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Yet none of that now applies, as the CBC’s “premium” app bears witness. Absolutely nothing is stopping viewers, in Canada or around the world, from subscribing to the app, if they choose, the same as they now pay for HBO, or Netflix, or Amazon Prime: the only question is whether the content is worth the money. And what sort of content is likely to attract paying viewers? The kind that people value highly, that engages and absorbs them on a much deeper level than we used to associate with TV. When people talk about a “golden age” in television, that is what they are remarking upon. The good stuff, almost all of it, is on pay. For a paying audience, it turns out, is also a demanding one.

Indeed, nothing would prevent the CBC from moving its cable signal onto pay, as well. I don’t mean as a supplement to existing revenue sources, but as a replacement for them. It’s clear to just about everyone that advertising finance is fundamentally incompatible with whatever role there might still be for a public broadcaster: the kind of programming attractive to advertisers is exactly the kind readily available on the private networks. But the way to wean the CBC off advertising is not, as its CRTC submission maintains, to give it gobs more public funding ($400 million more, annually). It is to put it on pay: not just online, but on all its platforms.

While the internet makes regulation largely obsolete, it also makes it unnecessary

Though proposed as an antidote to advertising, public funding suffers from much the same basic problem: in either case, the broadcaster is accountable not to its viewers, but to someone else — advertisers or the government, whoever is paying the bills. The larger goal, then, should be for subscription fees to replace, not just advertising, but also the CBC’s public subsidy. The beneficiaries from this would not only be taxpayers, but CBC viewers: subsidy is not only no longer necessary, but an impediment to quality — the kind that, we can now see, comes from a direct relationship with a passionate, paying audience.