CBC News has a scheduling problem for local news. Let's fix it!
The struggle of broadcasting across six different time zones.
I am a great fan of our public broadcaster, and the news coverage that they provide. Mind you, I have made many criticisms of specific CBC stories. But on balance, I sincerely appreciate that CBC News produces journalism unbeholden to the profit motive.
Journalism, at its core, is a public service, one which is frequently not profitable. This is why I am amused by private-sector journalists who criticize the CBC for relying on public funds. Corporate news media guzzles public subsidies, but unlike the CBC they answer only to shareholders, not to the Canadian people.
However, there is a structural flaw in the weekday television schedule for English-language CBC News. You see, CBC has a scheduling conflict between themselves, and themselves. At the same time when local CBC stations broadcast their local news, CBC News Network airs their prime time programs Power and Politics and Canada Tonight.
It shouldn’t be controversial to suggest that the Canadian people benefit from staying informed on both our national news and their own city’s local news. And if you have a severe journalism addiction, like I do, you might even watch local news for a few different cities.
But with the CBC, I’m struggling to even see my own city’s local news coverage. In the same 18h00 ET time slot that David Cochrane’s Power and Politics is running on CBC News Network, local news runs across the CBC’s Ontario and Québec stations.
Obviously, the CBC has to make compromises in scheduling programming on CBC News Network; it covers six different time zones, and thus Power and Politics may air from 17h00 to 19h00 in Ontario, but in British Columbia it will be airing from 14h00 to 16h00, and in Newfoundland it will be running from 18h30 to 20h30.
The whole point of a 24-hour news network is that the coverage is always up-to-date. But on a local channel, the local news has to run in specific time slots, to facilitate all the non-journalism that normally fills the television schedule.
That is why, regardless of which time zone you are in, your local CBC station will always air afternoon local news at 18h00, CBC’s The National at 22h00, and then the evening local news at 23h00.
To the credit of the CBC, where private media like Bell, Rogers and Corus are cutting local news broadcasts and laying off journalists, the CBC is instead hiring new local journalists.
But those journalists deserve to have their reporting seen by the most Canadians possible, and that means coming up with creative solutions to erase these schedule overlaps.
Before it syndicates across the CBC’s local stations as their time zones hit 22h00 local time (22h30 in Newfoundland), CBC News flagship program The National airs at 21h00 ET on CBC News Network.
The fact that The National is intended to air across local CBC stations explains why it has a large degree of pre-recorded segments, with some live interstitials hosted by Adrienne Arsenault and Ian Hanomansing.
But Power and Politics and Canada Tonight are both live programs, and do not simulcast on local networks like The National does. And the people who watch these programs do not want to watch them on a delay. Again, the whole point of a 24-hour news network is the rolling coverage.
At first glance, the scheduling conflicts in the 18h00 local slot do not appear to be a problem which can be fixed. Obviously, there are time zones with much larger populations than others, but upon analysis there’s only a single time zone which escapes the scheduling conflict.
In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, local news overlaps the first hour of Canada Tonight, while in Alberta and the Territories it overlaps the second hour. In Ontario and Québec, local news overlaps the second hour of Power and Politics, while in the Atlantic it overlaps the first hour.
Right now, the only places that get off easily are Newfoundland, where you’ll only miss the first thirty minutes of Power and Politics, and British Columbia, where you’ll get to watch all national news coverage without missing any local coverage.
It seems that CBC News solution to the 18h00 scheduling conflict is actually the 23h00 evening broadcast. If you can’t watch the 18h00 local news, whether because you’re watching national coverage or another reason entirely, the CBC intends for you to wait until the evening for local news.
Honestly, fair enough. There are benefits to watching later in the evening, especially because news can break within that five hour gap.
But the 18h00 afternoon local news is an hour long for most CBC stations, while the 23h00 evening local news is only thirty minutes long. As a result, many stories will be cut out for time, or edited down to remove detail.
So, if we can’t remove the scheduling conflicts for the 18h00 local news, and the 23h00 local news is too short in runtime, I have a modest proposal; what if we shorten The National and extend the local news that follows it?
CTV National News, which competes with CBC’s The National, runs at 23h00 in a thirty-minute slot. So, instead of an hour, what if The National runs forty-five minutes, and the local news which follows it also runs for forty-five minutes?
It would cover the same amount of time, but it would provide a balanced split between local news and national news, ensuring the public has greater knowledge of their own local affairs. Scheduling the changeover at 22h45 is a nice, round time that’s easy for the public to remember.
But we shouldn’t stop at just evening news. There is actually another time slot on local CBC stations that can be repurposed, and that is the noon slot.
For an hour at 12h00 local time (12h30 in Newfoundland), local CBC stations simulcast the rolling CBC Newsroom program from CBC News Network.
The CBC should largely replace this with local news programming. Dedicate the majority of the slot to local news coverage from that CBC station, and then fill the remainder of the slot with a short pre-taped national segment.
We may not be able to fix the schedule overlap between the 18h00 local news and CBC News Network, but we can make better use of the time slots that local stations already allocate to CBC News coverage.
Canadians get a lot of exposure to national news, and relatively little exposure to local journalism. I am extremely glad that the CBC is hiring more local journalists to fill that gap.
But it won’t count for much if Canadians never get to see those journalists and their work on TV. If journalism is a public service to keep the public informed, then we need to make sure the information actually reaches the public we seek to serve.
We have a clear path for the public broadcaster to set up these new local reporters for success. CBC News should expand their local evening news to forty-five minutes, and create a new local news program for the noon time slot.