It’s the 20th anniversary of Newsworld and try as they might at the CBC they can’t get anyone to celebrate with them. Oh sure, there have been a few “puff” pieces in the newspapers over the weekend, but even those were mostly buried deep inside the paper.
The worst article I saw was by Oakland Ross in the Saturday Toronto Star. I remember Mr. Ross as a fine foreign correspondent for The Star. Either he’s a terrible feature writer or he couldn’t be bothered with this assignment. Not that I blame him. It was a lousy assignment. How to you turn the sow’s ear of Newsworld into a silk purse?
Oakland Ross writes “If sheer survival is among the abiding themes of Canadian history…then Newsworld must be defined as a success.” Whoa, is that a load of manure. Newsworld has been a cash cow for the CBC. Even if nobody watched the network, Newsworld would make a fortune for CBC. Every Canadian who has cable TV or satellite television has to pay a subscription fee of over a dollar a month. For twenty years we have had no choice in the matter. That’s millions of dollars every month going to support a network that few Canadians watched. There was no way it would be taken off the air. The CBC couldn’t afford to.
A few years ago my partner, Lon Appleby, and I were doing a series of specials for C-Pac. We got paid peanuts but we enjoyed the cinema verite coverage they allowed us to do of conventions and elections. The people in charge of C-Pac at the time loved our work so much they brought us in to train their staff. What they were most proud of at the time was that their audience was usually larger than Newsworld’s. That’s C-Pac, hands up those of you who are regular C-Pac viewers.
At the time we joked that it would be far cheaper for Newsworld to go off the air and send video tapes to anyone who was interested in their programming. But then they would have to forgo the CRTC mandated millions they were collecting.
The old timers interviewed by Oakland Ross love to talk about the good old days when Newsworld was on top of the Meech Lake Accord or the Wars in Iraq. The truth is the best rated shows on the network were programs like Antiques Road Show. Does that even belong on an “all news” channel?
As Newsworld heads towards a new beginning, a fresh look that aims to be newsier, faster, using the CBC’s words, more like CNN, I wish them all the luck in the world. The changes are an admission that what they have been doing hasn’t worked. But they’ve chosen a steep hill to climb. Especially when the CBC doesn’t have the resources to cover very much outside our major cities, let alone the rest of the world. When a crisis happens in Mumbai will viewers tune to CBC or CNN? In the past Canadians have voted with their channel changers. They have tuned into CNN and the U.S. networks in droves. Do you want to watch people reporting from the scene or from a desk in Toronto? I know CBC got a reporter to Mumbai, luckily a CBC staffer was on vacation in the region. But while CBC News was getting its first reports back CNN was coming live from the streets of Mumbai.
I don’t blame CBC News for this. CBC is a small underfunded network that on the main channel at least, seems less interested in the news service than Being Erica and Little Mosque on the Prairie.
What I do blame CBC News for are the unrealistic goals being set. Wouldn’t it be far better to aim for a network that provided context and depth to major stories in Canada and around the world? Forget about CNN Headline News Channel. Look at the panels and discussion shows that are also successful at CNN. Look at TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin which gets a better audience in Ontario than Newsworld gets coast-to-coast by staying within their means and doing what they can do well. Sure, let us know when a story breaks, that’s what all-news is about, but just as important, help us to understand what is happening and why. Canada, and especially Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, are a perfect venue for panels and discussions. No matter where an event happens in the world we have experts living right here. People who understand the foreign context and the Canadian context and can bring the two together. And guess what? We can do this extremely well with the money and resources at our command.
The last word has to go to a former CBC News chief editor, Cliff Lonsdale, who I am quoting from the Oakland Ross story, he said, “Across journalism, we need more in-depth coverage. In a world of Twitter, what we desperately need is context.”
Filed under: Media Commentary, Antiques Road Show, Being Erica, C-Pac, CNN, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Newsworld, Oakland Ross, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, The Toronto Star, TVO
March 29, 2010 • 1:42 pm 0
Time to Lose All-News
I have just recently returned from China where just about the only English channel that was available to me was CNN. Tuning in the news became an end of day ritual similar to ending the day in Canada with The National or CTV News. Interestingly I was struck by the incredible lack of news on what purports to be an all news television service. For two weeks it seemed the only thing happening in the world was the U.S. health care debate. In the last few days of my trip the Israelis, never overlooking an opportunity to commit a major diplomatic faux pas, announced the building of a slew of new homes in Arab East Jerusalem, this while Vice President Joe Biden was in town trying to make nice to the Netanyahu government in hopes of restarting the peace process.
Two weeks, two stories of any consequence. It became clear to me that that’s what is wrong with the concept of all news television. There are no local stories. There are only big stories. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately big stories don’t come along all that often. Thus channels like CNN and CBC NN are left to hash and rehash the same story over and over again. What I’m saying here is that on days without a Haiti earthquake or a primary election involving a black candidate and a prominent female candidate CNN can be really, really boring. Watching the news networks’ attempts to heighten, that’s a nice way of saying sensationalize, a story can begin to be an antidote to insomnia.
It becomes very clear very quickly why CNN has dropped to fourth place among American news networks. Without an election or an earthquake it is far more interesting to watch Fox News. Why? Because the people at Fox are willing and mostly able to ratchet up a story in the most unethical way. They don’t care about the facts, they only care about the ratings. Sad to say it is more interesting to watch the ranting of an over the top bozo who has never let the facts get in the way of a good story than to watch another dry panel discussing the ins and outs of the minutia of health care or a different dry panel discussing the history of the U.S. and Israel.
I learned very early in my TV career that television is an entertainment medium. When I was producing local news my biggest competitor was not CTV or CITY, the ratings winners were Three’s Company and game shows. When I was at The Journal the audience giant was Hill Street Blues. Heck, I remember my host, Peter Kent, now a Tory M.P., refusing to go to studio for taping until the episode of A Team he was watching ended.
What does all this mean? What struck me was that CBC NN and CTV’s all news channels have little opportunity to ever gain a serious (in size) audience. They have too little going for them and far too much stacked up against them.
If CNN with reporters and crews all over the world is having a hard time finding enough stories to grab and keep viewers what chance does a Canadian all news network have?
Here are the facts. The Canadian news channels have to share a small band of Canadian reporters and a ludicrously tiny few international reporters with the main network they are attached to. If a story breaks anywhere outside of Canada they are ill prepared at best and hopelessly over matched as a rule. When Haiti broke did anyone tune to CBC NN for the story? If you did you missed the super coverage provided by CNN and for the record, most Canadians found their way to CNN.
Even if a big story breaks in Canada the news networks are ill prepared. Not because they can’t get cameras to the scene but because the reporter with the best ability to cover the events has his or her eye on that evening’s national newscast. The main network newspeople hire the reporter. They pay the reporter. The reporter’s future is dependent on the folks who run the national news. Until CBC NN and the CTV all news channel have their own reporters and their own bureaus worldwide they will never excel at what they are licensed to do: fast, complete coverage of breaking news stories. Don’t hold your breath, that will never happen. If they can’t do that, why bother to exist at all.
The truth is, and no broadcast journalist wants to deal with this, the highest rated program on CBC’s all news channel was The Antiques Road Show. Since the changes at CBC NN no program has come close to the numbers that showed garnered.
Worse news still, CP24 gets better ratings than either CBC NN or CTV. Why? Because it makes better background viewing. You tune to that channel without actually watching it. The weather is right there. The time is always there. The business numbers are constantly there. If a great story is breaking you can catch it as it scrolls by and tune in to CNN for the details. There’s no need to pay attention and there are no discussions and panels ad nauseum to focus on. In fact it is a better station with the sound turned off.
The time has come for CBC and CTV to face the facts. All news TV in Canada is not a great idea. It’s a waste of time, effort and most important dollars. CBC and CTV would be far better off using the channels as a kind of CBC 2 and CTV2. The news people could still jump in if there were a breaking story. The National could still have a second home during the hockey playoffs and everyone would be a winner, especially the viewers.
Filed under: Media Commentary, Antiques Road Show, CBC, CBC NN, CNN, CP24, CTV, Fox News, The National, Three's Company