CANADA: Magazine TV

What is a viewer likely to get in the “magazine concept” of television, which assigns advertisers spot announcements and leaves the network free for entertainment and information that fit its own tastes and sense of responsibility? The closest example now going is the big Canadian Broadcasting Corp., which is often watched by 1,200,000 U.S. families who live on the border. CBC creates more of its own programs (40 out of 58 network hours a week) than any major U.S. network, and they are so good that CBC collected six out of seven of this year’s Ohio State University awards for prestige network shows.

Corporately, CBC is a government-owned network with nine stations of its own plus 44 privately owned affiliates strung along the world’s longest (4,200 miles) microwave hookup. Canada justifies government ownership by the need for serving up Canadian culture to an audience uneconomically scattered across a vast land. But the government recognizes the merits of competition, and a new Board of Broadcast Governors (TIME, Nov. 16) will soon begin licensing private-enterprise second stations in all major cities. CBC President Alphonse Ouimet, 51, whose $17,000-a-year salary is less than one-sixth as much as NBC’s President Robert Kintner’s, expects to clear only $40 million in advertising revenues this year, and Parliament will have to make up the rest of CBC’s $75 million budget (v. $37 million for Britain’s BBC).

Fiction, Fact, Fun. Thus bankrolled, CBC regards advertisers with what the U.S. networks would consider downright disdain. Instead of turning over its programing to packagers, CBC puts together its own schedule, then sells ads under the same conditions as newspapers and magazines, confining commercials to seven minutes an hour. It pipes in some U.S. network shows (Hallmark Hall of Fame, Ed Sullivan Show, River boat) that blend suitably with its schedule, selling the advertising time to Canadian firms. CBS produces almost all the rest of its shows, and with two exceptions—Ford Startime (half of its programs are imported, half produced for Ford of Canada by CBC) and the CBC-produced General Motors Presents—a sponsor cannot even worm his name into a show’s title. CBC bars commercials from not only the middle but also the beginning and end of all its news and public-affairs programs.

Controlling their own show, Network Programing Director Eugene Hallman, 40, and TV Program Director Douglas Nixon, 44, aim for a magazine-like mixture of fiction, fact and fun. A typical evening’s fare last week offered song (Perry Como Show) and adventure (R.C.M.P., a realistic serial on the Mounties, which cartoonists are fond of lampooning), but gave equal time to Live a Borrowed Life, a sprightly historical quiz, and Explorations, a well-filmed exposition of the odd migration habits of animals, birds and fish.

Strenuous & Serious. Though CBC scorns the rating game,*its prize shows are highly popular. Closeup sends cameramen anywhere (Cuba, Egypt, Taiwan), interviews anyone (Evelyn Waugh, Brigitte Bardot), tackles any subject (homosexuality in Canada). CBC is strong on serious drama (recent example: The Crucible’) and occasionally goes all out for esoterica: it spent $147,376 on a full-length production of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes. On CBC Folio the Winnipeg Ballet and the Toronto Symphony lure more than 1,000,000 viewers. Says CBC Vice President Ronald Fraser: “We do not degrade viewers to a type.”

* With 68% of Canada’s TV sets in range of U.S. stations, CBC often loses: KVOS-TV in Bellingham, Wash, consistently has a bigger slice of Vancouver viewers than does CBC’s own CBUT-TV. But CBC affiliate CKLW-TV in Windsor gets 70% of its revenue from U.S. advertisers, often outdraws Detroit’s WJBK-TV, WWJ-TV, WXYZ-TV.