CBC/Radio-Canada president Hubert Lacroix on Tuesday said his organization has become more a multi-platform, digital ‘content company’ than a traditional broadcaster.

‘This ability to provide content across multiple platforms in a variety of formats is critical to our success. If the national public broadcaster is confined by its regulatory environment or confines itself through its own choices to conventional radio and television, it will die,’ Lacroix told an International Institute of Communications conference in Ottawa.

The CBC/SRC president said new technologies and platforms had enabled the transition away from pure-play broadcasting.

‘We no longer see ourselves as a broadcaster with separate and discrete media lines. We see ourselves, and we behave, as an organization in which all of our people collaborate and share resources to generate integrated content that we make available to audiences on whatever platform they prefer,’ he argued.

The downside, Lacroix added, is that new digital CBC content including podcasts, webcasts and mobile content is hard-pressed to penetrate a digital universe increasingly dominated by foreign content without regulatory support.

So the CBC on Dec. 5 will submit a written brief to the CRTC on how the regulator can ‘help ensure a strong Canadian new media presence,’ Lacroix added.