MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT AND CEO
This year was one of renewal for Canada’s national public broadcaster.
Thanks to the hard work and commitment of our people, CBC/Radio-Canada achieved the goals of its two-year financial Recovery Plan, balancing its budget for 2010–2011. This was a substantial achievement. At the start of fiscal year 2009–2010, we faced a projected budget shortfall of $171 million – about 10 per cent of our total budget.
The success of the Recovery Plan has allowed us to move to the next step in the Corporation’s evolution. We spent much of this year developing the new five-year strategic plan Everyone, Every way, which we launched in February of 2011. It outlines what Canadians can expect from their public broadcaster over the next five years.
Continuing with the theme of renewal, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) will hold hearings on renewing CBC/Radio-Canada licences in September 2011. The Commission will consider the following services:
- English and French television services
- English and French radio services
- CBC News Network and Réseau de l’Information (RDI)
- Our specialty television networks ARTV, bold and documentary
Our hope is that the decisions concerning renewal of our licences will facilitate the implementation of Everyone, Every way by enabling us to address our programming and regional priorities in the most effective manner.
Our Roadmap to the Future
Everyone, Every way defines our way forward in the midst of a changing media landscape driven by new technologies, demographic shifts, more powerful, integrated media empires and flourishing social networks.
The plan gives us the means to truly deepen our relationship with Canadians on national, community and personal levels. It recognizes that we cannot be all things to all people. But it is also premised on the notion that we can, and we should, mean something special to every Canadian.
Our vision is ambitious: To be the recognized leader in expressing Canadian culture and to enrich the democratic life of all Canadians. We will achieve this as follows: by creating and delivering original and innovative, high-quality Canadian content; by reflecting and drawing together all Canadians; and by actively engaging with audiences.
Since the February 2011 launch of Everyone, Every way, we have met with employees and stakeholders across the country to present and discuss the strategy. The strategy has been wholeheartedly endorsed by those with whom we have met. We also asked Canadians to give us their thoughts and comments through a consultation on CBC.ca and Radio-Canada.ca. This consultation is ongoing.
Three Thrusts: National, Regional and Digital Programming
The plan has three strategic thrusts. Canadians can expect more from their national public broadcaster in terms of the national spaces that reflect the Canadian experience, the regional spaces that knit communities together, and the digital spaces where they can engage in public conversations and debates in their own personalized way. These three thrusts are explained as follows.
Network Programming and National Public Spaces
Simply stated, this means more stories by, for and about Canadians. Over the next five years, our prime-time schedules will become even more distinctive. We will continue to gather increasingly large numbers of Canadians around Canadian stories that explain our realities and that showcase our humour and values.
Every year, CBC and Radio-Canada will each produce and air at least 10 Signature Events – projects of national cultural relevance or public interest that include programming elements on all platforms, a significant interactive digital extension, meaningful public engagement activities, and the participation of the regions of the country.
A recent signature event on CBC, Live Right Now, inspired Canadians to join together and change the health of this country.
Radio-Canada’s, Une heure sur terre... pour le Japon, demonstrated a strong show of support for Japan, 14 days after the earthquake. A live broadcast of the Montreal Symphonic Orchestra with Une heure sur terre aired on Radio-Canada as well as on Espace musique and Radio-Canada.ca.
Other Signature Events over the next five years will focus on culture, sports, music, history – the scope is as broad as the Canadian experience – and be in line with CBC/Radio-Canada’s objectives and promotional priorities.
Regional Presence and Community Spaces
Canadians have told us that the regions rank among our foremost priorities in their minds, but that they do not feel we live up to our potential. For different reasons, we have not always been everywhere we needed to be, or able to do everything we needed to do.
We will change that. We will expand regional programming beyond news to genres such as lifestyle, talk and music to better reflect local communities. We will introduce new services, new local websites, new formats on radio, and increase regional news on television during the day.
On May 26, 2011, we announced details of an initiative with an increased local focus, part of our recent commitment under Everyone, Every way, to introduce or improve services to more than six million Canadians over the next five years. Examples of how we will achieve this include the following:
- After successful inaugurations of centres in Trois-Rivières and Saguenay in 2010, multiplatform service offerings will be expanded by establishing a centre in Rimouski.
- All-new radio and online services will be established in Kamloops.
- CBC in Kelowna will expand its current service to include a new afternoon radio program focused on serving the British Columbia interior.
- CBC Victoria's existing programming will be enhanced to better serve the specific needs of Vancouver Island audiences. Victoria and Kelowna's new programming will commence in fall 2011, with Kamloops to follow in spring 2012.
- New weekend news programs on television and expanded weekend news programming on radio and online will be launched in Toronto this fall and in Calgary in winter 2012.
New Platforms and Digital Spaces
New digital platforms and spaces, including social networks, have made tremendous inroads over the last decade and have fundamentally changed the media environment. We can now personalize our experience where, when and how we want to.
Everyone, Every way will embrace this new media experience. To make this happen, we will double our current level of digital investment to at least five per cent of our programming budget by 2015, which should represent about $90 million.
We are continually innovating, embracing and experimenting. Here are just three recent examples.
- During the recent federal election, close to two million Canadians used the Vote Compass tool on the CBC/Radio-Canada websites to explore how their views and values align with those of the political parties.
- Since its launch in January 2010, Radio-Canada’s TOU.TV, Canada’s largest French-language entertainment television website, generated 30 million video streams. TOU.TV features over 2,000 hours of programming from Canadian and international public broadcasters and independent producers.
- We launched the Espace.mu website in June 2011 for online listening of music, allowing listeners to enjoy seven styles of music (pop, jazz, world, classical, rock, hip hop and folk/country), as well as simultaneous streams of Espace musique and Bande à part.
Building on Programming Success
CBC Television’s prime-time regular season audience share of 9.3 per cent was one of its highest in the past 10 years. And Télévision de Radio-Canada continued to attract almost 20 per cent of all viewing by television viewers in prime time, maintaining its position as the second most watched TV network among francophones.
On both networks, a total of 12 Canadian programs drew more than one million viewers. These include CBC Television’s Republic of Doyle, The Rick Mercer Report, Hockey Night in Canada and Dragons’ Den, as well as Télévision de Radio-Canada’s Tout le monde en parle and Les enfants de la télé.
Despite an overall decline in conventional radio listening among Canadians, ratings for both of our radio networks are at historic highs. CBC Radio now holds a combined national share of 14.7 per cent (CBC Radio One at 12.0 per cent and CBC Radio 2 at 2.7 per cent). Twenty of 22 CBC Radio regional morning shows rank among the top three in their markets.
Radio de Radio-Canada’s Première Chaîne and Espace musique now hold a combined audience share of 19.5 per cent. Première Chaîne has a 15.8 per cent share and Espace musique has a 3.8 per cent national share.
Radio-Canada.ca and CBC.ca are also performing strongly. Our combined Internet sites are drawing more than 7.5 million visitors a month, making these sites among Canada’s most popular.
Our FIFA World Cup soccer coverage served over eight million live video streams, and QTV, which is the weekly web television show based on the CBC Radio arts program Q, reached a new milestone with 10 million YouTube views. Radio-Canada’s websites have enjoyed an increase of 14 per cent in web traffic, up from 1.7 million to just over 2 million unique visits per month.
Making it Happen
Everyone, Every way is an ambitious plan. We will make it happen, but not without disruption – innovative disruption. Over the next three years, we will shift between 450 and 550 positions from existing jobs to our new priorities.
Our strategy does not depend on obtaining more money from government. But it does require ongoing stable funding and continued participation in the various funds available to industry players.
We will report on our performance regularly throughout the year across a range of metrics so that every Canadian can hold us to account through our Annual Report, our Quarterly Financial Reports, and our Corporate Plan Summary, which are all available to the public.
Contributing to Canada
Our success as a public broadcaster translates into a significant contribution to the Canadian economy. Deloitte and Touche LLP (Deloitte) was commissioned in the fall of 2010 to provide a measure of our impact on the economy. Input included data from CRTC submissions, Statistics Canada, industry reports and CBC/Radio-Canada. Deloitte concluded that we had substantial impact on the Canadian economy in 2010, supporting jobs and businesses across the country. CBC/Radio-Canada’s expenditure of $1.7 billion generated an estimated $3.7 billion gross value added contribution to the Canadian economy.
We are proud to contribute to the national, regional and local economies, as well as the cultural sector, independent producers, technology and Canadian talent.
Celebrate Our Anniversary
As our Chair of the Board has mentioned, CBC Radio-Canada is celebrating its 75th anniversary on November 2, 2011. Mr. Casgrain has outlined just some of the activities planned to celebrate this milestone with Canadians. To follow and participate in the activities planned, we invite you to listen, watch or log in and celebrate our 75th anniversary.
This is our commitment to Canadians – to everyone, in every way.
Hubert T. Lacroix
President and CEO