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Why CBC needs stronger support.

Article Excerpt
Much stronger support for public broadcasting is seen as crucial to providing programs Canadians want, and Canada's ability to compete in the Information Age. Commercial television is geared to meet the needs of advertisers, not the demands of viewers. A stronger CBC is viewed as a driver that can also help strengthen private sector Canadian broadcasting. Canada's media sector -- newspapers, magazines, book publishing, films and broadcasting -- are called dangerously weak. Public support of television and film is seen as economically crucial as the decision to invest in nuclear energy or aviation technology was in the last century. Remarks to the Senate Transport and Communications Committee, Ottawa, April 29.

Most citizens don't understand how North American commercial television works. They think it's a little like a movie theatre. The owner of the theatre tries to get the best movies he can, to attract the most customers, and make his profit from selling tickets. The assumption is made that television is the same, with the only real difference being that we don't have to pay an admission price because that's been covered by the commercials. Like the film is the product of the movie system, so the product of television, it's universally assumed, is the program.

But that's not the economic model of commercial television at all. The product of commercial television is not the program. The product -- that which is being bought and sold -- is you. To quote Les Brown, the former New York Times writer who became one of the world's leading historians of the industry: "The product of commercial television is the viewer. The program is merely the bait."

Follow the money, which is usually a good idea. The exchange of money is not between the viewer and the network, it is between the network and the advertiser. The advertiser is buying "eyeballs" by the hundreds of thousands, from a network.

This is not a democracy. This is not one-person one vote. Certain demographics are far more valuable to the advertiser than others. A woman, 18 to 35, for example, is worth at least 10 people over 50. That's because the people in the 18-35 demographic still have their major purchasing decisions to make -- fridge, home, car. In the Toronto market, depending on the network, and the time slot, they maybe sold at $150 a thousand to an advertiser. But old goats like me, who's unlikely to make the same purchases, will be worth $ 7.50 a thousand. We are...

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