So we’ve all read the reports about what CBC’s head honchos told the Heritage committee, but what really went on in that room?You won’t find out on their website.

I tried, given that our president encouraged those with concerns to “examine the transcript of the broader discussion”.

Here’s the full text of the meeting minutes:

The witnesses made statements and answered questions.

Ah, thanks. At least it beats the committee’s FAQ:

There is no data currently available for this item.

Instead, I got some data from someone who was actually in the room.

“There’s a big square table with about 30 people around it, with the CBC bigwigs seated at foot of table,” said Katy Heath-Eves of CBC’s media relations. “They began by speaking for two minutes each about the corporation’s strategic direction and priorities – nothing earth shattering.”

Then there was a carefully orchestrated Q&A session, with each committee member allowed something like seven minutes to ask a question and have it answered to their satisfaction.

That’s where the fun began. Jim Abbott (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage) took on the NHL question, NDP heritage critic Charlie Angus tackled reality TV, and then the brass “got their hands slapped” about Prairie Giant.

Testiest of all was Tom Lukiwski, Conservative MP for Regina-Lumsden-Lake Centre (who was filling in for Conservative MP Chris Warkentin from Peace River.) He used the opportunity to take umbrage “on behalf of all Canadians” for the film – a repeat of his gripe in Parliament that the production was “a dishonest portrayal of Saskatchewan history”. (Apparently his son was somehow involved in the production, but presumably not the dishonest bits.)

Heath-Eves said that the CBC executives came off well on other issues. Richard Stursberg used stark numbers to illustrate the economics of airing Canadian drama instead of American simulcasts. Robert Rabinovitch spelled out what CBC really needs: a clear, up front “contract with Canadians” outlining what they want from their public broadcaster, so CBC can figure out how much it would cost.

“It was strong, and convincing,” Heath-Eves said.

I’ll take that over falling off a chair.

——

Speaking of links…

It’s nice to finally link to the proper standing committee site, instead of the default one that gets inserted whenever I type Canadian Heritage. Tod set up WordPress with aLinks, which automatically inserts links to frequently used keywords. That’s really cool, if it’s what you actually want to link to. But it’s not always as clever as it thinks.

For instance: When I was travelling the globe, I met the Governor-General of Australia, who talked about his new national post office building.

Does anyone know how to manually override or remove aLinks? Please let me know. There’s also an ugly line break problem after links in Internet Explorer that I’m trying to fix…

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	Our Mandate	Posted at 11:10 am (29 Sep 2006)

Personal highlight from yesterday’s presentation before the standing committee on Canadian Heritage: assurances from CBC president Robert Rabinovitch that CBC won’t do “shows that stress plastic surgery, sex and humiliation [and the] eating of insects.” (All at once? Imagine the ratings!)

The comment was a response to a grilling over reality television by NDP heritage critic Charlie Angus. He brought up the dreaded issue of The One, as well as statements Rabinovitch made to the committee a year ago stating that CBC would steer clear of reality television. Rabinovitch said those statements were ambiguous – we do reality TV, just nothing yucky.

I have nothing to add… so here’s some background information on what we’ll be missing out on.

• - Bug eating is formally known as “entomophagy“
• - There are 1,462 recorded species of edible insects
• - They all look gross on a plate
• - To make corn borer cornbread muffins, just add corn borers to cornbread
• - Live termites are 350 calories per 100 Grams, 23 per cent protein
• - In China, beekeepers are considered virile, because they regularly eat larvae from their beehives.

And finally, the four cardinal rules for eating bugs:

• - Always try to cook insects
• - Never eat bugs you find dead
• - Don’t eat bugs that bite back
• - If it smells really bad, don’t eat it

Hakuna matata!

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	The CRTC	Posted at 1:20 pm (28 Sep 2006)

I was wrong. It turns out that the future of CBC may not be that far from the vision laid out by former CBC president Tony Manera on Monday.

Manera’s first two points were also the most controversial: eliminating hockey and local supper-hour news.

1) At the end of the current contract, CBC should stop broadcasting professional hockey….Hockey fans will still be able to watch hockey on private networks, and the CBC talent will go wherever the game goes. This measure will have a negative financial impact on CBC….At any rate, there are sound reasons to believe that CBC may not be able to match private sector bids for hockey rights in the future.

Those “sound reasons” were brought up at yesterday’s Q&A with the committee on Canadian Heritage. And CBC president Robert Rabinovitch didn’t duck from them:

If in fact the NHL goes to CTV and it’s distinctly possible, I think it would be very unfortunate because it’s the oldest mandate we have at the CBC, but it is distinctly possible, we will have to seriously re-evaluate almost everything about English Television.

As Richard Stursberg pointed out, no hockey would mean an additional 400 hours of airspace to fill, and $100 million less to do it with.

Where did this sudden frankness about the spectre of losing hockey come from? Certainly CBC is still smarting from losing the Olympics, though we pulled off some recent wins on World Cup soccer and curling.

As reported here, we know CTV is preparing an massive bid for hockey - some speculate as much as $1.4 billion.

It seems unlikely the NHL would turn down a higher bid just to honour CBC’s long hockey tradition. There’s an argument to be made that CBC can offer a greater reach, and therefore greater exposure.

And there’s also an argument to be made that giving hockey to CTV would knock CBC out of the picture for good. That’d leave CTV with a monopoly, and the ability to set terms for the next contract.

Next battleground: local supper-hour news. Here’s Manera again:

2) CBC should drop local television supper-hour newscasts, which have not been adequately resourced for some time, except in locations where there is insufficient diversity of coverage by the private sector. The savings should be redirected, first to radio, for enhanced coverage of local news, and secondly to national and international radio and television newscasts.

That’s apparently the preoccupation of executive vice president Richard Sturbsberg as well, who said yesterday that local newscasts have been in decline for 15 years.

According to Robert Rabinovitch:

The numbers quite frankly are unacceptable. They’re too low by a long-shot. And we have to ask ourselves some very fundamental questions about what it is we want to do.

Apparently that means “going back to the drawing board and re-evaluating everything on the local and regional news front.”

Obviously, that’s a cause of concern for everyone working in local and regional news. This afternoon, Rabinovitch sent out a clarification to employees about the local news pilots:

I would like to stress that my comments were not in any way meant to disparage individual employees. Rather, if you examine the transcript of the broader discussion we had around local news, you will see that my remarks were in reference to our institutional competence vis a vis what the privates are doing in local news. For them, local is a news priority. For us, local news has not been a primary focal point in the last six years, but we know how important it is to Canadians.

So, what’s your take? Can we afford to keep CBC in the hockey and local news games? Can we afford not to?

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	Hockey Night in Canada, Programming, The CRTC	Posted at 12:06 pm (28 Sep 2006)

Wow, where to begin?

Yesterday was a double whammy for CBC brass. They filed the corporation’s submission to the CRTC’s Television Policy Review, and they were grilled by the standing committee on heritage.

Some of the headlines:

- CBC could lose hockey and local news

- CBC wants to charge fees for cable and satellite users

- CBC does reality TV, but we don’t eat bugs

Each of these items is worthy of a heated debate, so I’ll file the details in separate stories.

In the meantime, here’s your homework:

• - Check out the CBC.ca story on the heritage presentation
• - Read the Corporate news release
• - Extra credit: read the full 68-page submission to the CRTC

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	Financial, The CRTC	Posted at 10:46 am (28 Sep 2006)

Ever so often CBC.ca streams live video for special events. In most cases this is a feed from CBC Newsworld but can really be from any CBC network or channel.

Our turn around time is approximately 5 minutes from the time we get the word to when the stream is live on the Internet. How is this possible? Read below to find out.

Getting The Video

All of the video that goes to air is funneled through Television Master Control in Toronto. This is great for us since all of the CBC.ca infrastructure is located in Toronto.

The video is provided by us from a group called Broadcast Engineering. We have a Leitch Video Router that allows us to direct multiple video inputs to up to 4 outputs. Attached to these four outputs are video encoders running windows media encoder.

We also have the ability to use “pre-integration” video. That is video that does not have any commercials. This video is used for on-demand content like the “News at Six” videos.

Distributing The Video

The video is encoded using Windows Media Encoder and delivered to our Windows Media Server. All of the video encoders at CBC.ca use the Osprey line of video capture cards from Viewcast. They provide a lot of advanced features not found in consumer grade video capture cards. These features include closed captioning support, in-hardware video overlays, and duplex access to the hardware (which allows you to have more than one program access the video capture device).

From there our CDN picks up the video for distribution on the Internet.

Once the stream is working various users at CBC.ca are informed and links to the video are placed on the website.

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	CBC.ca web site, Under the Hood	Posted at 9:46 am (28 Sep 2006)

Diminutive English star Bob Hoskins has joined the cast of the upcoming CBC-TV miniseries The Englishman’s Boy, according to stories by CP and Reuters.

Hoskins, who you can see in theatres now in Hollywoodland will play a 1920s movie mogul in a cast that includes Nicholas Campbell (Da Vinci’s Inquest), Michael Therriault (Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story), R.H. Thomson (Road to Avonlea) and Michael Eisner in the title role.

The two-part miniseries, an adaptation of the Governor-General’s Award-winning book by Guy Vanderhaeghe, is currently shooting in Saskatchewan.

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	CBC Television, Drama	Posted at 9:47 am (27 Sep 2006)

I like Google News, and it’s great to see CBC.ca stories heavily promoted in this news aggregator. But I’m puzzled by the way they mash up their top stories and their accompanying graphics.

See, the graphics aren’t really “accompanying” - they pull a headline from one story and a picture from another.
I suppose this lets them add another source to each headline, but it’s misleading. Sure, they identify the sources of each, but the layout still gives the impression that the pictures go with the stories - like they do everywhere else on the web.

Worse, the photos don’t always match. At 10:00 this morning, the top Google News story was “Israeli court sets free Palestinian deputy premier.”

The headline linked to a story from a source called AKI (Adnkronos International, an Italian news agency):

Jerusalem, 27 Sept. (AKI) - An Israeli military court ruled on Wednesday morning to release the Palestinian deputy prime minister Nassar al-Shaer, pan Arabic tv network Al Jazeera reports. He was arrested by Israeli soldiers on 19 August in Ramallah for his activities within the Hamas Islamic movement.

That story had no graphic, but there was one purportedly from E Canada Now (even though when you clicked there, it the story had no image.)

The problem? That’s not Nassar al-Shaer, deputy PM of Palestine. It’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, former president of Egypt. Who died in 1970.

By 10:15, the problem went away, because Google News rotated in new sources for both story and photo. It switched from AKI to one by Swissinfo and then other sources. By 10:30 it had fallen off the top spot, down to the More Top Stories section.

The E Canada Now story, “Israelr Releases Nasser Al-Shaer” (Israelr?) was still in the Google News rotation for that story, with no photo of either Nasser.

But on the site, they’ve fixed both the spelling of Israel, and the photo of Nasser.

So there’s the double-edged sword of getting your news story on Google: while it’s great promotion, it can also introduce problems, and archive the ones you make yourself.

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	Technology	Posted at 8:11 am (27 Sep 2006)

Anyone want to fly around the world, talk to interesting and sexy people, and become famous? Thought not.

Oh, wait, you do? OK then, hie thee to CBC Halifax for tomorrow’s auditions in the Fashion File Host Hunt.

After 17 years, Fashion File host Tim Blanks is stepping down, and the person to step up will be decided via reality TV.

Job description:

• - travelling the world covering fashion
• - interviewing top designers and models
• - writing a column for Fashion Magazine
• - making the season’s fashions accessible to a broad audience

However, “enjoys ogling beautiful people” won’t cut it. You’ll need fashion knowledge, journalism skills, a good resume and (preferably) a video reel. But you’ve got until Oct. 9 to put those together.

If you can’t make it to Halifax, the Host Hunt will be in Montreal Sept. 29 & 30, Calgary Oct., Vancouver Oct. 4 & 5 and Toronto Oct. 10, 11 & 12. Check the site for details.

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	CBC Newsworld	Posted at 12:47 pm (26 Sep 2006)

A couple of controversial columns on the future of the CBC:

On Saturday, there was a National Post piece by Robert Fulford called The lessons I learned at CBC.

Fulford characterizes CBC employees as follows:

In their own quiet way, CBC people have become a remarkable cult, the proprietors of a vast reservoir of smugness they are incapable of recognizing as such. For generations, they have been constructing a body of impregnable, self-regenerating opinion.

This isn’t just the usual caricature of senior management - Fulford extends it all the way down the line.

As employees they are pre-selected and their views are pre-recorded, like most of their programs. A single rule governs all personnel selection: Like hires like. That principle, followed for seven decades, produces seamless intellectual agreement in all corners of the staff. Occasionally a few oddballs somehow slip through the screening process. They are allowed to hold unofficial views, providing they have the good sense not to express them. Otherwise, the CBC encourages everyone to speak up.

Riiiiiiight.

If you poke around the web a bit, you’ll see that one year ago, Fulford collected paycheques for articles about the lockout (”seamless intellectual agreement?”) and blogging (the “good sense not to express” our opinions?) - but presumably those don’t count.

Fulford must know what he’s talking about. According to his resume, he was employed here as recently as 1993.

Then on Monday, former CBC president Tony Manera (at least he was here until ‘95) wrote a piece for the Ottawa Citizen called How to save CBC (subscription only.)

He unrolls a seven-point plan which includes:

• - Scrapping hockey coverage
• - Ditching local supper-hour TV news
• - Less advertising
• - More drama
• - Relaxing CanCon requirements for privates, but giving their tax credits and subsidies to CBC

Just a guess, but I’m thinking that’s not the exact plan that the current president and VPs will be presenting to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage tomorrow.

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	Media Coverage	Posted at 10:53 am (26 Sep 2006)

Today’s Globe has an odd CBC personality tidbit: for the first time in 70 years, Lister Sinclair is beardless! It seems that nursing staff at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital accidentally shaved it off last Wednesday. And how did the owner of Canada’s most thoughtfully-stroked chin respond? “I should have told them I wear a beard.”

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	Asides	Posted at 1:31 pm (25 Sep 2006)

So, how was Word on the Street? (Unfortunately I have to skip it each year to put on a birthday party for my little girl. But I’ve got Dora the Explorer cake to last the week!)

Here are some comments from CBC staffers who worked the Toronto event, which saw an estimated 200,000 visitors:

The CBC missed an opportunity to participate in the 2005 edition of the annual book and literacy festival in Toronto due to an unexpected interruption. So this year, the CBC went big, with a stage and tent at the north end of Queen’s Park opposite the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto. The day started with a staged Metro Morning featuring Andy Barrie and company, followed by the weather team from CBC-TV, Hot Type’s 10th anniversary, Writers and Company, and closed with a conversation and reading from Linden McIntyre. His new memoir is about growing up in Cape Breton.

Fans of the CBC pored through books and CDs from the CBC Shop as frequently as the rains came. The booth featured CBC Radio One, Newsworld and the team from the Digital Archives website. And while the fans enjoyed the face-to-face contact with staff, they had to shout over a diesel generator powering the stage only a few metres away. But their spirits were lifted when Hot Type released their 10th Anniversary designer cupcakes. Alas, by then the staff needed oxygen and dry clothes. Maybe they can be moved north of the generator next year?

Here’s another:

Word on the Street is a wonderful opportunity for CBC outreach. On my way down in the morning, I walked into my favourite local coffee shop (the Coffee Tree, they roast their own) for a cup to take with me on the subway, and my bright red “staff” shirt was a dead giveaway that I work here.

I had one inquiry about what would be at the CBC booth from someone planning to show up later. And while working at our Archives Website table, I was pleased to spread the word about the treasure trove that is contained here on Front Street.

But I was also pleased to pass along an inquiry from two Ideas fans, and a CD recording of memoirs from a delightful nonagenarian who wanted to speak to someone from Tapestry because, “I’m an interesting person.” These events always serve to reinforce my pride in what CBC does do right.

Any reports from Vancouver or Calgary? Let us know how it went.

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	Community Events	Posted at 9:52 am (25 Sep 2006)

Now here’s a feisty discussion!

Wednesday’s episode of The Big Picture with Avi Lewis has, perhaps predictably, caused quite an uproar.

The Root of All Evil? was billed as “a scathing indictment of religion’s growing power in the post 9-11 world.” It featured a documentary by UK scientist and famed atheist Richard Dawkins (nickname: “Darwin’s rottweiler”), who traveled the world to take on fundamentalist religious leaders of all stripes.

The debate didn’t end with the televised one following the documentary. It lives on at the show’s discussion board - where the conversation has reached 23,000 words since Wednesday alone!

There’s another debate going on at the Teamakers Forum where it was pointed out that protest began before the show even went to air. The “politically conservative” Proud to be Canadian site advised people to complain to the CBC Ombudsman ahead of time (and boycott our sponsors, and constitutionally ban the CBC), because

“The liberals’ Godless liberal-left fundamentalist channel, the state-run CBC, is being used again tonight to promote their religion and their hate, on your dime.”

(This despite the fact that one of the site’s own columnists, Joseph Ben-Ami, was to appear on the show.)

This week’s The Big Picture, Can We Save Planet Earth? features a doc by Sir David Attenborough – the voice beneath those chomping sharks and pouncing leopards on Planet Earth.

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	CBC Television, Shows	Posted at 9:00 am (25 Sep 2006)

If you live in Toronto, you’ve probably seen this week’s issue of Eye Weekly, with its cover story on CBC-TV’s fall lineup. (“Surviving the fall”, the cover proclaims, and “Your Tube” inside - which are clever enough.)

Unfortunately, the cleverness ends there. Joshua Ostroff’s piece (which runs but a single page, with an opposing page of promos for new series) doesn’t really have much to say, other than the familiar argument that CBC is too safe, and should stop trying to be all things to all people.

He does have an interesting bit on the million-viewer question: what sort of reach should CBC-TV programs expect?

“When Da Vinci went on the air in ‘98, I was hearing many of the same [ratings] arguments,” [Da Vinci’s Inquest creator Chris] Haddock says, noting that his first CBC series, Mom P.I., was cancelled in 1990 because it only got 900,000 viewers, numbers CBC would kill for nowadays.

That scribbly cover logo – which Ouimet points out is from the ‘70s, rotated, and has too many pieces – is certainly odd (there on the sidewalk, it looked a bit like a personalized picket sign from a year ago.)

The credibility issues persist inside, too – the author says that CTV news is hosted by Lloyd Bridges, and misspells the icon Pierre “Burton”. (You can have your citizenship revoked for that!)

(They’ve changed Lloyd to Robertson in the online edition, but not Berton. Didn’t he make snowboards?)

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	CBC Television, Media Coverage	Posted at 7:30 am (25 Sep 2006)

This Sunday (Sept. 24) is Word on the Street, an annual book extravaganza taking place in Vancouver, Calgary, Kitchener, Toronto and Halifax. As usual, CBC will be there with bells on. Well, not literally.

In Vancouver, there’s much ado about hockey:

Inspired by the launch of Hockey: A People’s History, we’ve gathered as many hockey authors and events as possible for hockey fans and book lovers alike. And among the novels, storytelling, poetry (Haiku Night in Canada!) and players we have on hand to celebrate Canada’s game throughout the day, we are very honoured to present none other than Roch Carrier to read his classic, The Hockey Sweater (in English and in French). Mr. Carrier will also read, in French, from his most recent novel.

In Calgary there’s Ian Brown, host of CBC’s Talking Books. He’ll be at the Dennis Massey Main Stage at 12:15 p.m.

For those planning to attend the Toronto Word on the Street, be sure to drop by the CBC  Stage, starting with a “Mini Metro Morning” at 11:00, followed by Weather Centre demos, and CBC personalities including Evan Solomon, Eleanor Wachtel, Heather Hiscox, Don Newman, Carol Off, Linden MacIntyre and Bob McDonald. (You can see the full Toronto lineup on this .pdf.)

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	Community Events, Toronto, Vancouver	Posted at 12:19 pm (22 Sep 2006)

Yesterday the Treasury Board approved the release of CBC/Radio-Canada’s $60 million in one-time funding for this fiscal year. (Am I crazy, or didn’t that start April 1st?)

Good news, although there’s still that pesky “one-time” prefix, meaning CBC has to apply for it every year. I believe this is the sixth “one-time” year in a row.

The cash isn’t in hand yet – according to CBC President Robert Rabinovitch, it becomes part of something called the Government’s Supplementary Estimates, which will be tabled in Parliament in November and voted on in December. Barring an election, of course.

(Do check out the new Budget site from the Department of Finance Canada – with a header that incorporates a talking Jim Flaherty!)

The next big day comes Wednesday, when CBC files its CRTC submission on over-the-air television. The same day, President and VPs appear before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage - for the first time since the change of government – “to talk about CBC/Radio-Canada’s plans for the future.”

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	Financial, The CRTC	Posted at 11:57 am (22 Sep 2006)