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CBC

Interesting…

Program director Slawko Klymkiw leaves CBC TV
CBC announced Wednesday that its head of network TV, Slawko Klymkiw, is leaving the public broadcaster at the end of the month.
Klymkiw has been the head of programming for nine years.
In a note to staff, CBC TV VP Richard Stursberg said Klymkiw is leaving to take up a “new, exciting and very different professional opportunity.”
Klymkiw, in his own note, said his new role will allow him to “give something back to the industry in a way that I hope will leave a lasting legacy in terms of developing future talent in this country.”
There is speculation he may become executive director of the Canadian Film Centre.
The announcement came on the third day of the CBC lockout, with 5,500 Canadian Media Guild employees off work and on the picket line, although Klymkiw said his decision “has absolutely nothing to do with our current labour situation.”
Klymkiw has been program director since 1996. Some of his successes include Canada: a People’s History, The Greatest Canadian, and Rick Mercer’s Monday Report. He was also responsible for CBC’s Movie Night in Canada strategy, which replaced Hockey Night in Canada when last year’s NHL season was cancelled.
He had previously been in charge of CBC Newsworld, the CBC’s 24-hour news and information specialty channel. He also ran the CBC News special program unit, where he developed the Gemini Award-nominated National Town Hall specials. Before that, he ran TV news for CBC in Toronto, and Winnipeg.
He started with the CBC in Winnipeg in 1980.
In July 2004, Richard Stursberg was appointed VP of CBC TV. At the time, there was widespread speculation that Klymkiw was unhappy at having been passed over, with CBC President and CEO Robert Rabinovitch telling the media he was “sure [Klymkiw] was disappointed.”
Stursberg said Eva Czigler will take on Klymkiw’s former role on an acting basis, which will ensure “strong continuity during the transition.” She is currently senior director of network programming at CBC TV.

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CBC

Find out what is up in Regina!

CBC employees have been locked out!
Find out how we are on Jennifer’s Blog

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CBC

Call your member of parliament!

Cdn. news lacking during CBC lockout
TORONTO (CP) – Two days into its controversial lockout of 5,500 unionized employees, the CBC has been operating on autopilot with plenty of reruns and pared-down programs.
But the most noticeable change has been the absence of any apparent effort to mount a management-produced television newscast, relying in prime time and over the supper hour on imported feeds of the BBC World News service. Newsworld has been limited to one-minute roundups of Canadian news read by managers before handing things off to the BBC.
“That’s certainly the plan right now,” Jason MacDonald, the CBC’s official spokesman, said Tuesday of the news programming from the public broadcaster, although another publicist suggested it wasn’t the network’s original plan.
“The BBC as lockout-breaker. It’s a very interesting model,” said Ian Morrison, spokesman for the independent media watchdog group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.
Bob Hurst, president of CTV News, declined to speculate on the chances of the private network incurring a ratings windfall from the lack of domestic news by its public rival. But he was willing to deliver a plug for CTV’s 11 p.m. news with Lloyd Robertson, noting that the live Atlantic version is available at 10 p.m. in Ontario and Quebec on CTV Newsnet.
“So there is an option for Canadians who don’t want to stay up till 11,” Hurst said. “Perhaps this is an opportunity for Canadians who have long been CBC traditionalists to find out that there is another very credible newscast, which is Canada’s most-watched newscast.”
Media observers said Tuesday they’re stunned the CBC hasn’t tried to provide any kind of news package from non-union staff or from all the incoming feeds that are available in any broadcast newsroom.
Patricia Bell, head of the school of journalism at the University of Regina, said the situation is even worse for radio, especially in places like Saskatchewan, where there are few alternatives to CBC Radio. She adds that managers have been shipped to Toronto to keep the central operation going.
“Who are they going to send (to cover news)?” Bell asks. “I just don’t think they planned.”
Bell noted that David Kyle, one of her school’s graduates and a Regina-based CBC manager, was reading national radio news from Toronto on Monday night.
And because the current lockout, unlike labour disruptions in the past, involves one union that now comprises both journalists and technicians, Bell said the situation confirms who really brings programming to air.
“We have graduates from here who have been working, especially in radio, for four, five years, doing very solid work and they’re still not even on contract. They’re casual. And you don’t build a strong ongoing presence if you don’t nurture people and let them grow.”
Normally a strong booster of the CBC, Morrison said he finds fault with both sides. He said both union and management went to the industrial relations board a couple of years ago and supported amalgamation of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (technicians) and Canadian Media Guild (journalists) into a single bargaining unit, a move that has resulted in the significant impact the current lockout has generated.
After 15 months of negotiations, the CBC locked out the bulk of its unionized employees at 12:01 a.m. Monday. At issue is the broadcaster’s wish for more flexibility to hire contract and part-time employees, something the CMG says is a danger to job security for full-time staff.
In other lockout developments Tuesday:
-Security officials at the Ontario legislature have changed the locks on the doors of the CBC media offices there at the request of CBC management. Reporters have not been in their Queen’s Park offices all week anyway but are now officially locked out.
-NDP leader Jack Layton is urging Heritage Minister Liza Frulla to protect Canadian programming by ending years of neglect of the public broadcaster. The New Democrats say the current lockout is the direct result of a lack of commitment from the Liberal government to protect and promote public broadcasting.
-In an open letter to the CBC president, Ontario NDP Leader Howard Hampton expressed his disappointment with what he says was a short-sighted decision to go the lockout route. And he said that for the duration of the dispute, Ontario New Democrats would boycott all CBC requests for interviews or information.
-In the Far North, in Iqaluit, programming in Inuktitut went off the air, leaving listeners needing vital weather information in a vacuum. But a CBC spokesperson says as of Tuesday afternoon, an Inuktitut announcer was back on the air.
-CBC management paid for a second full-page newspaper ad outling their position. It again expresses regret that the lockout became a necessity to break the deadlock with the union. It says only five per cent of CBC employees are on contract, including some of its most respected on-air personalities, and that they are represented by the CMG and are well compensated.
-A prolonged dispute could be particularly damaging to CBC Radio. In recent years, the radio networks have enjoyed a new ratings high, according to recent results compiled by the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement. In the Toronto market, Metro Morning, for example, has sustained a two point jump in market share to 12.6 per cent with an audience increase of 22 per cent.

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CBC

Day 2!

CBC workers locked out
TORONTO (CP) – Documentaries, world news from Britain and reruns of Antiques Roadshow dominated the CBC airwaves Monday as locked-out workers took to the picket lines in what was billed as the largest labour dispute in the national public broadcaster’s history.
Shortly after midnight Sunday night, some 5,500 workers across the country, members of the Canadian Media Guild, found themselves locked out of their offices in a dispute over the network’s desire to hire more contract workers.
Viewers who switched on the CBC’s main network, Newsworld or CBC Radio were greeted by documentaries, reruns and BBC World News broadcasts, separated by brief newscasts that were delivered by decidedly unfamiliar voices and faces.
Football fans won’t be pleased to hear they will likely see a pared-down broadcast of a CFL game between the Toronto Argonauts and the Edmonton Eskimos on Saturday night.
“I don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like yet,” said Chris McCracken, the CFL’s director of broadcasting. “But at this point we’re yet to be satisfied by the CBC and their plan to ensure our broadcast is not compromised in any way.”
He said the game may be aired without play-by-play or colour commentary – which would be a CFL first.
Dozens of CBC workers marched outside the iconic Canadian Broadcasting Centre in downtown Toronto, many sporting signs that read Locked Out.
“There’s no reason we’re out on the street today,” said Arnold Amber, president of the CBC arm of the guild, which now represents between 80 and 90 per cent of the broadcaster’s workers after technical staff opted to join the union in 2004.
CBC Radio host Anna Maria Tremonti called it “heartbreaking” to be kept off Canada’s airwaves as she paced the sidewalk beneath the corporation’s distinctive logo. Others fretted about how to pay their bills amid speculation the lockout could be a long one.
Christian Bailey, an associate producer with the CBC, said the worst part for him and many others was really just not getting to do a job they love.
“I think a lot of people are bewildered,” Bailey said. “They just want to be working.”
Local radio morning shows were replaced by a single national broadcast, while TV newscasts were dramatically pared down. Workers with the broadcaster’s French-language operations, Radio-Canada and Radio-Canada International, were also locked out, except in Quebec and Moncton, N.B., where staff belong to a different union.
That gave a decidedly Quebecois flavour to much of the CBC programming in other parts of the country throughout the day.
Some of the CBC’s most prominent personalities are members of the guild and remained locked out of their offices Monday, including Peter Mansbridge, anchor of the broadcaster’s flagship national newscast, The National.
The main issue at stake is job security; the broadcaster wants more freedom to designate new employees as either permanent employees, contract workers with set starting and ending dates, or temporary workers, who are called in to fill openings as needed.
Arthur Lewis, executive director of the lobby group Our Public Airwaves, placed blame for the dispute squarely at the feet of the federal government.
“The insistence by CBC on the need to be able to hire more temporary workers can be traced directly to the corporation’s serious funding shortfall,” Lewis said in a statement.
“This lockout is a direct result of the underfunding of CBC by the federal government – creating a situation where CBC managers feel forced to take desperate but, in our view, short-sighted measures to try to best utilize limited resources.”
The corporation currently consists of 70 per cent permanent workers, 20 per cent temporary workers and five per cent contractors.
The dispute centres on what kind of changes would be made to that formula, one Amber said is fairly standard in the broadcasting industry.
Richard Stursberg, executive vice-president of CBC Television, said management wants the ability to classify employees based on the needs of the corporation at any given point. In many cases, contract employees are hired strictly for a specific program, event or project, and the CBC wants those contracts to better reflect the project’s schedule, he said.
“I think it’s very healthy for an organization to be able to bring some people, small numbers, into an organization with their ideas and whatnot, and have them leave and bring in new people,” said Jane Chalmers, vice-president of CBC Radio.
“I don’t think it’s uncommon in work life in Canada, in the broadcast industry or out.”
Workers aren’t opposed to contract work, but merely want some criteria put in place to ensure that they are used only under specific circumstances, Amber said.
Management’s assurances that no one who currently holds a permanent job will end up as a contractor doesn’t help when young employees are always asking the union to help them find permanent positions, he added.
“We are talking about the next generation of the CBC,” Amber said. “We are a family, and the family goes from generation to generation.”
Much of the dispute is rooted in long-standing questions about whether the government-funded CBC should operate like a private business, one that can make – and lose – money.
Amber said the CBC is a special institution in Canada because it’s a Crown corporation.
“This is not a fast-food restaurant,” he said. “The CBC is not a cable company, it isn’t speciality programming – it’s the national broadcaster.”
CBC producers, newsroom staff and technicians have been without a contract for more than a year. Last month, guild members voted 87.3 per cent in favour of a strike mandate.
Amber said the Canadian public is in for a shock for the duration of the lockout, which marks the first time a labour dispute has left enough people off the job to dramatically impact the broadcaster’s public face.
“Up until today, nobody knew what it meant to miss the CBC,” he said.

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CBC

Here’s hoping we go back soon!

CBC, union fail to reach deal
TORONTO (CP) – Viewers and listeners across the country tuned in to unfamiliar faces and voices on the airwaves Monday morning after the CBC locked out 5,500 of its workers.
Negotiators for the broadcaster and the Canadian Media Guild could not agree on a contract by the CBC-imposed lockout deadline of 12:01 a.m. ET Monday. Lise Lareau, president of the Canadian Media Guild, called the lockout a dark day for viewers of Canadian television. “It won’t really be the CBC because the people who are the CBC are outside the doors,” she said.
Richard Stursberg, executive vice-president of CBC Television, said the network will rely on contingency plans and the 10 per cent of its workforce that is not unionized to maintain programming.
“The truth is it is still going to be a reasonably interesting service, but it’s not going to be the service we hoped to offer Canadians,” he said.
The lockout will mean local radio morning shows will be replaced by a single national broadcast, and TV newscasts will be pared down, although the network can rely on BBC newscasts for coverage of international events.
Television coverage of sporting events such as CFL games will also have a much different look and sound.
TV content may not be familiar, but the CBC has indicated programming on all services – radio, television and online – will continue.
Union negotiator Arnold Amber said the work stoppage will likely result in “an incredible backlash” from the Canadian public.
“The CBC doesn’t know what’s in store for it,” Amber said from a picket line in front of the CBC building in Toronto shortly after the lockout was announced.
“You don’t suddenly do this and expect the Canadian public to say, ‘Oh isn’t that lovely – I’m not getting any service.’ ”
Lareau said it will be interesting to see how the CBC replaces high-profile personalities like Peter Mansbridge, anchor of The National, the network’s flagship television newscast.
Stursberg would not speculate on who would be filling in for Mansbridge or other well-known personalities for the duration of the lockout.
He said the major sticking point is that the CBC wants the flexibility to hire more non-permanent workers.
Stursberg said the last offer the corporation put forth guaranteed all permanent CBC workers would retain their jobs.
“What stands between us and the union is a theoretical point in the sense that nothing that we have asked for applies to anybody who works here now, in terms of their employment status.”
Stursberg said the CBC is 90 per cent unionized – a rate he said is much higher than in the private broadcasting sector.
“We owe a duty to the Canadian public … who actually pay for the CBC to have a set of arrangements that are not only as effective and as efficient as the private sector, but indeed are more so.”
But Lareau said 30 per cent of the CBC’s workforce is already non-permanent, giving the network all the flexibility it needs.
“We believe the CBC intended this dispute from the outset,” she said. “It’s a very aggressive senior management team, and this was part of the plan.”
Stursberg said the CBC is willing to get back to negotiations at “any time.”
“We are prepared to stay up all night long to get this concluded,” he said.
Amber said it was too early to determine when talks might resume, but said the union also wants to get back to the table.
“Fifty-five hundred members of our union are out,” he said. “We are taking a service away from Canadians across the country. It’s awful.”
Lareau said locked-out workers are hoping to have an Internet presence for the duration of the labour disruption as an alternative to CBC broadcasts.
She said workers will know within a couple of days what types of web programming are possible.
The producers, newsroom staff and technicians have been without a contract for more than a year.
Last month, guild members voted 87.3 per cent in favour of a strike mandate.
Employees in Quebec and Moncton, N.B., belong to different unions and are expected to continue working but not to cross over into Ontario to help out.
The broadcaster’s last major dispute was late in 2001, when technical staff were locked out across the country. In some cases, the sound and lighting was not up to usual standards, newscasts were pared down, and there were plenty of repeats.
ACTRA, the 21,000-member actors’ union, will not perform CBC work during the pending lockout, but that’s not expected to have an immediate impact onscreen since many shows are not currently in production.

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CBC

Will you loan me some money to tide me over?

CBC files 72-hour lockout notice
CBC management has filed a 72-hour lockout notice, meaning job action could take place Monday morning if an agreement is not reached with the union representing 5,500 workers.
“CBC doesn’t want a work stoppage and we are extremely disappointed to have to take this action,” the corporation said in a communiqu√à Thursday night. “However, after almost 15 months of negotiations, our key issues remain unresolved.”
The notice does not automatically mean that a work stoppage will occur Monday. The corporation acknowledged that both sides are still at the bargaining table.
Earlier, the corporation presented the union with a revised offer. But the Canadian Media Guild, representing the CBC, said the proposal does not resolve the critical issues, namely the CBC’s insistence on a new contract that will allow it to hire most new employees on a casual basis.
The corporation says it needs greater flexibility when it comes to hiring.
CBC spokesman Jason MacDonald said management filed the lockout notice to impress upon the Guild that the “deadline is real.”
“They came back to the table with nothing in hand and a ‘we’ll get back to you.’ The deadline is coming fast. At this point, that’s not good enough. We have to be negotiating,” MacDonald said.
But Arnold Amber, the president of the CBC branch of the CMG, said the union needed time to analyze the corporation’s latest offer. He also said that in the middle of negotiations, the corporation sent out a communiqu√à to the employees detailing the latest offer, forcing the union to take time out to respond to their members with their own communiqu√à.
As for the lockout notice, Amber said the corporation has been building up to a lockout for weeks.
” We were not surprised by this,” Amber said.
“I don’t know why they followed this strategy and tactic.”
Labour action could have a significant impact on program schedules, particularly its radio and online coverage. CFL football and NHL hockey would remain on the broadcast schedule, along with acquired programming and movies.
Last month, the union voted 87.3 per cent endorsing the union, including calling a strike if necessary, if its negotiators couldn’t get a deal with the corporation. The earliest date for a strike or a lockout would be Aug. 15.
Negotiations for a new contract began in May 2004.
MacDonald said that while negotiations are ongoing, “we have a steep to hill to climb.”

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CBC

Promoting the mother corp

Upcoming CBC-TV season to focus on Canadian drama
CBC-TV has announced a redoubled focus on Canadian dramatic programming in its 2005-06 season.
Beginning this fall, the network plans to build on the past success of its “high impact drama” strategy by devoting the prime time slots on Sunday and Monday nights to Canadian dramatic specials and miniseries, CBC-TV announced in a media briefing on Thursday.
Long-awaited projects like The Tommy Douglas Story, the prequel to the 2002 Trudeau miniseries, Shania: A Life in Eight Albums and Waking Up Wally: The Walter Gretzky Story will come to air.
“Our number one goal is to increase viewing to our network,” said Richard Stursberg, executive vice-president of CBC-TV. “The season … is designed to bring to more Canadians more of the shows they want to see.”
A major challenge is determining how to compete against top ranked U.S. shows like Desperate Housewives, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and ER, which air on other Canadian networks during prime time, said Slawko Klymkiw, executive director of network programming.
CBC-TV’s strategy is to offer “more and better distinctively Canadian programming,” Klymkiw said. “We have to know who we are and what we do best. We have to make ourselves heard over the noise of the marketplace.”
Canadians have certain expectations of a public broadcaster, Klymkiw said, among them high quality Canadian drama, comedy and children’s programming as well as top notch news and Canadian sports coverage. “And of course they expect Coronation Street. God help you if you don’t give it to them,” he said. The popular British series will be on five nights a week.
“We have to give them things they can’t get anywhere else,” he said. “We’re opening up the floodgates on Canadian drama. We’re putting it on the air when Canadians are watching TV √± in prime time.”
Popular shows like This is Wonderland and Rick Mercer’s Report will return. Rick Mercer’s comedy vehicle has dropped the “Monday” from its name because of a move to Tuesday evenings beginning this fall.
New additions will include Da Vinci’s City Hall, which will follow the fictional Vancouver coroner-turned-mayor, and Brad Peyton’s stop-motion animated comedy series What It’s Like Being Alone.
The sports lineup includes coverage of the 2006 Torino Games in Turin, the Canadian Football League and the National Hockey League, if it returns. News programs are being revamped, with a pilot project that will restore local suppertime newscasts in St. John’s, Montreal and Edmonton to a full hour, Stursberg said.
Further details about the season will be announced in early September.

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CBC

Can’t wait to see it, actually on CBC!!

CBC investigates leak of Doctor Who episode onto Net; series debuts April 5
TORONTO (CP) – The CBC says it is investigating how a Doctor Who episode ended up on the Internet a month before the new sci-fi series begins airing on television, although a spokesperson says the network is not the source of the leak.
A 45-minute episode of the BBC-produced series appeared on the Net on Monday, the BBC reported on its website, calling it “significant breach of copyright.”
“The source of it appears to be connected to our co-production partner (the CBC),” the report said.
CBC spokesperson Ruth-Ellen Soles said Tuesday “we’re currently undertaking a vigorous investigation to determine how the leak occurred – and our investigations to date indicate that CBC was not the source of the leak.”
Soles added that “CBC took all necessary and appropriate precautions to preserve the confidentiality of the program.”
News of the leak emerged, coincidentally, the same day the CBC announced that the 13-part series will make its North American debut April 5 on CBC-TV.
British actor Christopher Eccleston (eXistenZ) stars as Doctor Who, and pop singer Billie Piper plays his companion Rose Taylor.
The original Doctor Who series developed cult status, ending in 1989 after 26 years on the air.
The new series is “a smartly written, contemporary, full-blooded drama that embraces the original series’ heritage and introduces the characters to a modern audience,” the CBC said.
“Travelling through time and space, the Doctor and Rose come face to face with a variety of new and menacing monsters, as well as battling with the Doctor’s arch-enemy, the Daleks.”

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CBC

I can’t comment or I may get in trouble…

CBC seeks more funds from feds to restore local news, boost Canadian content
TORONTO (CP) – The CBC has outlined a multimillion-dollar plan to improve its Canadian programming, including a strategy to restore regional radio and TV content, notably local supper-hour newscasts.
Such programming was slashed in 2000 due to a series of cuts in the broadcaster’s public funding. The strategy was presented Thursday to the Canadian heritage committee by Richard Stursberg, the new vice-president of the CBC’s English-language TV network, and his counterparts for French-language TV and English and French radio. It had already been submitted to Heritage Minister Lisa Frulla last December.
CBC president Robert Rabinovitch also outlined the plan in remarks to staff on Friday.
“Faced with massive government reductions in our funding during the 1990s, CBC/Radio-Canada was forced to make very difficult programming decisions,” Rabinovitch said. “But we are committed to rebuilding our local and regional service and this plan details how we would do that, and what it would cost.”
Under a three-year regional/local program restoration strategy, special operating funds would be required: $34.4 million in the first year, $61.2 million in the second, ramping up to $82.8 million by the third year.
In addition, the CBC wants the government to make permanent a $60-million annual pay-out that has been added to the broadcaster’s fixed budget of nearly $900 million in each of the past three years. And there’s an ongoing plea that the CBC get back its once-protected 50 per cent allotment of the Canadian Television Fund, the public-private source of program financing.
There are also plans to double the amount of current Canadian drama series and specials, mount a weekly cultural affairs program and bring back late night and weekend local news. Stursberg says the CBC is the only network willing to devote prime-time hours to Canadian drama.
Stursberg indicated there would be some streamlining or even elimination of existing shows to free resources to get back into regional programming, where cuts have lost the network hundreds of thousands of viewers. Even CBC’s national supper-hour newscast, Canada Now, has been rumoured to be under re-evaluation.
“This represents a good reversal in previous CBC policy, and that’s great,” said Arnold Amber, the Canadian Media Guild’s CBC branch president after the committee hearing. “It was also good to see the support coming from the members of the committee for this ambitious plan.”
Meanwhile, ACTRA, the Canadian actors’ union, is warning again that Canadian TV drama continues to decline. Citing a new statistical report issued by the Canadian Film and Television Production Association, the union said there was a seven per cent decline in government-certified Canadian content during the 2002-2003 season.
“Canadian drama has been on a steady decline since the CRTC’s 1999 television policy let private broadcasters off the hook,” said Stephen Waddell, ACTRA’s national executive director, referring to the broadcast regulator’s decision to relax the definition of required Canadian content.
“Canadians are losing their jobs and their culture.”
But the Canadian Association of Broadcasters, which represents the bulk of the country’s private broadcasters, offered a different picture, citing the same statistical report, entitled Profile 2005, that was released Thursday in Ottawa.
“Canada’s private broadcasters continue to be independent production’s strongest partner with year-over-year growth of investment in independent production of 13 per cent in the 2003 broadcast year,” CAB president Glenn O’Farrell said in a statement.
O’Farrell added that the difficulties faced in getting domestic production off the ground are due largely to the increased value of the dollar, a general decrease in production throughout North America and increased competition from various U.S. states to lure TV production.
The producers association report admits the industry is in a slump at present, citing the dollar and increased foreign competition. But it also looked positively at recent tax credit hikes announced in Ontario, Quebec and B.C.
“It’s a tough, cut-throat business and Canadian producers have got to fight for their turf,” said Guy Mayson, president and CEO of the producers association. “We’re moving in the right direction with the recently improved provincial tax credits, but we need to do more with the federal tax credits. And ultimately we need a business strategy for building stronger independent companies.”
Laszlo Barna, a Toronto producer responsible for such shows as Da Vinci’s Inquest, called for a streamlining of the key cultural industries, including the CBC, the National Film Board, Telefilm Canada, the CRTC and the Canadian Television Fund.
“The producer’s cash flow also needs to flow,” Barna added. “Right now it’s restricted by outdated administrative rules.”

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CBC

Show them the money!!

CBC seeks another $75 million to reinstate regional programming
OTTAWA (CP) – A quartet of CBC executives is scheduled to appear before the Commons heritage committee Thursday morning where a recent request for millions of dollars in extra government funding to reinstate regional and local programming is expected to surface. Such programming has been scaled back over the past decade because of a series of Ottawa-imposed budget cuts.
Under the plan, already submitted to Heritage Minister Lisa Frulla for review, the public broadcaster is requesting $25 million in special operating funding for the first year, ramping up to some $75 million by year 3.
“CBC operates in tough financial circumstances so I’m sure it will be a subject of discussion,” Jason MacDonald, CBC spokesman, said Wednesday.
Attending the hearing will be the new vice-president for English-language television, Richard Stursberg , and his counterparts for French-language TV and the English and French radio services.
The request comes after the CBC has endured widespread criticism for reducing supper-hour programming in its various regional markets, which in turn has led to a loss of hundreds of thousands of regular viewers.
The heritage committee has argued that the CBC must ensure that levels of local programming outside of Montreal and Toronto are delivered.
“A CBC that pays attention to its Broadcasting Act mandate to serve the special needs of Canada’s regions would balance network with grassroots radio and TV programs,” Ian Morrison, spokesman for the advocacy group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, said in a letter this week to the CBC.
“That’s the challenge we hope the CBC will address.”
In a committee hearing last November, CBC president Robert Rabinovitch noted that the network’s parliamentary appropriation is $415 million less than it was in 1990. When asked if the cuts to local and regional programming were a mistake, he replied that the CBC had to live within its reduced budget.
The CBC receives base funding of nearly $900 million a year from the federal government, which has topped up the budget by an additional $60 million for each of the last four years (minus a $10-million reallocation in recent supplementary estimates). And while the CBC has brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues from other sources, including advertising and programming and property sales, it has also lost an estimated $20 million due to this season’s NHL lockout and incurred less than anticipated revenue from the Summer Olympics.