The CBC’s budget was slashed by $115-million over three years as part of the federal government’s strategic and operating review initiative. But combined with the cost of required investments and other unavoidable expenses, the CBC is facing an overall $200-million shortfall. Additionally, the Crown corporation is estimating it will have to deal with $25-million in severance pay, as a result of layoffs.
CBC employees were informed of the larger structure of planned cuts at a town hall meeting with CBC brass on April 10. In all, the CBC plans to cut 650 full-time jobs by 2015, including 473 this year. Of those jobs, 256 will be cut from CBC’s English services by 2015, but 215 will disappear this year. CBC’s French services will lose a total of 243 people at the end of the three-year roll-out.
CBC News Network will cut a total of 88 news jobs as part of the overall 256 English services jobs set to be slashed: of those, 34 will be local jobs, 44 national and 10 will come from administration. Wrapped up in this are cuts to CBC’s The National and a “reduced capacity” to their Parliamentary bureau.
“We’ve announced the big strategic decisions, in terms of show cancellations on the news side … and now it is down to the individual level, and I think by the end of the month [April] people will have a clearer idea,” said Jennifer McGuire, editor-in-chief of CBC News and general manager of news and centres.
Ms. McGuire said CBC TV’s The National wasn’t assigned a cut specifically and said cuts to the program are “really a structural change.”
“We currently have a system of reporters that are dedicated to the network, who appear on The National all the time but aren’t managed by The National. So we’re combining that group, and in that process we will be pulling jobs out of the system,” said Ms. McGuire.
Ms. McGuire said the CBC’s Parliamentary bureau in Ottawa did receive a cut, “but it isn’t a cut to a specific show [such as Power and Politics]” and instead will be spread across the bureau. As “individual conversations” still needed to take place, Ms. McGuire couldn’t get into specifics, but said, “we’re not cutting news gathering” to the Parliamentary bureau.
“I don’t think it should impact what Adrienne Arseneault does or Terry Milewski, but in how we organize there will be jobs that come out of the system,” said Ms. McGuire, when asked if cuts will impact the amount of coverage.
Speaking with The Hill Times on April 25, Mr. Thompson said the “lion’s share” of notice letters were sent out that day. But while Mr. Thompson said no one had yet received notice in the Parliamentary bureau, he cautioned that there could be some that got delayed.
The CBC’s collective agreements include provisions for a seniority-based job-bumping system but Ms. McGuire said they’ve “tried to manage the process so that wouldn’t happen.”
However, the CBC isn’t just cutting jobs to meet necessary reductions, cuts to programming have taken place as well, and the corporation has looked for savings in office space. Overall, CBC is looking to reduce its office space by more than 800,000 square feet by 2017, estimating that it would save an average of $30 per square foot.
The CBC is also looking to increase its ad revenue, and has applied to the CRTC to introduce advertising and sponsorship on CBC Radio 2 and Espace musique, previously commercial-free, which they estimate would bring in up to $50-million over three years.
Ms. McGuire said there’s “high anxiety” in the CBC right now, just as there was pre-budget, and said in finding the cuts they had to make some tough decisions about shows and the teams behind them. But at the end of the day, while Ms. McGuire said meeting the reductions will “definitely decrease capacity in the system” she doesn’t think the reductions will impact the CBC’s overall effectiveness in reporting.
“I believe we are probably more versatile than most media organizations. We’re continually looking at how we work and how we can evolve and how we use technology in efficient ways,” said Ms. McGuire. “I think the perception on the outside somehow is that CBC is not nimble and not efficient. You still hear these mythologies out there, but the truth of the matters is … we are pushing the integration of news. … We’re assigning across platforms. You see our television stars on radio, our radio stars on television, and all of them online in a way that is forward-looking in terms of how media companies are working, and all [media companies] are sort of grappling with this.”
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: LAURA RYCKEWAERT
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