CBC-TV should stop showing pro sports, Senate report says

The CBC needs a full re-examination of itself to get back to its core mandate ofpublic broadcaster, says the head of the Senate committee on transport and communications.

The committee released a report Wednesday afternoon recommendingthe CBCeliminate all commercials from its TV network.

Italso recommends the CBC get out of the business of covering professional sports and the Olympics, leaving those areas to the private broadcasters.

At the same time, it wants Ottawa to have a"more coherent" system to refine the mandate of the public broadcaster, including a commitment to long-term planning.

"CBC-TV in particular is in danger of losing its way," Senator Joan Fraser, head of the committee, told CBC Radio.

"It's trying to be all things to all people. It's trying to compete head-on with the private sector, where such competition is neither necessary nor in the public interest."

Fraser said the CBC needs stable, increased funding from the government to make up for the lost ad revenue.

CBC-TV relies on advertising quite heavily. In 2004, ad revenue for English and French television totalled $223 million —about a quarter of the CBC's annual funding from Ottawa.

Would private networks commit to prime time sports?

The group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting has mixed feelings about moving sports off of CBC, says spokesman Ian Morrison.

He worries private broadcasters might not want to tinker with their prime time schedules, so pro sports could be shunted to specialty networks down the dial.

"It would prevent CTV carriage of programming that it really cares about from the United States," Morrison said.

John Williamson of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation said Canadians are not going to be keen on increasing their contributions to the CBC.

"This is not a solution that's going to go over well with taxpayers, or even with this government," he told CBC Television.

He said it was premature to put forward the idea of more money or fewer ads for the CBC without a full review of the public broadcaster, which the Harper government has proposed.

"What's missing is the CBC's new mandate," he said.

Concentration of ownership a concern

The Senate report also recommends changes to deal with concentration of media ownership.

It would support an automatic review of media concentration whenever a single owner captures more than a certain percentage share of the local audience, especially where the business owns both print and broadcast interests.

The report is recommending the Competition Act establish panels to review media deals that will result in increased concentration and that the CRTC participate in these reviews.

The 40 recommendationstabled deal with subjects ranging from health of the magazine industry to the role of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

Among the other recommendations made by the report:

• Give the CRTC the power to levy fines on broadcasters.
• Simplify the access to information system and expand it to include Crown corporations.
• News media outlets should be required to regularly state the identity of their controlling shareholders.
• The Department of Canadian Heritage provide support for the start-up of magazines.
• A network of centres of excellence for research in journalism and the news media be established in Canada.

The Senate committee recommended increased protection for journalists subpoenaed by a court. Applications by judges for journalists' notes should require the signature of a cabinet minister.