CBC asking Ottawa if it can broadcast less Canadian TV content: Report

The CBC has asked the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to allow the public broadcaster to drop its primetime TV content from nine hours to seven, according to Ottawa correspondent Dylan Robertson of The Winnipeg Free Press.

“The manner in which the corporation provides its services is changing to meet the needs and interests of Canadians and in response to the evolution in how that content is being consumed,” states part of CBC’s proposal to the CRTC sent in November of 2019, according to Robertson.

CBC management argued the changes since the public broadcaster has upped the amount of Canadian content it provides online. The CRTC does not regulate the amount of Canadian content of online distributors like it does for radio and television broadcasters.

Streaming services such as Netflix and Crave do not have follow the high Canadian content quotas that the CBC and other Canadian TV broadcasters have to abide by.

Media advocacy group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting is asking the Trudeau government to get the laws changed in order to force the streaming giants to produce and offer more Canadian content.

Late last year the Liberals announced they were looking at enforcing Netflix, Amazon Prime, Crave and Disney Plus to show more Canadian content, which could result in Canadian consumers getting less of the foreign shows the streaming services currently have on offer for customers around the world.

Late last year CBC continued to lose ad revenue, down more than 53 percent in 2019 from that of 2014, as first reported by Ottawa news outlet Blacklock’s Reporter.

The CBC also had to lay off a few dozen employees from the Toronto headquarters last November.