Have you ever been listening to CBC Radio and heard something so good you wanted to hear again? Maybe it’s an interview that excited you. Or a documentary that touched you. Or maybe it’s something you remember from years ago that you just want to hear one more time. CBC Radio One’s Sirius channel and CBC’s podcasting group are coming out with a new show called Listener’s Choice. To get your pick selected, fill this form out and tell them what you’d like to hear, and why.

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	Podcasting, Sirius Satellite	Posted at 7:29 pm (31 Jan 2007)

Here’s a neato little tip if you want to go back in time through the news. Type this into your web browser’s address bar:

http://www.cbc.ca/news_archives/YYYYMMDD.jhtml

Be sure to substitute the “YYYYMMDD” with the actual year, month, and day you’d like to look up. For instance:

http://www.cbc.ca/news_archives/20010911.jhtml

There’s even a shortcut to this on the CBC News page — it’s near the very bottom-right of the page. Pretty nice touch, considering nearly all other national news outlets charge you to read content older than a month or so.

The page you see in the news archive is just a “snapshot” of what www.cbc.ca/news/ looked like at some point during that day. If you want to see all of the news that was published on a particular day, you can use the searge engine: type the follwing search query in: “inurl:story/2001/09/11″ (without the quotes) This will return all news stories written on September 11, 2001.

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	CBC.ca web site, Secret Nerd Tips	Posted at 12:36 pm (30 Jan 2007)

CBC plans to add social media elements into its web site, according to a memo to staff sent this morning by CBC TV executive Richard Stursberg.

“We want to move to a [web] 2.0 environment,” he wrote, “Providing our audiences with the ability to

• comment on items
• rate them
• link to them from their blog or website
• subscribe to specific types of content
• search for specific video content
• submit user-generated content.”

What else should we be doing? Let me know in the comments.

No word yet if CBC will redesign its logo to this:

televisionCBC 2.0 beta

Stursberg also struck back at critics who say CBC TV is under siege. “We still have work to do, but we are by no means “beleaguered”, as some of the country’s television columnists — many of whom work, ultimately, for companies that have a commercial interest in our success or failure — would have people believe.”

Stursberg noted that CBC Televisions primetime share for the regular season to date is 7.3%. Our share for the ’05-’06 regular season was 7.3%. In ’04-’05 it was 6.7%; in ’03-’04 it was 7.3%; and in ’02-’03 it was 6.9%.

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	CBC.ca web site	Posted at 11:44 am (30 Jan 2007)

If you’re enjoying the content on here, but forget to visit each day to get the latest news about the CBC, let me deliver it to you! Get a summary of headlines from Inside the CBC — waiting for you in your email box each morning.

Enter your email address:

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	About This Blog	Posted at 12:48 am (29 Jan 2007)

The Globe and Mail is reporting that a new NHL rights deal involving the CBC and TSN is close to being done. “The agreement, which would start in 2008-09, would give TSN a stronger national package with more games involving Canadian teams and also a Canadian series in at least one round of the NHL playoffs,” said the newspaper.

It reported that Hockey Night in Canada would stay on the air, but that the CBC would lose some Canadian playoff content to TSN. CBC would “get most of the postseason, including the Stanley Cup final.”

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	Hockey Night in Canada	Posted at 12:16 am (29 Jan 2007)

All this week on Inside the CBC, you’ll get an insiders’ view of three of the most interesting rooms at CBC Vancouver:

Tuesday: CBC Radio 3
CBC Radio three operates on the Sirius satellite network and through its nationally recognized podcast. You’ll get a look inside their workspace and the Alexis Mazurin studio, and meet the people who put Radio 3 on the air.


Wednesday: Studio 3: Drama and Foley
I think Studio 3 is the most interesting studio in the Vancouver broadcast centre: It’s where radio dramas are recorded, and include all the fun sound effect machines (like the door of a thousand doors!).


Thursday: Radio Master Control
This is where it all gets put together: in Master Control. You’ll learn what it takes to get a radio network on the air, and what happens if I yank out the two cables plugged into the main patch-bay.


So, as they say, stay tuned! Or, subscribe to summary of new articles every day in your email box.

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	How Shows Work, Vancouver	Posted at 12:01 am (29 Jan 2007)

Clearly, the CBC logo is setting logo-fashion trends?!

Photo: “Exploding pizza squared?” by duncanmm

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	, The Odd File	Posted at 11:47 pm (28 Jan 2007)

Here’s a little tip for the tech-savvy: If you ever want to find all the links to a specific person or show on the CBC Archives site, just use the site’s advanced search, then View Source. The URL that links to the full results page is displayed at the top, commented out. (They’re planning to re-jig the page to include an, er, easier way to do this.)

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	Asides, CBC.ca web site	Posted at 11:46 pm (28 Jan 2007)

CBC Radio’s Jian Ghomeshi told fans on his newsletter that he’s going to try not to “suck” as host of his new network afternoon show, due to launch in March.

“I will be the host, “he wrote. “And I desperately hope to be a very good host. Of course, it may suck. In which case, I shall become the Chevy Chase of the talk show world. Not good. But I will try to work at not being the Persian-Canadian Chevy Chase. And I don’t expect it to suck.

Jian’s show, unnamed at yet, will be a live 90-minute program in the afternoon, replacing Freestyle (speaking of which, I’ll be co-hosting today/Friday).

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	Personalities	Posted at 9:57 pm (25 Jan 2007)

Shelagh Rogers, host of CBC Radio’s Sounds Like Canada, who worked with Peter Gzowski in Toronto, spent a few moments with me yesterday (the fifth anniversary of his death) talking about his legacy, career, and passion. It runs less than 12 minutes.

Video quality: Remember, I’m a radio guy, not television, so my camera work and the lighting isn’t particularly good. But it’s the content that matters anyway, right?

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	Obits, Personalities	Posted at 12:30 am (25 Jan 2007)

The Toronto Star is reporting:

Officials with the Prime Minister’s Office have lodged a complaint with the CBC ombudsman over a report broadcast on the public broadcaster’s French-language network.

The complaint, signed by communications director Sandra Buckler, was not made public Tuesday but rejects certain aspects of the report which it contends do not reflect reality.

It takes issue with Radio-Canada reports about a meeting between U.S. and Canadian officials in Texas which suggested the existence of a project to quadruple oilsands extraction from here to 2011 to meet U.S. needs.

The Conservatives have rejected contentions the meeting was secret and said they had not been sworn in as the government. They said the meeting was planned in 2005 by the previous Liberal government of Paul Martin.

Full article: PM lodges complaint against CBC

Update: The french arm of CBC Television is refusing to retract the report; the Radio-Canada (radio) already has. There is no question of running any correction at all of any kind,” said Pierre Tourangau, a senior director with Radio-Canada Television. “We feel we did our job quite correctly.”

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	News & Journalism, Parliament	Posted at 3:53 pm (24 Jan 2007)

Image: CBC Still Photo Collection

For three hours a day, five days a week — for 15 years — millions tuned in to CBC Radio’s Morningside and Peter Gzowski. Despite Gzowski’s dishevelled appearance — sweaters with cigarette burns, big glasses and pockmarked skin — this beloved radio host cast his folksy charm across the country. When Gzowski died in this day five years ago, Canadians paid tribute to the broadcaster whose stammering informality and comforting voice had become a symbol for Canada.

The bright lights of TV lure the popular host away from radio. (Radio; runs 1:37)After three seasons as the host of This Country in the Morning, Peter Gzowski says goodbye to radio. The three-hour weekday morning show, with its mixed bag of interviews, music, essays and recipes, was the most popular CBC Radio show at the time. In the last few minutes of the final program, an emotional Gzowski thanks his listeners, saying he’s taking time off for a rest and a change. He ends the show by promising to return to CBC Radio one day. He did.

Stuart McLean and Peter Gzowski break down in a laughing fit. (Radio; runs 13:47) “He’s not well,” says Gzowski looking at the cricket Stuart McLean has brought into the studio. The “sleeping” cricket is just one of a long list of bargains McLean has purchased for one dollar. In the middle of McLean’s account of all the things he has managed to buy – toothpicks, city water, penny matches and chalks – the cricket’s relaxed state results in both Gzowski and McLean breaking down in fits of uncontrollable laughter. “It’s him it’s not me,” says McLean, gasping for breath in the in the middle of their gut-sucking, out-of-control laughter.

Canada’s beloved broadcaster says au revoir. (TV; runs 2:42)After 15 years of hosting his daily three-hour morning show, Peter Gzowski signs off. In a makeshift studio in Moose Jaw, Sask., the beloved host of Morningside bids “au revoir.” The loss of Captain Canada, Gzowski’s nickname for his effort in bringing the country together, is a sad occasion for legions of his loyal listeners. “I feel like I’m losing an old friend,” says a woman echoing the sentiment of some 1.5 million listeners who have regularly tuned in to Morningside.

The text and clips above are from the CBC Digital Archives web site. Its full biographical topic, Peter Gzowski: Voice of Canada, is now online. As well, the folks at CBC Archives have encoded more than 150 Gzowski clips ranging from a 1969 interview with Moses Znaimer (on Radio Free Friday) until the final episode of Morningside (1977).

As for rememberances…

[Read more →]

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	Obits	Posted at 1:07 am (24 Jan 2007)

So, while producing my tech column for this week, I was digging around for some sound effects. I ran across one called “Muttering Crowd.”

Often, when you’re in public radio and on a limited budget, you have to make your own sound effects. This is something that my colleagues who produce Definitely Not The Opera at quite good at doing. That’s part of why I enjoyed working for that show. They’re based in Winnipeg, but as the west-coast producer, I could call up (as I did) and say “Hey, I need the sound of a crowd kind of muttering in the background about nothing. Something I can layer underneath a piece I’m working on.”

So rather than dig through the thousands (read: dozens) of sound effect CDs we have for just the right sound, the crew in Winnipeg would all gather in the little sound booth and just make the sound for me.

And so, I present to you, for the first time revealed in its entirety ever publicly, the raw sound of a crowd muttering, as performed by the production team of DNTO. (Some of them were laughing a bit during it because, let’s face it, gathering a dozen people in a room to mutter incoherently — for a living — is kinda funny.)… [Read more →]

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	DNTO, How Shows Work, The Odd File	Posted at 12:40 am (24 Jan 2007)