After spending years claiming poverty and receiving bailouts, the CBC has reportedly decided to shower its CEOs with bonuses.
Throughout the Bill C-18 debate, we’ve heard countless tall tales about how the news sector was on the verge of a total collapse. This from the largest players in the sector. To be clear, the news business is an extremely tough gig to get in to, but that commentary generally only applies to the smaller independent players. This is partly thanks to the largest media players having all the advantages in the world and living comfortably on stacks of cash thanks to government subsidies as well as the momentum of the heyday of peak television from decades ago. Smaller players like us, unlike the largest players in the sector, actually have to put forth the effort to earn every dollar. Nothing is handed to news outlets like ours.
So, it’s probably no surprise that when the likes of Bell, CBC, and trade organizations representing similar organizations come running to lawmakers screaming about how they are going to go broke overnight, people like us laughed at their faces. That’s with very good reason. For one, these organizations often run monopolies in various regions. For another, they are apparently so broke that they can afford whole teams of lobbyists to push through the disaster that was Bill C-18. So, when we saw throughout the senate hearings those entities saying that without government intervention, they would practically fold overnight, we called their bluff and said that the legislation has nothing to do with “saving” journalism. Instead, whatever money they get out of this is going to hedge funds, CEO bonuses, and shareholders.
This was a plain as day obvious outcome for us at the time, but at the time, for some, this was just the ramblings of a crazy person. For supporters of the legislation, the threat of bankruptcy for the wealthiest corporations was very very real and all those jobs associated with those mega corporations were on the verge of disappearing and we will see a pillar of democracy vanish overnight. After all, if you can’t believe a corporate lobbyist, who could you believe?
Yet, like so many other things that make it onto the pages of Freezenet, what I right has a disturbing habit of becoming reality. For instance, after Bell got their Bill C-11 and Bill C-18, they proceeded to proceed with slashing 9% of their workforce. They then took the money they got out of the deal and raised dividend payments to their shareholders. The Canadian government, having realized they had been lied to this whole time by the likes of organizations like Bell, expressed anger towards Bell and held a hearing to express their frustration with them over their “garbage” decision. Bell’s response to all of this was largely to flip off the government on top of it all.
While Bell deserves the heaps of anger it got from their obviously bad behaviour, they are not alone in making such decisions. The CBC, as news hit that they would be getting $33 million, slashed 10% of its workforce. While the CBC did see that massive windfall get cut to $7 million, they got a massive government bailout in exchange for not going through with their latest round of layoffs. So, if you are naive enough, you might be tempted to say that this is the end of the story. The government issued a massive bailout of the CBC, so those jobs are saved and the CBC will be able to carry on. Well, not quite.
A recent report suggests that the CBC has decided to shower its CEO with bonuses. Apparently, the CBC isn’t really as impoverished as they let on all this time. From iPhone in Canada:
The CBC has approved future bonuses for its executives and non-unionized staff, as revealed in the state broadcaster’s latest annual review. On June 25, the CBC discreetly posted a notice on its website, announcing the approval of another round of bonuses, just days after the latest parliamentary session ended, first reported by La Presse.
These bonuses are for work done in the 2023-24 fiscal year. The exact cost to taxpayers for this new round of bonuses remains unclear.
Internal documents obtained by the CTF show the CBC approved $14.9 million in bonuses in 2023 while cutting 346 jobs during the 2023-24 fiscal year. Since 2015, the CBC has distributed $114 million in bonuses.
The CBC’s strategic plan lists five “key performance indicators” (KPIs) that trigger bonuses for staff. The annual report detailing the 2023-24 KPI results will be available later this summer.
Back in December 2023, the CBC announced it would be facing a $125 million shortfall for the 2024-25 fiscal year, and would be cutting 600 jobs and reducing English and French programming.
Isn’t that amazing? We went from the news sector claiming that they were on the verge of bankruptcy to organizations like the CBC needing to lay off hundreds of employees due to budget shortfalls to mysteriously somehow pulling out millions from somewhere to go towards the “feed the poor starving CEO with bonuses” fund. Funny how that works, isn’t it?
As noted, this isn’t strictly a CBC issue. This is a pattern of behaviour we’ve seen among the largest players in the sector. They claim poverty and hold up their own employees as ransom. The government sends them truckloads of free money to “save” those jobs. Those news organizations then take that money and shovel it directly towards their executives and shareholders. After that, they do whatever they feel like with their employees afterwards. After all, this was never about “saving” those jobs in the first place.
One of the infuriating aspects of all of this is the fact that these companies could have used that money to better adapt to a digital age. They could easily use that money to develop a better product and offer more comprehensive and thoughtful reporting. Either that or that money could have gone to a startup who is willing to put in the work to produce something better. Instead, that money is invariably getting wasted on the upper class who will probably end up hoarding that cash as a way of getting a new wealth high score instead.
In fact, this cycle sets up a system that actively encourages wasting that money on top of it all. After all, why bother creating an innovative product that consumers want when the government was just going to make up for whatever budgetary shortfalls that those corporations experience in the first place? There’s no reason to attract an audience because they are getting that money directly from the government instead. So, they can continue to kick up their feet, enjoy their monopolistic powers, and continue to offer a worse and worse product in the end. Who cares if they continue to lose audiences? They can just make the government swoop in and “save” them anyway. Life is certainly easy for them.
At any rate, this was a highly predictable outcome in all of this. Yes, the CBC lost website traffic when the Online News Act predictably backfired, but taxpayers can pay for all of those mistakes. The large media outlets, if anything, are getting rewarded for these business screw ups. We called it throughout the debate and, despite the occasional accusation of using vitriol in our writing, the predictions seemingly ended up coming true. It turns out, we were accurate all along.
The CBC exists in a bubble. Bonuses aren’t bonuses they’re performance incentives. The majority of key performance indicators are missed, per the annual report, yet bonuses are still paid and the targets for the next year are lowered. For some missed targets the CBC claims they are partially achieved which somehow justifies bonuses.
Ad and subscription revenue keep dropping. Viewership keeps falling. Expenses keep rising and the bonuses keep flowing. Oh well, at least this behavior unites the country with disgust for the CBC.
There was a time I had a lot of respect for the CBC. My respect for the organization has dwindled greatly over the last 5-10 years. People sometimes talk about how the CBC is in every major city covering all the major stuff and how it is a major public good. Yet, in practice, I don’t really see it that much. For instance, in my home town, there is a CBC outlet supposedly covering all the stuff happening there. A whole staff is supposed to be taking care of it, yet I never really hear much about the coverage of the CBC.
Last month, I had a REALLY nasty cold and was forced to stop writing for a few days. I gradually got well enough to start writing again. Despite my extremely limited resources, working for free, and writing in “niche” topics, I was able to produce more than 4 times the output the CBC was able to provide covering literally anything they felt like covering (and that’s not even counting all the reviews and video’s I do over top of that). I kid you not, they have PAID staff to do this stuff in that area (complete with a physical building and equipment) and I’m reporting circles around them for free. It’s… quite pathetic for a medium sized city.
I think the biggest threat to the CBC right now is viewer apathy. I believe there are a lot of viewers like me who don’t care what’s on the CBC. Instead they wonder what’s on Netflix, Prime, TSN, Disney or YouTube.