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The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is a national television network in Canada, and is akin to the BBC in that it is primarily government-funded (although, unlike the BBC, the CBC airs commercials).
Prior to relocating to the UK where he created series such as The Avengers and Doctor Who, Sydney Newman, a Canadian, worked for the CBC.
In 1964, the CBC became the first North American broadcaster of Doctor Who when it began airing the early William Hartnell-era stories, but the network cancelled its broadcasts after about a year.
In 2005, history repeated itself when the CBC hosted the North American broadcast premiere of the revived series, initially broadcasting the show only a couple of weeks after its UK telecast (and many months before American broadcasts of the revived series began).
The CBC also received screen credit for contributing development funds towards the new series. Graeme Burk, writing in the June 2009 issue of Enlightenment (#151), however, states that it wasn't a funding deal, so much as it was an acquisition deal. Burk writes that the CBC provided funding for the BBC series The Tudors, and as such was able to provide creative input, while there was "no real weight" with the CBC's co-producer credit on Doctor Who.
The 2005 broadcasts were sponsored by TV Guide magazine, and Christopher Eccleston videotaped a series of introductions and "bumpers" in which he discussed the series and its characters and also promoted a contest run by TV Guide and the CBC, the first prize being a trip to Wales to visit the set of Doctor Who. One phrase coined during one of the bumpers, "Hands off the TARDIS - Doctor Who will return", continued to be used on commercial bumpers into the 2008 season (albeit spoken by an announcer and no longer by Eccleston).
Most broadcasts of the 2005 season ended with a brief, Doctor Who Confidential-style look behind the scenes, and the CBC also compiled its own version of Confidential for its website. The CBC was criticised for editing episodes for length (due to the need to fit in commercials) and for editing out the cliffhanger resolution on World War Three.
On December 26, 2005, the CBC aired The Christmas Invasion, one day after its UK showing. For this occasion, Billie Piper recorded special introductions and bumpers, wearing an outfit with the Canadian-iconic "Roots" logo. This was the last time the CBC's broadcasts of the series came close to coinciding with that of the BBC. The CBC also discontinued the practice of recruiting the show's stars to record promotional material such as bumpers.
In 2005, it was also announced that the CBC would co-produce the first season of Torchwood in much the same capacity as it did Doctor Who.
Beginning in 2006, broadcasts of Doctor Who became less timely on the CBC, as the broadcaster chose not to air the series until well after its broadcast in the UK, but still before the US broadcast. The second series was also interrupted (in-between the two-parter The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit) by a lengthly mid-season break. As a result, the Canadian release of the 2nd Series DVD set actually occurred the week before the CBC broadcast the series finale. As a result of the mid-season break, the 2006 Christmas special, The Runaway Bride was not aired during the holiday season.
In 2007, the CBC aired the third series of Doctor Who, with the episodes beginning a couple of weeks prior to the season finale airing in the UK. In an unusual decision, the Christmas special, The Runaway Bride aired in an after-midnight time slot several hours after the season premiere, Smith and Jones.
Meanwhile, nearly a full year after it had aired in the UK, broadcast of the first series of Torchwood on the CBC occurred in the fall of 2007, after the third series of Doctor Who, even though the season finale of Torchwood led into the season finale of Doctor Who. The CBC aired the more adult-oriented Torchwood generally intact, except for censoring certain words of dialogue and making cuts for commercial time.
Ironically, the 2005 through 2007 series were all scheduled following the CBC's broadcasts of Coronation Street, which was an ongoing ratings nemesis of the original series in the 1980s.
In 2008 it was announced that the CBC would no longer be funding Torchwood and would not air the second series (it was subsequently aired by a competing network, Space, about five months after its UK broadcast). It was rumored that the CBC had also dropped its funding for Series 4 of Doctor Who, which was supported by the fact the CBC no longer received screen credit on Series 4 episodes, but the CBC later said it was still supporting the series.
In May 2008, after months of speculation by Canadian fans, the CBC announced it would belatedly air the fourth series starting on September 19, 2008 in the same Friday-night timeslot formerly occupied by Torchwood, months after the broadcast of the series in both the UK and US. Although there was initial speculation that the network would split the season into two halves as it did with Season 2, ultimately it was announced that the series would be shown unintrerrupted to its conclusion in December. The series was no longer paired with Coronation Street in its new timeslot, instead it followed reruns of The Rick Mercer Report, a Canadian variant on Jon Stewart's Daily Show.
Controversially, the network chose not to broadcast the 2007 Christmas special, Voyage of the Damned, meaning Canadian viewers were not given a resolution to the previous season's cliffhanger. As of June 2009 there has been no announcement as to whether the special will ever be aired by the CBC. On 18 November 2008, the DVD box set of the fourth season was released in Canada, even though the CBC broadcasts still had 4 episodes left. (The CBC either did not attempt to, or they were unsuccessful in, delaying the Canadian release of the set; unlike Space which was able to delay the Canadian release of Torchwood Series 2 on DVD until after its broadcasts of the show had concluded.)
A major fan controversy erupted when the CBC's broadcast of the Season 4 finale Journey's End on 12 December 2008 was severely edited to approximately 44 minutes from the original 63 minutes in order to fit a standard 60-minute timeslot, with commercial breaks. This resulted in major narrative scenes being deleted[1], with reviewers later commenting it rendered the episode hard to follow. The CBC only made the uncut episode available for a brief time in streaming format on its website. The CBC subsequently did not air the 2008 Christmas special, The Next Doctor.
Despite calls on fan forums and in blogs for Space to take over broadcasts of Doctor Who, in January 2009 the competing network said it had no plans to do so. However, Space subsequently announced that it would broadcast the 2008 Christmas special The Next Doctor on 14 March 2009, leading to speculation that the CBC would be dropping the programme.[2] This was confirmed a few weeks later with an informal announcement that Space would air the second special Planet of the Dead in June 2009, followed by the remaining specials and the 2010 season.[3]
On 1 June 2009, Space officially announced that it had taken over Canadian broadcasts of new episodes of Doctor Who, retroactively beginning with The Next Doctor, continuing with Planet of the Dead airing in late July, and continuing on with the remaining specials and the 2010 season. In March 2010, Space will also obtain the rights to air the first four seasons of the revived series, with the exception of Voyage of the Damned (which has yet to air on CBC), which will become available in April 2010.[4]
It is not yet known whether Space will continue the funding arrangement that had previously existed between the CBC and BBC.
Criticism
An example of the criticism levelled towards the CBC and its recent handling of Doctor Who can be found in the article "National Dreams" by Graeme Burk, published in the June 2009 issue of Enlightenment (#151), a magazine published by the Canadian Doctor Who Information Network. In his critique of the situation, Burk notes that after a strong first season in 2005, which involved large amounts of promotion, the network seemed to forget that it had a hit series. Burk alleges that changes in management at the network resulted in loss of interest, and that the network missed out on numerous opportunities to promote the series, such as in 2008 when John Barrowman was in the country for several weeks co-hosting the CBC production of the competition series How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?, yet the network never attempted to recruit the actor to help promote Doctor Who. At one point, according to Burk, citing an earlier article in Enlightenment, some officials at the CBC weren't even aware the network had a co-producer credit.
CBC Bold
A secondary CBC-sponsored broadcast of Doctor Who began in the fall of 2008 when the the CBC-sponsored digital cable channel Bold began airing reruns of Series 3, with Series 4 reruns commencing in January 2009 (however, Bold aired The Runaway Bride instead of Voyage of the Damned). Presumably Bold's broadcasts of Doctor Who will cease by March 2010 when most available episodes transfer to Space.
