Spammus Interruptus?
CBC’s spam filter launches Monday and IT staff say it should all but eliminate “false positives” – those valid emails inadvertently blocked by the system. Messages sent from legitimate sources will now get through, which should spell relief for reporters working on stories requiring reference to words that might otherwise trigger the filter.
Massive ATI filer turns out to be Montreal lawyer
The individual who filed nearly 450 Access to Information requests to the CBC has revealed himself to be Michel Drapeau, a former colonel and now a lawyer in private practice.
Drapeau says he makes more than 800 requests for information each year to various public organizations. At $5 each, it costs him roughly $4,000 annually.
Since September 2007, he has submitted 448 requests to the CBC. He says he’s only had responses from 63 of the requests so far. The CBC has said that the unexpected sheer volume of requests caught it off guard and is hiring more people to try to keep up with the workload.
That’s not good enough for Drapeau. “[I've received] no answer nor any acknowledgment of delivery — anything,” he told a Quebec newspaper. “My requests have sat still. I’ve been doing this work since 1992 and I’ve never encountered this kind of situation.” In retaliation, Drapeau has filed 524 complains with the Inf
The attitude of the SRC pushed colonel Drapeau to deposit 524 complaints with the federal Information Commissioner, Robert Marleau. Marleau’s office would not comment.
As recently as this week, CBC posted a job one-year contract position for an additional person in the ATI office.
Avi Lewis begins hosting U.S. show on Al-Jazeera network
Former CBC-TV personality Avi Lewis has begun hosting a program on the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera network focusing on U.S. politics and the upcoming American election.
Lewis will host Frontline U.S.A. from the U.S. Previously, he hosted several current affairs programs on CBC Television programs such as the debate show counterSpin.
In the autumn of 2006, Lewis began hosting CBC Newsworld’s The Big Picture with Avi Lewis. In June 2007, CBC Newsworld debuted On the Map with Avi Lewis, a daily (Mon-Thurs) half hour of international news spin. Both shows were cancelled before they reached their second season.
CBC’s official response to Heritage Committee report
(reproduced verbatim)
Canada’s national public broadcaster welcomes CBC/Radio-Canada: Defining Distinctiveness in the Changing Media Landscape, the report issued this morning by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.
“It’s positively encouraging to see the Committee recognize the value of public broadcasting to Canadians - on all platforms, old, new and emerging,” said Hubert T. Lacroix, President and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada. “In the face of sweeping cultural, technological and industrial change, Canadians need a place for distinctive Canadian content. This report to the Government asserts the meaning and importance of public broadcasting for all Canadians, and shows how it improves our democratic and cultural lives.”
From the report itself: “The Committee regards CBC/Radio-Canada as an essential public institution that plays a crucial role in bringing Canadians closer together… The vast majority of the evidence stressed the distinctiveness of CBC/Radio-Canada, reflected in the quality, originality and creativity of its programming. Being distinctive should not however mean being inaccessible. Its services must be accessible to the various elements of the Canadian public.”
CBC/Radio-Canada is especially pleased to see that the Committee’s report calls for a new relationship and a renewable arrangement between Canadians and their public broadcaster: their proposed Memorandum of Understanding would establish a seven-year plan which would set out what services Canadians could expect from their public broadcaster and the resources necessary to provide them.
“The proposed seven-year cycle - with increased, committed funding indexed to the cost of living for its duration - would go a long way to help fulfil a new promise to Canadians and ensure that people’s expectations of public broadcasting may be measured and met against collectively set goals,” said Mr. Lacroix. “In all, the Committee’s report has very aptly captured the challenges facing public broadcasting in Canada and provided valuable recommendations for the future.”
CBC/Radio-Canada looks forward to working with this Committee, the Government and the public to develop a new long-term arrangement. Meantime, the Committee’s report recognizes that the continued health of public broadcasting requires a more urgent response on a couple of fronts, including the funding of the transition to HD, and the financing of new digital content.
“I commend the Committee for having produced a thorough and, more importantly, a truly actionable blueprint for the future of public broadcasting in Canada,” said Mr. Lacroix. “And I think I speak for all who believe in Canadian public broadcasting when I say that we look forward to the Government’s response.”
Heritage Committee recommends permanent funding increase and less reliance on advertising
The federal Heritage Committee is recommending that the CBC’s funding be increased from $33 per person each year to $40 — and that the funding increases each year as per the cost of living. It further recommended CBC-TV be less dependent on advertising revenues.
(The CBC has not had a permanent funding increase in more than 30 years, not even to account for inflation.)
In its long awaited mandate review report, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage says the CBC’s mandate should cover seven years. It will begin public consultations on the recommendations soon.
It also recommended that the CBC and federal government “work toward decreasing CBC Radio-Canada’s relative dependency on advertising revenues for television programming.”
The committee has also given its support to a plan to increase the number of regional radio stations throughout the country, and wants the Broadcasting Act kept up with the times, including digital media and emerging technologies as a way to reach out to Canadians. It further wants resources put in place to provide closed-captioning for 100% of its television programming.
Canadian Media Guild Response
The Canadian Media Guild, which represents the majority of CBC employees, says it “strongly supports” recommendations and urges parliament to move quickly to implement the committee’s recommendations, particularly those that call for enhanced
funding.
“This feels like the first real moment of optimism for the CBC in recent memory,” says Lise Lareau, national president of the Canadian Media Guild. “An all-party committee has said yes to the CBC, yes to expanded radio coverage, yes to more CBC programming, including on the internet, and yes to more money to properly fund these important initiatives. Let’s get on with it.”
The CMG took credit for some of the recommendations, saying the report “echoes many of the proposals the CMG made when it appeared before the committee last spring, including an increase of per capita funding from the government.”
Conservative MPs Reject Recommendations
The Conservative Party wrote its own opinion rejecting, among other things, a proposal to keep the CBC’s television prime-time schedule all-Canadian. It said it considered recommendations like it (like the requirement of submitting a detailed HDTV implementation plan), amounted to micro-managing. “If CBC/Radio-Canada was [sic] bound to follow this particular recommendation they would not be permitted to show classic Christmas movies during prime-time on Christmas Eve, unless it happened to fall on a weekend.”
The party also rejected many recommendations seeking additional funding for specific projects, like HDTV implementation, saying that “stable-long term funding” was more appropriate than one-time grants for specific things. However, it also rejected the long-term funding proposal recommended in the document, saying it wanted to see a proposed budget from the CBC first. “Our members are disappointed that the report doesn’t recommend that CBC/Radio-Canada be invited to provide a full costing of the other recommendations of the committee report. We believe that responsible leadership involves costing out these recommendations before assigning fixed amounts to fund them.”
New Democrats Seek “Skill-Based” Approach to Hiring Presidents and Selecting Board Members
NDP members, in a supplementary report, said Board members and the CBC president should be hired based on skill and competence-related criteria, and that Board members should be non-partisan and better reflect “the regions of Canada, majority and minority language communities, First Nations, men and women, and ethnic and other minority groups.”
Currently, while the gender split is even among board members, all come from major cities. All but three of the 12 are from the Toronto/Montreal/Ottawa regions.
Highlights from the report are still ahead
or have your say in the comments.
[Read more →]
Have a quick legal question about your story?
Did you know: If you’re working on a story and need a quick legal opinion about something in your script you’re concerned about, advice is just a phone call away?
Yesterday, when I was writing my technology column for CBC Radio One’s regional morning shows, I discovered I was a little in over my head with a legal question. I’m reporting this week on a company which has been attacked on blogs. I needed to know: Can I report that people are accusing the company of having “a kick-back scheme”? Or would that qualify as (re-)publishing a defamation, which would expose the CBC to liability?
With a couple of clicks, I found the Getting Legal Advice [internal link only] page on iO. Picked up the phone, read the part of my script in question to one of our senior lawyers, and got an answer (it’s fine to report that — covered under Fair Comment).
You can find the phone numbers of these people on that page. Be sure you’ve got this information at hand:
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names of sources, the number of sources, the positions held by sources and the extent of their personal knowledge of the event in question;
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all documentation, its substance and how it was obtained;
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location where any comments were made (in a court of law or a legislature, or in the street);
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circumstances in which reports on an event or individual were made.
Related links (all internal links only):
Access Groupwise Messenger from the outside world
As someone who only works inside the Vancouver plant a couple of days a week (most of my work is outside the building), I was thrilled to discover that you can reach people through our in-house Groupwise Messenger system — even when you’re not in a CBC building.
To do so, you’ll need either Groupwise Messenger installed on your PC.
If you’re on a Mac, you can connect to our instant messenger network from the outside world as well — just download Adium (it’s free), go the Adium/Preferences, and enter your Novell username, usually your last name and first initial (e.g., maffint).
You’ll need to know the server name and port — email me (Tod Maffin) from your Groupwise account and I’ll give you the deets.
And feel free to add me to your Groupwise Messenger contact list. 
UPDATED:
Check the comments for some updated information about this.
Vancouver CBCers seeking fresh blood on their Dragon Boat team
Q: Where can you spend your evenings off being yelled at by a CBC Producer to hurry up?
If you answered “At my show, jackass!” you’re wrong. (Well, maybe you’re right, but that’s another story.)
Vancouver’s Dragon Boat team, the “Wave Catchers,” are on the hunt for seven new members. The team competes in at least two of the big festivals: the Alcan Dragon Boat Festival in mid-June and the Kelowna Dragon Boat Festival in September.
Practice is Sunday mornings at 11:00 a.m. and lasts for two hours. Practices are run by a coach with many years of experience as a competitive paddler.
It all starts March 30th on Sundays, then it moves to weekday evenings after June. The boat season ends just in time for your next show’s season in September. There is a registration fee of $150 to cover Festival fees, a CBC jersey, coaching, and dock fees.
Even if you aren’t able to join the team, you can cheer them on on their Facebook group.
If you’d like to join, contact Monia at 6218 in Vancouver (centrex 181).
Does your region have any recreational teams?
Tell me about them!
Getting better
Thanks everyone for your kind emails about my neck injury. Initial thoughts are it’s related to (a) the way I sleep — on my stomach, and (b) strain from not being very ergonomic with my computer use. Thanks to the wonder of Tylenol 3s and Robax, I’m doing much betterrrrrrr……. zzzzzzzzzzz
Did the Conservative government rush the CBC board appointments?
Late last week, the federal government appointed three new members to the CBC Board of Directors. Two of the three have strong ties to the Conservative party:
- Mary McNeil is a fundraiser and charity executive by profession. Earlier this year, she was hand-picked by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to compete for the candidacy in a wealthy Vancouver riding. (She said she’d never favoured any party, but acknowledged her whole family were Conservative party supporters.) She lost the bid to a business professor.
- Brian Mitchell, lawyer #1, sits on a number of other boards in Montreal. He is a former member of the Conservative National Council. He once ran against Joe Clark for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative party, then ran unsuccessfully in for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Until the CBC appointment, he has served on the Conservative Party’s national council.
- Linda Black, lawyer #2, has been a senior executive in a variety of government roles — most recently in a provincial Labour Relations ministry. She’s currently a lawyer with a legal review board.
Opposition MPs claimed the appointments to the CBC Board were part of a larger strategy to fill vacancies on federal Boards in advance of a possible federal election. (Along with 15 judicial appointments, people were appointed to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, the CRTC, the Bank of Canada, the National Welfare Council, the Canada Race Relations Foundation and others.)
The appointments were made without the supervision of the federal appointments commission that Prime Minister Harper had promised during the last election campaign.
Also related to broadcasting, CTV reporter Marc Patrone, a former Conservative candidate, was named as a CRTC commissioner. The Globe and Mail says the job pays $126,200 to $148,500 a year.
However, respected Conservative blogger Stephen Taylor did a study in 2005 and discovered that 85% of political contributions from CBC board members went to the Liberal party.
Break-in at CBC Vancouver somewhat ironic
Thieves took advantage of the construction chaos around CBC Vancouver Monday night and broke in, stealing a notebook computer, cash, and some personal items.
This week, the Vancouver edition of CBC News at Six is doing a feature on residential property crime. The irony of the break-in, which shared the same traits as a home B&E, isn’t lost on executive producer Wayne Williams.
“We’re not talking about a real organized criminal activity,” Williams said. “It’s smash-and-grab kind of stuff and then in and out pretty quickly.”
CBC News to be split into Programming and Newsgathering divisions
Effective immediately, CBC News will be re-organized into two main areas: Programming and Newsgathering. Both divisions will be headed by CBC Radio’s senior two executives who will be leaving their roles in radio.
- Programming will be led by Jennifer McGuire, who will become Executive Director of News Programming and Deputy Head of News. In her new role, she will define the mandate, voice and tone of news programs across all platforms—Radio, Television, Newsworld and CBC.ca.
- Todd Spencer will join News as the Executive Director of News Content. Todd’s extensive experience in this role while in CNN’s Asia bureau will bring insights to his team and to News generally.
The new structure, under CBC News publisher John Cruickshank, appears like this:
- Executive Editor of News: Esther Enkin
- News Programming: Jennifer McGuire
- Strategy and Innovation: Heaton Dyer
- News Content: Todd Spencer
- Finance: Iain McIntosh
- Don Knox will be “senior director”
* Read the CBC’s backgrounder on these changes [internal link only] on iO, the new CBC intranet.
REACTION FROM STAFF
These were among the questions posed by CBC staff at the announcement:
“What changes will occur to local news?”
Cruickshank: “We’ll see a level of coordination through the country through the newsrooms and the new universal desk, coordinating with the assignment desks, so there’s a coordination with all newsrooms across the country. Jennifer will bring programming expertise to the newsrooms, supplementing the beginning work we’re doing with the Magid [U.S. news consultants] folks.”
“What kind of resources are you putting into reporting?”
Cruickshank: “Over time,we really want to focus on folks that are audience-facing — people who are on-camera and on-mic who are actually engaged directly with the audience. That’s got to be an evolutionary thing, but it simply has to happen. The first steps have to do with communications and coordination, though.”
“I thought I heard the words ‘investment in local tv news.’ What does that mean for the poor souls putting on hour-long shows with six or seven people?”
Cruickshank: “We’ve seen investment in local news, staffing in Vancouver, training, and an enormous amount of research. We’re going to continue to try to engineer our operations so we get more feet on the street. This is going to take time. It’s not going to happen overnight. For most folks, tomorrow is not going to be a different day. This is going to be evolutionary.”
CBC’S QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
The CBC published a list of prepared Q&As on its intranet earlier today. This content comes from CBC Communications (you can tell, since the phrase “extend and leverage the brand” exists in it 
)
What is changing in News?
We are creating structures that will allow for faster and more complete sharing of intelligence across platforms and across the country. This will permit us to get breaking news on all our platforms faster than the competition and will enhance our ability to break news more often.
Are there going to be budget cuts?
Our overall News budget will remain the same. We continually review our budgets against priorities. As a result, resources will shift to meet those priorities.
What is Esther Enkin’s role? How does it differ from Jennifer’s new role?
As Executive Editor of News, Esther’s focus will be on journalistic policy and standards.
Are there any changes to Current Affairs?
Jennifer McGuire will be responsible for Television Current Affairs programming. Linda Groen continues to be responsible for Radio Current Affairs and Radio Current Affairs will report into Radio.
What changes are going to be made to The National?
We are looking at how we can extend and leverage the very powerful National brand.
What’s the status of Magid?
The Magid consultants will continue to be involved in research, training and strategies to support our evolving breaking news strategy.
So, do you work at CBC News or for a current affairs show? How does this announcement affect you?
CBC unveils new integrated structure to employees
CBC English Services today unveiled its new organizational structure, bringing radio, television and digital platforms into alignment under one “integrated management framework.”
The announcement, in front of a live audience of employees at the CBC Broadcast Centre in Toronto, was broadcast via closed-circuit to CBC locations around the world.
During the announcement, Stursberg reaffirmed that the CBC’s continuing commitment to Canadians remains unchanged. “This is not about a change in vision or direction for each service—their respective strategies stay the same.”
* Read the CBC’s backgrounder on these changes [internal link only] on iO, the new CBC intranet.
According to Stursberg, the revised organizational structure will “provide the best support for creating programming” across the CBC’s different media lines — radio, television and digital —but each will continue to pursue its existing strategies.
As part of the newly announced structure, Stursberg announced a revised management committee. Changes will take effect immediately.
In the announcement to staff, moderator and CBC Radio host Michael Enright asked Stursberg “What exactly is the central inefficiency that this reorganization is intended to correct? And who is served by it? What have we been doing wrong so far.”
Stursberg: When i look at the news service and the sheer quantity of resources we have, we don’t have enough breaking stories. I frankly find it strange that the most popular all-news network in Canada is a foreign news network [CNN]. That is untrue of newspapers…. When we look at the array of resources we have — and much of the aueience is watching — Are we available for breaking news all the time? The answer: Nope. Are we the ones who are dominating the newscasts all the time? Nope. We should be the most dominant, original, impoirtant news centres of all in the country.
Enright: “There’s concern about whether television [decisions are now made by] one person. Can you address this amazing centralization that the power and decisio- making lies in your office and you. You might hear the name King Richard mummered in the halls of the Broadcast Centre.”
Stursberg: “I don’t think that’s true at all. What we’ve tried to do is to hire very powerful, gifted, intelligent executives and said “Go and make it happen.”…. I think that over the course of the last little while, we have been able to attract an extra-ordinary colection of execuitves. When executives have left, people have been stunned at [the calibre of their replacements].
How do you feel about the continuing integration of services and centralization of decision-making?
Radio leadership to move to news roles
CBC Radio’s top two executives have been moved to a new integrated news division, as part of changes that further the Corporation’s movement toward integration.
Jennifer McGuire, currently executive director of radio, will become Executive Director of News Programming and Deputy Head of News. (Until a replacement is found for her position, she will continue to hold the radio office.) Former vice-president of radio Jane Chalmers left the CBC a couple of months ago. Weeks later, that position was eliminated.
Todd Spencer, formerly head of radio production, will also move to the integrated news organization as Executive Director of News Content.
“The core strength of Radio remains with its gifted team,” Stursberg wrote in a memo to staff posted on its new intranet. “Our intention is to search internally, as we need someone who can hit the ground running and understands the Radio service.”
Larry O’Brien will take on the role of Senior Director, Radio Production and Resources on an interim basis; CBC plans to fill the position for the integrated organization within six months.
* Read the CBC’s backgrounder on these changes [internal link only] on iO, the new CBC intranet.
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QUESTIONS
In an all-staff meeting held this morning, moderator Michael Enright confronted Richard Stursberg on the decision.
“Why I am seized with the feeling that TV is strip-mining radio of its senior management.”
Stursberg: “We’re lucky that we have incredibly gifted people in radio. The issue isn’t radio being strip-mined, but we can certainly take advantage of those extra-ordinary resources for the purposes of all. It’s a mistake to say that Jennifer and Todd are leaving radio. They’re not. They’re going to News, which is a television and radio function.”
CBC News publisher John Cruickshank characterized the changes as “a reverse takeover of news by radio.”
“But the examples you give are television,” Enright continued. “Take an example or World Report. It has the largest news audience in the country — TV or radio. I don’t think the criticism you have of TV apply universally to radio.”
Cruickshank: “CBC Radio News is brilliant five days a week from nine to five. Our issue has to do with ‘Are we going to be a 24-hour breaking news organization?’ In other words, are we commited every day, all day or just during particular shifts.”
Enright: “But how is that going to work? They tried this with BBC Radio and it was a disaster. They’re reorganizing and trying it again. Isn’t one of the dangers of this integration is the stories will become less distinctive — everyone covering the same things across all the platforms — and radio would lose in all this because television has the greater force field. We’re going to be ’sucked into’ this.”
Cruickshank: “CBC Radio News is already quite powerful. It’s very significant in the structure that nobody is aligned specifically to television or radio, but that everyone has lots of experience in all the media. We are not talking about finding efficiencies by sending [TV] people with no radio experience out to do stories. Our agnosticism is around content — being a content company. It’s enormously important that we have the right content on the right platform.”
Enright: “Suppose there’s a story that radio could cover with a phone, but television needs pictures, so we all have to wait?”
Cruickshank: “No. There will actually be a desk which will [think about] who needs this. Will it be radio? Television? Newsworld? The regional shows? We can make a sensible decision about what kind of staffing we need there. Right now, we’re not coordinated in that way. We send too few or, worse, too many people [to cover the same story]. We need a centre where we can decide where a story is going to go — like a slot organization: “That’ll go to radio and Newsworld and that’s it.”
Stursberg: “Our commitment to Canadians about news is that we are there with the news as it happens, whenever they need it. If radio news can get to it first — boom, it goes to radio. It goes out as quickly as possible.”
From the floor: “Everything you talk about is what it means for news. The only thing I can see in this organization chart about Current Affairs is there’s no more current affairs department at all. This gives me great concern.”
Stursberg: “One of the things we wanted to do was to make sure thigns sat in appropriate places, so one of the conversations Jennifer and I had was what do we do with radio current affairs vs. radio news. In the old days, current affairs was theoretically inside news. In reality, it never really was. It was always managed by radio. If a show is fed by news gathering, it is a news show. If it is not, it is not. In the future, the radio current affairs shows will not sit within NCAN, they will sit within radio where, as a practical matter, they are already. When we say current affairs shows, we mean everything from Ideas and onward. Those shows are the pillars of radio’s primetime schedule. The commitment to those shows remains absolutely intact.”
CBC employees: Did you attend or watch/listen to the announcement? Are you in radio? What do you think about these changes?
New CBC TV shows catching on: Canadian Press
We’re getting there…
The CBC is succeeding in getting Canadians talking about its new primetime shows, suggests a survey conducted late last month by The Canadian Press and Harris-Decima.
As of Jan. 28th, one in three people polled had heard about four of the CBC’s heavily promoted winter shows: “The Border,” “JPod,” “Sophie” and “MVP.” All of the shows launched in early January.
Now the bad news. That hasn’t yet translated into large numbers of Canadians tuning into the shows, however - only 10 per cent of those polled had actually seen “The Border,” about an elite team of Canadian border-security officers. That’s more viewers than the other shows had managed to attract among those surveyed.
Thirty-three per cent of those surveyed felt that the quality of CBC programming is getting better compared to previous years, compared to 21 per cent who felt it was getting worse. But those who had watched one or more of the new programs (19 per cent of respondents) were five times more likely to say the quality was improving (67 per cent)rather than declining (12 per cent).
More younger people than older people had a better opinion about the quality of CBC programming, the survey also found.
More than 1,000 Canadians were interviewed between Jan. 22 and 28th though Harris-Decima’s national online panel, and the results are considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Canadian Press
