CBC hiring someone to watch CBC

Has Canada's state broadcaster finally found the secret recipe to improve its miserable ratings?

By Sheila Gunn Reid
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October 20, 2023
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News Analysis

Given the extreme lack of regular consumers of CBC products, the state broadcaster is spending some of its $1.6 billion in annual subsidies to hire someone to monitor CBC broadcasts for viewer experience issues.

The main purpose of the monitoring system is to be “remote eyes and remote ears” for CBC/Radio-Canada support teams (operators) to provide monitoring visibility into viewer and listener experience across all Canadian regions for TV and Radio linear CBC/Radio-Canada broadcast networks.

The monitoring system shall proactively detect and alert the operators, in real-time, to viewer and listener experience issues affecting TV and Radio regional playout. The monitoring system shall also, in real-time, allow operators to validate this alerting enabling the operator to see and hear TV and Radio content as the content is being played out in the regions.

According to a 2022 report in the Western Standard:

Despite getting $1.5-billion of taxpayers’ money, data from the CRTC show the CBC has dropped to less than 3.9 per cent of viewership across Canada in 2018-2019 – a whopping drop of 25 per cent in just one year.

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