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CBC television ad revenue dropped 16% in first half of 2023 as mainstream media flounders

Published

1 year ago

6 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

The news comes just weeks after the CBC announced it must lay off about 600 workers, approximately 10 percent of its staff, as it faces a $125 million budget shortfall.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) television ad revenues plummeted by 16 percent in the first half of this year, a further indication that mainstream media is struggling to keep pace in the independent era.

According to information obtained December 19 by Blacklock’s Reporter, CBC, Canada’s public radio and television broadcaster, published their Second Quarter Financial Report which revealed that television ad revenues decreased from $95.7 million to $80.6 million in the first six months of 2023.

“There is much to do to prepare CBC for an uncertain future,” President and CEO Catherine Tait said. “We are experiencing the same challenges as other media in Canada and around the world.” 

The news comes after Tait failed to mention the reduced ad revenues at the November 2 Commons heritage committee. It is also just weeks after the CBC announced that it must lay off about 600 workers, approximately 10 percent of its staff, as it faces a $125 million budget shortfall.  

According to the report, from the beginning of the year until September 30, the CBC lost 16 percent of its television ad revenues for both English and French programming. The report further states that it does not expect a recovery from the loss for years. 

“In response to the federal Budget 2023 announcement to reduce spending by three percent and in light of both the softening of the TV advertising market and the current economic environment we are developing an analysis of the revised financial context that presents an updated version of our financial pressures including the adverse revenue outlook for the next three years,” it said.  

“We occupy an important place in the Canadian broadcasting system and face a unique set of risks,” the report stated. “Like all broadcasters we must adapt to accelerated technological changes, shifts in demographics, evolving consumer demands, increasing regulatory scrutiny and structural changes in the media ecosystem.” 

Despite its revenue “tracking below target,” the CBC receives major funding from the Liberal government under the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The government subsidies make up CBC’s largest single source of income, a fact that has become a point of contention among taxpayers who see the propping up of the outlet as unnecessary.

On November 2, Tait claimed that the CBC requires further government funding, saying “To be clear over the last 30 years CBC has not had a real increase in its budget, real dollars aside.” 

Tait’s comment seems unfounded considering the CBC was set to receive increased funding as a result of mandated deals signed with Big Tech under Trudeau’s Online News Act.  

The deal was finalized in early December. Under the new agreement, Google will pay legacy media outlets $100 million to publish links to their content on both the Google search engine and YouTube. 

As a result of the recent subsidies and the Google agreement, roughly half the salary of a journalist earning $85,000 is estimated to be paid by the combined contributions of the Trudeau government and Google. 

Furthermore, Trudeau recently announced increased payouts for legacy media outlets ahead of the 2025 election. The subsidies are expected to cost taxpayers $129 million over the next five years. 

Beginning in 2019, Parliament changed the Income Tax Act to give yearly rebates of 25 percent  for each news employee in cabinet-approved media outlets earning up to $55,000 a year, to a maximum of $13,750. 

However, the Canadian Heritage Department has since admitted that the payouts are not sufficient to keep legacy media outlets running. Accordingly, the Trudeau government doubled the rebates to a maximum of $29,750 annually, up to 35 percent of a journalist’s salary. 

Furthermore, despite being nominally unaffiliated with either political party in Canada, the CBC receives massive funding from the Trudeau government. According to its 2020-2021 annual report, the CBC takes in about $1.24 billion in public funding every year, which is roughly 70 percent of its operating budget. 

However, the massive payouts are apparently insufficient to keep CBC afloat amid growing distrust in mainstream media. 

According to a recent study by Canada’s Public Health Agency, less than a third of Canadians displayed “high trust” in the federal government, with “large media organizations” as well as celebrities getting even lower scores. 

Large mainstream media outlets and “journalists” working for them scored a “high trust” rating of only 18 percent. This was followed by only 12 percent of people saying they trusted “ordinary people,” with celebrities receiving only an eight percent “trust” rating. 

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Business

Worst kept secret—red tape strangling Canada’s economy

Published on February 22, 2025

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From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

In the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S.

According to a new Statistics Canada report, government regulation has grown over the years and it’s hurting Canada’s economy. The report, which uses a regulatory burden measure devised by KPMG and Transport Canada, shows government regulatory requirements increased 2.1 per cent annually from 2006 to 2021, with the effect of reducing the business sector’s GDP, employment, labour productivity and investment.

Specifically, the growth in regulation over these years cut business-sector investment by an estimated nine per cent and “reduced business start-ups and business dynamism,” cut GDP in the business sector by 1.7 percentage points, cut employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points.

While the report only covered regulatory growth through 2021, in the past four years an avalanche of new regulations has made the already existing problem of overregulation worse.

The Trudeau government in particular has intensified its regulatory assault on the extraction sector with a greenhouse gas emissions cap, new fuel regulations and new methane emissions regulations. In the last few years, federal diktats and expansions of bureaucratic control have swept the auto industry, child care, supermarkets and many other sectors.

Again, the negative results are evident. Over the past nine years, Canada’s cumulative real growth in per-person GDP (an indicator of incomes and living standards) has been a paltry 1.7 per cent and trending downward, compared to 18.6 per cent and trending upward in the United States. Put differently, if the Canadian economy had tracked with the U.S. economy over the past nine years, average incomes in Canada would be much higher today.

Also in the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S., and only about two-thirds as much new capital (on average) as workers in other developed countries.

Consequently, Canada is mired in an economic growth crisis—a fact that even the Trudeau government does not deny. “We have more work to do,” said Anita Anand, then-president of the Treasury Board, last August, “to examine the causes of low productivity levels.” The Statistics Canada report, if nothing else, confirms what economists and the business community already knew—the regulatory burden is much of the problem.

Of course, regulation is not the only factor hurting Canada’s economy. Higher federal carbon taxes, higher payroll taxes and higher top marginal income tax rates are also weakening Canada’s productivity, GDP, business investment and entrepreneurship.

Finally, while the Statistics Canada report shows significant economic costs of regulation, the authors note that their estimate of the effect of regulatory accumulation on GDP is “much smaller” than the effect estimated in an American study published several years ago in the Review of Economic Dynamics. In other words, the negative effects of regulation in Canada may be even higher than StatsCan suggests.

Whether Statistics Canada has underestimated the economic costs of regulation or not, one thing is clear: reducing regulation and reversing the policy course of recent years would help get Canada out of its current economic rut. The country is effectively in a recession even if, as a result of rapid population growth fuelled by record levels of immigration, the GDP statistics do not meet the technical definition of a recession.

With dismal GDP and business investment numbers, a turnaround—both in policy and outcomes—can’t come quickly enough for Canadians.

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute
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Business

‘Out and out fraud’: DOGE questions $2 billion Biden grant to left-wing ‘green energy’ nonprofit`

Published on February 22, 2025

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From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The EPA under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a ‘green energy’ group that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a “green energy” nonprofit that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists such as former Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.

Founded in 2023 as a coalition of nonprofits, corporations, unions, municipalities, and other groups, Power Forward Communities (PFC) bills itself as “the first national program to finance home energy efficiency upgrades at scale, saving Americans thousands of dollars on their utility bills every year.” It says it “will help homeowners, developers, and renters swap outdated, inefficient appliances with more efficient and modernized options, saving money for years ahead and ensuring our kids can grow up with cleaner, pollutant-free air.”

The organization’s website boasts more than 300 member organizations across 46 states but does not detail actual activities. It does have job postings for three open positions and a form for people to sign up for more information.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, along with new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, are raising questions about the $2 billion grant PFC received from the Biden EPA’s National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), ostensibly for the “affordable decarbonization of homes and apartments throughout the country, with a particular focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities.”

PFC’s announcement of the grant is the organization’s only press release to date and is alarming given that the organization had somehow reported only $100 in revenue at the end of 2023.

“I made a commitment to members of Congress and to the American people to be a good steward of tax dollars and I’ve wasted no time in keeping my word,” Zeldin said. “When we learned about the Biden administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this.” Zeldin previously announced the Biden EPA had deposited the $20 billion in a Citibank account, apparently to make it harder for the next administration to retrieve and review it.

“As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been,” he added. “It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”

Daniel Turner, executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Beacon that in his opinion “for an organization that has no experience in this, that was literally just established, and had $100 in the bank to receive a $2 billion grant — it doesn’t just fly in the face of common sense, it’s out and out fraud.”

Prominent among PFC’s insiders is Abrams, the former Georgia House minority leader best known for persistent false claims about having the state’s gubernatorial election stolen from her in 2018. Abrams founded two of PFC’s partner organizations (Southern Economic Advancement Project and Fair Count) and serves as lead counsel for a third group (Rewiring America) in the coalition. A longtime advocate of left-wing environmental policies, Abrams is also a member of the national advisory board for advocacy group Climate Power.

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