With friends like FRIENDS, who needs enemies?

by Tod on August 04th, 2009

Whatever folks at the lobby group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting are smoking, I want some of it.

This morning, they sent out a news release claiming to know of a “secret plan” to move the CBC’s flagship TV news program, The National, to 11:00 p.m. My own automated Twitter stream picked up the report and tweeted it while I was sleeping on the west coast. I woke up to find the Twittersphere buzzing — loudly — about it.

Their report said:

CBC has a closely guarded secret plan to move its flagship news program The National from 10 pm to 11 pm weeknights. This would reduce the reach and influence of Canada’s most important news program and compromise the CBC’s mandate, according to the watchdog group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.FRIENDS¹ believes CBC may fill the 10 pm weeknight spot which would be vacated by The National with entertainment programming, possibly of non-Canadian origin.

Get real. This is totally and completely false.

• There is no plan to move The National.
• There is no plan to replace The National with entertainment programming — American or otherwise.
• There is no plan to replace Mansbridge with a singing avocado.²

I called Kristine Layfield, CBC’s head of network programming, and asked her point-blank if there ever any truth to this. She called me back within 10 minutes. “No truth to it at all. This couldn’t further from the truth,” she said. Pretty unequivocal. If there were any plans, I think we’d be hearing things like “We are considering a number of options,” or “We don’t have any immediate plans to do that, but we always like to keep our options open.” And I’d be hearing it from a p.r. person.

There was no ambiguity in her response. “They couldn’t have gotten it more wrong.”

In a letter she wrote to the group:

There has never even been any discussion of moving The National in the news redevelopment process, and the idea that we can even afford to replace it with entertainment programming particularly at this time is ludicrous. In fact, our new fall schedule will have less American programming than in the past ((Emphasis mine.)) and we are launching an expanded local supper hour news cast from 5-6:30 p.m across the country.

Let’s think about this logically:

The Ratings
The National pulls in huge numbers — it’s the country’s most-watched newscast. What on Earth would the CBC be able to put there that would capture the same numbers? The only shows that pull the same kind of audience are major American brands like CSI Miami and So You Think You Can Dance. Do you really think the CBC would replace the country’s top news show with something like that? Besides the massive protests that would ensure, the CBC would be in violation of its license by going over the allotted foreign time. As well, the CBC would have to buy the programming alongside CTV, Rogers, and Global at the latest L.A. screenings in May. Nobody from the CBC — not one — was there soaking up the sun and free booze.

The Dollars
If this were true, the CBC would have to make, for the same cost as The National, five one-hour shows whose budgets could be more than $500,000 times five (and that’s for 13 weeks), and that reached The National’s average of 800,000 viewers, a growth of 25 percent over the last two years.³

The Brand
As a rule, television news consumers are very brand loyal. And in the past they’ve shown themselves to be resistant to time slot moves. In 1992, following the death of Barbara Frum, the CBC rebranded The National as “Prime Time News” and re-launched the program at 9:00 p.m. It didn’t work. CBC lost viewership and returned to its current form in 1994. Even when the 2008 Olympics moved The National to the peculiarly time of 10:32 p.m., it remained the top newscast in Canada.

Seriously, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting. Please send me what you’re smoking.

UPDATE: Later in the day, Ian Morrison, the head of Friends, backpedalled on his original claim, rephrasing it as “a discussion” and a plan.

1. Honestly, why do p.r. people insist on capitalizing names of shows and organizations. You’re not an acronym, Friends. Unless you have a “secret plan” to hide your actual name: False Rumours In Endless News Discussions. [↩]
2. Just trying to pre-empt Friends’ next claim. To be fair, I haven’t confirmed this. [↩]
3. Kind of shows you how little they understand about television and programming when NBC has put on Jay Leno five nights a week at 10pm to drop their entertainment strategy. [↩]