The public Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is approaching its 75th anniversary. “The old dilemma — how to create original Canadian shows when it is much cheaper to pick up popular American ones — now has a new urgency,” reports the Globe and Mail. As commercial and international choices proliferate, it notes, a public broadcaster of Canadian programming becomes more distinctive and more relevant, not less. “It is going to be increasingly difficult to create content within the confines of national boundaries and national models,” media consultant Jerry Brown, an associate partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, told the paper. “[Yet] it’s vitally important each culture and each country tell its own story.”
The paper notes that whether the CBC will become “painfully isolated or gloriously distinctive, though, depends on how successfully it positions itself as the first source of Canadian choices in a digital age, and whether its government and its audience help it embrace that role.”
There’s also a sidebar on how the CBC compares with other pubcasters worldwide, including PBS.