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)

On Nov. 29, 1912, broadcaster John Fisher was born in Sackville, N.B.

In 1943 John became CBC Radio’s “Roving Reporter”, travelling Canada from the Magdalen Islands to the Queen Charlottes to tell stories about the nation’s people in the three-times-a-week series John Fisher Reports. It was during this time that he got his nickname “Mr. Canada.” He died Feb. 15 1981 at age 68.

You can listen to reports from John Fisher on the CBC Digital Archives site.

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	Today In CBC History	Posted at 4:52 pm (29 Nov 2007)

And… farewell Blake.

The following is the last of the “Under the Hood” columns that have appeared on this blog for more than a year, courtesy of CBC.ca tech guru Blake Crosby.

Blake worked with CBC.ca for almost six years, first joining the team to babysit the servers during the Salt Lake City Olympics. He went on to work on other Olympic and elections sites, among others, and won an award for his work on CBC.ca’s Media Resource Locator tool (see his earlier column.)

Blake has moved on to a company called VerticalScope. Long term, he’s working toward a career in aviation – you can track his progress on his flying blog.

Thanks, Blake!
~PG
————–

Farewell Webtrends, Hello Hitbox!

There have been some behind the scenes changes in the way we process and crunch the web server log files.

Webtrends
The software we were using previously was called Webtrends. It processes the raw log files from the web servers and produces graphs and charts.

The main advantage to using Webtrends is the fact that it processes the raw web server logs. Anytime someone fetches content from our web servers, it is recorded in a log file. Whether this be a mobile phone, Internet Explorer, your grandma’s 386, or your text only browser – it’s all tracked.

Items such as your IP address, the page you were requesting, the type of browser you were using, and the date and time were recorded. This provided a solid source of data to process.

One of the downsides was the Webtrends limitation that the log files needed to be in chronological order. This is impossible with our website, as we have many different log file sources that are all out of order. There was a lot of overhead to merge all these log files into a chronologically correct source of data for Webtrends.

Changing Business Requirements
With the recent “upgrade” of the internet to Web 2.0, CBC needed to upgrade their website with more “Web 2.0″ features. This included items such as the most viewed stories, or most e-mailed stories. This real time data was available from the web server logs, but Webtrends couldn’t process the data fast enough for it to be useful.

This is where Hitbox, our new system, shines. The Hitbox product comes from a company called Visual Sciences (formerly WebSideStory.) It works the same way as Webtrends, except it offers real time data of people visiting the website. This is not done using log files, but javascript instead.

For every single page you visit on CBC.ca, a cookie for “a.cbc.ca” will be set. This cookie is used by Hitbox to track your movements throughout the website, and is recorded in real time. Although no identifiable information is recorded, we can see how individual users use the website.

That means content producers can track the performance of various areas of their sites in real time – understanding what stories are most popular, the times of day with heaviest usage, the most common navigation paths through the site, what links users follow to and from stories, and so on. By watching specific live stats instead of waiting for a report, the content itself can better reflect users’ actual behaviour.

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	Under the Hood	Posted at 11:16 am (28 Nov 2007)

Robert Rabinovitch, Richard Stursberg and Sylvain Lafrance appeared before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage today to discuss “the role of a public broadcaster in the 21st century” and to “make the case for a new contract between Canada’s national public broadcaster and the Canadians it exists to serve.”

Rabinovitch’s opening remarks and the CBC news release are available online. One focus of the discussion was the integration of media and media lines:

We can no longer think of ourselves as a Television and Radio company with an Internet presence. The fact is: we are a content company. We need to create content that, from its inception, is designed for multiple platforms. We are working hard to entrench this philosophy in all of our services, and to have it guide us in all that we do. French Services’ integration is well underway and is yielding results, and much the same can be expected to follow from the recent announcement concerning the integration of English Services.

Rabinovitch suggested the CBC needs a 10-year mandate and firm funding commitments to make such changes. And he suggested that up to $150 million more should be added to the budget to cover expenses such as high definition service.

Richard Stursberg was questioned about his suggestion that CBC needs to be more like Tim Hortons and less like Starbucks.

“The purpose of the metaphor is to capture what the CBC is trying to do,” Stursberg said. “Hortons is … the service that has broader public appeal.”

More on the story at CBCNews.ca Arts.

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	Our Mandate	Posted at 5:24 pm (27 Nov 2007)

Look up, look wa-a-ay up… and wave bye-bye. Rusty and Jerome have left the building.

On Tuesday, the CBC Museum held a going away party for Rusty the Rooster, Jerome the Giraffe, and 51 pieces of paraphernalia from Friendly Giant. The items, which were on loan from the family of the late Bob Homme, are being returned to his family.

(According to a story in the Globe, the items were returned after the puppets appeared in a skit on this year’s Gemini Awards. They were portrayed as living in a retirement home, “where a narrator described them as sitting around, drinking, smoking and having sex.”)

None of Homme’s family were present at the farewell party, but there were milk and cookies, reruns of the show, and a duo of recorder players performing Early One Morning.

(Feeling nostaligic? Watch the Friendly Giant opening sequence on this YouTube clip, which includes CBC-TV ads from 1984. Or see the puppets work on the theme music in this YouTube clip.)

Not all the 51 pieces were on display at the museum – they include small objects like guitars for Rusty, hats, and snow covered turrets to use on the castle in winter time. (More photos on my Flickr set. H/T to Elizabeth Bridge for the pictures and headline.)

Also in the crowd were people who worked on the show during its 26-year run. One of them was John McCarthy. He’s now operations manager for the Network Production Centre, but back in 1979 he was a special effect technician working on Friendly Giant. The highlight of his career: lowering the drawbridge on Friendly’s castle each day. (Runner up: making the cow jump over the moon.)

“We did the models for the show, and made the instruments,” McCarthy said. “And we frequently had to repair Jerome’s ‘castle neck’.” The giraffe’s long neck would frequently wear out from rubbing against the wood of his window frame.

McCarthy said everything was “live to tape” back in those days, and believe it or not the musicians played the music live each time, seated behind the set. “Bob was a great recorder player,” John remembers.

What are your memories of the Friendly Giant? Share them here!

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	Archives/Vintage Media	Posted at 11:01 am (27 Nov 2007)

A niggling complaint among some of us drones in the CBC’s Toronto Broadcasting Centre has been the varying cleanliness of the facilities. The elevators are usually spotless, for example, but the carpet by my workstation seemed to be vacuumed about twice yearly. Not good, in an environment where many people eat at their desks….

Well, the Death Star is getting new cleaners. Starting Dec. 1 we’ll be using Omni Facility Management to keep the place tidy. According to Marcel Gauthier, director of the real estate division, the new cleaners will treat different areas differently – studios, common spaces and workstations will get different schedules based on need, and newsrooms in particular will get better service.

They are also bringing in better equipment, “green” cleaning products and bar-code readers to generate reports on how often areas are cleaned.

And – music to my ears – annual steam cleaning, and WEEKLY vacuuming! (Sidebar: Erich, who sits in the next cubicle over, was so unhappy with our icky floor that in addition to regular complaint calls he brought in his own Dirt Devil… and it was stolen the next week.)

Rumours were circulating among staff that the changes were the result of the new once-weekly garbage collection program, and that some cleaning staff were given layoff notices. But the real estate division says that the old contract was simply up for renewal, and that current cleaning staff “will be offered employment with Omni, as dictated by Bill 7 legislation.”

As I write this, I’m dropping muffin crumbs on the floor and starting a stopwatch…

(OK, I know this was of no interest to anyone other than Toronto CBC employees… but at least I’m not writing about our washrooms any more! ~PG)

So, how clean is your office? 

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	Toronto	Posted at 2:37 pm (26 Nov 2007)

The newspapers aren’t the only ones who think CBC-TV did “a job well done” covering the 95th Grey Cup. The boss liked it too!

(H/T to Jennifer Good for the great pic of Kirstine Layfield, executive director, network programming. It sure beats the extreme close-up in the last week’s Post, no?)

What did you think of CBC’s coverage? Was it Canada’s best?

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	CFL on CBC, Executives	Posted at 11:29 am (26 Nov 2007)

This doesn’t look like Toronto, not at all.

Peering out the window of the CBC.ca offices overlooking Front Street this morning, the first thing I see is a sausage grill the size of a tanker truck.

There are pickup trucks on the sidewalk. Cowboy hats in the club district. There’s a pep band playing Garry Glitter on the trombone in the Barbara Frum Atrium. People wearing parkas made from flags of teams that didn’t even make the playoffs. Last night I saw a horse that didn’t have a police officer aboard. And for the first time since before the lockout, the old Mövenpick restaurant on the southwest corner of the CBC building has life in it!

The Grey Cup football game isn’t until Sunday, and the Argos won’t be there, but Toronto has definitely got Grey Cup fever (even though the unseasonable cold seems to have scared some people indoors). And CBC is in the middle of the craziness, with cameras everywhere, a shop full of swag, and a public “CBC Sports Cafe” acting as party central.

(Insiders say that when the facility opened up, the permit police were out in full force, incredulous that CBC could actually serve beer and, you know, have fun. Use of the facility is rumoured to be planned for upcoming hockey broadcasts, and the Cafe may be used for other events.)

Grey Cup weekend is a bittersweet event for CBC, though, because (as the newspapers are keen to point out) after 55 years this is CBC’s last CFL broadcast for the forseeable future. Starting in 2008, TSN has sole broadcast rights for at least five years.

So, CBC is going out with a bang. The game will have an amazing 29 cameras inside the stadium alone (the division finals had nine) including the famous Cablecam above the field.

The game will be carried in high definition, on the FAN radio network, Sirius satellite radio and to 74 million homes abroad via cable (standard definition.) Coverage begins on CBC-TV at 2:30 EDT on Sunday, with the game broadcast starting at 5:30.

I’ve uploaded some more CBC Sports Cafe and Front Street photos to Flickr (hat tip to Tony for some of them.) You can watch this year’s events, plus recent Grey Cup games on the CBCSports.ca main page. And check out some great moments from Grey Cup history (like the 1950 “mud bowl”) at CBC Digital Archives. Oh, and be sure to have your say on who you think will win. (Like most people, CBC analysts Greg Frers and Khari Jones both pick Saskatchewan, 24-10 and 17-13.)

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	CFL on CBC	Posted at 4:44 pm (23 Nov 2007)

So, welcome to Day One of the integrated CBC! How’s it going so far?

To recap: Yesterday, CBC president Robert Rabinovitch announced that effective immediately, all its English-language services would be integrated under Richard Stursberg, who takes the new position of executive vice-president, English services.

There followed two internal “town hall” sessions (one a mere 23 minutes after the announcement was sent out) to discuss the changes. [Note: If you missed them, CBC employees can call the number included on the e-mail to hear an "instant replay" recording of either town hall session, available until Monday afternoon.]

Then at 6:00 last night, Richard Stursberg and Jennifer McGuire (who is now executive director of CBC Radio) sent a note to staff assuring that the move is about keeping up with technology, and does not signal a change in direction. Special emphasis was put on CBC Radio, whose concerns took up a large part of the town hall sessions.

Our goal has not and will not change – to deliver a public broadcasting service that reflects the values and aspirations of Canadians. Through innovative programming and continuous renewal, we are delivering high quality programming that reaches a broad audience. We have turned a corner and in many respects, Radio has led the way. It makes perfect sense then, that the plan for Radio is continuity and stability.

Both executives clearly repeated that point. McGuire led the 1:00 session by telling her staff that although the news “may seem a bit unsettling”, they should be assured that “when you wake up tomorrow, nothing’s changed.” Stursberg told those present that CBC Radio is going in “absolutely the right direction” and his goal is to “get you there further and faster.”

A similar service integration was undertaken at Radio-Canada in 2005. Andy Barrie, who hosted the town hall, reminded listeners that CBC was once integrated under Peter Herrndorf, who now sits on the board of directors that approved the changes on Wednesday. And CBC News integration has been happening for years.

So, what does it all mean?

In the short term, it doesn’t appear to mean major staffing changes (though last month’s announced newsroom integration at BBC could result in 2,500 job cuts.) Anonymous management blogger Ouimet thinks it makes sense, structurally, and the next step should be an English-French integration. In an article for Playback, Ian Morrison says the changes could “downgrade the independence” of CBC Radio, while CMG head Lise Lareau worries that Stursberg is “not seen as a radio guy and now he’s in charge of their lives.” According to the Globe, it means more Jian.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

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	Board of Directors, CBC Policies	Posted at 11:03 am (23 Nov 2007)

In a note to staff today, CBC president Robert Rabinovitch announced that the CBC Board of Directors has approved “the formal integration of CBC Radio and CBC Television, which is effective immediately. The integrated services, including CBC.ca, will be led by Richard Stursberg, Executive Vice-President, English Services.” Jennifer McGuire becomes the new Executive Director of CBC Radio, reporting directly to Stursberg. The moves are based in part on Radio-Canada’s 2005 integration under Sylvain Lafrance. More information is expected later today.

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	Asides, Board of Directors	Posted at 12:40 pm (22 Nov 2007)

It should have been no surprise, but the shows I mentioned in yesterday’s item on the 2008 winter preview also have websites – you just haven’t seen them yet. And some of them are rather spiffy!

These sites are not yet promoted on main CBC pages or press releases, and they aren’t listed on the program index. But you can find them through a site search, or by just guessing the URLs – you’ll notice the obvious pattern.

• http://www.cbc.ca/theborder is my immediate favourite, in the dark-n-ominous vein carved out by Intelligence and even the long defunct Spynet. The site includes a nifty game where your first job is to withstand an airport interrogation. Stick with it, because if you can endure that it unlocks other games, with more to follow when the show goes to air. Mercifully, there appear to be no Tasers or cavity searches.
• http://www.cbc.ca/jpod – Weird. But not nearly as weird as the official site for the book, with its skateboarding turtle. Both sites are either very cool, or utterly awful – and I can’t decide which. Can you?
• http://www.cbc.ca/sophie – I think someone figures this site will appeal to women… It even uses the same shade of pink as Slice.ca. Not much information here yet, but I’m pleased to see a social bookmarking widget being built into the new designs.
• http://www.cbc.ca/mvp – Hockey! Babes! Music!… ouch, the music. How long will it take you to find the off button? (Or the swear word?)

Anyhow, give ‘em a click. What do you think?

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	CBC.ca web site, MVP	Posted at 12:20 pm (22 Nov 2007)

In case you missed it, yesterday CBC-TV tried something new, and held its first “winter preview” of upcoming prime-time programs.

Previewed programs include immigration drama The Border, sitcom Sophie, Douglas Coupland’s jPod, lifestyle series The Steven & Chris Show, reality program The Week the Women Went, and the much-anticipated MVP – “a sexy look at a fictional NHL team of hunky players and the women who love them.”

Special programming includes The Englishman’s Boy, Project X, The Confidential Series, plus the returns of H2O, Test the Nation and Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister.

(Aside: I kept stumbling upon tidbits about the tapings of these shows back in July, when I last did this blog – including jPod, The Border and The Week the Women Went – so I’m looking forward to seeing them on air.)

Today’s Globe sees the lineup as an effort to attract “a younger, more female audience.” And the media has been quick to draw a correlation between CBC’s push and the ongoing American screenwriters strike. CBC executives admit there’s certainly an opening.

“All I see is opportunity – we have a shot,” head of network programming Kirstine Layfield told the Canadian Press. “People are going to be looking for something to watch, and I always find when people watch Canadian television, they are pleasantly surprised. It’s hard, it’s really hard, to make a mark and this is really going to help us.”

A day earlier, Layfield reported interest from U.S. networks in CBC programs . She confirmed that The Border was one of them. Westwind Production’s Mary Darling says Little Mosque on the Prairie is another.

But Writers Guild of Canada president Rebecca Schechter, who also had a hand in Little Mosque, said optimists like Darling are “dreaming in Technicolor.”

“It’s a weird pipe dream,” she said. “American giant conglomerates, they’ve not come across the border to Canada. They have consistently showed no interest in putting Canadian programming on American network television.”

The WGC plans to participate in an international display of solidarity on Nov. 28.

If you are really pining for American content, you’ll be able to get that on CBC too. According to CP, “CBC also said Tuesday it has acquired the rights to Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune from CBS Paramount International. Both shows will begin airing in September 2008.”

As for the Canadian stuff – well, the launch, and its fortuitous timing, managed to create a certain level of optimism. Prolific television blogger Denis McGrath, also a writer on The Border, had this to say of the event:

The impression I walked away with? When Layfield and the new regime started at CBC they took a lot of heat for saying they wanted to redefine and remake what the broadcaster was, and the kind of programming it did. This looks like a pretty vibrant schedule — it definitely has energy and a potential for big pop. I hope the stuff all works. It would be nice for CBC to get a win.

And if the WGA strike is still on, Canadians might actually get a chance to fairly sample their homegrown wares. It’s the best slate I’ve seen from CBC in a while.

What do you think of the winter lineup? Does the U.S. strike present an opportunity for CBC?

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	CBC Television, Little Mosque on the Prairie, MVP, Marketing/Promotion, The Media Landscape	Posted at 4:36 pm (21 Nov 2007)

Hey all, Paul Gorbould here – I’ll be filling in for Tod for the next couple of weeks while he takes a well-deserved health break, so please bear with me while I adjust the seat and mirrors, and do send me any comments or story suggestions you might have. Thanks!

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	About This Blog, Asides	Posted at 1:06 pm (21 Nov 2007)

Well, it’s begun.

Federal politicians started meeting this morning to develop a report for the Heritage committee on the future role and mandate of the CBC.

The CBC is currently operating under the mandate approved by Parliament sixteen years ago. That Act tells the CBC it should provide programming that:

• Is predominantly and distinctively Canadian.
• Reflects Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences, while serving the special needs of those regions.
• Actively contributes to the flow and exchange of cultural expression.
• Is in English and French, reflecting the different needs and circumstances of each official language community.
• Strives to be of equivalent quality in English and French.
• Contributes to shared national consciousness and identity.
• Is available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and efficient means and as resources become available for the purpose.
• Reflects the multicultural and multiracial nature of Canada.

Why does it need changing? Partly because of the large-scale changes in media technology, the Internet, media concentration, and so on. The world is pretty different today than it was in 1991, when the Broadcasting Act was passed.

The Toronto Star says it believes several major questions are on the minds of politicians through this process:

First, should CBC television focus all its energy on trying to win large audiences as Richard Stursberg, the current executive director of English programming, believes? Last year, he cancelled a raft of Canadian drama shows because he didn’t believe their ratings were high enough and veered away from public broadcasting with a series of reality shows and lusty dramas such as The Tudors, a co-production with Ireland about the life of Henry VIII. Such shows draw bigger audiences and ad dollars but tell Canadians little, if anything, about themselves.

Second, should it stick with part of its mandate by running programs like the Royal Winnipeg Ballet even though they are ratings disasters?

Third, how much money should Ottawa give to the CBC? Now, the broadcaster gets $950 million a year from the government. Another $550 million comes from advertising and other revenues. The amount of tax money is substantial, but Ottawa’s grant has fallen by 20 per cent in the past 15 years when inflation is taken into account. Indeed, only the United States and New Zealand give less government money per person to their national public broadcasters.

Fourth, is a public television broadcaster needed any longer now that private broadcasters, although dominated by foreign content, produce some popular Canadian shows such as CTV’s Corner Gas?

The Star noted that the Commons committee will likely study a 2006 Senate report that recommended “CBC Television should be more like CBC Radio, focusing on high-quality news and information programming, services not available on other stations and better regional programming.”

What do you think about the current mandate? Would you like to see changes?

NOTE ABOUT COMMENTS: This post/thread is about changes to the mandate. Not about how the CBC should be shut down, etc. The usual “I hate the CBC” comments will not be approved.

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	Our Mandate, Parliament	Posted at 11:50 am (20 Nov 2007)