As the national public broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada has a broad mandate to serve Canadians and to “reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences, while serving the special needs of those regions.” The role of the CBC in local communities has long been a strong element of the public broadcaster’s success, and it presents a key opportunity in the future, in light of the weakening market for private local broadcasting across Canada. While the CBC is present in many of the larger cities across Canada, there are still important gaps in cities and communities, large and small. Through its history, CBC has taken an inconsistent approach to regional service, at times expanding, and other times contracting, its level of local service. As a result, the local and regional approach has large gaps where communities are underserved. One such example is the city of Hamilton. The recent history of CBC in Hamilton is a telling case study of missed opportunities and future potential for renewing the relevance of CBC/Radio-Canada.
Hamilton context
The Hamilton Census Metropolitan Area (CMA) is home to 827,679 people. It is the third largest CMA in Ontario (after Toronto and Ottawa), and the 10th largest city in Canada. The population is roughly on par with Winnipeg and Quebec City.
Beginning in the late 1990s and consistently until this year, the city’s private media landscape has been beset by a series of media consolidation and ownership changes, moving the ownership of local media assets further from the community, which has resulted in stripping local news and information reporting.
The most recent example was the abrupt closure of 900 CMHL in August 2024, the city’s only news and current affairs station. This closure came amidst a larger sell off of local broadcasting assets by Canadian media companies.
Compounding the diminishing local news and information provided through private broadcasters through the last 20+ years of media consolidations is the fact that Hamilton has always been underserved by local CBC radio.
Where other communities of commensurate size (e.g. Quebec City or Winnipeg), and several much smaller, could rely on their local CBC stations to provide local coverage, this has not been the case in Hamilton, thus leaving one of Canada’s top regions without a reasonable and fair level of service from the public broadcaster.
As the private media landscape shifted over the last 20 years, Hamilton residents, city councils and other political representatives have advocated for diversity in the local media environment through regulatory channels, such as at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission (CRTC) and directly to the CBC.
Central to this advocacy was recognizing that CBC/Radio-Canada, as a public broadcaster, plays a unique role in providing local broadcasting services to cities across the county, and that this role only becomes more relevant as consolidation and divestment increases in the private sector.
However, despite continued community advocacy, CBC has missed a number of opportunities over the last 20 years to acquire a radio frequency in Hamilton, which have come available due to private media concentration. Instead, the public broadcaster has provided limited digital local content on its website, which is not commensurate with radio service in similar-sized cities across Canada.
This glaring inconsistency has not gone unnoticed at CBC and was highlighted by Richard Stursberg, former head of CBC’s English Services when he observed in 2012, “The situation is particularly odd if we compare New Brunswick to Hamilton. New Brunswick has three local radio stations (Moncton, Fredericton and Saint John) and a local TV station (Fredericton). Hamilton has no local radio or TV, despite having a population larger than all of New Brunswick.”
Lessons from Hamilton
The Hamilton experience with CBC points to a fundamental lack of accountability within CBC/Radio-Canada as it relates to local and regional service to communities. This lack of accountability was highlighted by former Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St. Onge in her announcement related to the future of CBC/Radio-Canada. In her press conference on February 20, 2025, Minister St. Onge stated:
“One of the goals when it comes to governance is to bring this public broadcaster closer to people and that’s something we have heard. People have a perception that the public broadcaster isn’t listening to them. That it is not receptive to hearing their points of view.”
“The Canadian population supports the CBC but wants it to be better and wants to be connected with their public broadcaster. This is one of the critiques we consistently hear. Some people feel that the public broadcaster is too opaque and far from their reality and their needs.”
In response to these concerns, the minister proposed amendments to the Broadcasting Act “to require that the Corporation include public consultation on issues related to its priorities and strategies in the context of its corporate plans. The amended Act could require CBC/Radio-Canada to indicate in its corporate plans how it satisfies the public consultation requirement, including the results and ways in which these results influence its decision-making and operations.”
There are several ways that this lack of accountability is illustrated in the Hamilton example: First is through a lack of coherent and equitable policy and associated strategies to support local and regional service. Second is a lack of innovative digital strategy to support and supplement local and regional service. Finally, a lack of leadership in building the needed community relationships to better serve communities across Canada.
Opportunities
The Hamilton experience provides key lessons for the CBC more broadly. Looking ahead, the Hamilton case study highlights potential opportunities for the public broadcaster to become more relevant to Canadians in the future:
- CBC/Radio-Canada needs to clearly articulate a local/regional policy with tangible measures that can act as a benchmark from which legislative goals, public consultation, accountability and transparency can be assessed.
- CBC should fulfill the original promise of the Hamilton digital service and provide the full range of programming of a local station through the digital means available. This Hamilton model could be an innovative and cost-effective way to expand CBC local services to other communities across Canada.
- CBC should take advantage of local frequencies becoming available and the diminishment of the commercial radio model. CBC could expand its footprint in markets where private radio is shrinking and innovate to provide local content through a blend of traditional terrestrial and digital delivery.
- When looking to expand and add resources: CBC should listen to where community support is strong. Invest in communities where CBC is wanted and needed.
For CBC/Radio-Canada to forge a path forward, the broadcaster needs to expand its footprint to better serve more Canadian communities. It needs to focus its priorities by investing at the local and regional level, where it is better able to connect directly with Canadians, to better reflect these communities both to themselves and to the rest of the country. CBC/Radio-Canada’s long-term sustainability is only feasible through building its support and relevance from communities across the country to a national level.
To read the full report, Mixed Signals: Lessons from CBC’s experience in Hamilton, click here.
