Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue 2 - Evidence for November 23, 2004
OTTAWA, Tuesday, November 23, 2004
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 9:35 a.m. to examine the current state of Canadian media industries; emerging trends and developments in these industries; the media's role, rights and responsibilities in Canadian society; and current and appropriate future policies relating thereto.
Senator Joan Fraser (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable senators, welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications, which is continuing its study of the Canadian news media and the appropriate role of public policy in helping to ensure that the Canadian news media remain healthy, independent and diverse in light of the tremendous changes that have occurred in recent years, notably, globalization, technological change, convergence and increased concentration of ownership.
[Translation]
This morning, we are pleased to welcome Mr. Ben Chin, news anchor with radio station Toronto One (CKKT) which was recently licensed by the CRTC. This station has a rather turbulent history which could prove rather interesting to explore. Previously Mr. Chin worked for the CBC.
[English]
Mr. Chin, thank you very much for being with us today. As you know, we ask for introductory remarks of ten minutes, if possible, not more, because we need time for questions. I will now ask you for your opening statement, please.
Mr. Ben Chin, Toronto One, As an Individual: Thank you, Madam Chair. It is a pleasure to be here this morning and I want to thank you for the invitation. I also want to thank you for the exhaustive work you have done so far. Your interim report, released in April 2004, is an impressive body of work so far. Senate committees have a tradition in this country of doing sometimes groundbreaking and important work that is quite often not tainted by partisan politics in the same way as in the lower house. I must say that you are living up to that tradition very well.
I am here today as a resource to you, as somebody who has worked in television news for 15 years. You would think that I was capable of technology but, as it turns out, I somehow did not get my biography e-mailed properly to your clerk. Let me briefly give you my background in this business.
I began in 1989 in when Moses Znaimer hired me for Citytv in Toronto as a general assignment reporter. I worked there for eight years, during which time I became the noon anchor and I broke several stories. After that, I moved on to work with Senator Munson and to take his place in Halifax as the CTV Atlantic Bureau Chief.
Senator Fairbairn: What a challenge!
Mr. Chin: We will not get into the things I had to clean up!
I was there for a year working for CTV National News, so that gave me a different experience from the urban Toronto-centric newscast at which I had worked at Citytv.
After a year at CTV, I moved to the CBC and went back to Toronto to host afternoon programming on CBC Newsworld. Eventually, they moved me to anchoring Saturday Reports on the weekend, as well as filling in for Peter Mansbridge and Alison Smith on Sunday Report and The National. I have had a taste of public national broadcast news as well as cable news, which I think has made a great impact. I guess the only people I have not worked for in this country at this point are Global and The Weather Network. I have had a good look around. I am here not as a representative of Toronto One, the station that I joined a year ago, but to speak as a journalist who has been working in this field.
Toronto One was a unique opportunity to start a brand new, over-the-air basic TV station in Toronto — the first one in more than 30 years and perhaps the last one in my lifetime. It was a temptation too great to resist. I am glad that was there to help start the struggle to win over an audience and to raise our flag on the city of Toronto.
Having said all that, the last 15 years, when I look at the business and what it is like from the inside as a reporter, anchor and journalist, there is a great paradox. There has never been a period of greater proliferation of news outlets on television as there is today. When we were growing up, all the news that was fit to watch on television in the world could be broadcast in half an hour and it was done at ten o'clock or eleven o'clock at night. That is what we called ``the world.'' Today, there are competing 24-hour news channels and local 24-hour news channels. That is essentially changing the way we do our work.
The paradox is that, while the access to international news and local news — all of that has grown so much in the last 15 years — the viewership does not seem to be as engaged. In some ways, people are not turning to the news in the way that they used to. It is not the great central meeting place of society. That fills me with a bit of concern because if we do not have a common starting point to engage in debate, then where will we start? Where are people coming from?
There are a number of reasons for this. One is the growth in television stations, beyond news. You have looked at that already, namely, the so-called 500-channel universe. There are many choices at six o'clock, ten o'clock or eleven o'clock. You do not have to watch the news any more. More and more people are choosing not to do so.
There is also an echo boom generation of younger people now reaching their twenties and early thirties and they are not watching television news — not in the numbers that certainly those of us who work in the industry would like to see. We need to broaden the subject matter to talk to them, to talk to the audience, the young emerging generations, in a way that they understand and in a way that is relevant to them.
The other aspect is the incredible social experiment of diversity in cities like Toronto. I do not think, in history, in the world, there has been a time of greater social mobility. People come from all over the world and adjust and move in and integrate or not integrate — all of this is going on in a city such as Toronto with the size of about 5 million people now. It presents great challenges.
I do a lot of school outreach. During the war in Iraq, for instance, I would ask young people in high school, ``What is your primary source of news? Is it CBC Newsworld?'' A few hands would go up. I would then ask, ``Is it CTV Newsnet,'' and a few hands would go up. I would then ask, ``Is it CNN?'' Many more hands would go up. At several schools I said, ``Is it Al-jazeera,'' and the room full of kids raised their hands because it happened to be a neighbourhood with a concentration of kids from South Asia and the Middle East.
That shows it goes beyond what is available on cable because you can get satellite transmissions of news services that you prefer to watch. A lot of the parents are probably getting news services that reflect news from home more. That could be a challenge to the greater integration of society in terms of the kids watching what their parents watch and not turning to what we have traditionally turned to as mainstream news in Canada.
In terms of our work from the journalist point of view, the workload has increased greatly. When I began 15 years ago, you worked the majority of your eight-hour shift on one story. You went out to a place, you talked to people, you phoned other people and you spent a good deal of time with them. Even back then, people who worked in current affairs would say, ``You news people do not spend a lot of time on stories.'' However, we used to spend at least one day on the story. Nowadays, with the proliferation of 24-hour news, a reporter's day is pushed here and there. There is a constant need to feed the machine. Quite often, you could be assigned to a story where you are doing what we call talkbacks in the business, with the anchor. I will give you an example, a plane crash. I have covered plane crashes where I have not gotten out to the scene of the plane crash for two days because I am too busy filing for the hourly newscast. Producers go out and get those elements and then we turn it around for the late-night newscast.
This need to do play-by-play of news as it develops through the day poses challenges to a reporter's ability to give you the sort of last-word story, the considered, thoughtful story. It is harder to do those thoughtful stories because you are so busy doing the play-by-play throughout the day.
News does not happen in a vacuum. The television box in most people's homes is the theatre. It is a place where entertainment comes out. People view the news much the same way they view reality shows, game shows or anything else. As time goes on, news has to compete against those other kinds of entertainment programs. It must have the bells and whistles and the look of those things. That is fair enough, but it is also making an impact on editorial decisions because you are mindful of what the audience is watching before they were watching you.
To give you an example, I will not name names but on one of the national newscasts a few years ago you would not have seen a promotion run an hour before the show of Britney Spear's wedding. That is the type of thing that people are forced to do now. They need to cover those stories to try to reach that audience that seems so hard to reach, and to reach that audience that is watching the American program before the newscast.
Those are some of the pressures and challenges that we face in our business. I will now open it up to questions.
Senator Tkachuk: Toronto One, I believe, was originally owned by Craig Media which does not own newspapers. Subject to CRTC approval, however, Quebecor, which owns the Toronto Sun, will own it. How will being part of a country with extensive cross-media ownership affect your work, do you think?
Mr. Chin: First, the Quebecor deal has been approved by the CRTC. We are just waiting for the signatures, the dotting of the I's and the crossing of the Ts, and the contract between CHUM and Quebecor.
From my perspective as a worker at Toronto One, I welcome the partnership with the Toronto Sun. As a stand-alone television station, as your work has shown you, there are very few of us that are stand-alone TV stations. It is hard to buy programming and it is hard to make an impact on the marketplace. I do not know to what degree there will be convergence on an editorial level, but there is definitely value in a marketing convergence where the Toronto Sun has a great deal of marketing muscle in Toronto. They will be able to help get the word out that there is a new television station on channel 15.
Senator Tkachuk: You are not too concerned about it?
Mr. Chin: I am not too concerned about it. Do I think that we will have to tow the same editorial line as the Toronto Sun? I do not think so. When it gets right down to the business of establishing our TV station and it being successful — this is all speculation on my part and all remains to be seen — in general, I think that business people allow things to grow if they work.
There is no great fear at Toronto One that the Toronto Sun editorial board will come over and make us tow the line, whatever line that may be.
Senator Tkachuk: If the CBC did not exist in Toronto, as far as local news is concerned, would the private sector fill the void?
Mr. Chin: When I look at the Toronto market, the Toronto market is the one market where local CBC is not doing very much right now. Their audience figures are so small that they are comparable to ours right now as a start-up TV station that started only last September. We are neck to neck.
Senator Tkachuk: That is right. It is the same in our province.
Mr. Chin: I wonder what void they would leave. In the private sector, you constantly hear criticism of the CBC. As somebody who worked there for five years and who believes in the CBC, I am not one of those people who say that. I would like to see a local CBC thrive in Toronto and do well and do better than it is doing.
As things stand now, where the CBC's presence has devolved to in the last ten years, it is not as if they are going to leave a great void. In many areas, others have jumped in. I would say that Citytv in Toronto now does much more political coverage, public affairs coverage, than they used to when I was there. While they may not be the CBC, they have in their own style filled some of the void left behind by the old CBC supper-hour, six o'clock local show.
Senator Tkachuk: All the news media is headquartered out of Toronto. Almost all the cable channels are in Toronto. All the cultural things that TV is to promote and carry are out of Toronto. Why do you think that is?
Mr. Chin: Obviously, Toronto is the business centre and these are all businesses. It would be as strange for a television station to locate somewhere else as it would be for a bank. I think that is the explanation, although I am not the one making those decisions.
Senator Tkachuk: Do you think that is good for the country?
Mr. Chin: No, I do not, particularly. I do not think it is very good for the country that the centre determines what the cultural norms are in this country or that things get siphoned off from the regions back to Toronto and somehow get reinterpreted back to the regions. It could lead to a very myopic view of what this country is.
We need strong people from the regions to do well in the large organizations, but frankly I do not know how that can be corrected because it is not as if I can go off and start up a TV station in Halifax.
Senator Tkachuk: What is stopping you?
Mr. Chin: Money.
Senator Tkachuk: Not the CRTC, just money?
Mr. Chin: That is right. If I showed up at the CRTC with a pocket full of money, anything is possible. It has now turned into a business for large companies that need to leverage their costs across many TV stations, and possibly across different media.
Senator Merchant: You have touched on so many things that touch me: What the young people are viewing, how ethnic or immigrant communities relate to news and how they get their news.
To carry on with what Senator Tkachuk was saying about the CBC, do you see a way for the CBC, who has stations all across Canada, to serve us better? I come from Regina, Saskatchewan. There is half an hour of local news at six o'clock and everything else we get all day long is national news. There is nothing wrong with that. Just because we come from Saskatchewan does not mean that we are not interested in what is happening in the world. However, we feel a bit removed because everything is coming from Toronto.
The CBC is a company that we all support, but it is an expensive way to get news. Do you have some solutions for the CBC? What could they do to better serve us?
Mr. Chin: The country first has to ask itself that question. I was at the CBC during the pull-out of the regions, in the launch of Canada Now and the closing down of local news rooms and the conversion into this hybrid Canada Now, partially local and partially national from Vancouver. Those were not editorial decisions that were made. Those were decisions driven by fiscal realities, where the news management — and I have a great deal of sympathy for how they came to this decision — looked at their operations, looked at their costs and said, we have to do something; this is not sustainable. We need to ask ourselves, what do Canadians primarily count on the CBC to do?
As a group, they decided that is more national and international news and perhaps the six o'clock hour can become an hour where you can reflect one region to the other. That was their decision for pulling stakes from local news. It was the wrong decision because I think only of the journalistic or editorial reasons to do things. I do not really understand the financial pressures they are facing.
When Mr. Robert Rabinovitch was at the House of Commons the other day, he said that he would need an increase in funding in order to explore the re-launching now of local news in several markets. I take him at his word because I know money was tight even after the downscaling of local news. Those are money decisions and as long as taxpayers' dollars are at work, then it is Canadians who have to answer the question, how valuable is it.
There are certainly markets in this country where the CBC is vital, whether it is PEI, Newfoundland or Saskatchewan. There are underserved markets that you do not see a mad rush of private sector companies jumping to go into. The national broadcaster must be there. Perhaps they can come up with an asymmetrical model of serving the underserved communities and pulling out of the larger communities.
Senator Merchant: I do not quite understand that because the CBC is a very expensive way for Canadians to get the news. I do not know if that is because of the way they operate, because they are working with other people's money. I have known reporters over time, who have worked for both the CBC and the CTV, and they have told me that the CBC does things in a more expensive way. I do not know what that means. If a reporter came to Saskatchewan to cover a story, he would bring a lot of people with him, fewer than he did when we worked for CTV, for instance. I must say, however, that in my opinion, the CBC news is good-quality news.
Mr. Chin: It is good-quality news.
Senator Merchant: Yet it takes money to give you the better quality.
Mr. Chin: Increasingly, it is an unfair criticism of the CBC. They are quite often the poor cousins out in the field. CBC in Toronto is, for instance, so outgunned by CFTO and Citytv, us, Global, everybody in Toronto that they are the last to show up anywhere. They do not have the camera resources to cover the city properly. They have four reporters for all of Toronto.
It might be five, but it is around four. It is not true that they are wasteful in the news operation in a way that others might have said in the old days.
Part of the problem is that the pay scale is not necessarily higher than elsewhere now. If you hired me as an auditor to go through the CBC building and find waste, I am sure I could find it but I would not know where to start. It was not on my floor; that is what I could tell you.
Senator Fairbairn: Mr. Chin, I should preface my questions by telling you I am one of those relics of journalistic history that started on Parliament Hill 43 years ago in the press gallery. At that point, there was no CTV, there was no Global. There was CBC — two people, the great Norman DePoe for television and Tom Earle for radio — a couple of independent radios, and CHCH Hamilton had a person here. When there were press conferences in those days, the cameras were not allowed in, so it was very much a print world. That has changed dramatically, and I think that is a good thing.
Some comments that you made trouble me. You were talking about young people with Senator Merchant. You were talking about them not watching TV, but if they were, they were more inclined to watch CNN or Al-Jazeera, and I suppose out of curiosity and horror, many people would watch that now through satellite. With all of the money and effort, mergers and this and that that have brought us very wide access to a wide variety of television outlets across this country, why is it that, when you have very good television — and I believe we do in Canada, and I am obviously a big fan of CBC too — populations, young and old, are watching CNN? What is attracting them to that when they get the same kind of stories covered in Canada? They also have Canadians around the world covering them, and doing extraordinarily well. Why is it that this attraction is not taking place in this country but we are tuning in to the fast food TV like CNN?
Mr. Chin: I wish I had an answer for you. I do not, really. I look at the situation, and I think they have an ability in the U.S., obviously, with a great deal more money and resources, to be able to go. They can cover a war, minute-to- minute, in a way that Canadian networks cannot. We can certainly do a better job of maybe not being the first there, but the last there, and giving a different sort of insight into what is going on than the simple play-by-play of the explosions, and which one took place first. If that is where the viewers are going, it must be because there is something inherently more entertaining to the packaging, and the embedded journalist coverage that we got during the war in Iraq from American networks. People felt closer to being at the front lines watching American channels, I suppose.
The other odd thing that I do not know the answer to is that when I do public outreach and talk to young people, quite often there is a great deal of cynicism about American journalism as being overly patriotic and one-sided. Yet, when you ask what they are watching, they watch that. It must mean that there is a great opportunity to present Canadian journalism in a fresh way. There is an opening there. They are not happy about the coverage they are getting from the American networks that they predominantly watch. If we can just get them to switch over and start to watch us, maybe there is an opening to redefine what it is to be a Canadian journalist, and a Canadian's view on the world versus an American one.
Senator Fairbairn: This is something one of your colleagues, Mr. Kevin Newman, was set to do with Global when he came back from his stint in the United States. Has that had an effect? Has that raised the bar? Global does do it a little differently. Has that raised the interest?
Mr. Chin: It must have somewhere, because Kevin Newman's show is doing quite well across the country, better than a lot of people would have expected. He is certainly making an argument for a different kind of, or a more creative look at, national and international news coverage, doing it on a shoestring budget and having hundreds of thousands of people watch across the country. He is obviously making some of the right decisions.
Senator Munson: What comes around goes around. That four-year-old you met in Halifax is now in Grade 11, and this morning he engaged my wife and me in a serious discussion on a paper that he is trying to present to his teacher on bias in the media. I do not know where that came from, but challenges are coming from upstairs in my own house now.
We had a person here last week talking about single ownership in markets, particularly Vancouver, in radio, television and newspaper. This witness talked about the fact that he believes the government should step in and regulate. What are your views on that sort of thing? I thought that was quite a statement for him to make.
Mr. Chin: I have not been a part of the ``stop the convergence'' movement. I will tell you why. I have seen good and bad management in large companies, and I have seen good and bad management in small companies. If you look at CTV/The Globe and Mail union, I do not think that we can look at that and say that it has been horrible. It has not. The Globe and Mail has become a better newspaper, in my mind, in the last five years or so, largely because of competition from the National Post. It has become a more reader-friendly newspaper and a better newspaper actually. CTV news has also benefited from its relationship with The Globe and Mail — maybe not to the degree that some people within the company might have liked, with joint investigations and those types of things, but largely those two enterprises are operating much as they were before. I cannot look at convergence and say, much as I would like to in an instinctive knee-jerk way, that this must be a bad thing. I do not think it has demonstrated itself necessarily as a bad thing.
We clearly live in a country where we require certain kinds of regulations. Without it, regions will not thrive. There must be an equalling of the playing field in this country, because it is such a vast country and the population is so concentrated in certain areas. That is true, but I would also hesitate to ask government to walk into those types of business transactions. It is the same sort of ambivalence I have about employment equity. I know that I have benefited from it. I know that it is a great way to get different communities reflected in television. I think that broadcasters need to do that themselves for their own sake, for business. It must not be a minimalist endeavour of trying to live up to regulations but an opening up, a leap of faith into taking chances. I cannot share the other witness's concern in terms of government regulations going in to break up a company.
Senator Munson: You talked about your workload and the workload of journalists and the fact that you have to skim over things and do things for twelve o'clock, six o'clock, eleven o'clock and so on. Will your workload be a lot heavier if the Sun Media Newspapers group gets hold of you, and you have to do a column and blog? How does that serve journalism in the sense of what you said before about having one or two days to do a story? Does that hurt the quality of journalism in this country?
Mr. Chin: I think that it would, certainly, but I do not see that happening on a grand scale across the country. You might see Dr. Marla Shapiro, who has a television show on CTV, also write a health column for The Globe and Mail, but that is a managed example of convergence. On a day-to-day basis, I do not think we see a Toronto Star newspaper reporter filing a newspaper story and reporting on television. CBC has enough of a hard time trying to get radio reporters and television reporters to converge, or to work together. Even in partnership situations that I have been in before, where newsrooms have linked up, the partners are very guarded about their own stories, and rightfully so. The Toronto Star does not want to give up stories to me, and I do not want to give up stories to them. I do not think there will be that kind of editorial convergence.
I think it was a best-case scenario seen by bean-counters years ago that there could be this kind of refrigerator oven; that we would need only half the journalists of the newspaper and the television station combined to do the work of both. I do not think that is happening.
Senator Munson: You talked about the echo boom generation. To whom are you trying to appeal? What are you doing differently that we do not see already in the private market in the city of Toronto?
Mr. Chin: In Toronto, our six o'clock newscast is not really a newscast; it is more a news magazine and we are targeting them directly. One of our strategies has been that there is no point trying to go after established viewer patterns in your first year and try to steal away loyal viewers from other television stations. The more useful work would be to bring more people into the tent overall by appealing to people who are not watching news programs at six o'clock. We are making conscious editorial choices, based on what we believe is important to that age group, and the way they see their life in their city.
Our program is quite different from the other newscasts. We do not devote a lot of time to daily news. We devote much more time to doing stories about popular culture, trends, the city's architecture, and whatever it might be, in longer form through our half hour. We are giving the show a kind of packaging that is, frankly, quite glitzy. I often hear from kids that it is very fast, it is very glitzy, and that it looks kind of American. We are trying to compete with what they might watch from stations south of the border.
The Chairman: Mr. Chin, you are in Toronto and we are in Ottawa. Could we ask you to send us a tape of a couple of your shows so that we can see what you are talking about?
Mr. Chin: Absolutely, yes. I can.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: I will group these three questions together and you can answer them however you wish to do so. The first one is about the news. Let me preface this by saying I think our schools are doing an excellent job in promoting the environment with our young people, making them guardians of the environment and making them aware. I am wondering if we could look to our school system to do a much better job on citizenship. If so, do you think it would be relevant to do everything possible to get schools to give assignments in social studies, political science and other relevant courses that would require them to watch some Canadian news?
Second, regarding the news at six o'clock or seven o'clock, is it relevant any longer to have it at 6 p.m.? Life is changing. Most of us are probably just getting home. I, for one, think it is sad that the family meal is going down the drain for the majority of our population. There is that choice. If they watch television, it is wherever the table is, which is often true. I am wondering if seven o'clock would be better, when people are unwinding. I do not know whether that has been talked about in the media.
The third part is about the personality of the anchor. I think that is probably key. There is a program, for instance, that I watch on Sunday at noon whenever I remember or can, and it is because of the people. I want to watch them. It is theatre but it is also good Canadian news; similarly with other things that I watch.
Those are the three parts of my thinking directed toward you.
Mr. Chin: Let me begin with the third. I think personalities on the air are vitally important, whether they are anchors or reporters. I wholeheartedly agree with you on that.
In terms of your first point about our education system, it does trouble me a great deal that humanities-type courses, history courses and political science courses, are not requisites anymore as students get into senior grades. I hear that from history teachers in Ontario. I do not know why there is this de-emphasis. We have never done a particularly good job of teaching Canadian history or public affairs in this country overall. We have had great teachers, of course, in individual schools; but that has been a complaint since I was a kid.
Now we are saying, ``You do not have to take that, you can take a second math course,'' or whatever it might be. That de-emphasis is an unhealthy one. I hope that, at some point, school boards and parents re-examine that. This is all part of that movement of getting children prepared for the workforce. Perhaps the best preparation you can have for the workforce is to read widely and get a liberal arts education in many different aspects. That probably helps you deal with problems in many different kinds of industries, and in learning how to build a bridge per se.
I am trying to think of your second point.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: It is 6 o'clock versus 7 o'clock.
Mr. Chin: That is a very good point. We launched our program, Toronto Tonight, at 7 p.m., trying to do that. Then we found out that at 7 p.m. you run into a whole host of American prime time programming, which has incredibly loyal viewers. We now run at 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. We find that, quite often, our seven o'clock numbers are higher than at six o'clock. That is probably because of people getting home later and not finding a news, current affairs program on at seven o'clock.
The Chairman: For real news junkies, you can start at six o'clock and keep going and going.
Senator Eyton: Thank you for being here this morning, Mr. Chin. There has been a quiet criticism of Toronto and its central place in the English media in Canada. I note that you are from Toronto and, I expect, do not propose moving.
Do you agree that it is desirable for a major urban centre to exist in this country that attracts talented, energetic people who feed off each other, and thereby make themselves better? How else would you explain New York City, L. A., Rome, Paris or London? It seems that every country needs at least one. In Canada's case, I suppose we would be represented particularly by Montreal and Toronto. It seems to me those centres have a unique value of their own and make the media experience much better, not only for the industry but also for the Canadians that listen and read. Can you comment on that?
Mr. Chin: I agree with you. Even the United States has New York, Washington and Los Angeles.
Senator Tkachuk: And Atlanta and Nashville.
Mr. Chin: That is right; but mostly, other than CNN, they are based in New York as well. In a country of our size, I do not think it is particularly dangerous that Toronto becomes a breeding ground. I also share the deputy chair's concern that it is too bad that regionally driven programs and centres have closed down over the years. What is the solution to that? People cannot be forced to go places where they are not making money. It is a financial enterprise; it is a business.
Senator Eyton: Toronto One just went through a hearing process with the CRTC. I am not sure if you are familiar with all of this, but I will ask it anyway. Was the question of converging media raised as an issue before the CRTC? If so, is it any part of the conditions of licensing that you now have?
Mr. Chin: I do not know. I did not follow the hearings closely enough to say whether or not that question came up. I have since seen Quebecor's executives quoted in various articles talking about the value of owning the Toronto Sun and Toronto One, but I do not know to what degree that came up during the licence application.
Senator Eyton: I would be curious in getting an answer to those questions. Perhaps we can do that on our own.
The Chairman: Absolutely. I wanted to explore that area, too. As you probably know, in some other cases the CRTC has imposed, as a condition, a form of separation of newsrooms or editorial decisions. It is a little difficult sometimes to figure out exactly how these things work. Obviously, the proprietors go in there hoping also to achieve benefits of convergence quite apart from conditions that the CRTC might have set. Are you aware of any internal systems being set up to guarantee editorial independence between the Sun Media Newspapers chain and Toronto One?
Mr. Chin: We are still at such an early stage of moving in as the new owner that I am honestly not aware of any attempt to either separate or converge the newsrooms. To tell you the truth, the thought had not even crossed my mind that it was likely. I could see a world in which Toronto Sun columnists have their own television shows and where we might jointly do a consumer investigation. That could happen. However, because the two media are so different in terms of how to gather news and how to tell the stories, it has never cropped up in any of our discussions; so I am not aware of that.
The Chairman: Allow me to cite an example that has come up a few times in our hearings, and continues to be the subject of some controversy in Montreal, where Quebecor, as you know, has a large media empire. This has to do with the Star Académie phenomenon, a Canadian Idol kind of program. The Journal de Montréal, which is owned by Quebecor, gave and sustained prominent news play to the Star Académie phenomenon. Quebecor told us that they thought it was absolutely great, that it was cross-promotion, that it was entirely appropriate and that they planned to continue doing it. Certainly, if you read business-page interviews with Quebecor, this model is cited as being appropriate. Some academics and journalists have argued that what happened was a distortion of news judgment and that although Star Académie was indeed a phenomenon covered by everyone, the Journal de Montréal's coverage of it was so disproportionate as to displace other news.
I do not know if you are aware of that or how you would greet the arrival of such a phenomenon in Toronto.
Mr. Chin: As I understand it, I do not know anything about the specifics of the Star Académie case and the Journal de Montréal —
The Chairman: Speak hypothetically, if you will.
Mr. Chin: As I understand it, that was an incredibly popular show in Quebec. As far as cross-promotion is concerned, they are not its inventors. Convergence is not the only reason for cross-promotion. Whether it is a charity that a television organization has had closer links to, or something else, I have seen that time and time again during my 15 years as a reporter — certain things receive greater play because they are closer to the heart of the station, good for the station's image or provide a means to increase its prominence within the community.
Quite apart from any convergence between the newspaper and television station, I think that is the way in which newspapers and television stations have operated since the beginning of time. You often see newspapers run with stories that others do not run with because they broke the story and want to achieve maximum effect from it. They may carry on with the story for days after everyone else has dropped it because they want to have the maximum benefit of letting the community know it is their story. It is a kind of agenda-journalism.
If anything, I am looking forward to opportunities whereby the Toronto Sun can help us at Toronto One because our footprint is large but public awareness of our existence is still quite low. We were not able to do the level of marketing that we would have liked to do at the outset. If the Toronto Sun can help lend marketing muscle to our program then that is fine. I do not think there is anything wrong with that.
This is happening everywhere. If Quebecor moves in and we are doing that with the Toronto Sun, then we are doing that at a time when the National Post and The Global Televison Network work together and The Globe and Mail and CTV and CFTO work together. It is really just levelling the playing field between competitive television stations.
The Chairman: How many journalists are there in your newsroom?
Mr. Chin: We have, according to our last statistics, 15 on-air personalities — reporters and anchors — eight producers and writers, and five or six camera people on electronic news gathering, ENG, for a total of about 30, I would say.
Senator Phalen: I would like to return to the CBC. There is a poll by Ipsos-Reid that suggests 85 per cent of Canadians want to see the CBC strengthened in their regions. Another Ipsos-Reid poll suggests that the viewing audience of the CBC is less than 10 per cent. Why is there such a discrepancy in the poll results?
Mr. Chin: The biggest challenge to the viewership of the CBC is American television coming across the border from American television stations, as well as American television that is rebroadcast for simulcast by Canadian outlets.
It is no great secret that they can do fine-quality Canadian dramas that do not attract the audience of a crime-scene investigator program. It is simply not good enough to do a good job in your hour or your one-half hour. Basically, you are like a department store such that if you do not have other great properties for people to come to, they will not come. Often in news we kid ourselves about how we can make ratings go up or go down by how hard we work. However, at least half the battle is the program that is on before you.
Let us talk about The National with Peter Mansbridge. He is airing when one-half to three quarters of the sets are tuned to another channel — likely popular American programming. The great challenge is to present an argument for watching Canadian television not because it is good for us but because it is good.
Senator Phalen: The last time the mandate of the CBC was changed, I believe, was in 1991. Do you believe that changes are necessary? Would you recommend changes in their mandate?
Mr. Chin: No. I am a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to the CBC. I believe that It should concentrate on the things that it does well: sports; Hockey Night in Canada; the Grey Cup football coverage; local and international news delivered in a way that other news organizations do not; and help to develop and foster talent and drama across the country so that we can put on competitive dramatic programs that the average viewer would prefer to see over something on an American channel.
Senator Fairbairn: To get back to the convergence between television, newspapers and pollsters, especially in areas such as election campaigns, do you believe it has an effect on the writing and broadcasting of the two agencies connected with a polling company?
Has this been a dramatic change in how polls are read and how questions are asked? Is there still a line of independence somewhere?
I know this question has been asked repeatedly, especially after the last election.
Mr. Chin: There is a level of discomfort there for me to be certain about partnerships and polling, but I will say this: Let us say there was a Toronto Star-Toronto One poll. Last year, we had a strategic alliance with the Toronto Star. The Toronto Star and Toronto One pay a certain amount. It gives us access to certain questions, and it gives them access to other questions for purposes of breaking it to the audience.
The fact of the matter is, before we ever did that, if The Toronto Star commissioned the poll, and they had the results on the front page, we would likely follow that story.
The greater problem is polling becoming such an important part of election coverage. That is the greater problem, as we saw in this last election, where about the only thing that the polls got right was the momentum swing. None of them were all that right with the last two weeks of the election. We have this great need to be scorekeepers, as TV journalists, because we think we have run out of things to talk about. If there is a day that somebody is up by four or down by three, that is the story we want to do.
Two organizations can come together with a polling agency and craft the wrong kind of questions or leading questions or provocative questions. That can happen. That is just bad management. Those are bad editorial decisions. Two organizations can also come together and ask good polling questions and both cover them. There is nothing wrong with that.
Is it the convergence that is forcing TV to follow the polling story? No, it is not. During the last federal election, Toronto One was left without a dancing partner when it came to polls. What did we do? We talked about every poll that came out every day. We might not have had first access to it, but it was out there. People were talking about it, so we covered it. It was not convergence that forced us to do that.
Senator Fairbairn: Maybe your listeners were better informed.
Senator Munson: In closing and getting personal, how many times have you woken in the morning with your own great idea for a news story to get on the air, only to walk into your newsroom to see a bunch of people sitting on a desk who have already read all the newspapers and are saying, ``We must do that, that and that.''
How does a TV industry change that kind of culture? In other words, in the world of convergence do you still have an independent voice? You know as well as I do that you are swamped by a state within the newsroom which says, ``If it is on the front page of The Globe and Mail or The Toronto Star or whatever newspaper, it must be front page on our television station.'' How do you stop that nonsense?
Mr. Chin: I know where you stand on that.
The Chairman: There is no bias.
Senator Munson: It is not a bias. It is experience.
Mr. Chin: That is experience talking. I could probably count the number of self-generated stories that I have filed in the last 15 years. It is certainly not hundreds of times. It might have been dozens of times. I do not know. There is a news agenda in a competitive world. The newspapers and television are the same way. We keep picking the same stories over again because we are all watching what the other one is doing and trying to do the same thing so that we do not look like we have missed anything. In doing that, we have missed many creative opportunities. Perhaps that is why people turn away from us or get cynical about us because it is cookie-cutter news. Wherever you turn, it is all the same things over and over again, with a different necktie and a different set.
I am not tooting my own horn because I am not completely happy with the way our programming is on the night-to- night basis. It is an experiment and a struggle. We have our good days and bad days, but we have created a workplace where what is in the newspapers does not matter. We really do have a place where our nine o'clock meetings go to ten o'clock because everybody comes in with ideas, and we have to pick the four things we will do that day. Just because the finance minister in Ontario is giving an economic statement does not mean we have to do a full-blown story on it. That is the way we look at it. With respect to who is interested in that, we can cover that off, and I can read that as an anchor with over-pictures, a take and a clip. However, maybe the more interesting story is something else that day.
We do not feel because ``what is he going to say'' is all over the front page of The Toronto Star means we have to cover that story. That is the way we have been operating, for better and for worse.
The Chairman: I look forward to seeing that tape you will send us.
Mr. Chin: I do not think it is quite like what people have thought of as being the six o'clock news. It is not, but we will be glad to send it to you.
The Chairman: It has been a most interesting hour. We do have another witness waiting, and we are grateful to you for having been with us today.
Mr. Chin: Thank you for having me. I hope I was of some help to you today.
The Chairman: We resume our hearing with our second witness, Mr. Ezra Levant, publisher of the Western Standard, a brand new venture. It takes courage to launch new ventures. Mr. Levant has ten years' experience working in both the news field and the political domain.
Mr. Ezra Levant, Publisher, Western Standard: Thank you very much, Senator, and thank you for the invitation.
As you mentioned, earlier this year, along with 18 other intrepid investors, we started a new Canadian magazine whose intentions are to be a national news and current events magazine. I brought some copies of our latest issue, which I gave to the clerk. By coincidence, this latest issue has a story on page 23 about media freedom in Canada. According to one, somewhat subjective, report, Canada has actually slipped in the rankings of press freedom. That is just by coincidence that that is in our latest issue.
I have been guided by certain questions that the clerk has asked me to focus on and I will spend most of my time on that. However, whenever I think of government wanting to help the media, I am somewhat terrified because help sometimes translates into control, and I do not think the Canadian media would benefit by more control. The magazine side of the media business is relatively free compared to the TV and radio side. However, there are some governmental restrictions still upon us such as restricting foreign investment. Also, the government still skews the marketplace by giving subsidies or advertising revenue to certain magazines and newspapers, which gives them a competitive advantage over other magazines, such as the one that I am pleased to publish that receives no subsidies or advertising.
I will address the five points that I have been asked to, and then I will be delighted to answer your questions.
The first point I have been asked to address is whether Canadians have appropriate amounts of quality information. I would say that the answer to that is always yes, because I think that it is not rational for ordinary Canadians to invest too much time or effort in getting more information about current events and politics. It is not in their interest to do so unless it is a particular hobby or personal interest, as it is for everyone in this room. Simply put, Canadians do not over-consume and do not want to over-consume political information because it simply is not in their economic interest to spend hours researching the minutia of a political campaign where their vote is unlikely to make the difference. Unless it is a very close election where every vote counts, it simply is not rational for Canadians to consume as much current events and political information as those of us who love politics as a passion would want them to. Those Canadians who want to go the extra mile can do so, both within Canada and, increasingly, on the Internet.
The second question I was asked to address is whether literacy has a new importance in the information age. Obviously it does, especially given how much text material there is on the Internet. However, I would caution against any so-called media literacy, which I think is a code word for ``politics,'' ``philosophy'' or ``ideology.'' I would be very nervous about any official approach to media literacy as I think that would be naturally open to political manipulation either at the national level or at the level of a particular teacher or professor who would teach media literacy through their own political lens.
The third point I was asked to address is whether communities, minorities or remote centres are appropriately served. I think that they are as much as they want to be. There is no ethnic group in Canada whose members cannot access media of interest to them if they want to. I think we should not impose our ideas of what they should want to read upon them. Many people of ethnic groups want to read the same things that other Canadians would, and if they have a particular interest they can follow it up.
The only point that I would add is that if we want to allow more ethnic diversity in our media, perhaps we should roll back the foreign investment caps because a natural source of funding, for example for a Hindi newspaper, may well come from India, and that may be stopped by our foreign restrictions.
The fourth point I was asked to consider is why there is a concentration of broadcast media in Toronto and Montreal. I think the answers are obvious. That is where the population and the capital concentration is, and I do not think there is necessarily something wrong with that. However, as I have alluded to before, that has been emphasized by government subsidy and favour.
I come from the West, which is a part of the country that is traditionally not with the governing party. Therefore, it is of no surprise that enterprises in the West do not receive as much patronage-oriented subsidy as enterprises based in Toronto or Montreal. There is no secret to that. It is part of our political style and entrepreneurial style to go it alone without government subsidy. Even if we can succeed on our own, which I hope our little magazine will, it is made difficult by the fact that some of our Toronto- and Montreal-based competitors receive a lot of government support.
The final question put to me was: What forms of self-regulation are appropriate? Other than some fundamental laws, such as defamation and fraud, I think that any self-regulation is appropriate because the market, both readers and advertisers, will discipline the media. Speaking as a publisher, we must be responsible that we are engaging enough to keep our readers interested but responsible enough to keep our advertisers in the boat. In a 500-channel universe, every niche taste can find its niche publisher or broadcaster. I think that the era of government regulation is over, not just philosophically but technologically. I think that the dying gasps of government regulation, such as the CHOI-FM incident, will become increasingly impossible to implement, and that is fine. Not only is it technologically imminent, but I think that Canadian consumers of information are discriminating enough to make their own choices and they will punish broadcasters and publishers both by switching their subscriptions or viewing habits and by removing their advertising.
I feel much more accountable and oriented to my individual readers and advertisers than I would to any government authority. I am much more interested in pleasing readers or advertisers who criticize me than I would be an officious meddler from a bureaucracy far away who has no interest in my success.
Those are my five answers to your five questions. I am delighted to be here and I look forward to your questions.
Senator Tkachuk: Do you think there is a role for the CRTC?
Mr. Levant: I do not think there is. I think that, like many other institutions that were invented many decades ago, their original raison d'être has gone, but they are self-perpetuating. I think that the Internet has made them irrelevant. Some of their recent actions have proved that they are out of synch with the democratic consumer culture that Canada is lucky enough to have. I think that they have no place.
Senator Tkachuk: Should it be the role of the Competition Bureau or the CRTC to prevent monopolies in markets, or do we need either?
Mr. Levant: I do not believe we need either. I am hard-pressed to find a single example in history of a monopoly that has managed to keep its monopoly without government support in one way or another. In fact, if you look historically at Canada's greatest monopolies, they did not exist naturally. Some government intervention created them in the first place.
I think that it is actually impossible for a media monopoly to form. The divergence in public opinion makes people want to seek another point of view. Frankly, the dominance in Canada of Maclean's and Time Canada make our magazine, the Western Standard, so much more appealing. We appeal to those who want an alternative to the oligopoly of magazines. The answer to strong media or monopoly media is more competition naturally.
Senator Tkachuk: What role, then, should the CBC have as part of Canada's media family?
Mr. Levant: The CBC has products, services and programs that are of quality, and history and tradition enough that they can now stand on their own. I regard the CBC as an example of a competitor to me that receives subsidies. Obviously, they are not a very direct competitor. I am a small magazine publisher; they are a national colossus, but the fact that they sop up slightly less than $1 billion in government money every year and they sop up other advertising money makes it difficult for natural competition to exist.
I think that the CBC could be liberated from the government and put into private hands, perhaps even the hands of its own owners. In a 500-channel universe there is no longer the need for one channel to be pumped up as much as it is. It may have had a place in the past, but I do not believe that it needs the government support. Take the training wheels off.
Senator Tkachuk: We have had quite a bit of discussion here on cross-ownership — newspapers owning TV stations and TV stations owning newspapers. Do you think that is a concern? For example, we have been told that Vancouver newspapers and television stations are basically run by one company.
Mr. Levant: As I said earlier, if you find a monopoly or an oligopoly, look for the government's hand in creating it. It is so obvious that a key reason for that is government keeping out foreign investors and foreign capital. There should be foreign competitors in Canada that would succeed only if they could appeal to Canadian tastes.
I should be allowed to get as much capital as I want from the United States. American TV stations should be able to set up in Vancouver.
Wherever you find a concentration, if you look further you will see that government actually helped to create it.
Personally, as a publisher, I am in favour of cross-ownership. Frankly, as a little start-up, I could use some help from a big company in many ways. Eventually, I would like to partner with larger strategic alliances. I would not want someone in Ottawa telling me that for some theoretical reason I cannot do something that is in the health of my company's success or my readers' interests.
Senator Merchant: I come from Saskatchewan. I know that westerners have their own issues with the CBC. You made some comment about westerners having a more difficult time. We have had some good success stories. I am thinking of CanWest, Rogers and Ralco. Ralco has stations from Vancouver to Toronto, including Ottawa, so we have had some success stories. Perhaps you could elaborate on what you meant with that comment.
Second, I want to explore how you feel about whether there is a bias in the media. You said something about media literacy programs and that you would be a little concerned about the type of person in a classroom who may be shaping the media because of their own political agenda. What about the media people?
I was impressed by something I read about Slate Magazine. Apparently, it was asking its online contributors how they intend to vote. The reader is better informed about how to approach what they read.
Could you comment on those two things?
Mr. Levant: As to your first point about western successes, of course there are western successes. I did not mean to imply there were not. The question I was addressing was: Why is there media concentration? I do not think it is unnatural that the media would be concentrated where the markets are; not just where the viewers and readers are concentrated but the advertisers. I am not opposed to that. I am not for regional subsidies of media at all.
What I am pointing to is, besides that natural fertile soil for media to grow in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa, there is also some political gravy being ladled out, some extra fertilizer for that fertile soil. I am familiar with Ralco and the other organizations you referred to. CanWest is very proudly located in Winnipeg. There are western successes. I hope that we will be one as well.
As to your question about bias in the media, I read with jaw slack that Slate Magazine article you referred to. They asked every single employee at Slate Magazine, not just the columnists but the interns — just about everyone except for the janitor — to say who they were backing in this election. Out of let us say 40 people in the whole company, maybe five were for Bush, more than 30 were for Kerry, and a couple were for some independents. It was shocking to me. I thought it would have been more balanced.
I worked on Parliament Hill for two leaders of the opposition who were Canadian Alliance and Reform. I got to know a number of the members of the media. I would say that out of the 100 journalists I got to know on a casual basis, perhaps three of them confided to me that they were on the conservative side of the aisle. We know so many of them who are on the liberal side of the aisle. In fact, there is a bit of a revolving door sometimes with our friends in the media taking high posts in Ottawa.
I hope one day to take advantage of that ladder and climb my way to the top. I am joking of course. If there is to be an elected Senate, I will throw my hat in the ring.
Please do not take it from my anecdotal observations. However, I know that in the United States, Gallup frequently surveys the Washington press corps, and it is overwhelmingly Democrat. I think it is safe to say that, in this city, it is overwhelmingly liberal or left.
Journalism schools are the same way. I am proud to report that in our entire reportorial staff, other than my editor who is quite well educated, not a single one of our reporters has gone through journalism school. We hire based on one criterion only. It is: Do you know how to think? We will teach them how to write. We do not want our reporters, especially our young reporters like Cyril Doll who wrote the article I referred to, who is a bright young reporter, to take an ideological course. Too often, these days, that is what journalism school is. I do not need them to be taught that they need to be missionaries or advocates. Although we have a conservative flavour, I am proud that our magazine treats Liberals and New Democrats respectfully. In every issue we have a question and answer session, including ones with Jack Layton and Anne McLellan. A lot of leading liberals and progressives agree to be interviewed by our magazine because we have a reputation for treating them fairly. I am very proud of that. I do not see that treatment of conservatives in other magazines and newspapers in Canada that are on the liberal side of the spectrum.
Concerning the bias you refer to in Slate Magazine, I detect it myself on Parliament Hill. I detect it in the journalism schools. Frankly, I see our little magazine as a bit of a journalism school in rebuttal. We will take young people and teach them how to write. We will hold on to them for as long as we can afford them. Hopefully, however, we will send them out into the journalistic world to help tilt the balance back to what we think is fair reporting.
The Chairman: When you talked about your hiring policies, I was irresistibly reminded of Mr. Henry Luce who, when he founded Fortune magazine, said that he had the choice of hiring economists and teaching them how to write or hiring poets and teaching them economics. He discovered that you could not teach economists how to write but you could teach economics to poets. I do not know whether that is pertinent or not, but I always cherished it.
Senator Fairbairn: Your second point jumped out at me immediately, largely because I think you have struck a very important chord in what you are saying. I do a lot of work on literacy in this country and have for a very long time. Our previous witness talked about how young people were watching CNN and all of this. You have added another thing here which I think is very important. You refer to the degree to which people now are choosing to get their information from the Internet because they have their computers in front of them and they can run them.
You raised the question of basic literacy. Many people thought the Internet would cure that. It is a good tool for learning, at a certain point, but if you do not have the basic skills, then you are not going to be able to use it with any great success.
Could you tell us a little bit more about this degree of Internet-versus-the-more-traditional-parts-of-journalism that we are all aware of and have been part of, some of us? Then could you also give me your own thoughts on the literacy issue? We try hard in every province in the country, and nationally, on the literary issue, but not hard enough. I do not think people believe it, and yet it is true, and I think you have indicated that you know it is true.
Mr. Levant: I have seen reports in some demographics that time spent watching TV is declining, replaced almost perfectly by time spent on the Internet. I imagine that means more time reading words on the Internet, because it is still a largely text-based medium.
I am not an expert in literacy. My personal bias would be, that is the jurisdiction of the provinces and school boards. I am not sure if there is a federal role in that.
Senator Fairbairn: Early childhood.
Mr. Levant: That is outside the scope of my comments. As an amateur observer, I would say that basic skills like spelling and grammar have been on the wane sometimes. I do not know if the Internet will help that, but it has provided people with easy access to alternative news reports. The Drudge Report, which has some 8 million unique visits per day, is proof that people are still hungry for the written word. The editor, Matt Drudge, essentially links to other stories. He occasionally has his own inside gossip — he broke the Monica Lewinsky story — but generally he has become an editor. He chooses 20 stories from around the world that he thinks are interesting from a different point of view.
Our magazine has a circulation in print of approximately 40,000 hard copies. We now have up to 15,000 unique visits a day to our website, which we hope to grow. We love our print issue and it is the mainstay of our business, but our website, which is totally text driven, now has far more eyeballs going to it over a two-week period than our print.
I do not have smart comments to answer your good questions on literacy, but I can say that the Internet — at least in our company's case — is text driven and there is a lot of reading going on. I am sorry that is not a very good answer to your question on literacy.
Senator Fairbairn: It is a challenge to conventional newspapers — the Internet has become that. Would you also indicate whether you believe, because of its personal connecting and everything else, it is also challenging the electronic media as well, both radio and television?
Mr. Levant: It is, certainly, on the television side. For radio, a lot of people listen to it in their car and you will not get Internet competition to that medium.
On thing I will remark, in closing on this point, is what is called the ``blog-o-sphere'' or web logs. There are now an estimated two million people in North America that have their own web log, where they publish an Internet diary that they update several times a day. Our own website has a group web log that is updated sometimes 20 times a day. This has turned millions of people across North America, including hundreds of thousands across Canada, into publishers, editors and reporters in their own right. I imagine the net has caused people to tutor themselves to become better writers, spellers and grammarians, I would hope. It has actually turned millions of people into their own media moguls of some sort. When I say that, there are some people — NealeNews in this country, Instapundit and others in the U.S. — who now have personal circulations larger than many daily newspapers. The Pyjama Hadin, as they call them, people who sometimes blog in their pyjamas, can go from being obscure, private people into major forces. I think that is very exciting.
Senator Munson: What is your circulation?
Mr. Levant: Our total circulation averages just under 40,000. About half of that is paid annual subscribers; 7,000 go to the Air Canada lounges and business class cabins. We move about the same number on newsstands, and then we have some bulk and controlled circulation.
Senator Munson: We had a witness from The Walrus magazine talking about tax laws preventing charitable organizations from helping out news magazines. What is your view on that and postal subsidies, and so on? What can make your magazine broader-based for the rest of the country? It is the Western Standard, but I just read two articles here and I found the one on salmon interesting, and the one on freedom of the press interesting. We do not know enough about the Western Standard in the east.
Mr. Levant: I am pleased to report that although we emerged from the ashes of the old Alberta Report magazine and our initial ambitions were largely regional, as our name betrays, fully 22 per cent of our subscribers are now from the greater Toronto area. In fact, less than half of our subscribers are from Alberta. It was a pleasant surprise to us that we had an appeal nationwide, which is delightful.
You ask a good question, and it is one we are beginning to look into now. We have had $100,000 in donations come to our magazine, even though we are not a charity. I imagine that if we were able to set up a foundation to support those parts of our enterprise that would be appropriate — for example, we have an internship program where we have four students and we would like to expand that to eight students. These are students — some of them are in college, some are just out of college — that work for us for between 3 to 12 months under the tutelage of our editor. When they graduate they either stay on with us or go out into the world. I would love to be able to set up a foundation to teach these kids and, perhaps, to lift them off my corporate payroll.
As the publisher, I have an ability to pay a certain amount for young talent, but perhaps I am not able to meet the market price for what some of these bright young writers would be. I just returned from a vacation with the National Review, that has a National Review Institute, which is basically how they succeed as a business enterprise. They raise money. The Nation, which is a left-wing magazine, does the same thing. They have these week-long cruises with conferences aboard; and in one week, the National Review raised about $250,000. The Nation raised $500,000 in the same way. Those politically oriented, current-events magazines, especially with a bit of a political flavour — The Nation on the left and the National Review on the right — succeed through donations in the United States.
I am not fully conversant with their charitable laws, but I think that if we could set up an appropriate charity to do genuinely charitable things as in a student internship — help kids learn journalism, not to become partisan people but the opposite, to give them a practicum to finish their training, not to subsidize our company outright but to bring more kids into our newsroom than we could normally afford to do — that would be something that would help us out.
I want to be careful because I do not want to come across as looking for a government handout. However, if there is someone out there who wants to donate money so that I can hire a kid out of school, and if there is an educational and charitable flavour to that, if I could say to that person and the other $100,000 worth of gifts our magazine has received, ``We will dedicate it to this program that meets this educational curricula,'' even maybe give these kids credit at a college for serving a term, like a report card, I would be open to that. That would help our company by lifting certain costs off our payroll. It would help the kids by giving them access. Cyril Doll, who wrote that press freedom article, is in his twenties. We have had interns as young as 17. That would be helpful.
Senator Munson: On another subject, you say you do not think there is a role for the CRTC. Reading all the regulatory business with the CRTC and saying there must be certain things — for example, Al-Jazeera cannot do live television and cannot come here, and so on — but you say eliminate the CRTC. Is it just people coming in here and building radio and television stations and newspapers without any regulation of any sort, just a free-for-all with foreign ownership, American stations, as you said, in Vancouver? I need a bit more of your thinking on that.
Mr. Levant: That sounds exciting to me. Talk about a true marketplace of ideas — not just one or two.
Senator Munson: You might not have a country.
Mr. Levant: How would they succeed? If a Mexican company were to set up a television station here they could succeed or fail in a number of ways. They might succeed if they were to appeal to a niche market of Spanish-speaking Canadians or Mexican Canadians. They might, if they were to pursue a local market, have to out-local the locals. They would have to do a very good job of reporting local news or they would fail. If they were to use their own money, who would care? What a buffet of choices that would offer us rather than just the same, staid alternatives.
I find it highly exciting to go to New York or London and see the massive choices of newspapers on the whole ideological spectrum and in dozens of languages. That is healthy. If someone from a foreign country wants to risk their own money to please me, a reader, I am delighted. Speaking as a publisher now, if someone from abroad were to invest in the Western Standard I would be equally delighted because I would have more than just the Canadian capital market to choose from. I believe there would have to be some basic rules for things such as defamation, fraud, et cetera, but we already have a common-law structure to deal with that. Who will liberate the media? Believe it or not, it will people like Howard Stern, who leap over the FCC and the CRTC, and can beam directly to people.
We have a little radio program that our magazine does once a week. We spoke with executives from Sirius Satellite Radio, the satellite company out of New York. They are talking about 10 different channels just for Canadian talk radio — on the left and on the right. Perhaps it is four but it is more than only one station. It will be a number, spanning the whole spectrum. If some Americans want to put money into paying for Canadian talk shows on satellites, why should the CRTC have anything to say about that? Why should we care if foreigners want to spend their money giving us information. Either it connects with Canadians and the company profits or it does not profit and goes away. Would it not be wonderful to have such a choice rather than a few tired dailies and a handful of television stations?
The only people who profit from keeping out competitors are the incumbents. It is the same in the media business as it is in politics. The more rules you have, the more you actually protect the existing players. I know why my friends in the established television and radio stations and in newspaper love it as it is: because it keeps out competitors. I am an upstart so I do not mind the idea of competition. In fact, I would like to bring down the rules that subsidize my long- time competitors and give them some of the advantages that they have.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: It is interesting to meet you, Mr. Levant. I have two questions. First, I, along with Senator Fairbairn, do a great deal in the area of literacy. You have taken me to a new level of thinking when you say how important it is to read the printed word on the Internet. Perhaps we should adjust our thinking on that in our messages. Is the interest in the Internet much less focused on the written than on the ideas and information presented? Do they have to put up with the written word because that is the way it is presented — not in pictures or symbols. Whether the interest is in the written word, there is certainly an interest in the ideas and information. I appreciate the fact that we should talk more about the reading skills required for the Internet.
I would like you to discuss again this statement: ``The market will serve as a much more fair and rapid regulator than any bureaucrat — what is not acceptable by the community will be abandoned by advertisers and readers — viewers.''
As a Canadian, I have taken hope from the fact that, to some extent, our media — I think you know which media I am talking about — have talked about the quality and values in Canadian identity. If we do not guard that carefully, those qualities, values and that emphasis on Canadian identity will not exist in the way that I hope it will always exist for generations to come — certainly for my children and grandchildren. I wonder if that hope for the marketplace and our great Canadian hope for the future is shared by you.
Mr. Levant: It is obvious that the Internet is not just about words because there are photos and videos as well. Some of the beheading videos that al-Qaeda broadcast have been among the most frequently downloaded items on the Internet. Frankly, the Janet Jackson photos from the Super Bowl last year were the number one searched-for Internet item during that week. Increasingly, you will see such things as audio blogs — web blogs with audio. It will become multi-media but there will always be text because that is how the user inputs his or her search items, for example. The medium will evolve but there is a literacy component.
Concerning the market of values I will say a few things. First, there is a tendency, even if it is unwitting, to control when one tries to help or to encourage. Politicians, bureaucrats and even business executives naturally succumb to that.
I have my vision about what should be in the Western Standard and what our readers should read. What did we do? We took a massive reader survey to which a great number of our people responded. Some of the columnists that I thought they should read and like they did not read and like. Others that I was more skeptical about were very popular. I could try to impose my will on our readers or, as we have done, we have evolved. If we want people to keep reading our magazine, then we will have to give them what they want. We can show leadership by presenting new voices to them and trying them out but it would be a short-lived private sector medium that would continue to serve up a material that would talk only to itself. That is one of the disciplines provided by the market that does not necessarily exist for our public sector competitor like the CBC. If they were to broadcast something that no one else wanted to watch, then they would not be disciplined. However, I am disciplined.
The real answer to the values of which you speak is that, with great respect, senator, different Canadians hold different values. Ottawa is different from Newfoundland, from Calgary and from Quebec. You cannot, from the top down, say that we will emphasize and subsidize these official values and in some ways either ignore or suppress those competing values. I am not saying that you are necessarily calling for that but any policy that would say, ``these are the official values,'' will be squashed by the public who will find elsewhere the content it demands. The CBC is proof of that. The official voice of Canada is actually not an expression of the values held by many millions of Canadians. I would imagine that if the Fox News Channel were on basic cable, it would immediately outstrip CBC Newsworld in terms of viewership. You cannot impose values upon people.
If you want to teach values, teach them in schools. I am in favour of teaching true Canadian values, and know what they are in my mind: tradition, work ethic, honesty, et cetera. Perhaps, I have more traditional values. If you want to inculcate values, do it in the schools and in the homes and by example, but do not try to do it through a government media policy.
Senator Trenholme Counsell: My point about values goes to the Canadian Constitution and, more especially in this context, to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which are two fundamental documents. I always applaud when those documents come into the discussions on the media.
Mr. Levant: I believe that my magazine and many other Canadian media support the fundamental freedoms of freedom of expression. That is the answer — a competition of ideas.
Senator Eyton: You touched on Sirius Satellite and the effect of foreign involvement in one of the three applications that is currently being considered by the CRTC. As a matter of record, I want to point out that 80 per cent of the Canadian version of that service will be owned by Canadians and 20 per cent by foreign investment. They were able to arrange a partnership that will provide the service. Originally it was 10 Canadian channels and I believe that increased during the course of the proceedings. To my mind, all of that was good.
My other comment is that as we heard from Senator Munson, we had an appearance last week by Mr. Ken Alexander who has launched a new magazine in Toronto called The Walrus. Today we are hearing from you who have launched a new magazine in Calgary called the Western Standard. I want to compliment you because Mr. Alexander, first, did not provide us with copies of an edition and did not have subscription forms. Showing the greater heart of the westerners, you arrived today with a magazine for each of us; and I will read it.
I am a marketplace guy and I generally favour market responses and answers to the way in which we live. However, I am nervous — and I understand you are making the point and you would concede something from it — about a world in which Canada, given its proximity to the U.S. and the spread-out nature of her population in a thin line across the southern border, has no regulation and no restriction. Simply put, I get nervous about letting everyone go at it, particularly when we are next to a large foreign population base.
I have a couple of examples. You have talked about the CBC before and there has been some knocking of it. However, I, for one, believe that CBC Radio One is one of the finest services on the air. I think it is superior to any radio service in the U.S. The only one I can think of that would be comparable, or perhaps better, is the BBC World Service; and it, too, is massively subsidized one way or the other.
In your world of no regulation or subsidy, what would happen to that? I think it is a value that is important to us. I thought of, for example, the music industry in Canada, which has prospered mightily. That has to do with writing, production and performing. Canada is disproportionately represented internationally by many talented people whose roots are in Canada. Many of them are now international stars and have tremendous recognition. None of that would have happened except for regulation and subsidy that allowed them to get started, after which their careers soared. Some of that Canadian talent is now in London, New York and Las Vegas but the artists remember that they come from Canada, and many of them still perform here. I wonder at that, which I think all Canadians would see as a positive thing.
On the ``concern'' side, I look at Clear Net that is format radio with no local content whatsoever. It is a service that reaches out to possibly 3,000 stations in the U.S. It has not come into Canada and I hope it never will. Those are only three examples but in your world of no regulation, no subsidy, no restriction and let the market decide, I do not think it would do a good job and could not give me satisfactory responses to the three elements I mentioned. Can you comment on that?
Mr. Levant: I think if there were a USA Today newspaper box next to an Ottawa Citizen newspaper box on the street, I do not think USA Today would make money. Occasionally, when a big US story would break, people would buy it. If Gannett Company were to use their own money and put in boxes, I would not have objections. However, I do not think they can transplant their ideas without appealing to our market.
On the other hand, I noticed in your own online report that CNN.com and MSNBC.com are the two most popular websites in Canada, so there is a Canadian interest in the world abroad. I imagine that most senators go to the New York Times website from time it time. We should have the options to make those personal choices. The Internet shows that when we are given those choices, each of us makes his or her own choice.
Senator, you think that CBC Radio One is the best radio on air. That may be true, just as it may be true that opera and symphony are better than Brittany Spears and Christina Aguilera. Does that mean the government should come in and subsidize opera and symphony that probably appeal to a wealthier demographic than to any other area. I do not think so.
Subsidy does not have to come from the government. The renaissance with its explosion of art was subsidized by wealthy patrons and benefactors. If we were moving toward a more free-market approach to the world then, speaking as an ideologue, I think we would reach such a point, were the government to recede from the arts and media, that private investors would try to make a go of it by investing in Canadian talent or, alternatively, wealthy benefactors would begin to give it back. We have seen that happen in Canada. Some of our greatest media moguls, the CanWest family for example, have given a great deal of money back. After earning it, they have subsidized the arts. I do not think we need the government to subsidize entertainers, although it is great to have a Shania Twain and an Avril Lavigne success story. Would they have been ignored had it not been for a private talent agent or a private benefactor? I am biased towards the private and philanthropic, and I am always sceptical about the government trying to pick the taste that is better.
Senator Eyton: They provided an atmosphere and an environment; and the talent came forward. That is all they provided.
Mr. Levant: Hollywood and New York provide the same. They are even greater hothouses of artistic talent and not because of government subsidies but because of a critical mass and entrepreneurial atmosphere. I may be wrong but I appreciate your comments.
The Chairman: Would I be safe to assume that your magazine is not making money yet?
Mr. Levant: That is correct. We have had a successful launch and we are 100 per cent ahead of plan on ad sales, I am delighted to report. You can see some of the advertising in the issue before you. We expect to be in the black by December, 2005 if things go well. We are an independent company with 19 investors and we owner/managers are working hard.
The Chairman: I have not read every issue but I have read some. In fact, I have scanned through this issue that you brought today. I am happy to hear that you are ahead of plan on ad sales, although they are still very thin. What is the ratio of paid advertising?
Mr. Levant: Our ratio changes. This is only our 18th issue and we are fluctuating because we do not have many repeat sales. We would like to be at about 30 per cent to 40 per cent. We recently increased our rate card by 50 per cent, which the market has accepted. In our next issue, you will see some big national advertisers for the first time. We are beginning to move beyond the little mom-and-pop advertisers — basically friends and family — to the level of national advertisers attracted by our editorial quality and our strong demographics, including the fact that we are on board Air Canada planes, which has given us an exciting demographic for advertisers. It is an exciting but tough business out there.
The Chairman: Air Canada carries the magazine in bulk. Do you pay a bit or do they pay a bit?
Mr. Levant: We have an arrangement such that under the audit bureau it will be paid circulation.
The Chairman: What proportion of your circulation would be free, controlled circulation?
Mr. Levant: It fluctuates. We did a special election issue and sent out 70,000 for free as controlled circulation to certain markets, followed by a sales pitch. Generally, our controlled circulation is 10 per cent or less.
The Chairman: Could you please tell me how many journalists, writers and editors you have on staff, and what your basic range of freelancers would be?
Mr. Levant: We have four reporters in our Calgary office and four more reporters across the country. We have a number of freelancers who contribute from time to time. We also have columnists, some of whom are picked up from the syndicate, and Mr. Mark Steyn anchors our back page with original work. I want to take this opportunity to praise our editor; we are proud of him. Mr. Kevin Libin is our sole editor and carries the whole magazine on his shoulders. He came to us from Canadian Business, where he was the senior writer, when he moved back to Calgary. I would like to sing his praises because he is a large reason for our success.
The Chairman: If one person can do all that, I bow in homage.
Mr. Levant: He is truly amazing.
The Chairman: Thank you for an extremely interesting session. We are grateful to you for joining us.
The committee adjourned.