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“I don’t think any media company is very good at [real estate] and we’re not, for sure,” Mr. Mattocks said.

Over more prosperous decades, the CBC has acquired a huge real estate portfolio, valued at about $1-billion.

Mr. Mattocks said selling some of the assets and leasing might free up money for the broadcaster’s core mandate, providing content.

The CBC’s operating grant has been continually chopped in the past few years. It also lost the right to broadcast Hockey Night in Canada in 2013, which produced a loss in advertising revenue, estimated at $225-million.

Those cuts led to 657 layoff notices in 2014 — 1,000 to 1,500 jobs are expected to be eliminated over the next five years.

The staff reductions mean the organization will need less physical space in future, Mr. Mattocks said.

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“The Broadcast Centre was built and opened before 1992, and in 1992 it was built for a different day,” he said. “Coast to coast, we had 12,500 people. We’re under 9,500 now, and headed lower than that.”

‘Parts of the building have not changed since ’92. I’ve got to tell you, they’re dreary and they’re dreadful’

The iconic blue and red building on Toronto’s Front Street West was constructed in the 1990s to consolidate the CBC’s once-scattered organization. Previously, its operations were spread among more than two dozen offices across the city, and the corporation was spending a small fortune on cabs and mailrooms.

But the centre was also built before the digital revolution changed how news was produced.

“The technology has changed dramatically. When you used to have someone edit video, you needed an edit suite that was 400 square feet and had a million dollars worth of equipment,” Mr. Mattocks said. “Now you edit video on your laptop.”