Private broadcasters are urging Parliament not to increase CBC subsidies in exchange for ad-free public television, saying the proposal unfairly disadvantages commercial networks. Blacklock's Reporter says the Senate transport and communications committee heard from the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, which argued the CBC should refocus on local news rather than competing with private networks for viewers and ad revenue.“With the parliamentary appropriation they have, they could redeploy these funds more towards local news and less towards Family Feud or what have you,” said Kevin Desjardins, president of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters. He emphasized that federal funding should support public broadcasting that complements private networks rather than competes with them.CBC currently receives $1.4 billion in federal funding annually. While English TV ad sales dropped by 10% to $194.7 million last year, management at CBC previously suggested that an additional $400 million in public funding could allow for an ad-free television model, a proposal originally pitched in 2016 by then-CEO Hubert Lacroix.“If CBC Television were to lose its ad revenue and not be able to increase its government revenue, what should they do?” asked Sen. Donna Dasko. Desjardins responded that private broadcasters believe CBC’s $1.4 billion “head start” from federal funding creates an unfair playing field in an already competitive market.Derrick Gray, chief research and operations officer at Numeris, added that CBC-TV ratings have shown flat or declining viewership over the past decade. “We do see that all TV networks have been showing downward trends in audiences over the past 10 years,” he testified. “The CBC network itself does tend to have a steeper decline in their audiences.”Sen. Daryl Fridhandler remarked that many Canadians, particularly younger ones, seem detached from CBC-TV. “I anecdotally will talk to people who are professionals and well-educated in their 30s and 40s, and they say, ‘We don’t pay attention to that stuff anymore; we go on our device here and I will listen to this source and that source and I don’t really care about that,’” he said, questioning whether efforts to boost CBC’s reach would resonate with modern viewers.According to a 2019 CBC Annual Report, local TV newscast audiences declined from a combined 313,000 in 2017 to 230,000 by 2019, underscoring the network’s ongoing struggle to retain viewers even amid government support.
