The election of the Conservative government in 1930, led by R. B. Bennett, made the future of the Eard Commission’s recommendations to favor public broadcasting uncertain, and the Canadian Radio League was formed to lobby for their implementation. He influenced public opinion in support of public broadcasting by reaching out to labor unions, farmers’ groups, business associations, churches, the Royal Canadian Legion, the Canadian Club of Toronto, newspapers, university presidents, and other influential public figures.
In 1932, the Canadian Radio-television and Broadcasting Commission (CRBC) was established as a public broadcasting body. During its creation, Bennett spoke about the need for public control over radio:
“This country must be assured of complete Canadian control of broadcasting from Canadian sources. Without such control, broadcasting will never become the agency through which national consciousness can be developed and maintained and national unity further strengthened.”
Journalists and contributing editors writing in the offices of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, photographed by Conrad Poirier (Montreal, 1944).
However, the commission had serious internal political problems, and in 1936 it was replaced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). The CBC was controlled by the national government and financed mainly by taxes (license fees) collected from radio owners. The CBC took over the regulatory role of the radio department and focused more on providing programs for the national network. However, private stations continued to exist and were allowed to rebroadcast CBC programs.
French-language services
In 1945, The Canadian Press (CP) established a French-language radio news service through its subsidiary Broadcast News, the first such telegraphic service for French broadcasters in North America.
The CBC established a French-language network in Quebec and surrounding French-speaking areas. Although the French-language service had competition from American stations, it proved to be quite conservative in technology and programming. It was closely tied to influential newspaper and church interests and was seen as a propaganda forum for Quebec’s traditional elites. It did not promote separatism or a sense of Quebec nationalism.
In 1969, the province of Quebec created its own radio and television system, breaking the monopoly of the federal CBC. Radio-Quebec became a tool of the provincial government and often presented separatist views.
The development of radio broadcasting in Canada, as in the United States, was delayed by a sharp conflict between the interests of newspapers and radio. When Charles Edwards became manager of Press News in 1944, radio stations in Canada and newspapers in Canada distrusted each other in competition for advertising money, and he was often the peacemaker, persuading them to cooperate in their best interests. On January 1, 1954, CP replaced Press News with a new subsidiary, Broadcast News (BN). The company worked in cooperation with private broadcasters and supplied news to private radio and television stations in Canada. Edwards traveled across Canada to improve television journalism and established annual regional meetings to raise standards for television news directors. He was the driving force behind the creation of the Radio and Television News Directors Association of Canada (RTNDA) in 1962, to seek equal access to all types of news sources at a time when government agencies were banning broadcast reporters from press conferences. By the time he retired in 1971, Edwards felt that he had brought peace between print news and television news, and that they had realized that one complimented the other in reporting breaking news.