The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was established in Nov. 1936. It’s no secret that the public broadcaster has received an enormous amount of taxpayers’ money on a year-to-year basis. Ottawa has doled out $1.2 billion in annual public funding since 2018, although it briefly rose to nearly $1.4 billion during the 2020-21 fiscal year due to COVID.
Many Conservatives, and a not-so-insignificant number of Canadians, believe that total CBC funding should be reduced. These individuals don’t typically like, watch or care for some or all of its programming. They feel the CBC has taken billions of taxpayer dollars and spent it in an unwise fashion.
Based on what’s going on with CBC’s streaming service, they’re going to have extra ammunition to use against the public broadcaster and federal government. Some on the fence may join them, too.
CBC Television launched an over-the-top streaming platform, CBC Gem, in 2018 to replace the CBC TV app. Subscribers would have “the option of an ad-supported, free option, or for $4.99 a month, an ad-free version.” CBC Gem would carry a variety of programs linked with CBC TV, CBC News and CBC Sports, as well as original programming. It would “offer 150 feature films from Telefilm Canada” and partner with the National Film Board of Canada to stream, according to then-CBC CEO and president Catherine Tait, “the very best of their library.”
Tait also told an audience at Content Canada, an industry event in collaboration with the Toronto International Film Festival, that CBC Gem “won’t just be CBC content. It won’t be just our news and our current affairs.” Rather, it would be “the crown jewels of Canadian content.”
It sounded like a good venture on the surface. People are shifting from cable TV to popular streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Apple TV on a steady basis. CBC TV evidently wanted to follow this trend and become a streaming service leader in the Great White North.
How are things working out? That’s a good question. Alas, the CBC hasn’t been completely forthcoming in this regard.
According to Anja Karadeglija’s Aug. 26 Globe and Mail piece, Matt Malone, an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa, reportedly sent in an access-to-information request to find out CBC Gem’s subscriber numbers. Yet, CBC/Radio-Canada “refused” to give out this information because “citing exemptions for programming activities and information…could harm its competitive position.” Malone appealed to the federal information commissioner, who “disagreed with the CBC” and “ordered the public broadcaster to disclose the numbers” in July.
Incredulously, CBC announced that it intended to go to court to prevent these subscriber numbers from being released. “We will make our case in our filing with the Federal Court and let the court decide,” CBC spokesperson Leon Mar said in an email to Karadeglija. This led Malone to respond that this decision is “a very interesting use of CBC’s precious resources. In my opinion, it’s a sad but telling attempt to dodge basic transparency.”
Did CBC experience a change of heart the past couple of months? No.
An application in federal court was recently filed. CBC/Radio-Canada president Marie-Philippe Bouchard told The Canadian Press on Oct. 20 that the public broadcaster is “charged with making some of our budget out of commercial relationships.” In her view, “that has to be played according to the rules of the market. And so we’re finding ourselves, with this ruling, uncomfortable with the interpretation.” Moreover, Bouchard said paid subscribers “are not what makes Gem” since it is “mainly a free-to-user service” and that the “paid part is really a commodity for people who don’t want advertising.”
I’m sorry, but this decision is ridiculous.
CBC, our country’s public broadcaster, is going to waste additional taxpayer dollars to go to court to prevent CBC Gem’s subscriber numbers from being revealed. Why? There can only be one logical reason for this: the total subscriber base of this streaming service must be very low. If these numbers were at a decent-to-high level, there would be absolutely no reason to keep this information private. And there would certainly be no need to worry about competition from other streaming services, either.
Let’s play devil’s advocate. What if the court ultimately rules against the CBC, they’re forced to reveal CBC Gem’s subscriber numbers – and everything turns out to be A-OK? That would be fine, but it would also make this entire episode a total waste of time, effort, money and resources. What would be the point of this, exactly?
That’s why you have to assume CBC Gem’s subscriber numbers are pretty low. Especially when you take into consideration Bouchard’s eye-raising caveat about paid subscribers not being “what makes Gem.” It’s also hard to see how CBC could justify maintaining this streaming service going forward if a seemingly harmless piece of information could be perceived as being potentially harmful to CBC Gem’s existence.
CBC’s critics and opponents could be having a field day with this story before long. It’s all due to a gem that doesn’t seem to be shining brilliantly.
Michael Taube, a longtime newspaper columnist and political commentator, was a speechwriter for former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper.
