CBC – Canadian for value
Blimey, they’ve got their work cut out, I thought.
The photograph above is Lana Gay on CBC Radio 3, the third national radio station from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It’s carried on Sirius Satellite Radio and online.
This studio setup isn’t, by itself, too unusual. Until you look closer. At the clocks. On the wall.
To see more than one clock is slightly unusual in a radio studio. However, to see six of them… goodness. This show is the mid-afternoon show for some, drivetime for others, and the evening show for a few more.
You see – Canada is big. Really very big. And CBC has to cover all of it.
“CBC Radio-Canada” runs six national services. There’s CBC Radio 3, which is much like a Canadian ‘Amazing Radio’. There’s CBC Radio One, which is kind of “Radio 4 meets a bit of Radio 2″. And then there’s CBC Radio 2, which, as far as I can tell, is “Classic FM meets Jazz FM meets Radio 2’s folk programme who then meets Radio 3’s weird evening stuff” type station. Then they run the francophone Première Chaîne, Espace Musique, and the Radio 3 – like Bande à Part, all of which are related to their English cousins (or perhaps it’s the other way around, he says, desperately trying to curry favour). There’s also CBC North and Radio Nord Québec for the Canadian Arctic. Programming is, variously, in English, French and eight Aboriginal languages; and a further seven languages on Radio Canada International.
Already it’s sounding complicated. But it gets more complex. CBC Radio One isn’t really national; it’s more a collection of local radio stations operating under the same brand. Each station has its own speech breakfast show, for example, coming together at 8.30am for shared output. Many programmes are networked, but delayed for each timezone.
They have three separate main studio complexes for radio – one in Montréal for the francophone services, and one in Toronto for the main English services, with Radio 3 coming from Vancouver, and more national programmes coming from local centres.
And the cost of all this? Including the money earned from television commercials (which the CBC sells), the CBC got just over $1.5 billion (£900 million) in revenue, in 2006. The BBC? Their total earnings for the same period were $6.7 billion (£4.1 billion).
I’m always quite impressed at the value I get from my BBC licence fee. However, Canadians must be mightily impressed at the value for money they get from their national broadcaster.
* In the photograph, you might notice, on the screen of the playout system, a large ominous sign marked ‘BACKUP’, while another to the right was actually playing out the music. I didn’t dare ask why.
Disclosure: CBC generously helped me with some of my travel expenses.