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The CBC needs financial flexibility, not more money

CBC chief executive Hubert T. Lacroix said Thursday in a speech ... reacting to comments from Finance Minister Jim Flaherty on Wednesday that CBC already gets "substantial financing" and should not expect more.

He said the CBC does not want new money, but the flexibility to borrow against future years to weather the current recession.

He pointed out that CBC/Radio-Canada has no access to the capital markets or to commercial borrowing.

"Private broadcasters have the financial flexibility that comes from their sources of capital. In a cyclical downturn, they can effect some changes by smartly managing their balance sheets and lines of credit," he said.

"As a Crown corporation, CBC/Radio-Canada has no access to this type of borrowing so, when we lose a dollar of revenue, we must cut a dollar of expenditure or postpone the expenditure to next year in order to balance our budget."

The CBC gets $1 billion annually from government, but estimates advertising revenue next year will be $60 million or more below budget.

Cuts are looming at the public broadcaster that would hurt its ability to fulfil its mandate, Lacroix said.

Among the measures being considered at CBC to deal with the shortfall:

* Introducing more American programming into television schedules (currently 100 per cent Canadian from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.)
* Downgrading or selling parts or the whole of TV or radio services.
* Increasing advertising on the air.
* Shrinking geographic coverage of the country by consolidating local stations, which would reverse the current investment CBC is making in building regional coverage.
* Selling off assets.

Lacroix pointed out that CBC, unlike any private broadcaster, provides programming in English and French across five time zones and has services in eight aboriginal languages and eight international languages.

Investment in Canadian drama and comedy is up 38 per cent in the last eight years, he said.

"Other conventional broadcasters are facing stagnant or shrinking audiences, yet CBC Television's audience share in prime time has risen to 8.9 per cent this season — an increase of 1.5 points in just two years," Lacroix said.

The CBC gets about $34 from each Canadian taxpayer, he said, compared to $124 to support the public broadcaster in the U.K. and $77 in France. He said it's a modest investment, considering the huge mandate the CBC is required to fill.

Lacroix defended the diversity of platforms, including livestreaming and podcasting, that is delivering CBC to Canadians. He said he wants to maintain some key directions at CBC despite the economic downturn.

"We can't be all things to all people. We simply don't have the resources, nor should we," he said.

"We must focus where we can be most effective: content company, Canadian programming, leader in new media, deeply rooted in the regions."

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The Medium is ...

Regarding McLuhan's most famous title...

"[...]the title was a mistake. When the book came back from the typesetter, it had on the cover "Massage" as it still does. The title should have read The Medium is the Message but the typesetter had made an error. When Marshall McLuhan saw the typo he exclaimed, "Leave it alone! It's great, and right on target!" Now there are four possible readings for the last word of the title, all of them accurate: "Message" and "Mess Age", "Massage" and "Mass Age"."

-- Eric McLuhan in Phil Baines. Penguin by Design, A Cover Story 1935-2005. Penguin Books.Pg 144

Source: Wikipedia

Beijing is Burning!

This brand-new building designed by Rem Koolhaas went up in flames yesterday. This unconventionally shaped tower houses the Beijing Mandarin Oriental hotel, which was yet to open. It is a part of the TVCC complex, which also houses the very oddly shaped China Central Television headquarters. It is reported that the hotel tower exploded with flames as revelers set off fireworks celebrating the end of Chinese New Year.

An interesting twist on the story has emerged in recent hours, however, regarding coverage of the event in Chinese media(from HuffPo/Reuters):

According to the Shanghai-based site [Shanghaiist], the Chinese government sent notices to various news sources and sites in the mainland in an attempt to control the online coverage of the event. The notice demanded that news outlets cease posting photographs and videos and to only publish details consistent with the official state media report. The notice can be found at chinaSmack, an English-language China news blog.

The chinaSmack site notes that television coverage of the fire was virtually non-existent and that China's bigger sites, such as Sina were made to pull photographs off the Web.

My friend Herman is in Beijing... maybe he has something say about this. Or not, possibly because the gov't has already removed his assuredly investigative report. Why do I suspect this might be happening? In past months, the great Firewall of China was very good at interrupting our skype conversations, eliminating profanity and some vaguely democratic musings. Perhaps I should have resorted to "frak" a la Battlestar Galactica to better communicate my frustration. "Their Own Worst Enemy" by James Fallows for The Atlantic (November 2008) sums things up nicely, though only tangentially related.

And then here is an analysis from the ever enlightening blogosphere:

"I'm not scared, the fire has not spread to the Big Underpants yet!"

If you are still reading, you may also appreciate this virtual tour of the (former) building:

They're Watching Us: The Google Edition

I started uploading personal information on Google about two years ago when I opened up a photo sharing account. Since then, I have my resume uploaded, created a small personal website for professional purposes, and used Google docs for school and work. Between this blog and my email, Google probably knows everything about me aside from my birthday and social security number. They have my credit card information and my employment background and obviously, they know where I live since I plug it into my computer for transit information nearly everyday.

This all got me thinking about what sort of risk we all are at as Google extends its reach farther into our private lives. This year--or sometime in the near future, Google plans to make PCs (as in personal computers... we're not talking macs vs. PCs, though Google and Apple are in this together) obsolete. Your home computer will just be a portal into your Google world.

According to an article from The Guardian:

The PC would be a simpler, cheaper device acting as a portal to the web, perhaps via an adaptation of Google's operating system for mobile phones, Android. Users would think of their computer as software rather than hardware. It is this prospect that alarms critics of Google's ambitions. Peter Brown, executive director of the Free Software Foundation, a charity defending computer users' liberties, did not dispute the convenience offered, but said: "It's a little bit like saying, 'we're in a dictatorship, the trains are running on time.' But does it matter to you that someone can see everything on your computer? Does it matter that Google can be subpoenaed at any time to hand over all your data to the American government?"

Google refused to confirm the GDrive, but acknowledged the growing demand for cloud computing. Dave Armstrong, head of product and marketing for Google Enterprise, said: "There's a clear direction ... away from people thinking, 'This is my PC, this is my hard drive,' to 'This is how I interact with information, this is how I interact with the web.'"

Beware the GDrive! I would caution against giving your life to Google because they make everything so easy and free.

If you're not already convinced that they may be working against us, see the video below, animated with great graphics and narrated with British-accented gravitas.

Also, a Simpsons clips below because everything in life has a Simpsons reference.

More Media Meltdown

According to Planet Money, if all print were to move online, the industry could only support 20% of its initial workforce. For your reading pleasure, Laura Conaway and David Kestenbaum also make mention of this piece by Michael Hirschorn in The Atlantic, which is getting a lot of attention; it says that the New York Times will survive until May (surprise!).

To download the NPR podcast about how the world (economy) is going to hell in a hand basket, right click here, for the live stream, click here.

In related news, that massive eyesore that is Times Square, is losing one of its most prominent stores, Virgin. This Virgin Megastore location will shut down in April 2009 because it's just not viable to sell CDs anymore. The Times Square location is the most successful music store in the US but Richard Branson is throwing in the towel. Word is that some of the massive space will be sold to Century 21 so that Midtown will be even more zoo-like. Perfect.

One last thing

It's 11 and I'm ready for bed. Yes, that's 11 AM. Curse you, winter months.
But one more awesome piece of news: the Pulitzer Prizes are now accepting entries from online-only publications. The Pulitzers are moving into the future. Why can't everything else? I guess we all wish we knew. Besides economic troubles, why did there have to be Media Meltdown Monday? The only people that should lose jobs when we turn to web are printers (sorry, guys). Designers, writers, and editors alike should have a place online.

Still, folks are writing lots about the future of publishing and there's lots of wobbly knees at the offices of Big Media. Things aren't going so well.

Tip Sheet:
* Tina Brown 'gets it' and saves all the writers for herself. Good thinking.
* Great books on Nintendo. Holy Shit.
* September: New York Magazine gets us talking about "The End"
* Insightful solutions from the Urban Elitist
* December: Cuts at Random House, NYTimes asks for big money, Tribune Company declares bankruptcy
* James Gleik's poorly written Op-Ed for the NYTimes gets a lot of online attention
* The only way to save the industry is a pretty package? So says Good Magazine. Good luck, folks.
* Quill and Quire OMNI with a huge leak. The Globe and Mail scraps their standalone Books Section, arguably the nation's best, and folds it into the Focus section.

The last word: we will be fine. If there is a way to make money, North Americans will find it.

Book Tour

I've given up on NPR for a while but they've had some good authors reading from their own books lately. The show is called Book Tour. For those who are allergic to books, you don't have to read! Someone can do it for you! And who better to interpret the text than the author? This is like having Freud write your psychology papers for you!

Author Junot Diaz (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao) is so funny and has some interesting insight into media coverage of Election '08.

"I think we should all keep a journal of the next fifty days. Instead of a journal of a plague year, this is a journal far far worst...We will all be struck by how much we will these insights in the future."

In Defense of Rachel Maddow

Thanks to Ms. Rachel Page, the provider of all my magazine needs from January - May 2008, for introducing me to Rachel Maddow, the coolest person to hit the television airwaves in a while. Maddow is the host of the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC, which airs right after Keith Olbermann's Countdown (Ben Affleck did a pretty good, while long, impression of Olbermann on SNL last week but the video's been taken down temporarily).

Two nights ago, Stephen Colbert named Maddow the Queen of Cable; she's gathered a large following already so I'm a little slow here but will be an ardent fan. Full episodes are available for free on iTunes.

In any case, I've been doing my Googling and have found many, many articles like this, which insist that MSNBC is hiring nothing but left-leaning crazies.

Here's a good rundown of the conversation so far. And if you like Maddow, here's a glowing profile from New York Magazine, where I cribbed the nice portrait of Maddow.

The point- or rather, the question, which I have not been getting at but is on my mind, is how do you 'objectively' talk about something that is blatantly insane, scary, wrong (but also pro-conservative or -republican, for example)? Marc Ambinder and Andrew Sullivan thoughtfully answer: