Sometimes people ask what the CBC’s policy is on profanity.
     As a rule, profane language is not used in our programming. However, in certain circumstances, because of the theme or dramatic tone of the program, coarse language is sometimes used. If this is the case, we exercise our strongest tools as a broadcaster to protect sensitive viewers. Adult programs are generally aired in appropriate time slots. In a earlier time slot, an advisory warning usually precedes the broadcast. In addition to this, our stand on the issue of profanity is defined in our manual, Journalistic Standards and Practices. Here is an excerpt from it:

4.1– As a general rule, profanity or expressions which would give offense to a considerable number of the audience must not be used. It is not practicable to prescribe a list of words and phrases which could not be broadcast in any circumstances, as public acceptance in this area is always changing…There are occasions when the broadcast of an expression normally considered offensive may be justified. The validity of such language within the context of the program must be evaluated. Furthermore, it must be apparent that editing out the expression would impair the integrity and significance of the information which is in itself important enough to justify broadcast.

What I fear the most as a broadcaster is swearing on air accidentally. I’ve got something of a “potty mouth” off-air; it’s something I’m trying to work out of my natural vernacular so that a swear word won’t pop out by accident. After I made this screw-up live on air, my co-host said during a break “You’re lucky you didn’t swear.”
     Damn straight.

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	CBC Policies	Posted at 4:00 am (31 Jul 2006)

Hi folks — I’ll be on vacation for a week (testing out a Sirius receiver along the way), so I won’t be posting much in the coming few days. I’ve pre-loaded the blog with some content which will be coming out once every day, so there’ll still be stuff to read.

Please note that while you can leave comments on any post, they likely won’t appear on the site until I’m back on August 7.

Photo: “Talking Books on Sirius” by Tod Maffin

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		Posted at 11:25 pm (29 Jul 2006)

Here’s the top of the Review section of today’s Globe and Mail:

Oh come on, CTV… er, Globe and Mail, now you’re just embarrassing yourself. At least this one is so blatant, it’s almost funny. I mean, they could have superimposed the CBC logo with a skull and crossbones.

Personally, I would have gone with:

But I guess people might have caught on that the Globe and Mail is owned by the same company that owns CTV, a direct competitor to CBC Television. Gee, who said media consolidation was a bad thing?

(Er, incidentally, Globe, we’re still waiting for that retraction and apology…)

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	The Media Landscape	Posted at 11:43 am (29 Jul 2006)

The son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau will appear nude on CBC Television. Justin Trudeau is among the cast of a CBC television series and recently shot what the Ottawa Citizen calls a “fully exposed” nude scene.
     In 2003, he served (clothed) as a panelist on CBC Radio’s Canada Reads series, where he championed The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston.

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	Drama, The Odd File	Posted at 11:05 am (29 Jul 2006)

ABC’s cancellation of The One has forced schedule changes for CBC Television. Hustle, which had served as the Wednesday lead-in to The One, moves to Tuesday nights. Wednesdays will be home to feature films like Mission Impossible and Under the Tuscan Sun.

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	Asides, CBC Television, Programming, The One	Posted at 8:30 am (28 Jul 2006)

UPDATE: Just to reiterate (to help clarify some of the comments), CBC does not use any DRM.

CBC.ca offers over 25 different radio stations online for any internet user to listen to.

Being able to deliver so many stations to such a wide audience has many
challenges.

Step 1: Getting the Content
Because of the way the CBC Radio network is set up, not all of the Radio One and Radio Two feeds flow through Toronto. In order to get around that problem we use the CBC wide area network (the network that attaches all of the offices together) to get our encoded data back to the streaming server in Toronto.
   The encoder is a rack mounted machine located in the Radio Central Equipment Room in each region. Some regions however (like the northern ones) is available via satellite back in Toronto. In those cases, we just keep the encoder in Toronto.

Step 2: Encoding the Content
All of the Radio streams are encoded in windows media format using Windows Media Encoder in each region. Each encoder encodes two streams, a high bitrate (32kb/s) and a low bitrate (16kb/s).

Windows media was chosen for several reasons:

1. Rights Management. Unlike with the MP3 or Ogg format, Windows Media allows us to apply digital rights management rules to our live streams. Although no such rules currently exist, it does leave the possibility open in the future.

2. Robustness. The streams are delivered using RTSP or MMS. Two protocols that were designed to deliver real time data. Using RTSP/MMS over HTTP (which is how MP3s are delivered) also allows us that extra layer of “protection” against users who want to steal our content. It’s harder to rip data delivered over RTSP/MMS than it is over HTTP (however, still possible).
3. Scalability. Being a news organization, CBC.ca experiences huge spikes in bandwidth and demand when there is breaking news. Using windows media and windows media server allows to to meet that demand. I’ll explain how shortly.
4. Support. CBC has a mandate(http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/B-9.01/) to “be made available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and efficient means..”. The majority of computer users in Canada use Windows and are able to support playing Windows Media streams. Using a format that allowed a user to listen to CBC Radio online without having to download a 3rd party application (Real Player, Winamp, iTunes) fulfilled our mandate.

Step 3: Delivering the Content
All of the servers that run CBC.ca are located in Toronto. This is where
all of the encoded streams are delivered to.
   CBC.ca peers with an Internet exchange called TorIX(http://www.torix.net/). An Internet Exchange (IX) allows ISPs to pass traffic between one another for free. If a user is on TorIX (that is, they use an ISP that CBC peers with at TorIX) then all of the traffic for the radio stream will come from CBC.ca servers in Toronto.
   On the other hand, if a user is not on TorIX, then they will be directed to servers located elsewhere. If all of CBC.ca’s servers are full (because of a high demand) users will then be directed to the Akamai(http://www.akamai.net) network to get the stream.
   Akamai is a Content Distribution Network(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Distribution_Network) that CBC.ca uses to deliver content to end users in the most efficient means possible.
   All of this is possible by software that was developed in house. It allows us to provide it with business rules (an example rule would be: only send users to server B when they are on TorIX and Server C and D are full) to ensure that the end user gets the best experience for the lowest cost to CBC.ca.
   When you request a streaming asx file. The software does its magic and then rewrites the contents of that asx file on the fly. Your player then reads the asx file and fetches the content from the server.
   This software was so successful that myself plus others who worked on it   received a CBC.ca Award of Excellence(http://intranet/awards/online/awardsofexcellence/2004.htm) in 2004.

UPDATE: Just to reiterate (to help clarify some of the comments), CBC does not use any DRM.

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	Under the Hood	Posted at 12:12 am (28 Jul 2006)

ABC has cancelled The One: Making of a Music Star after dismal ratings. The show’s web site now reads: “There are no plans for additional episodes. Thanks to all who participated in and supported The One!”
     Personally, I didn’t think the show itself was all that bad. George Stroumboulopoulos did a great job hosting, and the show concept itself has proven itself as eyeball-worthy around the world. (Star Académie — which is basically a French version of The One — draws as much as half of the province’s entire population.)
     The problem is that the reality/competition show field is already way too busy. ABC simply got in too late. Were it to be among only a few competitors and it probably would have been a huge hit. But it tried to struggle for eyeballs in a space already crowded with Canadian Idol, Rock Star: Supernova, America’s Got Talent, So You Think You Can Dance, and Big Brother — all with their own characters and plotlines.
     Face it, even the most diehard reality-show fans have to, after a while, pick and choose which shows they are going to invest time into. For me (sadly), it’s Big Brother — a show where 14 people are locked in a house and vote each other out. But the thing is: I have a job and a life. I can’t keep up with a whole new set of contestants.
     Call it Reality Overload.
     A CBC official says plans for the Canadian version of The One are still moving forward which I think is a good thing. But timing will be critical. Let’s hope it doesn’t launch when there aren’t 492 other competition/reality shows on.

From the blogs:

• The Stroumboulopouli:”Man! Give a show time to build a following. ABC is a jerk! It took the CBC for a ride on this one! Bad move ABC!”

• Torontoist: “Sorry George, we want to see you succeed, but love you too much to have America take you from our clutches.”
• Fine Young Journalist: “So who gets to walk the plank in the CBC management hierarchy? My money’s on ‘nobody.’ And if history is anything to go by, they’ll probably do the Canadian version in the fall as scheduled.”
• Antonia Zerbisias: “Still no management splat on the CBC atrium floor.”
• Mister Bryans: “Lets just ignore Canadian Idol and go for something with quality.”

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	The One	Posted at 9:38 pm (27 Jul 2006)

While the Globe and Mail’s Gayle Macdonald gleefully reported yesterday that a CBC staffer called the cops on the Canadian Idol crowd (Idol tapes across the street from the CBC building in Toronto), the Toronto Star’s media columnist, Antonia Zerbisias, actually picked up the phone and got some facts:

According to Constable Victor Kwong, a spokesperson for the Toronto Police Service, it was one of the Toronto paid duty officeers who called for extra units to assist with the safety of the gathering crowd. No citizen or CBC staffer called. It was a totally a Toronto paid duty officer.

Wow, Gayle. Slow news week, I guess? I mean, you reported the story as if it were factual, even though you didn’t name any sources and apparently didn’t didn’t bother to fact-check what “a CTV crew” told you.
     Hell, if I’d have turned in that kind of reporting in j-school they’d have flunked me.
     The Globe owes the CBC a retraction and an apology.
     Still, I can’t help wonder why the Globe would print something without even bothering with a basic fact-check like Zerbisias did.
     I mean, it’s not like the Globe and Mail and CTV are owned by the same company.
     Oh. Right.

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	Media Coverage	Posted at 9:36 pm (27 Jul 2006)

Congratulations to Julie Grenier, from CBC Television news in Ottawa. She was the winner of the $20 gift certificate from Chapters/Indigo. While the contest is closed, you can still take the survey and help provide direction to this blog.

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	About This Blog, Asides	Posted at 5:45 pm (27 Jul 2006)

John Paolozzi from CBC Radio 3 sent this to me… when your colleague says they eat, breathe, and sleep their job, maybe they’re not kidding! I kind of think maybe the shirt contest should be a "creative ways to use the CBC logo" contest.

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		Posted at 2:56 pm (27 Jul 2006)

Here’s some of the behind-the-scenes audio from Freestyle today, captured during one of the 90 second news breaks. You won’t be able to hear Matt and Kelly, the people "behind the glass."

A glossary of sorts to what you’ll hear:

• A reset: "Welcome back to Freestyle…"
• TTV: "TIme to voice" (how many seconds into the song do the lyrics start)
• Post: A moment in the song where something significant happens (like the drums start or the music changes in some way)

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	Behind the Scenes, Freestyle	Posted at 10:45 am (27 Jul 2006)

Today is the last day to enter the contest where you can win a $20 gift certificate from Chapters/Indigo. To enter, just take this very short survey. (It only takes about 60 seconds to complete.)

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	About This Blog	Posted at 6:37 am (27 Jul 2006)

CBC Radio 3 will repurpose editorial content from its Sirius Satellite service for its web site. The features cover aspects of Canada’s independent music scene. Starting today, you’ll not only be able to listen to these features, but also add them to your personal playlists.

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	Asides, CBC Radio 3	Posted at 6:33 am (27 Jul 2006)

Why big is better in the world of media: Critics of Globemedia’s takeover of CHUM are nostalgic for an era that never existed.

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	Asides, The Media Landscape	Posted at 1:41 pm (26 Jul 2006)

This fellow has posted step-by-step instructions on how to put your own CBC logo on a notepad or, for that matter, pretty much anything.

Amazing what you’ll find by subscribing to the CBC tag in Flickr.

Photo: “Final Result” by gnb

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	Fanatical Fans	Posted at 10:15 am (26 Jul 2006)