I'd like to know where you got the promotion

You'd think PR pros would generate better PR.

But no.

All weekend long, I have been on the receiving end of emails from angry and disheartened indie producers, writers and CBC insiders who say that the move to privatize the publicity function has been an unmitigated disaster. Which is what I have been saying, most recently here.

Note that I am not picking on Media Profile in particular. (It's the company that won the original one-year publicity contract and has recently re-signed for two more years.) I believe that the very idea of privatizing the function is misguided. Every other network in the world, including CTV, Global and the CHUMCity group of stations, have in-house publicists working directly with the producers. This results in speedy and efficient connections between programmers and the toner-stained wretches who write about the shows.

Anyway ...

I have been informed by several insiders that the statistics regarding the staff to management ratio in what's left of the CBC in-house Communications department provided to me by CBC are way off. Ouimet, the CBC inside blogger, calls them a ''lie'' in my comments here. But s/he is anonymous so let's be conservative and not trust the him/her.

How about going with something on the record, a column penned by the Globe and Mail's John Doyle last August 25, soon after the lockout of 5,500 employees began. It's not available online but here's the relevant part:

Anybody with a job knows that in any organization, there are staff members and managers. Managers are not unionized. They supervise, they have added responsibilities, and they lead. They also go to a lot of meetings. That's the way it is.

Usually, a group of employees report to a manager. The ratio of managers to staff varies from place to place. But, as far as I can figure (a Google search on the topic) the standard ratio is usually between 1:8 and 1:11. Dramatic variations on this indicate a problem.

Well, I have before me — okay, you can't see it, but trust me here — a chart that synopsizes the situation at CBC English Communications. That's the department that “communicates” information and advertising related to CBC-TV and Radio. Earlier this year, the same department laid off some 35 publicists and “outsourced” the lucrative publicity contract to Media Profile, a public-relations company founded by former press secretary to Pierre Trudeau, Patrick Gossage.

As far as I can tell, in the department there are 98 employees and either 42 or 44 of them are managers. That means a manager for every 2.3 employees. That's just nuts.

The Canadian Media Guild confirmed the figure is accurate as it understands the picture in that department. I called a CBC spokesman who didn't return my call by press time.

I have searched and searched and can find no correction of Doyle's figures, nor any letter to the editor disputing them.

Meantime, this rather damning narrative appeared yesterday on, of all places, CBC's own official blog, Inside the CBC. It's the story of how the little series 49th and Main made it to air -- although the lack of promotion ensured that few watched it. Here's co-executive producer William Wallace Grey Gray on the matter:

Sadly, the promotional campaign we were promised for this summer run never materialized. Each of the projects did some of it’s own marketing, but only at a very late stage when we discovered the CBC, under it’s new promotional structure, was either unable or unwilling to mount anything like a push. One fifteen-second promo for each show was aired on occasion in the few days before that show went to air, and that was about it.

As he puts it, this is not a big budget extravaganza but real (taxpayer) dollars were spent on the show and Canadians ought to have heard about it.

In the same vein, producer Danny Iron is frustrated with the promotion, or lack of it, around his Northern Town, which debuts tonight at 9. In fact, there is an email travelling through industry circles which several people have forwarded to me. It's from Iron to a freelance publicist:

Taking you up on the offer to shill. Given CBC's one week of promos and no dedicated publicist (other than the one I had to hire and pay) we need all the help we can get. Airs Monday at 9:00 - you'll like it I think.

The words of a producer desperate for some ink and boldface -- and who can blame him? So where is the now supposedly wonderful well-oiled privatized and streamlined CBC-TV publicity machinery?

Some people are speculating that Iron is being punished with no promotion for speaking out against CBC-TV executive vice-president Richard Stursberg in the spring, when he made the now infamous pronouncement that primetime entertainment shows had to score a million viewers or they were toast. Here's what Iron told the Star's Murray Whyte in April (I added the link):

There are 40 or 50 projects in development at the CBC right now, and just as many producers left wondering where they stand. Daniel Iron, a Toronto-based producer, delivered his show, Northern Town, last summer. It hasn't yet been scheduled.

"I thought it was audience friendly. It's a comedy," he said. "Maybe they don't think it's audience friendly enough." When asked what he thought "audience friendly" means, Iron was blunt: "Shows not typically associated with a public broadcaster — like CSI," he said.

Iron, a veteran film producer, dealt with Stursberg during his time at Telefilm Canada, where the executive headed a largely unsuccessful initiative to produce Canadian films aimed at increasing domestic box-office share. Amid few hits, most of those films either failed to draw audiences or were never released at all.

The CBC push for audience share, Iron said, "just feels like the same thing all over again."

But I don't think Iron is being singled out. The fact is, all shows are being short-changed when it comes to PR.

Oh but it doesn't end here. Over the weekend, I heard that CBC's Communications department is trying to tell TV scribes what is a priority and what is not, as if the PR types an dictate what shows CBCers can write about -- and that there's a lag of weeks sometimes before you can get a communication from the Communications people.

It's as if the all new, not-so-improved management is trying to jettison all traces of the previous regime's programming and start with a blank slate.

With no viewers on it.

One last thing: a kind of confirm-or-deny bit from an insider, who takes issue with CBC spokesperson Jeff Keay's contention to me last week that "Our decision-making model with regard to budgets has not led to any change in programming dollars being diverted to publicity."

Why? Because the programs are not doing publicity. The word is that at least for Newsworld, a show is charged $3000 for dealing with Media Profile--and that their "publicists" know so little that the producers would have to write the press release themselves and then e-mail it to Media Profile so the company could e-mail it you.   

And that $3000 would come out of the production budget. So with budgets so tight the producers don't bother. Some producers say that since they would have to write the release anyway, they  would send out their own press releases by e-mail by themselves if they had time--which they don't.

I can't vouch for the amount of $3,000 but I do know that the clock starts ticking and billing rates kick in for Media Profile the moment it starts working on a press release.

O yeah: What was the break-even point for CBC on The One anyway? A million viewers? 800,000? 500,000? If it's only getting just over 200,000, how much is this debacle costing. And by the way, The National, whose scheduling has been disrupted, was getting about 600,000 in the 10 p.m. time slot last year this time -- when there wasn't this insanity in Lebanon going on.

So how does all this privatization of publicity and communications save money for CBC? Result in better ratings? Serve the public interest?

Since I am still waiting for answers to my questions to CBC Communications from last week, I figure I'll just let all this hang until I hear one way or another.

Over to you, CBC management.

Comments

Also as I understand things the union is making a business case to have PR returned to the CBC fold. Now that the contract for the outside company is renewed, will there be huge penalties to pay if the union makes its case and CBC management has to go back to having a proper in-house PR department?

[Mark Federman]

About the ratios, Doyle has it right - the average rule-of-thumb for management-worker ratio is 1:10, give or take. The current ratio at CBC is obscene any which way you cut it. About outsourcing PR, there is a fundamental disconnect concerning what each party cares about. The PR firm cares about whether they can impress the person who signs the check (ie. a manager or executive). This can be accomplished through all sorts of means, most of which have little to do with actually delivering eyeballs to the tube (in this case). The key question for an external PR operative is "can we maximize billable hours," because, quite frankly, that's how the account exec is measured in most instances. An in-house PR function attached to the program cares about eyeball delivery, and little else, because that's how s/he is measured.

For either the in-house team or the out-house team, in practical terms it boils down to, "how am I being measured today?" In classical terms, a good manager will want to align employee incentive, employee performance measurement, and department/corporate objectives. The more you employ an outsourced service, the more challenging it becomes to do this effectively.

[sanj]

the one is a show that requires people to vote. whever this series is over - chances are
they won't rerun it again. they don't rerun Idol .. so cbc needs to take steps now to promote this show.

[True North]

Seems to me you can outsource most things a network needs - program production being the big one.

But you have to maintain hands-on control of programming and Marketing. And program promotion is really the other arm of programming - two key marketing functions that lead to success.

What successions of ill-informed CBC execs have failed to recognize is that no ad agency or PR outfit is remotely equipped to give justice to the CBC account - which requires a constant stream of specialised publicity and advertising for hundreds of "products" every year.

The agency operating model and cost structure are simply incompatible with the demands of network publicity which needs a "machine" more in the old hollywood mode.

It's not that you can't outsource special projects or high-end services, but when you ship all your accumulated basic promotional knowledge base out the door, it's a sign you've giving up being a real network.

[Ouimet]

Well, I might be anonymous, but the record shows that I am almost always right.

Doyle was wrong, but not by much, and it's really not his fault. He was probably looking at a high-level chart, which tend to leave out some of the little guys. You know, the unionized employees who actually do the work.

The management to staff ratio is more like 1:3, and senior management to staff closer to 1:19, not 1:5 and 1:22 as they told you.

And if anyone in Communications wants to dispute this, I refer them to their own staff list, last updated July 18 2006, which is where I got the numbers.

From the first day it was announced, no one I talked to, management or union, understood why publicity was outsourced. None of them thought it would save money. None of them thought it would bring us better PR.

None.

There was only animosity.

I work in a CBC department that's 1:5. Manager jobs in my area are never posted either. Why have a talent search when "friendly" appointments will do?