They've lost their viewers. Which is what the new CBC president, Robert Rabinovitch, stated in May when he announced 670 layoffs and the closing of a dozen regional newsrooms. During the 1990s it dropped from 28 percent to 13 percent. In Toronto, Canada's biggest city, the share was two percent. CTV makes a killing showing almost nothing but American shows, but their network and local newscasts aren't as glib or half as politically correct.
Viewers see people who look and act a lot like themselves.
It means we're being intellectual. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was created by act of Parliament in 1933 to provide national radio in both French and English, the country's two official languages. When television came of age a generation later, that sentiment seemed all the more clairvoyant. In fact, from the '50s through the '70s, the CBC was one of the world's great public broadcasters. The CBC is well on the road to oblivion.