Don’t forget to carve your CBC logo pumpkin for our contest – the winner will be selected tomorrow. I received a handful of entries today, so the competition is heating up! Put a CBC logo on something round and orange (warning: basketballs don’t carve well), send me a snap, win a gift certificate. Trick or treat!

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	Asides, Fun Stuff	Posted at 2:52 pm (31 Oct 2006)

Canadians, and by extension the CBC, are being accused of hitting below the belt in the fight for the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Halifax and Glasgow are seen as the frontrunners to land the games, with the Nigerian capital of Abuja also in the running.

An Oct. 1 CBC documentary called The Feral Boys of Glasgow (CBC News: Sunday) shone a harsh light on Glasgow’s knife crime and gang violence problem:

In Canada, we tend to think of gang violence as something imported from the U.S. American culture is filled with music, music videos and movies depicting the “thug life.” But there is another place where gang culture is a fixture, and has been for over 100 years: Glasgow, Scotland.

The situation has become so bad that the United Nations recently declared Glasgow the most violent city in the developed world. Host Carole McNeil travels to Scotland, and brings you a report on the feral boys of Glasgow.

Glaswegians see the broadcast as a dig at Canada’s chief rival, and are crying foul. According to the Oct. 22 Sunday Herald,

GLASGOW’s bid to host the Commonwealth Games could be damaged by a Canadian documentary portraying the city as awash with gangland violence. One million viewers in the North American country watched harrowing scenes of teenage assaults in Scotland’s largest city.

The shocking images were part of what the programme called the city’s “public health catastrophe”.

(Nice to see high ratings being used against the CBC, no?)

The Oct. 29 edition of the Sunday Observer ran an item called Glasgow seethes at sports rival’s ‘dirty tricks’ (subhead: “Battle to host Commonwealth Games turns nasty”).

Although the Glasgow bid team to host 2014 has adhered to the etiquette of not rubbishing its rivals, they are privately seething at what they regard as dirty tricks being employed by their Canadian counterparts.

Last night, the director of Glasgow’s bid hit back at a Canadian documentary which branded the city as one of the most violent places in the world.

CBC, of course, says it was just straight up journalism. “To suggest the documentary was motivated by anything other than legitimate journalistic interest in a significant current social problem would be inaccurate,” CBC spokesman Jeff Keay told the Globe. (The article also says the United Nations recently ranked Glasgow the most violent city in the developed world.)

For the record, the CBC does not have a broadcasting deal in place for the 2014 games.

But why a piece on Glasgow, and why now? Host Carole MacNeil told the Sunday Herald she decided to make the show “after being made aware of Glasgow’s social problems” and to “de-racialize” gang violence.

I found low levels of education, one in six households wholly unemployed and the highest levels of single mums, lung disease, heart disease and depression. When you put that picture together, you think no wonder these kids are on the periphery. There’s no aspiration. That was the thesis of the documentary.

In a later Sunday Herald item, literary editor Alan Taylor had the following riposte:

In an ideal world, BBC Scotland would already be over there making a retaliatory programme showing what a hellhole Halifax is. In 2004, the latest year for which there are crime statistics, Halifax had the highest rate of violent incidents per head throughout Canada, a total of 71,000, two-thirds of which were committed by feral youths under 24.

The two competitors for “the friendly games” clashed earlier, when Halifax bid head Scott Logan commented that Glasgow’s bid could be harmed by London staging the 2012 Olympics. According to the papers, the rivalry also hurts Scottish first minister Jack McConnell’s recent efforts in “wooing Canadian Scots back to their homeland.”

Though she defends the documentary, Carol MacNeil says she understands the reaction. After watching the final cut, she joked, “I thought that I won’t be working for the Glaswegian tourist board”.

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	Media Coverage, Shows	Posted at 2:39 pm (31 Oct 2006)

It’s one thing to go skinny dipping with a Liberal hopeful or table decorating with a Leafs enforcer, but tonight’s the big one: Rick Mercer visits the Prime Minister.

According to the Mercer site,

Rick has a sleepover at 24 Sussex Drive with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Harper’s kids, Ben and Rachel

The piece is being heavily promoted on CBC, and there was a photo of Harper reading Mercer a bedtime story in the Ottawa Citizen. Quite a coup (though the PM also shot a cameo on Corner Gas a few weeks ago.)

According to Saturday’s Globe, Mercer’s personal highlight happened off camera, when he took the Lord’s name in vain while talking to his field producer. Seven year old Rachel Harper rans through the mansion screaming “Rick Mercer said a bad word!”

By the way, if you look down in the corner of that picture, you’ll notice the photo credit: “Deb Ransom, Prime Minister’s Office.” Last week we reported on a brouhaha over the PMO’s rejection of freelance photographer Dave Chan to take stills at the shoot. According to a source at Mercer, the uproar was “greatly exaggerated.”

Apparently the Mercer team doesn’t usually travel with a photographer. They take snaps with a small digital camera, and these pictures sometimes make the newspapers – but for the Sussex Drive shoot, the team decided to hire a professional. According to the source, the PMO informed them it wasn’t necessary because an official photographer covers the Prime Minister 24/7, and CBC told Chan to “stand down.”

So, there you go. A tempest in a teapot? Make it sleepy time chamomile.

For more photos of the Prime Minister in action, check out Stephen Harper’s photo gallery. You’ll even see the PM reading a story to a pair of kittens. I hope Mercer isn’t jealous!

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	Shows	Posted at 11:50 am (31 Oct 2006)

Behold! My masterful CBC pumpkin creation, carved last night with the assistance of my five-year-old (her role: touch pumpkin guts, say “ewwwww”, scamper off to draw. Later, ask why it is taking so long.)

If I can do it, so can you. And unlike me (or my daughter), your CBC pumpkin could win you $25 at the CBC shop. The “Exploding pizza, smashing pumpkin” contest has received zero entries so far, so the odds of winning look rather good.

What to do: Download the .eps or .pdf of the logo, carve it on something round, and e-mail me a picture. The most interesting picture wins a $25 gift certificate. That’s it!

Also, as I hinted earlier, CBC.ca now has some fantastic materials on pumpkins: A narrated slideshow on how to carve a pumpkin (the audio slideshow is new for CBC.ca), some fantastic pumpkin carving templates (designed by CBC Radio Sports’ Kevin Sylvester), a slideshow on Halloween chic then and now, and a spooky Halloween quiz.

There’s also information on staying safe for Halloween, and an In Depth on the $1.5 billion business of Halloween. And be sure to check out the CBC Digital Archives topic on Halloween and Tales of Canadian Ghosts, and the CBC News story debunking spooky myths.
By the way, I turned the seeds from this work of art into a tasty snack, using a couple of online recipes: roasted pumpkin seeds (the traditional, from allrecipes.com) and spiced pumpkin seeds (made quickly, in a frying pan – from BBC Food).

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	Fun Stuff	Posted at 1:29 pm (30 Oct 2006)

Here are some excerpts from the second part of Robert Rabinovitch’s interview with the subscription-only news service Cartt.ca.

(Excerpts from the first part of the interview were published here Oct. 17.)

In the new publication, Rabinovitch talks to Cartt.ca publisher Greg O’Brien about transmission technology, CBC Sports, local news and the 2005 lockout.

On the need for transmitters:

One of the phenomena that’s happened since satellite’s been introduced into Canada is we always used to talk about the underserved areas in terms of channel selection as compared to the (urban) areas. If you look at the numbers – and it’s in our (TV Policy Review) presentation – the larger number of people who don’t have satellite or cable delivery are in urban areas. They’ve chosen not to get it. If you go into the hinterlands, it’s almost all now satellite or cable.

On pro sports coverage:

We are committed to stay in professional sports – for a couple of reasons. Number one: It connects the country together. We feel that’s one of our responsibilities.

Number two: It helps finance our amateur sports programming. If it wasn’t for that, I don’t know if we could afford to continue to do amateur sports, because amateur sports are not cheap. We’ve always said our philosophy is when you see an athlete at the Olympics, it won’t be the first time you saw them because we’ll have shown them already. And you know, that is quite different from what you see on the specialty sports channels.

So, we are committed to pursuing professional sports. But we’re also committed to not overpaying.

We think it’s absolutely wrong for us to compete with the private sector to win professional sports by writing a big cheque. I’d like to win these things the way we did with FIFA, where our number was, I won’t say much less, but it was less than I know the private nets bid for it.

On CBC bidding on CFL rights:

Football – you know, whether we get it or not – I’m not so certain is that important anymore. We’ll have to have the Grey Cup, but when you look at the whole schedule and alternatives, maybe it should go only on specialty channels. We’ll see what happens.

On how soon after broadcast CBC could offer shows on demand:

The answer to that is that it’s going to be “soon.” It’s going to be like (ABC has shown) Desperate Housewives, literally the next morning.

In fact, the big discussion right now, or a big discussion right now with Nielsen’s – is in counting audiences and counting eyeballs. The people who watch it the next morning or two days later or three days later, should they be counted, from an advertising point of view?

The consensus right now is to say yes for the first three days. And BBC’s way of doing it is to say “the first week you’ll have the programming for free, after that you’re going to have to pay a price for it.”

On staying in local news:

As I said at the Committee, our numbers in local news are abysmal. I can’t say it in a nicer way. So the question is should we be in local news, or should we abandon it? Right now, my operating assumption, in my working with the board is that we want to be in local news. But if we want to be in local news, we’ve got to do it well. I think that’s something the public broadcaster can do, as more and more you’re finding private broadcasters are beginning to withdraw from local news because it’s not the profit centre it once was.

On the effects of the CBC lockout:

I still think there are people who are living in the past, very few. But when I talk to staff, the lockout is not an issue. In fact, some of them joke and say “lockout or strike, you call it what you want, which they wouldn’t have done a few months ago.”

It’s not something one wants to do very regularly, but… the fact of the matter is at the end of the day, we are very satisfied with the contract that we negotiated. We think we have the flexibility to move forward, and I think if people read the contract they will see that we did quite well. And I’m not boasting because I think the employees did very well as well.

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	Executives, Our Mandate	Posted at 10:09 am (30 Oct 2006)

Hi everyone, Tod here. Thanks for your kind and thoughtful emails over the last eight weeks. I am happy to put a few of the rumours to rest; to wit:

• I did not accept a pro-basketball contract with the Indiana Pacers (didn’t meet the weight requirement)
• I am not in the witness protection program and had nothing to do with those funny-smelling plants in my basement
• I did not fly to Paris to be a model in the upcoming “Geeks in Ginches” spread in Mon Dieu!
• I have not been hired by the Conservatives to develop a CBC Chairbot

The truth is I’d become quite ill and have been undergoing rather intensive treatment all this time. I’m back at home now and will be recuperating all next week, so I won’t be turning on my email for another week or so.
     I expect to restart blogging on InsideTheCBC.com mid next-week, and will be back on air mid-November.
     On a related note, I have decided to close my iloveradio.org site this weekend and will blogging instead at my personal blog at http://www.todmaffin.com/blog/
     Thanks again for your concern and I’m looking forward to being back!

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	About This Blog	Posted at 5:20 pm (27 Oct 2006)

Great news! I just heard from Tod Maffin, who asked me to pass along the news that he’s out of the hospital and returning to the blog shortly (could even be next week.) I’ve passed along your kind comments during his absence. I know Tod is looking forward to being back Inside the CBC. And it’s been a hoot pinch hitting for him!

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	About This Blog, Asides	Posted at 10:03 am (27 Oct 2006)

If column inches are any indication, Intelligence is clearly the good news story of the CBC-TV fall lineup. (This week, the Globe’s Andrew Ryan called it “the sharpest drama on Canadian television.”)

OK, you probably knew that already. Now for something new: I’m happy to say that the clever people behind the TV series have also got some pretty cutting-edge web projects in the works.

Here’s the scoop on what’s coming up, from an inside source worthy of Jimmy Reardon himself:

- An online video remix competition, in conjunction with Apple. You’ll be able to download and re-edit special Intelligence footage, and win prizes (not yet specified, but daddy needs a new iBook….)

- A series of audio podcasts discussing the topics raised on Intelligence, such as drug enforcement

- A major distribution deal that could see Intelligence air in multiple countries

There’s already a rather nifty game called The Mole on http://www.cbc.ca/intelligence – you conduct an audio sweep of a building and piece together a conversation from what you overhear. The best part: once you figure it out, you can submit your name to win prizes – props from the show that include spy gadgets and a year’s supply of rolling papers! I kid you not. Oh, and as far as I can tell, CBC employees ARE allowed to enter.

All told, this adds up to some rather forward-thinking program publicity. Like the show, the online activities are being driven by producer Chris Haddock, and are the result of his company’s multi-year convergence strategy.

Just as well, because according to my source, the program faces uphill battles both on air (scheduled to compete with House on Global, Law & Order: CI on CTV) and online (inability to stream episodes online, a la Corner Gas, due to digital rights issues.)

Then again, Brent Butt isn’t offering rolling papers… is he?

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	CBC Television	Posted at 10:21 pm (26 Oct 2006)

On Friday, the EAP unveiled a new logo (at right) before an audience of over 100 employees and volunteers in Ottawa. The event featured speeches by a number of CBC/Radio-Canada union leaders and senior managers, including George Smith and Arnold Amber. Here’s what the EAP has to say of the new look:

Dynamic, modern and minimalist, the new logo reinforces the program’s philosophy of mutual assistance. It’s an ideal opportunity to highlight the EAP’s relevance, as issues of employee wellness and engagement take on greater and greater importance in the workplace. The new logo will be publicized to employees through a poster campaign with the slogan “Because sometimes you need a helping hand.”

The EAP is a joint union management program. All CBC/Radio-Canada employees, retirees and their families are eligible for the program’s confidential counselling services.

Why the change? I asked Patrick Gagné, the program’s national administrator.

“We’ve had the same logo for the last 23 years. It hadn’t really changed at all,” Gagné said. “Like everyone else, we’re competing for people’s eyeballs.”

The new logo was designed internally in Montreal by Yannick Blanchet.

“The old one was very static,” Gagné said. “This one is more dynamic. It has more movement.”

[Right: The old EAP logo]

Gagné reminds employees that the EAP can help with almost any problem employees or their families might face, including financial, personal or psychological issues.

“Nothing is too big or too small,” he said.

Employees can access the EAP internally on the intranet.

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	Health and Wellness	Posted at 9:54 am (25 Oct 2006)

Prime Minister Stephen Harper shot a sketch with Rick Mercer at 24 Sussex Drive this weekend, and according to Harper’s press secretary Dimitri Soudas, they “had a great time” (though presumably there was no skinny dipping.)

A good time was not had, however, by Ottawa photographer Dave Chan. Mercer had hired him to take pictures of the event, but according to the Toronto Star, Chan was uninvited by Soudas because he had been a “critic” of Harper (he had also worked for Paul Martin.)

Instead, Soudas said the PMO would provide its own pictures.

That strategy had already caused an uproar in the press gallery, which met yesterday to discuss the issue of access to the Prime Minister.

Perhaps the PMO would like to shoot the Rick Mercer Report as well, if they have cameras?

Actually, they do – or at least Parliament does. You can watch all the comings and goings on the Hill, for free, on your desktop with ParlVu. If you dare.

There’s also Member of Parliament Television (MPtv), a joint venture of the House of Parliament and Garth Turner… but I think he got uninvited for being a critic too.

Picking on Mercer seems like a bad strategy (it didn’t work out that well for Conrad Black.) And it’s not like Mercer would invite people to Photoshop his face, or anything.

Still, the Prime Minister took a jab at Mercer earlier this month, when he discussed his government’s environmental plan:

Canada’s Clean Air Act wasn’t developed on the fly at a press conference. It wasn’t written at an international meeting being held in an exotic location. And we’re certainly not going to hire a comedian to promote it.

He was referring, of course, to the One Tonne Challenge, which the previous Liberal government had paid Mercer to promote. (That program was also unceremoniously uninvited, as I blogged elsewhere.)

Mercer said he wouldn’t respond to the shot, but later commented, “Never heckle a comedian.”

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	The Media Landscape	Posted at 1:23 pm (24 Oct 2006)

Sounds like a new martial arts film, right? Not exactly. It’s the title manqué of a little contest I’ve whipped up for InsideTheCBC.com readers.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it: carve your own CBC pumpkin!

I’ve included a downloadable CBC logo/gem/icon/exploding pizza, which you can print out at whatever size fits your pumpkin.

Dowload .pdf

Download .eps

The prize, such as it is: a $25 gift certificate for the CBC Shop.

OK, so it ain’t the 6/49, but heck, it’ll get you a retro T-shirt or a HNIC hat.

How to enter:

Take a photo of your creation and e-mail it to me.

Bonus marks for adding your own pieces of flair to the pumpkin design, or for photo “interestingness” – appearing with your pumpkin, odd settings, etc.

No legal mumbo jumbo – I’ll just pick the winner and announce it on Nov. 1, along with the photo. If there are enough entries, I’ll create a page for the photos on this site.

Oh, and your pumpkin doesn’t have to be Pantone red 485C.

Stay tuned – I’m told there’s more pumpkiny goodness coming soon from CBC.ca.

(For those too lazy to enter, or who can’t be trusted with knives, try the CBC Kids game Pumpkin Patch Blast)

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	Fun Stuff	Posted at 12:22 pm (23 Oct 2006)

Today is the one-year anniversary of CBC Radio 3 host Alexis Mazurin’s death. Mazurin died after suffering a massive heart attack while attending Burning Man two months earlier. The r3 site is featuring a number of posts in memory of Alexis from r3 staff, his family and friends.

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	Asides, Personalities	Posted at 11:37 am (20 Oct 2006)

OK, this has absolutely nothing to do with CBC, but could someone please explain this graph to me? It boggles my mind in too many ways to let it go.

I’m on a mailing list for Media in Canada, which occasionally has interesting tidbits about CBC and other broadcasters, with a marketing and advertising slant. They frequently throw in little factoids from consumer studies (today: 25 per cent of Canadian teens eat chocolate bars weekly.)

Anyhow, this graph was a real puzzler. It doesn’t list the time period or units (1,000s?) and I’m not about to subscribe to PMB to find out. But…

Why do Manitobans eat more nachos at home than anyone else? And what the hell kind of “special event” in PEI brings out such enormous public nacho and cheese consumption? (More than the rest of the Maritimes combined!)

I turn it over to you, our nationwide audience, for explanation. A bag of Doritos for the most creative answer (cheese not included.)

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	The Odd File	Posted at 8:59 am (20 Oct 2006)

More hardware for CBC-TV at last night’s Gemini Awards for drama, variety and comedy. Among the winners were Songwriter’s Circle, Canada Russia ’72, The Rick Mercer Report, Prairie Giant, Trudeau II, and At the Hotel. Check out the CBC.ca story for more, or visit the Gemini Awards site.

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	Asides, Awards	Posted at 9:31 am (19 Oct 2006)

The buzz continues about Cassie Campbell’s debut as a colour commentator on Hockey Night in Canada.

Campbell had been hired as a sideline reporter this season, but was pressed into the role of colour analyst for Saturdays Leafs-Flames game when Harry Neale was snowed in at home in Buffalo.

She became the first woman to work as a game analyst for HNIC (on The Hour, Strombo said she was the first female game analyst in any major league sport, but I couldn’t confirm this. Several women have worked as sideline hockey analysts, including Brenda Irving on HNIC and Cammi Granato on NBC.)

How’d she do? By most accounts, very well.

The Globe’s William Houston had panned her work as a sideline reporter a week earlier, citing the weak questions she asked players. But he praised her colour work in a piece titled Campbell shines as TV analyst (subhead: “Former national star impressive in historic debut.”)

The headline in the Ottawa Citizen was Campbell rises to occasion on telecast and the Toronto Sun headline read Cassie knows her hockey. “At this early stage of her TV career, she’s more poised and polished than most ex-athletes,” said Ken Fidlin, noting that her coverage was “full of insight.”

The National Post, on the other hand, called Campbell’s work “a disservice to many people – perhaps herself most of all.” Mark Spector blamed the CBC for putting her on the air when she wasn’t ready. “It was the CBC, with typical arrogance, putting the best interests of the viewers behind its own agenda,” Spector wrote of Campbell’s lack of pro hockey experience. “Compared to males, women play at about a midget AAA level.”

Campbell returns rinkside for now, but HNIC executive director Joel Darling has hinted that she’ll return to the booth eventually.

So, what do you think? Was this a historic moment and a feather in CBC’s cap, or just an interesting sidebar?

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	Hockey Night in Canada, Personalities	Posted at 9:00 am (19 Oct 2006)