Exclusive Interview: CBC’s Hubert T. Lacroix

PREMIUM: The president and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada, Hubert T. Lacroix, talks to World Screen Newsflash about embracing digital media, boosting the Canadian economy and remaining committed to the public service mandate of enlightening, informing and entertaining.

This year CBC/Radio-Canada celebrates its 75th anniversary. Since November 2, 1936, the Canadian public broadcaster has been serving its viewers while contributing to the democratic, social and cultural life of the country. What started in 1936 as a radio service extended into the first television transmissions in 1952, and today includes a range of radio, television, Internet, and satellite-based services, in both English and French plus eight Aboriginal languages. Among its brands are the national English-language broadcaster, CBC
Television; CBC News Network; the digital TV channel bold; the French-language network Télévision de Radio-Canada;
the arts channel ARTV; and the websites CBC.ca, Radio-Canada.ca and TOU.TV. As Lacroix explains, CBC/Radio-Canada is embracing the digital world while remaining true to its mission of enlightening, informing and entertaining.

WS: What have been some of the most important contributions CBC/Radio-Canada has made to the television industry and society in Canada?
LACROIX: We have a very important history as the national public broadcaster. When we say in our mission that we want to express Canadian culture and Canadian identity, that we want to enrich the democratic life of Canadians and we want to be recognized as the leader in both, this is where we have contributed a lot. But we have also contributed by pioneering a lot of the broadcasting technology that you see every day.

The Broadcasting Act has these three famous verbs that everybody knows well. Our mandate is to enlighten, inform and entertain. It’s about Canadian programming and producing it in both official languages [English and French]. When you think about CBC/Radio-Canada, that’s what we do.

In an environment where Canadians have all sorts of media options, and with the States so close to our country, we need to create a space that Canadians can call their own. It’s a place where we think we reflect the diversity of voices and where Canadians can form their individual, social and political identities. This is where Canadians can connect with each other and talk about stories that concern them, their country and the world. This is what we have brought to society—a space. And that’s why we exist. We do that with our programming, whether it’s news, current affairs, drama or comedy, and it’s distinctively Canadian, because when you watch CBC/Radio-Canada in prime time, you see Canadian shows made by Canadians for Canadians. We do that also by drawing really important audiences around major events, because we have the broadcasting infrastructure and we’re connected coast to coast. When we talk about the Canadian experience, whether it’s the hockey playoffs or elections, or what we recently did with our coverage of the Royal Tour [Prince William and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, visiting Canada] or when we pick up an awards show or a concert—this is when we bring Canadians around Canada “wow” moments. And in our 2015 Everyone, Every Way plan, we want to emphasize that even more. We’ve committed to doing ten signature events both in French and in English that we would broadcast on all our platforms. That’s the first piece of our mandate.

The second piece is what we’ve done on the technology front. We were the first ones to go coast to coast with the first television station and that’s why we’re cele­brating our 75th anniversary this year. And as early as 1955, CBC/Radio-Canada’s television services were available to 66 percent of the whole of the Canadian population. Fast-forward to 2011 and we’re the first ones to broadcast in 3D television, we did it last year. Our websites are spectacular. They are the most frequented media sites in this country. Just about everything we do is available online either by way of live streaming or podcasts. We were the first ones to stream video on mobile devices. When you look at how fast we adapted and how much we lead all the other broadcasters in that field, we’re very proud. That’s the second very big contribution that we have made to Canadian television and society.

WS: How has CBC/Radio-Canada played a role in boosting the Canadian economy?
LACROIX: That is an important piece of what we do and we wanted to emphasize it. Canadians and the government give us—and we are very grateful for it—C$1.1 billion a year. It’s been the subject of a lot of conversation. We do things with this C$1.1 billion that no business model would allow a private broadcaster to do. We cover places and we produce programming that is not entirely driven by ratings or makes sense in a business model. But there is more to it. We asked Deloitte & Touche to conduct a study on the impact of CBC/Radio-Canada on Canada’s economy, in much the same way that I saw the BBC do a similar study a couple of years ago when it launched its update of its strategic direction. So we went to the same people, asked them to look at Canada and at what we brought. For every dollar invested in CBC/Radio-Canada, the study found that we create close to four times that value for the Canadian economy. Deloitte estimated that the C$1.1 billion [we receive] generates about C$3.7 billion dollars in economic value. It supports not only thousands of jobs and businesses in our corporation but also many in the private sector. That was an important piece of the conversation that was missing and we wanted to make sure that when we talk about the public broadcaster, as we were getting ready for license-renewal processes, that it’s not only about content, but it’s also about the important motor that we are in this economic environment.

WS: Is the CBC’s funding secure? For how many years at a time do you get your government funding?
LACROIX: That’s what’s a bit crazy about our model. We’re only funded on 12-month cycles, contrary to the BBC or the Australian Broadcasting Corporation or some of the other public broadcasters in the world. What we’ve told the government since I arrived in January 2008 was that it wasn’t about more money, but it was about us wanting to make sure we could manage these great assets and great people that we’ve been entrusted with in the best possible way. It’s about stable, long-term and predictable funding so we can fulfill the mandate and the expectations of Canadians.

WS: Tell us about the strategic plan 2015 Everyone, Every Way.
LACROIX: 2015 Everyone, Every Way is really our road map for the next five years. It’s about one thing: strengthening the relationship we have with Canadians by building on the things we have found to be important through all the research we do and the connections we make. It’s about being more national, more regional and more digital.

There are three important thrusts to 2015 Everyone, Every Way. The first is about content. When I say “more Canadian,” it’s about being even more distinctive in the programming that we deliver. It’s about making sure that prime time on CBC television is about Canadian shows. For years, when we were not as successful, we needed to rely on U.S. programming to bolster our audience in the beginning of the evening and bring people to the programming that we had. Now that we’ve been extremely successful with recent shows, we think we don’t need those American shows anymore. They served their purpose, so the focus in prime time will be about Canadian programming and the signature events I mentioned. We’ve committed to ten signature events both on Radio-Canada and the CBC. They’re going to be multimedia. It’s about bringing significant impact and a great number of Canadians around events that no other broadcaster can actually deliver. These signature events include the Live Right Now campaign [a national initiative to help Canadians improve their health] and the concert Radio-Canada did with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra to raise relief funds for the Japanese when the terrible tsunami hit their country. That’s the Canadian content piece of the strategy.

The second thrust is about being more regional. Canadians have told us that this is a top priority and we have sometimes failed to live up to their expectations, so we’re committing even more to it. I believe you cannot be a public broadcaster without being really deeply rooted in the community. It’s about expanding our services in places where we have gaps in coverage. We started the local extension plan. There are about 7.5 million Canadians we don’t touch right now with our services on a local level. This strategic direction will allow us to get to 6 million of them in the next five years and we have announced the first five places where we will be intensifying our efforts: Kamloops and Kelowna in British Columbia, we will be bolstering the Victoria station, doing more in Vancouver and being more local in Toronto. On the Radio-Canada side, in Rimouski, in Eastern Quebec, we have a new multimedia center that will open in September 2012 to cover the Gaspé peninsula.

The third piece is digital and we can’t do anything but lead in the digital area, where we have made the commit­ment that a minimum of 5 percent of our media budgets will always be invested in digital platforms. That will be over time, so that by 2015, CBC will invest anywhere between C$80 million and C$90 million to make sure we can be on all platforms so that Canadians can access our services when and where they want.

WS: How is CBC serving Canadians on multiple platforms?
LACROIX: It used to be one broadcaster would broadcast to many people. Now it’s much more one to one. It’s about you choosing a program that you might not have watched as it was airing and either podcasting or recording it. We want to make sure that we understand and continue to follow the consumption habits of the people who use our services, because it’s clearly now a one-to-one relationship. We want to make sure we are on whatever platform or device our viewers are using. That’s the 5 percent commitment to digital programming I was talking about. It’s also about realizing that what we do is content. We’re not the platform, we want to be on the platform, but the CBC brand is defined by the programming it does, by what you listen to or what you find on our website—not by your telephone or your iPad. So that’s our plan: to continue delivering and to continue leading on the digital programming side.

WS: CBC has been a strong supporter of Canadian producers and has invested heavily in Canadian content. Why has this been important and how will you be maintaining this commitment?
LACROIX: This takes us back to the 2015 roadmap. I have an interesting number for you. We invest more in Canadian programming than all of the other Canadian conventional broadcasters combined. Last year, we invested C$683 million; the whole of the industry invested C$640 million. Here’s another important number: 93 percent of our programming budget in the last fiscal year was spent on Canadian programming. If we don’t do it, we understand no one else will. This is our mandate. This is why when we talk about being the leader in expressing Canadian culture, when we talk about Canadians wanting to see themselves in prime time, we talk about Republic of Doyle, which is done in Newfoundland; 18 to Life, which is done in Montreal; Little Mosque on the Prairie, which is done literally on the prairies, and some of our radio shows, which come out of Calgary or Montreal. When you put everything together you realize what’s important for Canadians, and what is crucial and central to our mandate and our ability to be distinctive, are our Canadian stories.

WS: There’s been considerable vertical integration and consolidation in the Canadian TV industry. Has this impacted viewers?
LACROIX: I don’t think it’s impacted viewers yet. Viewers have not yet seen any change when they watch the screen, but the landscape has changed dramatically. We are right now the only national television broadcaster that is not owned by a cable or a satellite company. When I went in front of our regulator, the CRTC, a few months ago, we talked about vertical integration. The first point I made was that the CRTC cannot assume that these companies will voluntarily compromise their commercial and corporate interests and those of their shareholders—which is normal because ultimately that is who they are responsible to—in order to promote the objectives of the Broadcasting Act. So when CBC/Radio-Canada creates content, we must have access to all these communication platforms that now literally belong to our competitors. When we negotiate with Shaw [that owns Global TV] or Bell [that owns CTV] for their satellite or cable space, they have media assets and they compete against us every day. They compete exactly for the same advertising dollars. So we told the CRTC, in an environment like this, we must have access to these platforms, we must have a prominent place on these platforms, we must have access to the latest technology and it must be on a reasonably commercial basis. These are the challenges but they haven’t yet hit the viewer because these conversations and these big groups have only gelled over in the last 15 to 18 months.

WS: How does the CBC ensure a plurality of voices in its entertainment and news programming?
LACROIX: It’s about us ensuring that the public broadcaster does not give you an opinion—it gives you different voices, different points of view, so that you at home listening and watching form your own opinion. You become a better voter and this is why in our mission we talk about enriching democracy and that’s where the diversity of voices principle is so important.

We promote diversity in two other ways. First, we understand that Canada has changed and you can’t be a public broadcaster and not realize that you have to be a reflection of what Canada is. We have a whole bunch of initiatives to make sure we take into account diversity in our recruitment, the people we hire and the people you see on the air.

Secondly, certain big cities, particularly Vancouver and Toronto, now have more people of diverse backgrounds than any other cities in this country. People have also moved in this country. It used to be that certain provinces out west or in the prairies were not as populated as some of the provinces in the eastern part of Canada. Now that has changed because of economic priorities. We need to make sure we follow Canadians where they are and that we reflect them so that the stories we produce resonate with them. Diversity means those people who are working in northern Alberta and northern British Columbia might not look like me, yet we have to make sure we understand what connects them to the public broadcaster.