Converging in Parallel
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[Panel 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

Panel 5: Changing Channels: Public, Private and Community Broadcasting in Canada
13:30-14:45 -- Friday, November 10, 2006.

Moderator: Geneviève Bonin (Doctoral Candidate, Department of Art History & Communication Studies, McGill University)

Jump to panellist: Destin, Light, Milliken, Savage, Sawchuk, Williams.

1. Lainy Destin (BCL/LLB Candidate, Faculty of Law, McGill University). What does it mean to refer to public broadcasting's successes? What should we think about in terms of designing a principled policy framework to evaluate when success is, in fact, being achieved?

I view the political goals for public broadcasting in Canada, included in the Broadcasting Act, as fundamentally laudable (in need of some structuring, of course, but commendable nonetheless.) I also believe that the hybrid (private and public) nature of the broadcasting system has served Canadians well.

Acknowledging successes: In order accurately refer to the successes of public broadcasting in Canada, a concerted effort needs to be made by scholars to acknowledge and analyze the popular and ground breaking public broadcasting endeavors of recent years. Such an undertaking would help to formulate a set of basic and identifiable characteristics of televisions programs that resonate with Canadian viewers. I am particularly referring to different programming concepts that have managed to entertain viewers while relevant social issues to viewers (on television: Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High, Greatest Canadian, and Lance et Compte; on the radio: 275 allo, to name a few.)

Behind the screen evaluation: The evaluation of the success of public broadcasting cannot solely be focused evaluating content. More attention should be paid to management practices, particularly with respect to the fostering of successful productions. While our national public broadcaster, the CBC-SRC, has implemented some improvements to its broadcasting strategy, it is also important to implement a series of identifiable "best practices" exclusively applicable to public broadcasting goals. Such a manner of thinking has been applied in isolated cases in the past and would serve to counter the dominant corporate-commercial standards upon which public broadcasters have exclusively measured their success (efficiencies, streamlining, etc.)

Using market concepts: It must be said that while private-sector conceptions and interpretations of success should not be dominant, they can be useful. In the most basic private industry terms, we can measure the product output- that is, the programs by asking questions about the quality (production technique and cultural- popular or political- relevance). We can also conceive of a measure of the "reachability" of the programs offered (is the method by which a message is being emitted through a particular program accessible to viewers?) These indexing questions highlight the fact that measure of successful public broadcasting endeavors inevitably involve some balancing of political objectives and market goals as measures of success. Through this balancing exercise, public broadcasting endeavors gain robustness by demonstrating an understanding of viewers not just as citizens embody a modern interpretation of the Broadcasting Act; which where the viewer is not only a consumer, needing to be fed products or a citizen, needing to be fed civic values; instead the viewer can be understood as a more complex actor in the social-relation exchange exercise created through broadcasting, in general.

2. Evan Light (Masters Candidate, School of Media, Université du Québec à Montréal). How can Canadian policy regarding community communications learn from other jurisdictions' approaches to legislation and social support systems for this media approach?

Canada may has had legislation on community broadcasting since the 1970's. However, it has effectively done little to actively engage and support this sector, even though it has been recognized in the Broadcasting Act - the fundamental bed of our national broadcasting system as vital to the maintenance of Canadian society and identity. This has effectively led to the development of a system of community broadcasting that largely has a casual relationship with the CRTC rather than a structural relationship guaranteed by representation. Lack of basic representation within the communications regulator has resulted in a number of instances whereby the policies that govern community broadcasters do not address the realities they face nor the importance of this sociallydriven form of media and communication. Most significantly, the regulator is unable to consider community broadcasting outside the ideological norms of commercial and State broadcasting and unwilling to consider examples evident in other countries. One such example is the development of community radio legislation in Uruguay where such broadcasters have operated illegally since the 1980's. Over the past two years, AMARC, UNESCO, communications researchers at the Universidad de la República, and local social groups have crafted communications policy that meets their specific needs. Specifically, it will see the creation of a subsection of the federal regulator that is dedicated to community broadcasting and will be composed of representatives of community broadcasters, social organizations and the national university. As such, it will provide a manner of crafting communications policy that is rooted in community needs and which has the potential to facilitate regular dialogue on communication and media use. This structure will likely be extended to the field of community television.

One consistent and significant problem for community-based media groups is funding. At present, Canada is one of few developed countries in the world that does not have a mechanism in place to provide basic funding for community broadcasting. In other nations, such as the UK, the telecommunications regulator understands its mandate to be proactive and are thus capable of directly funding community-based broadcasters. Recently, a proposal made to Heritage Canada by Canada's three central community broadcasting associations (National Campus and Community Radio Association, Association des radios communautaires du Québec, Alliance des radios communautaires) to aide in the creation of such a fund was rejected. Another proposal to the CRTC through which commercial radio contributions to the CRTC would constitute part of this fund will be ruled on in January 2007. While some mechanisms do exist for community media inside Québec and for Francophone and aboriginal roadcasters throughout the country, this is the first concrete effort to create a global and inclusive measure.

Media regulation and the social values reflected in it tend to be largely limited to dominant commercial comprehensions of media use and consumption. If Canadian community communications policy is to evolve in a manner that is relavent and supportive of this constituency, policymakers must begin to look outside of their narrow traditions of "public" and private broadcasting and engage community media in earnest and both sides must take advantage of non-Canadian examples of successful cooperation.

3. Mary Milliken (Doctoral Candidate, Department of Sociology, University of New Brunswick). What aspects of the Canadian broadcast policy process have the most to gain from the conceptual discussion of "public service broadcasting" available in political economy and other bodies of knowledge?

Any discussion of public service objectives in broadcasting necessitates consideration of the impact of technological developments, convergence, and media ownership structures both nationally and internationally, in both broadcasting and telecommunications. What would happen if the discussion of telecom and broadcasting policy was conjoined under a re-invigorated concept of 'public service' (Raboy, 1995, 1997) rather than 'market rule'? Winseck has written about the artificial separation of broadcasting and telecommunications policy in Canada, through a series of political decisions as technocratic responses to the threats of international competition (1998). Our Cultural Sovereignty (2003) recommended a realignment of broadcasting and telecommunications policy, and the creation of a Department of Communications "…responsible for the Government of Canada's support for broadcasting, telecommunications and cultural industries (19.1)" as well as a redefined role for the CRTC.

The public service broadcasting (PSB) ideals to "educate, inform and entertain" are intended to ensure a place for socio-cultural objectives in the broadcasting market, and have always been subject to contextual changes due to political, economic, social and technological forces and events. There is some value to maintaining vagueness in the definition; if too strictly defined, PSB is less able to accommodate changing social demands, and less democratic as it becomes more vulnerable to agendas of society's powerful (Mosco, 1996). While the 1991 Act designates the whole Canadian broadcast system a public service, the system has never truly operated in a way that it could fulfil those objectives (Raboy, 1990, 1995a) and the concept of public service has been in retreat, globally, under the onslaught of neoliberal policies since the 1980s (Dyson & Humphreys, 1990; Mosco & Wasko, 1984). The absence of traditional public service ideals in telecommunications policy formation have been frequently noted in communications literature (Moll & Regan Shade, 2004, Raboy, 1997a). These combined factors have contributed to the creation of one of the most deeply concentrated media industries in the world, and to the undermining of public service objectives, legitimacy and practices across the system.

Before the Broadcasting Act (1991) and since, numerous examinations of problems in the system have identified similar issues: a lack of transparency and accountability, ill-defined areas of jurisdiction and responsibility for both public and private in broadcast and non-broadcast media, complexity and contradictions in regulations and funding mechanisms, and inadequate public input at the policy decision-making and production levels (Caplan Sauvageau, 1986; Mandate Review Committee, 1996; Standing Committee, 2003). An alignment of the legislation and regulation around both broadcast and telecommunications technological and organizational structures would address the realities of a technologically and financially 'converged' or integrated global market.

The question is: were the institutional and policy amalgamation to occur under the Conservative federal government, considering it's five (non-cultural) goals and its historically hostile position on the CBC, the CRTC, Heritage etc., what are the chances of democratization "of and through" media (Wasko & Mosco, 1992) by a parallel movement in the direction of public service, rather than the neoliberal trajectory that has characterized telecommunications policy since the 1980's (Rideout, 2003)?

4. Philip Savage (Lecturer, Department of Communication Studies, McMaster University). What role does audience research play in broadcasting policy? What are the institutional locations in which such research is undertaken? Does academic research concerned with public service have anything to contribute to such research?

Information about audience needs and desires has traditionally not played a very large role in the formation of broadcasting policy. A careful tracing of key Canadian broadcasting decisions over the last ten years suggests that at one level the emphasis on audience increased, in some key debates taking on a central role in helping determine the "public interest." In fact, a certain limited and commercial ratings definition (or "discourse") of audience has gained further dominance; entrenching itself not only in the economic decision making of private broadcasting institutions, but within public bodies like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), and the Canadian Television Fund (CTF).

In recent years, broadcasting policy formation in Canada has drawn on new audience based "measures of success" predominantly using quantitative, ratings based methodologies. For instance, when CTF simplified its grants to support Canadian TV production, audience measures such as "hours tuned" became primary criteria for allocation of funds to broadcasters and producers. And for once arcane audience research methodological debates became a site of industrial jostling. Qualitative assessments of program impact remained though effectively irrelevant - outside the conversation.

Similarly, the main federal broadcasting regulator, the CRTC, has implemented audience based incentives for broadcasters, allowing commercial broadcasters to increase advertising revenues via imported U.S. programming as the quid pro quo for airing more Canadian TV drama.

At the CBC, both internal and external reviews of performance have created a struggle to maintain some alternative qualitative performance indicators of "public value" developed historically by the Audience Research Department of public broadcaster, in the face of pressures to improve on lacklustre share performance.

In fact my argument is the language of audience has an impact on the CBC's direction and the goals of policy formation overall because the language and practices of audience research act as constraints on the range of options that Canadians can consider in determining the type of broadcasting system they operate and the future public service role of broadcasting. We've moved beyond the medium as message to the audience as the massage.

Academic injections of useable measures of public value in broadcasting have been few and far between. There is a somewhat understandable tendency among scholars to "abandon the field" of institutional audience research because of its limited and limiting view of audience. Fair enough. But their absence from the definition of audience in policy debates tends to leave open the door for a simplistic commercial notion of audience to dominate. In particular, few critical communication scholars have attempted to probe and produce alternative qualitative measures of audience needs and values that would enrich the policy debate. The time may be right for scholars working with media activists to deepen and transform policy formation by expanding the vocabulary of audience to support media in the public interest, that is, serving real audience needs and desires.

5. Kim Sawchuk (Associate Professor, Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University). To what extent has feminist media studies in Canada taken broadcast policy intervention as a programmatic goal? What trade-offs would doing so involve?

One assumes that a critical analysis and engagement with broadcast policy would be of great interest to feminist media studies scholars and feminist media activists. After all, "sex-role stereotyping has been included in the Broadcasting Act since the establishment of a 1979 CRTC task force until its 1991 revisions" and is a standard part of the self-regulatory mandates of the AAS and CAB (Trimble). The CBC has paved the way for the use of gender-neutral language, widely adopted as policy (if not in practice) by broadcasters. Since the 1995 Beijing conference on women, the mass media (including broadcasting) have been identified as a key site of feminist intervention and intermittently subjected to wide-scale media monitoring projects.

Despite this potential intersection of feminism and broadcast policy, the number of articles or books that examine broadcast policy (or specific cases) from the purview of feminism are few and far between, with a some notable exceptions (Ferguson; Trimble; Robinson; Strutt and Hissey; Beale and Van Den Bosch; Raboy; Murray; Mayer; Meehan; Banet-Weiser and Portwood-Stacer; Freeman; Shade, Porter Sanchez). Compared to other areas of inquiry in feminist media studies, media policy (cultural, broadcasting and communication) rarely receives specific attention. The debates on hetero-normative codes of sexuality and gender, on what constitutes a family or a household, on who is included in the public policy process, on the problematic division between the public and the private (as domestic), feminist analyses of the state, economics or bureaucracy: these areas of theory have implications for the analysis of governance. Yet, they have not traveled extensively beyond the borders of feminism or queer theory into this powerful area of media studies. As the paucity of material suggests, the relationship between feminism or feminist media studies and broadcasting policy has been, to quote a well-known policy scholar, a "missed opportunity."

I have been asked to address: what would be the trade-off for feminism to take up policy and policy to studies to take up feminism? I prefer not to think of this as a trade-off. Rather, considering the policies and practices that gender media governance is an opportunity to vivify both feminist media studies and policy studies and to bring them up-to-date with contemporary issues and modes of analyses.

Briefly, gendering media governance shifts the purview of policy to a broader framework that includes a history and critique of some of the points of contact, mentioned above. It is pressing in an epoch where feminism is both more systematically marginalized than ever within the state (witness the recent conservative gutting of the Status of Women portfolio). More necessary than ever in a world where masculinity, guns and violence seem ever more inter-twined, such a perspective does not trivialize gender and sexuality as a "woman's issue" but takes up the modalities of masculinity and sexualities in a range of policy and practices that articulates the everyday to the meta-political.

Finally, gendering media governance demands a radical rethinking of the terms in which policy itself has taken care of the "gender issue" through an out-dated and simplistic use of the "sex-role stereotyping" and its reliance on the methodology known as content analysis.

6. Patricia Williams (Doctoral Candidate, Department of Sociology, York University). What does evidence-based research that evaluates the Television Transformation Project's impact on CBC programming look like? Can research like this play an ongoing role in structuring the discretion of CBC decision-makers in how they meet public service obligations?

The Television Transformation Project (TTP) was launched in 2001, with a goal of ensuring that the CBC became increasingly distinctive from other networks. The recent and very briefly lived controversial reality show The One appears to go against everything the TTP set out to accomplish. This raises two questions: how did The One make it on air, and what does evidence-based research that evaluates the Television Transformation Project's impact on CBC programming look like?

The One made it on air in part because of the political vulnerability of the Canadian public broadcaster and as Ian Morrison notes, the fact that "the president of the CBC was appointed by Jean Chrétien in 1999 and has no television-production experience" ("The One is off the air", The Globe and Mail, July 29, 2006). It also made it to air because, as official policy documents reveal, the CBC continues to grasp at a vision of itself as a central player in the public sphere in Canada, with a goal of reaching all Canadians. It is a vision that is unrealistic (since 1994/1995 CBC television's overall ratings have declined from a 10.2 per cent share of the English-speaking audience to a 5.3 per cent share). When combined with private marketplace drivers and political pressures, it is also a vision that overshadows promising initiatives like the TTP; gives way to mass appeal, low value programming like The One; and prevents the CBC from accepting its potentially successful role as a niche broadcaster.

What this reality points to is the importance of not only examining the CBC's current broadcast schedule in order to gauge the impact of the TTP, but also examining the way that the broadcaster's official policy documents and public statements converge and diverge with the project's goals. It is only by making these connections and disconnections apparent, I would argue, that CBC decision makers can start to see the necessity of agreeably claiming the role of niche broadcaster and begin to understand why programs like The One do not fit the organization's mandate, nor do they fulfill the CBC's public service obligations.