CBC English Television Business Planning 101

When you go to write a business plan there are five basic questions you have to answer.

1) Who are my customers?
2) What am I going to sell them?
and
3) Why are they going to buy it from me, instead of my competitors?
4) What are my costs of doing business going to be
and
5) do the answers to questions 1-4 indicate that a profit can be made

Question 1 is really the key. If you do not know the answer to that one, you cannot answer the others and any executive, from any corporation should be able to provide an answer to this question, off the top of their head before they even accept the job.

In light of this, Richard Stursberg who has been the head of CBC English Television for nearly two years, said some disturbing things in a speech to independent producers at the annual meeting of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association on February 17.

Stursberg clearly indicated that he still has no idea who his customer is. He apparently feels that it might be computers that watch the CBC. So apparently there is some confusion on his part about the whole new media, web 2.0 thing. He indicated in the speech that he has learned that different people watch different shows for different reasons.

Our research tells us that different people come to television with a variety of needs and motivations. Programming that responds to different needs attracts very different types of viewers.

But, anyone who works in television, or who watches it could have told you that. On the basic question though, the one that has to be answered before any of the others can be looked at, Stursberg said

Simply put, we need to know who is watching what on television, and why they're drawn to one particular program or programming genre. We need to know for whom we are making our programs.

Stursberg also indicated, in a variety of ways that he feels the programming should be dumbed down, repeatedly using phrases like "clearly structured" and "accessible" to avoid saying this in so many words.

He, himself, raised the question of how this would be different from popular U.S. programming.

Q. CBC Television's program characteristics look more like those attributes of popular U.S. programming. How do they distinguish CBC Television as a public broadcaster?

and then proceeded to completely fail to answer his own question

Our objective as the national public television broadcaster is to broadcast compelling, interesting and entertaining Canadian stories made for Canadian audiences. We're hoping that by focusing on some of these characteristics we can do it in a way that appeals to more Canadians. This is a key responsibility for the public broadcaster.

I should also mention that he laid out some rather lofty goals

...CBC Television wants to be:
• #1 in Canadian programming for pre-school children;
• #1 in Canadian drama and entertainment programming;
• #1 in Canadian news, current affairs and documentaries; and
• #1 in Canadian sports.

But those goals are irrelevant. The point is that Mr. Stursberg clearly, after
two years on the job and who knows how many millions spent on research, cannot answer the fundamental question "who is my customer." Because he cannot answer that question, which he should have been able to answer when he took the job, he cannot even begin to explore the other questions I listed above. He cannot possibly know what the customer wants, how much it is going to cost to provide it, or how to position CBC television against it's competitors - never mind being #1 in the market.

In other words, until you know who the customer is you are shooting blind on everything else. You are not making business decisions any more than a person buying a lottery ticket is making a business decision. It is no wonder that CBC English Television is in trouble. It is actually quite amazing that it is not in even more trouble - a testament to the talent and creativity of the rest of the department and the loyalty of the CBC's core audience.

As I've said, Stursberg should have been able to answer the question "who is my customer" before he accepted the job. If today, almost two years later, he still cannot answer that fundamental question then it is irresponsible, a breach of trust with the people of Canada and the hard working men and women of CBC English Television for him to remain in that job, or to allow him to remain in that job.