OTTAWA \u2014 Experts say CBC\/Radio-Canada\u2019s new five-year plan to grow its audience offers a reply to its many critics \u2014 but it lacks specifics and it might be too little and too late.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, the public broadcaster released a plan for expanding its viewership by reaching out to children and youth, newcomers and \u201cnon-users or dissatisfied users.\u201d<\/p>\n
CBC president Marie-Philippe Bouchard told The Canadian Press in an earlier interview that the plan includes a new focus on rural areas and Western Canada through a larger on-the-ground journalistic presence.<\/p>\n
But connecting with that estranged audience will take more than enhanced local coverage, said Peter Menzies, a former CRTC vice-chair and former publisher of the Calgary Herald, now a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they need to make sure that when they do that coverage, they\u2019re speaking to people in a voice that they find familiar,\u201d he told The Canadian Press.<\/p>\n
That means \u201cif you\u2019re talking to people in Moose Jaw, you sound like somebody who knows what Moose Jaw is all about,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnless you\u2019re sort of embedded in your community and you understand how it thinks, listens, how it hears things, you\u2019re not going to be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Menzies said smaller communities may have early-career reporters who work there for a short while before moving to larger markets \u2014 and that means newsroom managers need to \u201cunderstand those communities and \u2026 make sure that you get relatively smooth transitions.\u201d<\/p>\n
CBC also needs to decentralize decision-making away from its Toronto headquarters, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very difficult for anybody in Toronto to be making sound decisions about what the interests are of viewers, readers and listeners in Western Canada, and rural parts of Ontario for that matter,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Marsha Barber, a journalism professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and former producer at the CBC, said the public broadcaster\u2019s \u201cbiggest challenge\u201d will be to reach those Canadians who don\u2019t use its service, or who feel alienated by it.<\/p>\n
It will have to \u201cprioritize using diverse opinions and voices from across the country to bolster its coverage,\u201d Barber said in an email, adding CBC will have to be \u201cvery specific\u201d about what it will do differently following previous attempts to boost its audience.<\/p>\n
Menzies said the CBC\u2019s new five-year plan might be landing too late to make a difference.<\/p>\n
\u201cImpressions get very embedded, and it\u2019s been a few years that this has been going on now \u2026 Once your connection is broken with people in media, it\u2019s very hard to earn them back and I think it\u2019s going to be extremely challenging,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But Jessica Johnson, a senior fellow with McGill University\u2019s Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, said the CBC still has a shot at connecting with a broader audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith local journalism, rural journalism especially, you just have to show up. You just have put a body there,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Johnson, who published a report on the CBC this summer, said her research showed that more than half of Canadians aren\u2019t satisfied with their local news options \u2014 and those who live in rural or semi-rural areas are even less satisfied.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s such a low-hanging piece of fruit, and reinstalling local journalism bureaus doesn\u2019t have to be that expensive,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
CBC\/Radio-Canada\u2019s plan comes months after an election which saw Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre repeatedly vow to \u201cdefund\u201d the CBC.<\/p>\n
There has been an unprecedented amount of political focus on CBC\/Radio-Canada in the past two years, Johnson noted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see the CBC really hearing the criticisms that have been levelled against it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Johnson said that while strategy is ambitious, it\u2019s also vague.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely missing the how and also \u2026 the how much,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Though the Liberals have promised to increase CBC\/Radio-Canada\u2019s budget and make its funding more stable, the strategic plan was released ahead of the federal budget, which will be tabled in early November.<\/p>\n
Sarah Andrews, senior director of government and media relations at the advocacy group Friends of Canadian Media, agreed the CBC is responding to some of the criticisms that have been raised in the past few years.<\/p>\n
She said the fact that the public broadcaster is aware of the \u201cneed to be more in communities, more boots on the ground, more journalists on the ground in those areas, is a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andrews said she would like to see more specifics, particularly about plans for individual communities. She noted that after the passage of the Online News Act \u2014 which resulted in CBC\/Radio-Canada receiving a portion of Google $100-million fund \u2014 the broadcaster outlined plans to hire up to 30 journalists in 22 communities.<\/p>\n
The new five-year plan says the public broadcaster has plans to \u201cfund additional coverage and hire sufficient journalists to cover 15-20 communities with a population greater than 50,000, that currently have no or little local CBC\/Radio-Canada presence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andrews said that \u201cto identify where those \u2026 communities are that don\u2019t have local reporting on the ground, and to have a timeline as to when journalists could be expected in those communities, I think that\u2019s certainly something that would be encouraging for communities that do feel disconnected.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA \u2014 Experts say CBC\/Radio-Canada\u2019s new five-year plan to grow its audience offers a reply to its many…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-222991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}