Are you not entertained? Richard Stursberg’s five year plan for the CBC

November 6, 2025

In October CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard unveiled her eagerly anticipated five year plan for the public broadcaster.

MediaPolicy commented on her map here and here. Months earlier, I also provided a platform for a number of guest columns or interviews with former CBC insiders and pundits who offered some broad brushed comments on how the CBC ought to reinvent itself, one of the nation’s great and never-ending dialogues.

One of those guest columns was from Richard Stursberg, the former CBC Vice President of English language programming, “welcome Ms.Bouchard, here’s some advice.”

Now that President Bouchard has weighed in, it’s the right time for another guest column from Stursberg, the author of The Tower of Babble: Sins, Secrets and Successes inside the CBC.

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The CBC’s Five Year Plan

By Richard Stursberg

In 1965, Robert Fowler, the Chair of The Royal Commission on Broadcasting and The Advisory Committee on Broadcasting, noted in a much quoted observation that:

         “The only thing that really matters in broadcasting is program content; all the rest is housekeeping.”

He was, of course, quite right. The measure of a successful broadcaster is the quality and popularity of its shows. All the rest – technologies, personnel, locations, financing, studios and platforms – are housekeeping, there to support programming.

Recently, the new President of the CBC, Marie-Philippe Bouchard, announced her new five year plan for the corporation, her vision for its future. It is called: Here For Canada, 2025-2030 Strategy.

The plan begins by stating – correctly – that “the core purpose of the CBC (is) ‘to contribute to shared national consciousness and identity.’” She then goes on to discuss the audiences she will target and the housekeeping measures she will employ to get there.

Her focus, she says, will be on children and youth, who she acknowledges are largely lost to digital platforms, newcomers, and “non-users and dissatisfied users”. She is planning to focus CBC’s programming on those least likely to consume it. This seems a tough assignment.

She goes on to target small towns, the North and minority language communities. Canadians, however, mostly live in large cities. Almost 60% of the population lives in the ten largest urban areas that produce 75% of the country’s economic output. Her focus on the places where Canadians are least likely to live also feels like a tough assignment.

Having established her target populations, the President describes the housekeeping measures she will employ. She proposes to be “digitally agile”, to emphasise “partnerships”, to get “closer to communities”, to expand “FAST channels”, and to”increase investments in independent productions”, among other things. These are no doubt sensible things to do; they should receive The Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

There is, however, little or no discussion in the President’s plan of programming, “the only thing that really matters in broadcasting”. There is no indication of what kinds of shows will be financed over the next five years. There is nothing in the plan that describes the types of dramas, news, documentaries or comedies that will be produced. It provides no discussion of what Canadians can expect to see, hear or read on the CBC’s many platforms.

Mme. Bouchard is not alone in providing a plan that emphasises housekeeping. Almost all of her predecessors did the same thing. Despite Robert Fowler’s caution, they have produced strategies, plans and visions that decade after decade have been preoccupied with the nuts and bolts of broadcasting, and only rarely with its content.

What, then, might a real plan look like, one centred on programming and not housekeeping?

In producing one, it would be wise to start with Mme. Bouchard’s observation that the core purpose and mandate of the CBC is “to contribute to shared national consciousness and identity”. 

It must also recognise that – as the president makes clear – “social and political polarisation are on the rise, as are threats to national sovereignty”. Canada feels badly divided: the West is alienated; Quebec is flirting again with independence; indigenous people are rightly aggrieved; and the young feel deeply disadvantaged. At the same time, Canada is confronted with a belligerent and unpredictable neighbour to the south that threatens the very existence of the country. Whatever program plan is created, it must speak to the moment.

The programming must also stand out in what is a very crowded field. New, beautiful foreign shows are available everywhere There is more content than anyone can consume, and the sheer excess dictates that only the really original, dramatic, relevant and exciting will be watched, listened to or read. 

 By way of a simplistic formulation, let’s break shared national consciousness and identity into three key questions and see what kind of programming might speak to them. The questions are:

 1. The classic: Who are we?

 2. The obverse: Who are we not?

 3. The Northrop Frye: Where are we?

Here For Canada: 2025-2030: The Program Strategy

Who are we?

Twenty-five years ago, the CBC released Canada: A People’s History. Its narrative connected the different periods of our history into an overall account of Canada’s national identity. It was an enormous hit.

The CBC will produce three new histories.

– An Indigenous people’s history of Canada. The history of the conquered is invariably different from that of the conquerors. For Reconciliation to be achieved, it is essential that all Canadians understand what happened. It will be dramatic and revelatory.

 – A history of French Canada. The struggle to preserve French Canada’s language and culture is little known in English Canada. Understanding is the key to shared  consciousness.

 – A history of Western Canada. The emergence of a  Western identity is not well understood in the East; its grievances, triumphs and ambitions are often met with scorn. To create a national consciousness, its story needs to be told.

With these three new histories, the CBC will reclaim its position as the principal source of broad public debate about who we are and the events that formed us. The new histories will inevitably precipitate debate. While we will try to make them as factually accurate as possible, there will surely be controversy. We welcome it. Arguing together is how we find out who we are.

Who are we not?

The answer, of course, is not Americans. Canada has historically defined itself in opposition to the United States, now perhaps more than ever. But not wanting to be American is not the same as not wanting to understand them. In the current circumstances, with the ongoing trade war and threats of annexation, it is essential to understand deeply what is happening south of the border.

The CBC will explore Canada’s relationship to the United States through comedy, news, documentaries and drama.

It will resurrect its comic exploration of the States. A new version of Rick Mercer’s Talking to Americans will be produced, with a sparkling new host.

A new half hour situation comedy will also be commissioned about a Canadian family that has to move to the heart of MAGA-land. It will be similar to Schitt’s Creek, but funnier – if that is possible. Think of it as MAGA Creek.

The news department will expand its coverage of the Republican strongholds in the Red states. It is no longer possible to understand US politics and society with reporters only in LA, New York and Washington; Canadians also need to hear what people are thinking and doing in Florida, Texas, Alabama and Utah.

The CBC will initiate new documentary and current affairs coverage of the key sectors of the MAGA movement, providing in depth explorations of American gun culture, the manosphere, evangelical Christianity, and white nationalism. They will look not only at what is happening in the US, but how these movements overlap developments in Canada. Our coverage of the Americans will focus on how what happens there matters to us.

Finally, a major dramatic series is in development about the invasion of Canada by the US. It has happened twice before.This series is set in 2029 and features tense negotiations. Doomed lovers, drone warfare, blockades, split families cyber attacks, tragedy, excitement and victory – but for whom?

Where are we?

Many of the CBC’s most successful shows have criss-crossed the country, letting us know and laugh at ourselves. The Debaters and The Rick Mercer Report showed us who we are in all our variety. The new season will bring back travelling shows that explore the country’s music, sense of humour, accents and general weirdness in all our regional variety.

A big unscripted exploration is also planned, a sort of Survivors: The Winter. It will be short on swimsuits, but long on snowstorms, frozen lakes, treachery, huskies, snowmobiles, ice fishing and bad behaviour. Where are we if not in The Great White North?

The physical country has increasingly given way to a virtual one. Canadians live more and more online, in social media, through avatars and artificial intelligence, the CBC will explore our new digital environment through news, documentaries, drama and comedy.

The news department will assign journalists to the major platforms, as they are assigned now to major cities. They will be covered as distinct places with, like all places, their own characters, myths, values and events. Their reporting will be enhanced by documentaries on how these worlds are structured, how they treat their citizens, and what they mean for Canadians’ sense of their own identity.

The CBC has a number of dramedies in development that will explore what happens when people are stuck in and cannot escape their favourite social media platforms, how they respond to falling in love with an AI based lover, and what it means to give up normal life altogether for the pleasures of a purely digital one.

These new programs will supplement the great shows the Corporation already produces.

We will also update our flagships with a broader set of views and guests. The National will be modernised; and the News Network will search out a broader set of voices. We will invite Canadians to see not just politicians and “experts” but also the vast range of thought leaders throughout the country: the zany, the ignored, the keepers of secrets, the ideologically marginal and the hilarious.

The CBC will judge the success of its five year plan on how Canadians respond to our programming. We will measure our success not just in terms of audiences, but also the debates and controversies it engenders. Our hope is to be funny, wise, difficult, exciting and unforgettable. Our ambition is to be as charming, cantankerous, funny and well informed as the country itself.  

 This may not be the best program strategy for the CBC in 2025-2030. It may be too ambitious, too expensive, too hard to execute or simply wrong headed.  The point of it is not that it’s right but that it provides a point of departure to talk about what the CBC should be programming over the next five years. 

If not this approach, then what? After all, “The only thing that really matters in broadcasting is program content; all the rest is housekeeping”. 

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This blog post is copyrighted by Howard Law, all rights reserved. 2025.