CBC Announces Fall Lineup: Can the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Be Saved?

CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) unveiled its fall season lineup on June 16 and it was scary. A Canadian government-owned cluster of television and radio networks founded in 1936, CBC has decided to vamp up its previously staid image and go reality television in a big way. The question is, will it work, will CBC end up privatized or will the whole season end up going down the tubes? And if it fails to launch, will anybody care?

CBC is obviously trying to imitate domestic competitors who are also commercial ratings winners like CTV. CTV has hits like "Corner Gas", a goofy sitcom, but makes most of its money from importing U.S. shows like "CSI: Miami" north of the border for Canadians who seem to have no interest in their own country's stories. CBC's response was to fill its schedule for Fall 2006 with reality shows, sitcoms and a single West Coast series by Chris Haddock (creator of critical favorite "Da Vinci's Inquest") called "Intelligence". "Intelligence" is about a Vancouver smuggler who becomes an informant for CSIS (Canada's equivalent of the CIA). It's also about the only show that seems worth watching in the entire CBC fall lineup. Everything else is centered almost obsessively on Toronto or Montreal (back east) and those fluffy-headed young urban viewers that CBC so desperately wants to cultivate. Well, why not? Nobody else is watching anymore.

CBC's rationale is that Canadians want to see more American-style content, so that's what they should get, only in a homegrown version. CBC cancelled three very Canadian series in February: "The Tournament" (a dramedy about obsessive hockey parents), "This Is Wonderland" (a sitcom set in a law court system gone bonkers) and "Da Vinci's City Hall (the eight season/spinoff of "Da Vinci's Inquest", a show about a Vancouver coroner-turned-mayor). The reason given was low ratings, despite the fact that the triple cancellation cleared the CBC's schedule at a bad time and that the shows that replaced all three series did even worse.

But there's more to CBC's failure to thrive than one instance of bad timing. Critics refer to CBC as "Fort Dork" due to its amazing ability to do the wrong thing at the wrong time, every time. Last fall, it shut out thousands of employees in a work action that pushed the fall season back over a month and gained the corporation lots and lots of bad press. It also cut down on advertising, which was already in woefully short supply. Then, when its three main drama (as in, not reality or documentary) shows performed badly under such conditions, it cancelled them. Never mind that "This Is Wonderland" and "Da Vinci's City Hall" were both veteran favorites with a loyal fan base. It's hard to say whether Canadians would watch good homegrown programming on the CBC. When the CBC broadcasts such programming, it's almost impossible to find it.

Critics like CBC Watch have also accused CBC of being right-wing and of "shuffling deck chairs" on the Titanic, in that the same old political appointees with little experience and even less talent shuffle around the top echelons of the corporation. Last fall, for example, the CBC trumpeted its miniseries series "Big Ticket". "CBC Television brings you weekly Movies and Mini-Series that are informative, provocative, and entertaining," its homepage proclaimed, ignoring the fact that the Big Ticket lineup included a biopic of Shania Twain and a rebroadcast of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Entertaining? Sure. Informative? Depends on how you feel about Shania and elves. Provocative? Are you kidding?

And when now-PM Stephen Harper forced a new election in January, CBC rescheduled one of its Big Ticket entries, "The Tommy Douglas Story", until the doldrums period in March. CBC claimed it was because Tommy Douglas (who helped found the NDP party) was "too controversial" (a line the miniseries actually used) for a biopic of his to appear on Canadian television right before the election. They were afraid it would influence voters. But they had no fear about airing an anti-Douglas documentary about the Douglas-founded National Health Care system during the same period. Apparently, "provocative" is no longer in. Neither are miniseries.

Despite the schedule-fudging, "The Tommy Douglas Story" went on to garner nearly a million viewers each of its two nights-a bona fide hit for CBC. Yet, when the family of one of the politicians in the miniseries complained that his portrayal was historically inaccurate, CBC yanked the miniseries from DVD sales and further broadcasting. Critics further noted that two of the cancelled series, "This Is Wonderland" and "Da Vinci's City Hall", were also decidedly left-wing. Ironically, at the same time that "Da Vinci's City Hall" was being cancelled, "Da Vinci's Inquest" was proving a syndicated hit south of the border. It has opened up doors to other Canadian television programming like "Intelligence" (which has caught the interest of hungry American networks) and won itself another season of repeats in syndication. So much for nobody wanting to see Canadian television.

Clearly, something needs to give at CBC. First, the corporation needs new blood and lots of it. How godawful is the leadership in a television network when the Arts and Entertainment Director refuses to discuss a fall lineup six months in advance because somebody might steal their ideas? Considering that shows can be filmed up to a year in advance, this seems ludicrous.

This also brings up the fact that CBC needs to promote their shows a whole lot more if they want to reach their ratings goals (one million plus for each program). CTV doesn't just get better ratings because it shows American broadcasting; it gets better ratings because it advertises the heck out of its programming, including the Canadian content that the government pushes for and CBC brags about having. CBC may have more Canadian content, but viewers know a lot more about what's on CTV. You can't watch what you don't know about.

It's past time that CBC started acting like a bunch of professionals and less like Amateur Hour Theater. Let's give the last word to Ian Tracey, veteran star of "Intelligence" and costar of both "Da Vinci's Inquest" and "Da Vinci's City Hall". After sitting through the introduction of a flaky new sitcom about beautiful media people in Toronto, Tracey wryly introduced his show with: "From the other side of the country comes Intelligence."

Amen.