Slawko Klymkiw is the executive director of network programming at the CBC. His distinguished career at the network has seen him work as the executive producer of news and current affairs in Winnipeg and Toronto and head up CBC Newsworld. As a former executive producer, Klymkiw oversaw the development of the CBC ‘National Town Halls’ and the coverage of the South African elections. The leader of CBC’s transformation team, Klymkiw has a broad appreciation of the public broadcaster’s role in this challenging period.

He sat down to talk to Playback this April in Toronto.

PB: How has the programming at the CBC evolved over the past 50 years?

SK: The programming has done a fair job of representing the changes that have taken place to the medium and in Canadian society itself. In the ’50s and ’60s, the CBC was obviously a leader in broadcasting. We had a mixed schedule of American and Canadian programs. We were remarkably ahead of the curve on drama, on information programs and on current affairs shows. All of these things set trends and were groundbreakers. From our live dramas to On The Record, one of the first dramatic shows that took on the headlines of the day, to This Hour Has Seven Days, we began to build a Canadian ethos in television.

We went through the analog revolution, the cable revolution, the digital revolution, the new media revolution and have entered into the information age. At some point, we were a hybrid: partly private, partly public, a network with a significant amount of American content mixed with some Canadian content.

As the Canadian viewing public began to get a lot of choice, it was important for us, especially in the ’90s, to redefine ourselves and become distinctive in the marketplace. We had to remain a cultural institution, one that brought things to the Canadian public that it could not get anywhere else. So you saw the Canadianization of the schedule.

Some things don’t change: one is high quality. One is being Canadian. One is the ability to be innovative and take chances. One is to be a broadcaster that actually brings the country together for seminal, important events. If we continue to stay loyal to those kinds of things, we’ll always have a place in the landscape.

PB: How will convergence and new technologies affect you?

SK: An organization like ours has to learn that it is first and foremost in the content business. Whatever the distribution form is, whatever the platform is going to be, it has to be driven by meaning, by stories. We need to embrace that as a first principle. The second principle is that the stories need to work on a lot of levels: not simply on the television screen, not simply on the radio network. This place has to be able to adapt its content to the technological changes around it.

PB: How about competing with private broadcasters?

SK: The truth is that fragmentation is eating away at everybody. If people keep looking at it in the old ways, they’re doomed. In a marketplace the size of Canada, you have to look at a complementary strategy. We do things that, truth be told, the private broadcasters don’t particularly want to do. It’s valuable in a country that is fighting and searching for its identity to have a public broadcaster. Private broadcasters should make money. Ours is a cultural mandate; theirs is an industrial mandate.

PB: Is the CBC reaching out to new talent?

SK: When I turn on the television set now and see reporters from coast to coast on the national news and in all our programs, I see new people. It’s heartening. They’re younger people from both genders and ethnically mixed in a way that represents the demographics in this country.

When I walk into the Vancouver ZeD newsroom, it is remarkable to see that generation of Canadians working for us. It’s not simply age, it’s attitude: they all come from new media backgrounds and their sensibilities are different. I see it in the new people that have joined Disclosure, in the independent producers that we’ve been hiring recently and in the younger actors and writers.

PB: Do you foresee a stronger partnership between Radio-Canada and CBC?

SK: It’s a virtual goldmine. The four program directors are sitting down and looking at the possibilities. Television – French and English – has a huge number of projects on the docket that we want to do together. We do a lot of shared events already, mainly special music events. We’re looking at more opportunities for ZeD and Radio 3 to work together. We see a children’s strategy emerging that will have us all involved through radio, TV and new media.

PB: What is the CBC doing up north?

SK: Northern service provides important news and current affairs programs in indigenous languages. We see an opportunity to do more but it can’t be piecemeal. It has to be part of a larger set of objectives that can drive up the value of the entire network.

PB: What’s your assessment of where CBC is now?

SK: I’m biased on this. I’ve had my chances to leave the CBC. I haven’t for a whole bunch of reasons. I don’t know any organization in the world that is so passionate about its cause. We want to create programs that are watched and felt and cared about, news that brings the country together, current affairs that speaks to its soul and drama that informs and entertains.

I’ve never worked with more talented people than right now at the CBC. It’s a complicated place so it’s a struggle, but it’s a struggle all of us are willing to undertake. No one gets rich working here. They do it because they love the notion of the work and its possibilities.

I think the CBC will remain contemporary, insightful, relevant to people and we’ll have another 50 great years.