[HCDX] Canadian Broadcaster Cuts 800 Jobs as Revenue Falls

[sakthi vel <ardicdxclub@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Canadian Broadcasting Corp., the countryâs government-run radio and television agency, plans to cut as many as 800 jobs, or almost 10 percent of its workforce, to trim costs as advertising plummets.

The broadcaster faces a funding shortfall of C$171 million ($139 million) this year, forcing it to fire workers and scale back programming, according to a statement from Ottawa today. Factors contributing to the shortfall include declining advertising, aging infrastructure and increased programming costs.

âThe shortfall was there and we were looking for ways of managing it and this is where we are today,â said Angus McKinnon, a spokesman for the broadcaster.

Seventy corporate-services employees will lose their jobs, as well as 393 workers in the English operations and 336 in the French-language Radio-Canada service, McKinnon said. Executive pay will be cut as much as 20 percent, and the agency may sell C$125 million in assets.

The CBC gets about C$1 billion, or three-fifths of its overall budget, in public funds each year from taxpayers. Prime Minister Stephen Harper declined to provide bridge financing to cover a shortfall this year. The broadcaster said it canât borrow on financial markets like its private competitors.

The cuts today are symptomatic of problems affecting all broadcasters in Canada and the biggest losers are people who live in smaller cities, where the CBC is sometimes the only local news operation, said Ian Morrison, a spokesman for programming watchdog Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.

âEmpty Warehouseâ

âYouâre stripping away a lot of production value capacity, so you keep the station open, but effectively it becomes an empty warehouse,â said Morrison, adding that the CBC made poor choices such as overpaying for U.S.-made shows and hockey rights. Morrison said the government should force cable and satellite companies to pay fees for the right to carry CBC and other conventional television stations.

The CBC, established in its current form in 1936 to preserve a Canadian point of view for news and programming, operates independently of the government. It has about 8,300 employees in 27 offices.

âAt a time when Ottawa is supposed to be providing stimulus to the Canadian economy and ensuring that people maintain employment, cutting 800 jobs is the wrong approach to take,â Lise Lareau, the Canadian Media Guildâs national president, said in an e-mail to employees. âOnce again, in spite of our supposed armâs-length relationship with Parliament, CBC/Radio-Canada is completely at the mercy of the government of the day.â

Public Support

A Harris-Decima poll of 1,000 Canadians conducted March 12 to 15 found that 50 percent supported the idea of a government line of credit for the CBC, while 41 percent opposed it. The poll has a 3.1 percentage point margin of error.

In 2006, the CBC had about 12 percent of all local television advertising revenue in the English market and 26 percent in the French one, according to the latest data from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. The CBC doesnât run ads on its radio stations, and it doesnât plan to change this.

The broadcaster also plans to cut costs by scaling back radio and television programming for news, current affairs and music, and will reduce its marketing and travel budgets.

To contact the reporters on this story: Alexandre Deslongchamps in Ottawa at adeslongcham@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
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Jaisakthivel, Chennai, India
www.dxersguide.blogspot.com


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