The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
CBC recently responded to an unflattering editorial by John Ivison that was published in the National Post. Here are excerpts from a letter to the editor sent to hundreds of newspapers across the country. "First let me say that ratings alone are a lousy measure of how well a public broadcaster is fulfilling its mandate. If all we were after was ratings, we'd put on a bunch of US programming like the private networks do and people would quite correctly call for us to be dismantled for using taxpayers dollars to do what the private sector can do better. That is not our role." "It is, of course, true that you can not have public broadcasting without the public. If no one was watching there would be no point. On average, 62 per cent of the Canadian anglophone population tunes in to CBC Television each week. CBC Television's share in 2003-2004 was up over the previous year both in all-day viewing and in prime time. So far in 2004-2005, CBC Television's share is again tracking ahead of last year (prime time currently running at 7 per cent share this season versus, for instance, Global TV at 8.7 per cent)." "...Mr. Ivison points to the fact that CBC Television does not do well on the list of Nielsen list of top 20 programs. In fact, Canadian programs generally do not do well in the overall top 20. Why? One reason is that a big US drama program, like West Wing or ER, will spend between three and five times more to make an hour of programming than it costs to make a top end Canadian show. What he doesn't perhaps know, is that 12 of the top 20 Canadian drama series and 18 of the top 20 Canadian drama specials in 2003-04 were CBC programs. Given our mandate, that is the list that measures our success." "... CBC Television is one platform out of 18 that CBC/Radio-Canada, operates. It receives $278 million in funding from the public purse. The rest of its budget is raised through advertising and other sources of funds. Compare this to the approximately US$800 million that US government sources contribute to PBS over and above the money they receive from fundraising drives and other revenue sources." The letter was written by Slawko Klymkiw, executive director of Network Programming for CBC Television.
