On Wednesday, Quebecor Media launched Canoe.TV, a free online video webcasting service. And it’s chock full of CBC content.

The site, available with both English and French content, features both live and on-demand content in a variety of categories. The on-demand programs lean heavily on CBC Television:

- the drama category is currently exclusively CBC (Jozi-H, October 1970, North/South and 49th & Main).
- the comedy area features Getting Along Famously and the Rick Mercer Report (season 3).
- the News & Documentaries category currently has only Mansbridge One on One.

Other channels are decidedly mixed fare from other broadcasters: ultimate fighting, yoga, home renovations, Sunshine Girl TV (”Ashley, is a 5-foot-7 Scorpio who’s way into motorcycles and cars…”) and Club Scene (mostly more T&A).

Live programming varies (right now I’m watching a Bollywood movie; programming comes from broadcasters in India, Portugal, Jamaica, UAE and Pakistan via Toronto-based Jump TV.)

According to Playback, “to monetize Canoe.TV, Quebecor Media will share online advertising revenue with content partners.” CBC is one of those content partners.

Bob Kerr, director of business development for CBC, says this is one of dozens of partnerships designed to increase exposure, including YouTube.

“It’s exposure, it’s reaching an audience we can’t guarantee we’d reach otherwise,” he says. “We can’t be arrogant enough to assume that anything we put up on our site people will come over and watch it. This improves the chances of them coming to CBC-TV or CBC.ca.”

Kerr points out that the content being offered on Canoe.TV is neither exclusive, nor the sort of “premium” content that is currently hosted and/or sponsored on CBC.ca, or sold through other venues.

“It’s a big, sophisticated platform on the Canadian space - why wouldn’t we want to be a part of it?”

What do you think? Increased exposure is good, and I certainly hope we see some revenue - though right now there aren’t many ads - but it bugs me to see online content that isn’t available via CBC.ca. And doesn’t it look weird seeing our chief correspondent under the logo of what some might call the competition? Or is this distribution, not competition? How about YouTube?

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	On-Demand TV	Posted at 3:14 pm (30 Nov 2007)

CBC News now has its own Facebook page, and you’re invited.

If you are on Facebook, just visit the CBC News Facebook page and click the button on the top right that says “Become a Fan” of CBC News.

According to Jon Dube, director of digital programming,

Doing so will add a link to the CBC News page to your Facebook profile, and let you participate in the conversations on the page and new features that we may add to it down the road.

Among other things, we hope you will use the page to post your suggestions for how we can improve CBC News, as well as to share and discuss interesting news stories you hear or watch on CBC or read on CBCNews.ca.

So far it’s mostly a headline distribution and discussion mechanism, but who knows what it will turn into?

(To my surprise, seven of the first 10 user comments on the announcement on the CBC News Editor’s Blog were pretty negative - to which I say, “what’s the harm?” Facebook is not exactly expensive, is it?)

I should point out that this is the officially-sanctioned CBC Facebook entity. A couple of weeks ago, Tod wrote about a different Facebook CBC fan page. That one is unofficial. This is the official one.

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	Fanatical Fans	Posted at 5:14 pm (29 Nov 2007)