Times change and technical innovations alter the way we communicate. Silent movies, over-the-air TV and recently newspapers have become endangered species or even extinct.

Trying to push back against technological change is a no-win situation and that applies to everyone from Canada's largest newspapers to the CBC. To survive, you have to adapt to the punishments and opportunities of changing economics and public taste.

From coast to coast to coast and around the world on shortwave and Sirius satellite. Not all technologies are still equal. (CBC)

Those of us who wrote the current Broadcasting Act 20 years ago understood that such change would come, but also that television was the dominant cultural and communications medium of its day.

We had two goals: to support both the well-being of the TV broadcasting system itself as well as its capacity to serve the interests of Canadians.

Specifically, the act sought TV programming that "serves to safeguard, enrich, and strengthen the cultural, political, social and economic fabric of Canada."

The centrepiece of the Broadcasting Act, where the bulk of cultural expectations were vested, was the CBC, from which Parliament expected "a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens and entertains."

Today, 20 years later, with the media world in a tizzy, it is time to ask whether the public broadcaster is still able to live up to our expectations.

When culture counted

Twenty years ago, culture counted politically. The Conservative government of Brian Mulroney was negotiating a free trade agreement with the U.S. and this proposal was not going to pass muster in English-speaking Canada especially without assurances to protect our cultural identity.

(At the time, Quebec's cultural output seemed less fragile because of the insulation of language.)

The free trade deal eventually would include an exemption for cultural products and led to an increase in Canadian support programs for the arts and culture. Everything from local dance troupes to national magazines and the CBC were beefed up considerably.

In the 20 years since, however, technology has altered the calculations. A proliferation of specialty channels fragmented the broadcasting system from within, to the detriment of the national networks, which are all now crying poor.

At the same time, audience fragmentation from outside the system, via the internet, resulted in an entirely new set of consumer habits.

At this point, we should probably expect a new broadcasting act to emerge after the CRTC licence renewal hearings scheduled for next year. In my view, it can't come soon enough.

The CBC mandate

When the time comes to rethink the CBC, it will no doubt be argued that Parliament's expectations of the national public broadcaster 20 years ago were pitched too high, in large measure because the CBC mandate was not matched by adequate parliamentary funding.

The public subsidy to the CBC amounts to about $34 per Canadian, roughly a quarter of that awarded the BBC in Britain. It is also worth less today in constant dollars, an erosion that has forced the CBC, faced with rising costs, to increase its reliance on advertising revenue.

Should the CBC stick to news? (CBC)

Advertising now accounts for more than half of the CBC's television budget and that in turn creates a bias for entertainment programming that is as mainstream as possible. But is that the way to go?

All Canadians have views about the CBC. Mine are pretty simple: the CBC should deliver programming that is essential to our experience as Canadians and which is otherwise absent from the commercial system.

Excellence in this case doesn't have to mean elitist or even "worthy," as some CBC execs have derisively described such expectations in the past.

The criteria should be only what Canadians need to foster an intelligent national discussion and a window on our own culture.

Cut the ads

Since it is market economics that have given an advantage to the entertainment side of the CBC mandate at the expense of the enlighten or news side, I think the only way to correct that would be through an indexed increase in the parliamentary appropriation.

This would mean easing the CBC out of advertising as well as out of programming that the private system could provide — such as wall-to-wall hockey.

For those who argue that it is precisely this dependence on advertising that keeps CBC programming in touch with its audience, I point out that where I live, on Vancouver Island, CBC Radio One, which of course has absolutely no advertising, is the top-rated outlet by several lengths.

But whatever the balance that is arrived at for financing the public broadcaster's capacity for radio and TV drama, I suggest the greatest emphasis for a revitalized CBC should be on the "inform" side of its mandate, for that is where its principal public service will increasingly reside.

Essential to democracy

Is this just a pitch for more news resources from someone on the website? No. I'm not a CBC employee. I only write here on occasion as I do for other media outlets.

More importantly, the issue is bigger than a CBC turf war between the entertainment and news sides of the organization.

Or include sports? Does the public broadcaster have to choose? (CBC)

In broadest terms, Thomas Jefferson put it best when he said during the American Revolution that access to objective news reporting is essential to democracy.

Closer to home, a Senate standing committee in 2006 reported that it was in the public interest for the CBC to make news its top priority.

Objective reporting and clear current affairs programming is the raison d'etre of public broadcasting and those of us who have lived in countries without reliable reporting know how important that is.

Canada is not in danger from tyrannical repression, though there is always the case for vigilance.

But the fact is, the entire process of news reporting today has been changed by technology — by the web — and possibly put at risk as news organizations cut their editorial ranks to try to stay afloat.

At this point in our history, with the changing economics of news gathering playing havoc with what we see and read, a well resourced public broadcaster is essential for reliable news collection and background analysis.

But seriously, please

In terms recalling our own Broadcasting Act, former U.S. vice-president Al Gore recently described the decline in television news as signifying Jefferson's "well-informed citizenry becoming our well-entertained audience."

It is a phenomenon we have seen on this side of the border, too, with newscasts offering more soft stories or invitations to viewers to nominate their favourite places at the expense of real reporting.

There has been some successful hard-news pushback. In the U.S. for example, in response to CBS choosing entertainment host Katie Couric to anchor its nightly news, ABC opted for "hard-news discipline" and vaulted decisively to the top of the network ratings.

The U.K.'s Channel 4 nightly news program with Jon Snow, the Jim Lehrer News Hour on PBS and the SBS evening news in Australia retain strong and loyal audiences of people keen to get news insights that connect the dots.

The news industry is clearly fretting about how to attract future audiences but this is not a debate the CBC has to engage in if it sticks to its mandate to enrich and inform.

Embrace the web

Television, of course, is not the only news media reeling from the web. The New York Times concedes that "readers have spoken loudly they prefer to access news on the web."

So, quality newspapers as well as broadcasters are looking to website publication. But surely this has to be more than web-friendly headline clips and superficial opinion blogs.

How can an authoritative and well-researched electronic journal of record be financed?

I would argue that Canada is ahead of the game by already paying for an experienced public newscaster that shouldn't have to cut its journalism to switch from one medium to another as tastes and technology change.

Arguments that a Crown corporation can't be relied on for objective reporting are hogwash. For generations, the world relied on the objectivity of the BBC's World Service, captured on shortwave in locales where free speech and adequate news sources didn't exist.

CBC News isn't threatened by the web. Quite the contrary, it is very likely its future, in the interest of all Canadians, provided the public mandate is interpreted as it should be.