Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue 21 - Evidence - June 14, 2005
OTTAWA, Tuesday June 14, 2005
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 9:35 a.m. to consider 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) presiding.
[English]
The Chairman: Honourable senators, the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications is continuing this day its study of Canadian media industries and the role of the State in helping the media remain strong, independent and diversified in light of the upheavals in this field in recent years, including globalization, technological change, convergence and ownership concentration.
[Translation]
Today, we are pleased to welcome representatives of CTV News. CTV is one of the country's major English- language broadcasters, offering a range of programs in a range of fields. It also operates a number of specialty channels, including CTV Newsnet, Report On Business Television, talktv, The Comedy Network, TSN, RDS, Discovery Channel, and the Outdoor Life Network. CTV is owned by Bell Globemedia, which also owns the The Globe and Mail.
We have with us today the president of CTV News, Robert Hurst, who is accompanied by Tom Haberstroh and Joanne MacDonald. Thank you for joining us. We are glad to have this opportunity, after a number of failed attempts, to get together.
Please proceed, Mr. Hurst.
Mr. Robert G. Hurst, President, CTV News: Good morning, senators. You have introduced Mr. Haberstroh on my left and Ms. MacDonald on my right, so I will not introduce them again.
The three of us have spent most of our careers on the front lines of CTV News, which included for all of us some lengthy assignment here at CTV's Parliamentary Bureau. We are somewhat accustomed to what goes on at Parliament Hill, although I must say that this Senate facility was not here when we were here in the 1980s. It was a bit of a backwater, so it is great to see such a good facility here.
I will begin with some background on CTV News. The CTV national news went on the air in 1961 with a 13-minute newscast. It was in black and white. At that time, there were three reporters and a couple of news cameras.
The first anchor was Peter Jennings, and CTV News owned one desk. One drawer of that desk was stuffed with red mesh shipping bags. They were called onion-skin bags, and we used them to ship film. Another drawer was filled with schedules for Trans Canada Airlines and the Greyhound bus company. Reporters in those days spent much of their time running to airports and bus terminals with those onion-skin bags.
Gathering news from overseas was a little more complicated. CTV News had no foreign bureaus, so we engaged a London-based newsreel service. Every day, that service would ship to us five or six stories from around the world. CTV News viewers would usually see those world events the same day, as long as the BOAC flight from London was flying. Often, it did not. It was by every measure a modest beginning.
The broadcast regulator's objective back then was to offer Canadians an alternative news voice to CBC television. CTV's journalists took that as a challenge as they set out to build a high-quality and comprehensive television news service that Canadians could trust. CTV's owners believed in local and national news, and they invested heavily in it.
After Peter Jennings left for ABC News in New York, Harvey Kirk became our lead anchor. In 1966, W-FIVE was launched. Today, W-FIVE is North America's longest-running investigative program. It is older than 60 Minutes. W- FIVE has just finished its current season and remains Canada's most popular program investigating issues of public concern. In 1972, Percy Saltzman and Carole Taylor introduced Canada AM. In 1977, Lloyd Robertson joined CTV News.
The 1970s and 1980s were times of expansion for CTV News. Local news was growing, and national news bureaus were added in Edmonton, Winnipeg, Halifax, Jerusalem, and Beijing, China. Those years were also periods of ownership struggles as local station owners vied for control of the CTV television network. In the late 1980s, there was even a plan to wind up CTV and shut it down, so fragile and precarious was the CTV financial situation.
In the 1990s, there was a period of consolidation among the stations that formed the CTV network. By 1997, a majority of the CTV affiliates were under common ownership. The addition of CKY in Winnipeg and CFCF in Montreal by 2001 completed the consolidation, except for the West Coast. CanWest acquired two CTV affiliates — BCTV in Vancouver and CHEK in Victoria. The independent station in Vancouver, VTV, became the new CTV affiliate, thus completing the consolidation of the CTV network under common ownership.
CTV's acquisition by BCE and the Thomson family, creating Bell Globemedia, provided stable financial resources, which enabled CTV to become the strong and vibrant broadcaster it is today.
For the news division, this has been an important factor in expanding and improving our news service. We have raised journalistic standards at all of our stations. We run training programs across the country, including diversity training. Our local newsrooms and national platforms can now freely exchange news stories, and we exchange with our stations up to 1,000 Canadian news stories a week.
We have improved our newsgathering infrastructure. We have built our own station-to-station video delivery system — a sort of trans-Canada telephone system for television news stories. The system is called Gateway — a CTV invention — and it won a Gemini award for technical innovation.
CTV News now has the financial resources to cover the most important stories from across Canada and from around the world. In these past few months, we have seen the tsunami, the RCMP tragedy in Mayerthorpe and the death of Pope John Paul II. We are currently preparing for the next general election. Each of these stories requires millions of dollars over and above our operating budget. We are committed to covering these extraordinary and costly Canadian and world events.
Today, 44 years after its humble beginning, CTV News is Canada's most trusted source of local, national and world news. Our local news operations are the ratings leaders in every single Canada market, except for Vancouver, which is a new CTV station. We are investing heavily in our newsgathering operations in British Columbia. Our Vancouver newscasts are a strong number two in that market, and we are growing there.
The CTV News with Lloyd Robertson is the top-rated national news program in Canada. We operate 11 local newsrooms. We maintain news bureaus in many other communities across Canada, including Lethbridge, Prince Albert, Yorkton, Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins, North Bay, Quebec City, Saint John, Moncton, Yarmouth, and Sydney, Nova Scotia. In addition, the CTV national news service has seven dedicated national news bureaus across Canada. Overseas, CTV maintains nine foreign bureaus on four continents. This is the largest overseas newsgathering operation of any Canadian news organization. We also operate the all-business channel Report on Business Television and our 24-hour news channel, CTV Newsnet.
We believe that Canada needs a strong, vibrant and competitive television marketplace. Every one of our CTV newscasts competes with many local, national and foreign competitors. In our opinion, Canadians are well served by television news services. Competition among television news outlets is intense and fierce, especially at the local and national level. We believe the standards of television news in Canada are among the best in the world.
In recent years, the largest proportion of new entries in the Canadian television news marketplace has been foreign news channels, especially American services like FOX News. CTV News believes that strong, distinctive Canadian news voices are more important than ever in this new environment. We asked the CRTC last year for some important changes to Newsnet's licence conditions to enable Newsnet to become a more vibrant Canadian voice in the 24-hour news environment. More that 1,200 Canadians from all walks of life wrote the commission supporting our initiatives. We are deeply appreciative of their support.
Those amendments to our licence allowed us to relaunch the Countdown program with Mike Duffy. COUNTDOWN: With Mike Duffy, which is a nightly show, is an intense review of the day in politics. In the weeks ahead, we will be expanding and overhauling CTV Newsnet to go head-to-head with large American news broadcasters with our distinctive Canadian voice.
Your committee is studying media integration and, more specifically, common ownership of print and broadcast outlets. At CTV News, editorial independence is the foundation upon which we cover and report the news. Our editors and reporters decide what to cover and how the news will be presented. There is no interference or direction from our owners or advertisers, or governments or special interests. We believe that, to be a credible news organization, CTV News must be independent, and we must also be perceived by viewers to be independent. In our news programming at both the local and national level, there are no editorials or corporate positions taken or promoted on events of the day.
During CTV's network licence hearings in 2001, the CRTC expressed some concerns about the potential for a weakening of journalistic voices in Canada due to common ownership of print and broadcast outlets. At the time, CTV proposed a code of journalistic independence that separates news-management functions between CTV and The Globe and Mail. The journalistic independence code we proposed to the CRTC is in effect today. In the four years since the code has been in place, there has not been a single complaint.
Decisions on journalistic content and presentation for CTV are made solely by CTV television news management. This is not only a journalistic decision; it is also a business decision. Our mandate at CTV News is to do what is best for CTV News and our viewers.
We do exchange daily assignment schedules with The Globe and Mail. We share the costs of public opinion polling. On a few occasions, we have done joint projects. For example, during the Iraq war, we used a Globe reporter as an eyewitness to the end of the war when our own reporter had gone missing on the battlefield. Our medical units did an acclaimed series on the health dangers of trans fats. However, these joint projects are rare. We sometimes use Globe journalists on our public affairs programs, but we also use journalists from CanWest, The Toronto Star, the Sun- Quebecor group, Corus and others.
We at CTV News are proud of what we have accomplished in 44 years since that 13-minute, black-and-white newscast in 1961. We take seriously our obligations to provide a public service through our news programming that reflects Canadian attitudes, opinions and ideas as set out in section 3 of the Broadcasting Act. CTV News produces more original news programming in Canada every day than any other broadcaster. We believe we have earned the trust of Canadians, because more Canadians get their television news from CTV News than from any other source.
We thank the committee for the invitation to appear before you. We look forward to your questions.
Senator Tkachuk: I was reading an article in the The Globe and Mail about CBC getting into the digital radio business as a partner with Sirius. Do you think that is something the CBC should be doing?
Mr. Hurst: I understand that the CRTC will announce the winners of the satellite radio competition on Thursday. We are partnered with the Bitove group to provide some news.
I would rather not answer your question. We are the news division, and I can tell you how CTV News works. When it comes to the CBC, we think the CBC is a very good journalistic organization in television news. They have a good national newscast.
In terms of their other ventures, we all would wonder what public policy issues are at stake when the CBC enters satellite radio or the Internet. We are most interested that the CBC is apparently going to be returning to local television news. We are following that with great interest.
Senator Tkachuk: You mentioned at the beginning of your presentation that the CRTC, or its equivalent at that time, licensed CTV as an alternative to the CBC. We now have all-day news channels, which to me are like electronic newspapers. I can switch on Newsnet and follow the story, or I can go to their website and pick up information in competition to my local paper or others. Do you think the CRTC should be involved at all in licensing all-news channels? Should all-news channels be given the same journalistic freedom to start as a newspaper is given?
Mr. Hurst: The CRTC does a good job in the news area of balancing entrants to the marketplace. I have been involved in the CRTC process when they were giving out general news licences and second news licences. We had been watching with keen interest on the entry into Canada of CNN, CNN Headline News, MSNBC and FOX. We think the CRTC generally does a good job in balancing the various competing interests to ensure that there is a diversity of news and voices in the all-news business on cable television in this country.
Senator Tkachuk: Do you have difficulty at CTV covering Bell, the telephone company, the mother company, as a news story?
Mr. Hurst: I will ask Tom Haberstroh to respond to that. Mr. Haberstroh handles the daily reporters and bureaus.
Mr. Tom Haberstroh, Vice-President, CTV News: Honourable senators, I would not say that we have any more difficulty than with any other company. I ran Newsnet for four years, and we did a significant amount of business on Newsnet. The orders were clear: Be tough, be fair, and treat Bell like you would any other company. That is the modus operandi. I would not say it is difficult.
Senator Tkachuk: Since you are owned by them, do you think viewers may watch what you say with some general mistrust about that particular issue or other issues surrounding the company's competition?
Mr. Haberstroh: That is a fair question. We instruct our journalists — be it in a news story or covering an event live, it is part of our policy to let our viewers know that with respect to Bell Globemedia or BCE as our parent company we are reporting on ourselves. I cannot extrapolate from that what the viewer takes from that statement, but we are transparent in that way.
Senator Tkachuk: It is my understanding that the CRTC placed some fairly strict conditions regarding Bell Globemedia's ownership of television in newspapers. Can you perhaps explain what they are, or did they?
Mr. Hurst: I am not sure, senator, what directly you are referring to. Our licence renewal was in 2001. At that time, there was attached to the CTV network licence renewal the journalistic code that we proposed to the CRTC to separate the news-management functions of The Globe and Mail and CTV News. That was attached to our licence. We filed that with the Senate this morning for your review.
Senator Phalen: When you entered into an agreement with the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, CRTC also imposed on you a $1 million a year requirement to publicize statements. Have you done that?
Mr. Hurst: Yes, sir.
Senator Phalen: In which way?
Mr. Hurst: We have done that through public service announcements on CTV, which is one of the most effective communication vehicles in this country.
The Chair: Might I ask what time of day those run?
Mr. Hurst: I do not know. I could certainly provide, if you wish, what we have done in the last six months or the last year.
The Chair: Yes, please.
Senator Phalen: I understand also that the CRTC imposed on you the restriction that you cannot serve on the editorial board of The Globe and Mail or vice versa. Would you venture on opinion on cross-media ownership for us?
Mr. Hurst: CTV and Bell Globemedia have not taken a position on cross-media ownership beyond what we own. We own a very strong television network and Canada's national newspaper. We think that is a good business to be in. We think Canadians are served very well by that amount of cross-media ownership, with the confines and constraints that we have an absolute separation of our print and broadcast news management.
Senator Munson: Before I pursue any questions, I should say that I have had a long relationship with CTV. It was a good one, except for one fateful day. I will leave it at that, to ensure that that is on the public record. CTV is a good organization and does good work.
You just answered the question briefly on cross-media ownership. When we went across the country, the biggest concerns we heard were from people in Moncton, New Brunswick, vis-à-vis the Irving empire, and from people in Vancouver, vis-à-vis CanWest. Their concerns were that they did not think the news they were getting was diverse enough.
Could you expand more on your views of corporate concentration, media concentration and cross-media owner concentration, in markets like this? Are Canadians being served properly?
Mr. Hurst: Senator Munson, let me speak to the two geographical areas you alluded to. We in the private sector believe in competition. In the Vancouver market, we had a start-up station, VTV. We started it from scratch. In the Vancouver marketplace, where I worked for a few years as the general manager of that station, we took on what is described as the big dog in town — CHAN — now BCTV. In a matter of two or three years, we have attracted more and more viewers, providing people in the lower mainland and across British Columbia with an alternative view of daily news events in that marketplace. That is competition and it is getting better.
When you talk about New Brunswick — the newspapers and radios and Irving ownership — I would suggest that our television voice in New Brunswick is a strong and vibrant television voice through ATV. We serve the local marketplace with fierce competition to reflect the news that the viewers in those communities want. We are a big believer in competition.
Senator Munson: We have read your report, Mr. Hurst, dealing with what CTV puts forth every day in terms of W- FIVE, CTV News, Newsnet, which Mr. Haberstroh has, or had, I guess. That is all well and good; it is the Canadian public face of CTV, along with Canada AM. However, that seems to be it. There is a lot of American programming. The one great face of CTV is through your news department.
Do you have any intention of expanding or spending more money? Do you have the money to spend, to have perhaps more newscasts? What does the future look like for CTV, besides the American programming and Canadian news?
Mr. Hurst: We are proud of the Canadian news we do. I do not totally agree with your analysis, Senator Munson, on the face of CTV. Your analysis talked about Lloyd Robertson, Canada AM and W-FIVE. One of the strengths of CTV News is our local stations, where we are doing more local news programming across this country than anybody else. We are doing local break-ins on Canada AM. We are doing a full hour at noon. All of our stations, at a minimum, are doing one hour at suppertime and a late night wrap-up after Lloyd Robertson. That is pretty important, it seems to me, to reflect the daily news stories of this country.
In terms of expanding, we have expanded our suppertime news in several markets of this country from 6 o'clock for an hour, to two hours over suppertime. The most watched news area of the broadcast day is suppertime news, the six o'clock, the five o'clock news. We are now doing two hours of suppertime in key markets. All across the Maritimes, we are doing two hours of supper time. Calgary expanded to two hours a year and a half ago. Our Vancouver station expanded to two hours a year and a half, maybe two years ago. Although we do not have any plans — and these would be corporate secrets — but we are looking market by market to expand our local news operations.
I cannot stress enough that one of the backbones of the CTV network is not only our programming schedule and Canadian programs like Corner Gas, which is a breakthrough Canadian program without a dollar of government funding, but also our news and public affairs programming, and nobody does more of this in Canada than we do.
Senator Munson: Is there a level playing field? The CBC has advertising dollars and public dollars competing against the private sector, such as your corporation.
Mr. Hurst: It is never a level playing field when a government outlet is competing in the private sector, but we are happy to compete. We are happy to compete with Global, with the Citytvs, the CHUMs, the A-Channels and the CBC, and we at CTV have been very successful in competing with commercial broadcasters and the public broadcaster.
Senator Munson: Through our committee work, we hope to support the industry. I am trying to get your views of where our committee should be going. Should we be minding our own business? Are we minding the business of too many people, in terms of regulation? Does the government have any role to play in the private sector, or should we just stay at home?
Mr. Hurst: That is certainly is an open-ended question.
Senator Munson: That is what we used to ask at CTV.
Mr. Hurst: I am looking to Ms. MacDonald and Mr. Haberstroh to help me on this open-ended question. Nobody wants to be regulated. We are regulated as a broadcast outlet — and I have said to Senator Tkachuk that we think the CRTC generally does a good job in balancing all of these interests and trying to stay ahead of technology. It was CRTC chair Charles Dalfen who, just last Friday at the annual convention of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, in an open forum, said again that nobody wants to be regulated. You do not want to be regulated, but that having been said, we are regulated.
In general, from a regulatory point of view, the less regulation, especially intrusive regulation, the happier we are. We are robust believers in the private sector and that marketplaces, especially in television news, although there may be an imbalance now or within a year or last year, eventually will sort themselves out. That would be the big picture.
I am a bit surprised that in open-ended questions more and more journalists coming before you are not being more specific on the daily issues we have in the trenches about things like freedom of information and the reviews and the overhaul of freedom of information, because there is less openness and freedom of information in this country from the federal to the provincial to the municipal levels than there was before all these acts were brought before Parliament.
Ms. Joanne MacDonald, Vice-President, CTV News: I would say that a number of the issues being brought to the forefront through these discussions, like diversity, the representation of the regions, fairness and balance, are good topics to have discussed among all of us.
Mr. Haberstroh: We understand why we are regulated, but we are doing very well in this environment. If you look at CTV News, we are still number one in every market, and our programming does very well. To Mr. Hurst's point, nobody likes regulation; but at the same time, we are doing well. We hope to have continued success in this environment.
Senator Munson: I was curious about a statement you made, Mr. Hurst: We run training programs across the country, including diversity training. Could you be more specific?
Mr. Hurst: Ms. MacDonald is in charge of setting up, overseeing and executing training programs.
Ms. MacDonald: On the diversity front, we have tackled that in a number of ways, both in terms of what you see on the screen and what happens behind the screen. We have had training courses in all our news rooms across the country, in the national news room in Toronto, taking a look at what diversity is, why it is good for our news rooms, why it is important to diversify the faces we put on the air, the people we use in stories, the approach we take to stories, the kind of stories we do. It has been a multifaceted approach to diversity. We have developed a database of experts and commentators. We are up to 1,600 names of people we can use in all kinds of stories, not just stories about diverse communities or particular ethnic groups.
Our approach is multifaceted. We have a full-time diversity producer working out of Toronto who is helping us set up that database, as well as setting up editorial boards, both nationally and across all the stations, where we invite various communities to come in and sit down with the senior management, have lunch, talk about the issues that concern them, how they access the process, how they get their story ideas across to us; and we talk to them about our evaluation of what is a news story and what is not. That process of opening up our doors and inviting people in has brought forward a number of great ideas and committed us to a better relationship with all those communities.
Senator Munson: Is there sensitivity training involved?
Ms. MacDonald: All our new employees go through a day-long workshop to look at diversity and why it is important to the business we do.
Senator Johnson: Could you tell me please what your viewing audience is nationally with icon Lloyd Robertson. You have had some superb anchors over the years, and I know your numbers are very good. What are your national numbers and the numbers in the local regions? Is there a difference, or is it pretty comparable?
Mr. Hurst: I will let Mr. Haberstroh talk briefly about national numbers, and I can offer some thoughts on local.
Mr. Haberstroh: I can give you Nielsen ratings. These are season to date, from the beginning of the viewing season, which we regard as September 13.
The BBM meters in all those homes, this is Monday to Friday, average minute audience for CTV News is just over 1 million — it is 1.01 million viewers. The National with the CBC network news is 794,000; and Global National, according to BBM, is 737,000. We are pretty happy with those numbers.
Mr. Hurst: Senator Johnson, we do not have this amount of detail on the local side, but let me give you a market-by- market overview. As I said earlier, the viewership of news programming in Canada is heaviest at suppertime hours in every market. When you add all those together, CTV's average evening newscast is about 1,600,000 viewers. This is Max Keeping here in Ottawa, and Darrel Janz and Barb Higgins in Calgary. In Atlantic Canada, we have a dominant share. I do not know precisely what it is. In Montreal, we have a dominant share. In Ottawa, we have a dominant share. The Toronto marketplace had been a very competitive marketplace. It is a horse race between CTV Toronto and Global, CTV Toronto being the winner.
We are dominant in Winnipeg. In Edmonton, there is a very close suppertime news war between CTV and Global. In Calgary, CTV and Global are in a war; and in Vancouver, Global is number one and we are coming on number two.
Senator Johnson: From what you told me, it is fair to say you have the largest viewing audience in the country, both nationally and provincially.
Mr. Hurst: Both locally and nationally in every single market.
Senator Johnson: I know this to be true in Winnipeg. I wanted to know about the rest of the country.
What about the rumours and stories in the media that BCE is about to sell Bell Globemedia? Would you comment on those rumours?
Mr. Hurst: We hear the rumours as well, and we are not a party to any of those discussions. We run the news division day in and day out. We cover these stories if they are newsworthy, but we are not a party to any of those discussions.
Senator Johnson: You are not affected by the uncertainty of your ownership at this point?
Mr. Hurst: No.
Senator Johnson: With respect to the National Post — The Globe and Mail was the only national paper for many years. Has this competition changed your operations in any way?
Mr. Hurst: The advent of the National Post? I would not say so. The National Post came on the scene, and we continued to do what we do every day, local and national news. There was no defensive or offensive strategy. Newspapers and television are separate beings in terms of delivering the news. We believe greatly in media literacy, but it really meant nothing to us on the television side.
Senator Tkachuk: You mentioned earlier about reporters that you use. Do you use National Post reporters?
Mr. Hurst: Yes, on our public affairs program. Joanne MacDonald is also the producer of our Sunday program Question Period.
Senator Johnson: That is a very good show.
Ms. MacDonald: We try to diversify the voices on the journalist panel at the end of the show. It could be Don Martin from the National Post, or Susan Delacourt or Tonda McCharles from The Toronto Star, or Rob Russo from Canadian Press. We try to have a variety of voices take part in that panel in order to have a variety of viewpoints every week.
Senator Tkachuk: Do you use National Post reporters on your newscasts?
Mr. Hurst: We would not use National Post or Global reporters on our newscasts, as they are direct competitors to us. We are talking about using other journalists, especially here in Ottawa, to comment on political events going on in the day. Generally, it is inappropriate in our news coverage for journalists to be interviewing other journalists.
Senator Johnson: Since you have had this link with The Globe and Mail, have your operations changed?
Mr. Haberstroh: No, they have not changed at all. The management and assignment structures between CTV and The Globe and Mail are totally and completely separate. Our operations really have not changed at all. We still go out and chase our stories; they go out and chase their stories.
Mr. Hurst mentioned that we do get The Globe and Mail schedule every day — so we know what they are up to. We let them know what we are up to. The Globe and Mail schedule is one of many story sources we have. We use many sources to come by tips and potential stories, such as our bureaus, our affiliates, ABC, the Canadian Press and Reuters.
Senator Johnson: Have you increased the number of journalists you have from five years ago, given the vast area you are covering now?
Mr. Hurst: We do not have a precise number on that, but absolutely. We have opened more foreign bureaus; we have more journalists in the field. CTV has grown in the last — you talk about five years — absolutely five years.
Senator Johnson: How long will W-FIVE last? I believe it has been on the air now for 40 years.
Ms. MacDonald: Next year, it will be 40 years.
The Chair: I should like to know the number of journalists you have. If you do not have that information with you, please provide it in writing.
Mr. Hurst: Let me offer a verbal response. We have across our system about 950 journalists. I am a little hesitant. I do not know whether that is a commercial secret against CanWest, so I just offer that, senator.
The Chair: It would not be a secret to anybody in the respective newsrooms on the local level.
Mr. Hurst: Quite right.
The Chair: I should like to understand the structure a little more. When you refer to 11 local newsrooms, those are the newsrooms of the local stations?
Mr. Hurst: Those are the big city newsrooms.
The Chair: Do they report to you, or do they report to the local station management?
Mr. Hurst: The news directors report directly to the local station management. Their objective is to be hyper-local, to cover their community. I have a dotted line to each local news director for standards, joint cooperation, delivering materials across the country. Last week, we sat with our local news directors for a day and a half of meetings. We were exchanging stories and story ideas and going over issues and problems in each market. Every local newsroom and local news director is directly assigned to the local station management.
The Chair: The news directors who report directly to you are the network people, like Ms. MacDonald and Mr. Haberstroh, and through them I assume the national network reporters.
Mr. Hurst: Correct.
The Chair: How many are there of them? I am not sure exactly what the labels on the little boxes in your chart are. I am just trying to understand how it all hangs together.
Ms. MacDonald: They would all report through us. Todd Battis is a reporter in Vancouver, and he would report through the domestic desk through Mr. Haberstroh and then to Mr. Hurst.
The Chair: Approximately how many journalists do you have on tap for the network?
Mr. Haberstroh: Approximately 15.
Senator Munson: There was a great deal of fanfare when BCE bought CTV and opened up bureaus around the world. Do those same bureaus still exist? Did you expand them, or are there less reporters?
Mr. Hurst: The job of our news organization is to put journalists where there is news. We opened a bureau in Australia, but because we were getting little production out of Australia and we had an imminent Iraq war coming, we closed the Australia bureau and moved the resources to Baghdad.
Senator Munson: I ask that because when CanWest was here, their position — which I disagree with — is that they have no intention of having foreign bureaus. They believe that it is sufficient just to walk into a place where news is happening, a tsunami or whatever. Having been a foreign correspondent for almost 10 years, my position is that you do not know the lay of the land or understand the people or the culture unless you are on the ground.
One of my biggest worries and concerns with present-day journalism is that we may lose the fact that a Hurst was in Moscow or China and other places. CTV will continue to expand. What do you think of CanWest's position?
Mr. Hurst: I will not comment directly on CanWest's position. Let me comment on your statement.
We believe in this news organization that it is important to have Canadian eyes overseas to tell international stories through Canadian eyes. I have been in several foreign bureaus as the resident correspondent. I am thinking of the burning down of the Russian White House, which was a dramatic and intense story with the new Russia on the brink. The resident correspondents were there. We were flooded with reporters sent across the pond from Canada and the United States, and they were asking their taxi drivers for background. It is not good journalism.
The Chair: Are your nine foreign bureaus all up and running or are any of them dark?
Mr. Hurst: They are all up and running.
The Chair: I will go now to the matter of the CRTC. There was a complaints committee set up as part of the arrangement when Globemedia was created. Who are the members of that committee? I understand that there has never been a complaint, but nonetheless you are required to have a committee.
Mr. Hurst: Gail Scott, from Toronto, was chairman of the committee, Jon Festinger was from Vancouver, and there was a third person, but I cannot remember the name.
The Chair: You can let us know that.
Mr. Hurst: This complaints committee was suspended about two years ago. The obligation to handle complaints was handed to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, which is why my memory is a bit hazy. The committee that was originally set up after our licence renewal has now been disbanded. In our licence, there was the ability to put this complaint process under the auspices of the Broadcast Standards Council, and that was done. That is why my memory of the three people is a bit fuzzy.
The Chair: I was looking at the conditions of licence for CTV television stations at the time when the licence was renewed in 2001. They went on at great length. However, I was struck by the fact that although it gets into great detail about the kind of priority programming — how many hours and how many dollars and what time of day and whatnot — the definition of priority programming categories are Canadian drama, Canadian music, dance and variety, Canadian long-form documentaries, Canadian regionally produced programs in all categories other than news and information and sports, and Canadian entertainment magazine programs. Then, as I say, it goes on at great length about all the things that must be done under all the headings — when you have to do children's programming and category 2b, long-form documentaries, between 7 and 11 — there is a lot of detail.
However, there is nothing in there about news. In fact, news and information are explicitly excluded from priority programming categories. Why is that? Second, does that omission have an impact on the way CTV envisages its business planning?
Mr. Hurst: We believe that the CRTC views CTV News as a strong news organization producing an enormous amount of local and national news. In previous licences of the CTV network, going back 10, 15, 20 years, there were requirements, as conditions of licence, to produce a certain amount of local or national news programming.
When we went before the commission in 2001, we believe it was enormously satisfied with CTV News' commitment to local, national and international news, and did not require a condition of licence be set on CTV News' commitment to produce local/national news and coverage from around the world.
The Chairman: What do you think would happen if the network decided that it needed to save a whole lot of money and the place to do that was in news?
Mr. Hurst: It is a speculative question.
The Chairman: It is, but it is not a lunatic question. Look at what has happened in private radio, for example, where there has been a huge pull back from news.
Mr. Hurst: I can only tell you what our situation is today and what the recent history is. The situation today is that CTV News is a strong organization and that we are growing our news outlets and our news properties, both on the conventional station and on our specialty channel, Newsnet. I also would make reference to Report on Business Television. Both of those channels are quite young and yet to make a robust impact on the Canadian marketplace.
The Chairman: Is news a profit centre for CTV?
Mr. Hurst: Yes. I hesitate somewhat, because some of our newscasts or news operations or public affairs shows are not profitable, perhaps lose some money. Generally, however, news is a profit centre. Nevertheless, when we are faced with the enormous costs of breaking stories like the pope's death or the tsunami, where we are confronted with immediate requirements for $2 million or $3 million, that will reflect on the balance sheet of the national news, for example, at the end of the year.
The Chairman: I assume that the network believes it is a solid investment in future returns.
Mr. Hurst: Yes.
Senator Chaput: On page 4 of your presentation, you talk about your commitment to Canadian news and about having to go to the CRTC about a year ago for an amendment to your licence. hat having been done, you are now working on new programs, if I may call them that.
Do you foresee in the future that you might have to go back and ask for other amendments to your licence because of the reality today, the head-to-head with American broadcasting? Do you foresee that there might be other needs?
Mr. Hurst: Senator, we do not foresee it, but I would not want to say, never. We have been given some licence amendments and we are going to make the best of our new licensing conditions for Newsnet to provide a strong and viable service to win viewers back from CNN.
Senator Chaput: Did you get most of the changes that you wanted?
Mr. Hurst: Yes, we did.
Senator Chaput: All of them.
Mr. Hurst: Yes, all that we asked for.
Senator Tkachuk: I want to thank CTV, unlike 60 Minutes, for changing the anchors at W-FIVE every decade or so.
I want to get back to CTV as an alternative to CBC — and now Global is in the picture and there are independents, as well. In what cities do you have independent competition in television that are also pretty good news providers?
Mr. Hurst: Independent competition meaning not affiliated with a network?
Senator Tkachuk: Yes. Vancouver, I think, and Toronto; is that right?
Mr. Hurst: We do not consider the CHUM group to be independent. This is the A-Channel CHUM group that are now just merging and are ready to relaunch in Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver under the CHUM banner — although I think they relaunched under Citytv Vancouver about a year ago.
There is Toronto 1. We have independent competition in the interior of British Columbia. In the lower mainland in Vancouver, there is an independent coming out of Bellingham, Washington. There are two stations on the island. One is a CHUM station and one is a Global station, but they are doing their own thing coming into the Vancouver market. There is the Channel M in Vancouver.
Senator Tkachuk: Quite a few.
Mr. Hurst: Yes.
Senator Tkachuk: CBC has said that if they go back into local news programming, something they abandoned a number of years ago, they will be coming to Parliament to ask for more money — which I have no doubt will be the case. We have a fairly mature television industry in this country. Do you think that, from a public policy point of view, Parliament should be authorizing money to open up local news operations that are owned by the state?
Mr. Hurst: We are fierce believers in free enterprise. We will compete with whomever is there. Your question is right. What is the public policy reason that the CBC should re-enter local television news across Canada? I would only make the reflective comment that, when they left local news seven years ago, their ratings and their viewership was so small that I do not think anybody even noticed, except for two places — Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and St. John's, Newfoundland, where they were very strong and a dominant broadcaster and provided excellent service.
Senator Tkachuk: Do you think there is a need for CBC television at all?
Mr. Hurst: I feel very uncomfortable with these questions about our direct competitor.
Senator Tkachuk: You are a citizen, and pay taxes as do I and as does everybody else in the country. Corporations pay taxes. Do you think we should be funding a state television network? To me, it is obscene, but many people love CBC.
Mr. Hurst: We at CTV News do not take any positions. We do not have any editorial policies that directly present opinions or editorials on the air. We are running CTV News.
The CBC is a good journalistic news organization. My personal view is that there is a place for public broadcasting in Canada, but we are fierce believers in the private sector. I prefer to leave it at that.
Senator Tkachuk: I will ask you the same questions that I asked the editor of The Globe and Mail when he was here. Has the CTV newsroom decided that the Senate is irrelevant?
Mr. Hurst: No. We have made no such decision. We have made no editorial policies in such a way, and we do not give editorials.
Senator Munson: Perhaps this question should be directed to a more corporate person at Bell Globemedia. Do you have a view on the existing regulations with regard to foreign ownership, and on easing those restrictions or keeping them? I ask that because I would think that, if your company were sold, they would want to sell to it to the highest bidder, whoever will spend the most money.
Mr. Hurst: I am not aware that either Bell Globemedia or BCE has a position on levels of foreign ownership of a television outfit.
Senator Munson: Have you checked?
Mr. Hurst: I know we do not have a position on it.
Senator Munson: Does the parent company?
Mr. Hurst: I do not think the parent company has a position on this either.
Senator Munson: Just to follow up on the chair's question on profit, is a news department expected to make a certain profit each year? When you become part of a bigger corporation, is there a certain level or threshold that you have to live up to?
In the old days — and I hate to talk about the old days — you could make whatever you want and spend almost whatever you want, as long as you made a profit. Is there a certain level or threshold that you have to live up to, and if you do not live up to it there will be cuts?
Mr. Hurst: The news department is expected to make a profit, of course. We are in private industry and news is profitable. Is there a specific threshold that each show, station or platform must live up to? No, there is not.
Senator Munson: As a journalist, you do not get up every day hoping to make a profit. You get up every day hoping for a good news story.
Mr. Hurst: As journalists, all three of us get up every day to chase the best news story in the country.
Senator Munson: When you talk about being profitable, are your profitability figures on the public record? How profitable is the news division?
Mr. Hurst: That information is not on the public record. I believe the top line numbers for all specialty channels in Canada are available on the public record, but I do not believe the CRTC breaks out our filings on conventional television.
Senator Munson: Do you have a code of ethics or written principles akin to the Atkinson principles, for example, at The Toronto Star that journalists at CTV should follow and read when covering news events? Is there a code of ethics or written principles along those lines?
Mr. Hurst: Yes.
Senator Munson: Have they been made public?
Mr. Hurst: They have been filed with the CRTC at various licence hearings. Yes, they are public, but they are not like the Atkinson principles at The Toronto Star.
Senator Munson: Every time I get cranky, my son, who is 17 years old, says, “Do not worry about it, dad; it is all good.” I know you are a positive person, Mr. Hurst, and you present a positive picture of CTV. It does sound all good. However, surely to goodness you have been cranky once in a while. You must have something to tell us about what is not good and what perhaps should be done within the Canadian television news industry.
Mr. Hurst: We believe we coined the phrase “It is all good” three years ago, during the Iraq war. A topnotch producer who used to work here was trying to get to Baghdad. All hell was breaking loose. We were worried about the safety of our foreign teams in the field. We kept hearing back from that wonderful producer the phrase, “It is all good.” It was all good because they got the job done and we are getting the job done.
Senator Munson: Did my son get this from CTV?
Mr. Hurst: We would like to claim ownership of that phrase.
Senator Munson: More seriously, you have presented to us a very positive picture, but it is not all good in this industry these days. Everybody knows that. There are concerns. I raised earlier today, for example, the concerns from various communities across the country. There are concerns in New Brunswick. You may provide the competition in New Brunswick, but one company owns every newspaper and all the radio stations. Yes, ATV does a good job to try to balance that, as does CBC. We have the same concerns coming from Vancouver and elsewhere, where Canadians — at least British Columbians — feel they are not getting diverse points of view because media control by families and by bigger companies. There are those who try to tell us that big may be better — but I am not sure. We have not made any judgments, and we must come to some kind of conclusion with this report in the fall.
Mr. Hurst: Senator Munson, I will answer that question with what, from our perspective, are our direct challenges. These are on our minds all the time. Our direct challenges are to make our station in Vancouver and our news operation more competitive, more viewer-friendly, and to expand our news programming. We do not do a noon newscast in Vancouver. We want to do one because we want to offer viewers in the Lower Mainland an option at noon against the Global station, which has been the long dominant heritage station there. If we can provide that alternative in Vancouver, it would directly help this committee's concerns about the diversity of voices in the Lower Mainland. That is one of our immediate challenges.
The second challenge that we have is relaunching CTV Newsnet. We have been sitting and talking for a few weeks now, since we got our licence amendments. We were diverted when we got into that enormous flurry, getting ready for an election.
Newsnet's future is great. We look forward to how we in the all-news world of 24-hour news will be delivering news to every region of the country and taking on the Americans.
In the days of the onion-skin bags, most Canadians got their news from the American networks. Canadians got their television news from ABC or Walter Cronkite at CBS. That changed in the 1970s and 1980s, as CTV and CBC matured, and Global came on. This is in reference to terrestrial television, over-the-air networks. No Canadian today gets his or her news from American conventional television. The viewing of Dan Rather — who is gone now — Peter Jennings or the NBC Nightly News is infinitesimal. What does this tell us? This is a victory for Canadian broadcast journalists, that we in this country are strong in our ability to deliver local and national news against those dominant, well-funded news organizations. That was then.
Now we have cable channels and specialty channels. We have the CNNs, who have been around since the mid- 1980s. We have MSNBC and FOX. All these channels, with a 10-year head start on us, are flooding into this country. It is our challenge and Newsworld's challenge to win Canadian viewers home. We will do it.
That is what we worry about every day, which is probably reflective of this committee's concern about diversity of Canadian voices.
Did I answer your question?
Senator Munson: That is very good. I hope — and perhaps you are doing it already, as well as with the diversity of voices through educational institutions — that CTV is tapping into the journalist schools that we went to across the country. There are many aspiring journalists who would like to be foreign correspondents and to work for companies like yours. You are paying attention, obviously, along with journalism schools across the country.
Ms. MacDonald: We have a very active internship program across our system where we tap into students from all kinds of schools. We just started a program with the First Nations Technical Institute to encourage their interns to spend some time with us, be it at Newsnet, Canada AM or the national news, come to get to know the system and get some experience.
In many entry-level, part-time or freelance positions, we will use people who have been through our system as interns because we have gotten to know them and they have gotten to know us. We see what they can bring to the system. In terms of diversity of voices, ideas and background, it has been terrific for us.
Mr. Haberstroh: Mark Oldfield, who is in Sudbury, at a meeting last week, said that he needed more Aboriginal reporters, that they were not coming out of journalism school. What he has done is brilliant. He went to a local high school to speak to the kids, to tell them that not enough kids are going into journalism at the college level. A couple of seminars were held, to talk about what journalism is all about, to talk about how to use a camera, how to shoot it, and what the students could do. He suggested they could think about getting into this field as they left high school.
He said that it would not pay off tomorrow but that in five years it may. If he could get more Aboriginal graduates from the local college up there, he was prepared to employ them. I thought that was pretty proactive.
Senator Munson: We need more of that.
Senator Johnson: We have learned that 70 per cent of Canadians get their news from television and not from newspapers or the Internet. We thought that the numbers getting their news from the Internet would be higher than it is, but apparently not. A majority of Canadians are getting their news from television, such as Newsnet and CBC Newsworld. They are certainly covering the waterfront.
Does CNN still not outdistance every network in Canada in terms of viewership?
Mr. Hurst: It is important to realize the difference between cable channels and conventional channels.
The big newscasts in Canada, where most Canadians get most of their news are conventional television: CTV, CBC, Global, A-Channel and CHUM.
Then there are the cable channels whose viewership in Canada is exceedingly small. CNN is the number one news channel of all the cable channels. However, it is important to know that those cable channels, as I think your study showed, are growing every year against conventional television.
Senator Johnson: That is a good distinction that I had not thought through. At the same time, so many things are coming on board. It is like infomania. It is impossible to keep up with everything.
That brings me to my question about the Canadian market. How saturated is the Canadian market with news shows? Is there a limit? Are we reaching a level of consumer and network satisfaction on this? Will there be more changes as we move along?
Mr. Hurst: In television news, we will see an enormous amount of growth. We are not anywhere near saturation. I talked about the local news outlets and our offering two hours of news programming in some of our markets.
In Canada, there will be an expansion, especially of local news. The morning period is a growth period for local and national news, and the suppertime period is a growth area. Part of this is because in big cities, especially Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, where commuting is taking an hour or two, the idea that broadcasters can offer the local news at 6:00 p.m. and you better be there by appointment are quickly fading.
Senator Johnson: They can catch it at any time of day now. That is very important.
We also found in our study, and I know this from living in Manitoba and having a place in the country there, that most of the people are getting their local information from their local newspapers. This applies in the same way to television news, that is, that they will look at their local channels before anything else. Is that a change from the past? It is a change in terms of the opportunities they have now to tune in?
Mr. Hurst: In the news business, perhaps like politics, we say all news is local first. People first want to know what is going on over the backyard fence and around the block. That is what they want first, and that is why local news is really important. It is first, and Canadians need to know wherever they are living what is happening around their block.
The Chairman: Coming back to the question of a statement of principles or a code of ethics, we would like to see that, please.
Mr. Hurst: We filed it with you today, Senator.
The Chairman: You mean the CRTC one. I thought you had your own set of principles and practices.
Mr. Hurst: We have our own. We have our own policy book and news style manual that we are happy to file with you.
The Chairman: That would be helpful. That, I assume, goes to all journalists.
Mr. Hurst: Yes.
The Chairman: Would that include any reference to an instruction, which I am perfectly willing to believe, comes from on high, to treat your corporate owners in the same way you treat everybody else? Is that set down in black and white anywhere?
Mr. Hurst: Yes.
The Chairman: That is not always the case. There are many schools of thought as to whether these things should be set down in black and white. If it is in yours, that is very interesting.
You exchange schedules with The Globe and Mail. On mundane day-to-day business, I can understand that being one more source of input as you are making up your own schedule to see what the other guys are up to. When you exchange schedules and you are working on a big exclusive story, is that on the schedule?
Mr. Haberstroh: No. That is an emphatic no.
The Chairman: Is it on their schedule when they are doing it?
Mr. Haberstroh: No. That is something we have come to live with. We do not say anything when we do not tell them, and they do not say anything when they do not tell us. The enterprise journalism stays with the creator of that enterprise.
For example, the Monday Globe had a story on a $5-billion CANDU deal falling through. We were not given a heads-up on that.
The Chairman: Even though you have a bureau in Beijing.
Mr. Haberstroh: Yes. On Friday, of course, we filed a story that Minister Volpe is considering revoking Canadian citizenship for suspected Nazi war criminals. There was no heads-up given on the other side.
It is difficult to encourage enterprise when you are going to take that enterprise and give it away. We compete on the big scoops, which every journalist would agree is the benchmark of how well you are doing. We compete directly and fiercely.
You are right that, on the more day-to-day matters, we are happy to exchange, but the enterprise stuff we keep for ourselves and they keep for themselves. That is the way it should be.
The Chairman: Let me come at the reverse end of this. When we started this study, there was a word that every single witness used. I have not heard you use it. You know the word.
Mr. Haberstroh: Yes, I do.
The Chairman: The word is “convergence.” What does or would “convergence” mean to you? What is the future of that?
Mr. Hurst: On the editorial side, we looked at converging print and broadcast journalists, to send one hybrid reporter out to cover a story and file for print and broadcast. We looked at it, thought about it, but did not really try it. It does not work for CTV News. I do not think it works for The Globe and Mail.
At CTV News, preparing and filing a television news story is a unique craft. Some of the people we have hired from newspapers have suddenly realized that it is tough to do second by second and technical issues, and storytelling and presention.
The Chairman: In 30 seconds.
Mr. Hurst: It is not the inverted pyramid, which in print style is one of the easiest things to do. You determine the most important new factor and proceed in descending order. That is not the television style. Television news is linear. If the second story in an hour-long newscast is badly done and confusing, the viewers will turn off and that journalist has failed everyone coming behind.
These things are part of the television craft. The viewers of convergence started in the United States, and it is basically finished in the United States. Time Warner is the prime example of the failure of convergence. At CTV News, we do not practise forced convergence with The Globe and Mail. There are still two organizations in Canada that are trying to practise forced convergence — CanWest and Quebecor. We are watching that with great interest, but we do not want convergence forced upon our journalistic product, because our experience has been that it hurts our journalistic product.
The Chairman: Where does the Internet fit in, in general, for a national television news organization? I am sure that CTV has an Internet site, although I blush to say that I have not consulted it. Do you have anything to do with theglobeandmail.com?
Mr. Hurst: One of the most popular and growing sites in Canada is ctv.ca. It is a video-intensive site and is completely separate from The Globe and Mail site. The Globe and Mail site competes with ctv.ca. Because we do television news, our site is video-intensive. The Internet today, although it may have great promise, is little more today than another delivery system. No Internet news site in Canada has a reporter in the field asking the mayor a question, chasing down police records or going to the school board. They are purveyors of material that has already been gathered. It is another distribution service and a repackaging service.
We do not know where the Internet is going as a delivery service. We are investing in it, watching it very closely and experimenting with it, but it is not yet the prime deliverer of news and public affairs in this country.
The Chairman: I gather that you do not expect it to become that any time soon.
Mr. Hurst: This is a question about new technology. I would love to be able to get CTV News and Newsnet on my watch some day, and I will, although perhaps in a hologram, and perhaps only I will be able to hear the audio so that it will not interrupt others.
We were flying up here yesterday just as the Michael Jackson verdict was coming down. They closed the doors on the airplane and we had to turn off our communication devices just as the news desk said that the jury verdict would be delivered in one hour.
In six months, there will be Internet delivery on planes. WestJet already carries CTV Newsnet, Newsworld, CNN, CBC, CTV and Global live through satellite transmission. Unfortunately, we were on a plane with old technology.
We could talk for hours about the promise of the Internet and the empowerment of individuals to publish their own blogs. We do not know where it is going, but it is fascinating to watch.
The Chairman: It has not eroded anything for you yet?
Mr. Hurst: “Erode” is an interesting word. The key erosion of news and public affairs programming in Canada for all broadcasters comes from cable and specialty channels. We call it fragmentation. That is where the fundamental erosion comes from.
The Chairman: There is no end to that in sight.
Mr. Hurst: The first part of your study on data showed that the growth of specialty channels has been pretty steady for some years. Also, in those specialty channels, there are news delivery services — Newsnet, Newsworld, ROBTv, the American channels, and Talk-TV.
The Chairman: Should I interpret that to mean that as long as you have your own family of specialty channels, including news channels, you can compete with other families?
Mr. Hurst: I have never thought of it as a family.
The Chairman: I was trying to use a friendly and non-threatening word.
Mr. Hurst: On the core strategic strategy of CTV, I will not speak about our programming strategies, entertainment strategies or Canadian dramatic comedy programming. However, clearly in the news area, at CTV News, we have an integration of services to help each other share and swap stories and to have our news and public affairs transmitted on as many platforms and outlets as possible, which includes a business channel to which Canadians can subscribe, and an all-news channel.
Senator Munson: Are you a strong supporter of Canadian Press?
Mr. Hurst: We are a very strong supporter of Canadian Press and have been for a long time. Having a national cooperative providing us and our stations across the country is very important to healthy journalism in Canada.
Senator Munson: Is the regular news that you deliver threatened in any way by the entertainment news we see on CTV and other stations?
Mr. Haberstroh: I do not feel threatened in any way by entertainment programming.
Senator Munson: I am speaking of so-called “info news” such as Inside Edition.
Mr. Haberstroh: I do not think we are threatened by it, and our numbers bear that out. Canadians are pretty sophisticated news consumers. They know what they want, and I am not sure that is what they are looking for.
Senator Munson: Although CTV and other networks would never make a mistake in covering a news story, in newspapers we see apologies for errors, usually on page A14. At one time, there were avenues for people to get their complaints on the air. If a journalistic mistake is made on the air by your organization, how is a correction made? It is human nature to simply hope that such things just go away. Is there a mechanism in your news organization for the public to make their complaints publicly?
Mr. Hurst: That is a very good question. My personal view is that broadcasters generally, because of human nature, do not correct their mistakes enough on the next broadcast or the next day. We have talked about that with our news directors. Some say that we do not have the luxury of space that the newspapers have. I think The Globe and Mail puts its corrections on page 2, and I believe that broadcasters should be following the model of the good newspapers in terms of correcting and updating.
Your question was specifically about the process. In the national newsroom at CTV News, we get up to 150 email communications and letters per day. All of our senior editors read them. I like to personally call people who provide their telephone numbers. That is one method.
If complaints are very serious or a complainant is not satisfied or sometimes does not hear from us, then there is the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, which is a volunteer organization set up by the CRTC. We are a charter member of the CBSC. Some of our news directors sit on their panels. This is the public process if you are not satisfied with what CTV News is doing on any of its platforms.
Senator Munson: Perhaps politicians from all political parties could learn from that too, admitting our mistakes from time to time.
The Chairman: You will send us the following: Your policy and journalistic practices book; details of who is on the committee at the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council and how it works now; and how many times of day you have carried those public service announcements about the particular requirements under the CRTC, which are of course separate from if you have a complaint about our news coverage in general and we spelled your dog's name wrong. We are talking specifically about the CRTC-imposed announcement. All other information is, of course, gratefully received.
This has been an extremely interesting session.
The committee adjourned.