second-quarter financial report.

CEO Catherine Tait made no mention of the Crown broadcaster’s decrease in advertising dollars during her Nov. 2 testimony before the House of Commons heritage committee.

Amid plans by CBC to cut 10 per cent of its workforce, the House of Commons heritage committee on Tuesday said it would be “inappropriate for the CBC to grant bonuses to executive members.”

That comes after the committee last week called the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s president and CEO Catherine Tait — who could make more than $120,000 in bonuses on top of her six-figure salary, according to CBC documents — to appear as a witness in the new year.

OTTAWA — Top CBC executives said Friday they are considering options to manage the broadcaster’s financial pressures, including taking a look at “senior executive compensation,” following plans to slash 10 per cent of the public broadcaster’s workforce.

CBC/Radio-Canada head Catherine Tait and seven vice-presidents released a brief statement that afternoon, after MPs of different political stripes voiced concern about the plan to cut 600 jobs and not fill 200 vacancies over the next year.

Quebec Minister of the French Language Jean-François Roberge offered a provocative historical comparison to emphasize the inherent unfairness of CBC/Radio-Canada’s decision to split just-announced job cuts equally between the public broadcaster’s French and English networks.

“It’s as if they are making Radio-Canada pay for CBC’s difficulties,” Mr. Roberge said of the broadcaster’s plan to cut expenses by $125-million to offset higher programming costs and slumping advertising revenues. “It seems to me the last time that happened was in 1840, with the Act of Union, when Upper Canada’s debts were sent to Lower Canada.”

Who needs Pierre Poilievre when you have Catherine Tait? If CBC was worried about the Conservative leader making the case for its demise, their president did it for them Monday night, on live television, no less. Appearing on The National with host Adrienne Arsenault, Tait was asked what Canadians will notice after CBC cuts 600 jobs, a full 10 per cent of its workforce, over the coming year.

Following news of mass cuts and layoffs at the CBC and Radio-Canada on Monday, CBC’s CEO Catherine Tait went on the network’s flagship news show and declined to say whether the public broadcaster’s executives would be receiving bonuses.

Adrienne Arsenault, host of “The National” on CBC, asked Tait, “I’m going to presume, no bonuses this year? … Can we establish (that) is not happening this year?”

TORONTO – The CBC’s president says a round of layoffs and programming cuts the broadcaster announced this week could mean changes in what viewers see on television.

Catherine Tait says slashing millions from the Crown corporation’s overall budget may mean fewer unscripted, factual or game shows.

She says those kinds of content don’t fall under the broadcast regulator’s programs of national interest policy that CBC has to remain committed to.

During a town hall meeting on Monday, CBC President Catherine Tait told CBC and Radio-Canada employees that the public broadcaster will cut up to 10 per cent of its workforce, including 600 workers, according to the public broadcaster.

The broadcaster is making the cuts to address a $125 million shortfall that the CBC is facing, with cuts to both its English and French services, according to multiple sources. $40 million of those cuts will be to programming, according to the CBC. The CBC confirmed on Monday that on top of the layoffs, which will affect both union and non-union workers, 200 vacant jobs will remain empty. There are also no plans to implement a retirement incentive package, sources at the meeting told the Star.

Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge says it would be within the spirit of the government’s digital news law if CBC/Radio-Canada were to receive money from Google — but suggested its share of the $100-million fund may be capped.

In an interview on Rosemary Barton Live airing Sunday, St-Onge said the deal was “mainly and mostly about written press” but that broadcasters like CBC/Radio-Canada also had digital written news and could be included.

“I think it’s important to respect the principle that for these tech giants, public broadcaster’s news must also have value” because of the advertising benefits Google receives, she told CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton.

When the smart people running the CBC were looking to produce a French version of one of its podcasts this year, it somehow never dawned on them that outsourcing the adaptation to a Paris-based production house might not be viewed as a stroke of genius.

Canada, after all, is an officially bilingual country. The Broadcasting Act stipulates that the CBC is our national public broadcaster in French and English with a mandate to, among other things, “contribute to a shared national consciousness and identity.”

Catherine Tait, president and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada, defended the public broadcaster’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict in a sometimes testy meeting with MPs Thursday.

Tait, who was called to appear before the House of Commons heritage committee after her term at the CBC was extended this summer, said CBC’s journalists are independent from government, the company’s executives and the board of directors and are free to report on the conflict as they see fit.

She defended the newsroom’s longstanding practice of not referring to attacks or their perpetrators as “terrorism” or “terrorists,” saying CBC journalists do not want to be seen taking sides in the conflict.

At the CBC it’s Hands off Hamas but woe to Trudeau’s critics …

.@CBC Ombudsman warns network to rethink coverage that disparages gov't critics as extreme or disreputable in purporting to fact-check the news: "When they do so they'd better be right." https://t.co/yzTaqzHkiH #cdnpoli @JonMontpetit pic.twitter.com/SUrJbLc4TD

— Blacklock's Reporter (@mindingottawa) October 10, 2023

OTTAWA – Six months after the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and Radio-Canada scaled back its use of the social media site X, the public broadcaster says it will mostly remain off the platform formerly known as Twitter because it doesn’t bring in a lot of traffic.

Leon Mar, a spokesperson for the public broadcaster, said CBC’s focus is to engage Canadians on other platforms and to continue driving traffic to its websites and streaming services.

“The audience and engagement that we get from X is small. Among our social media platforms, X is among the smallest sources of traffic,” he told The Canadian Press when asked why it hasn’t fully returned.