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	CBC Radio 2	Posted at 12:16 pm (28 Aug 2008)

Richard Terfry will have a regular day job soon.

The musician (who plays under the name Buck 65) will be the host of Radio 2 Drive when the show launches next week. The Halifax Chronicle-Herald profiled Terfry Tuesday and got his thoughts on what you’ll be hearing starting September 2:

We kept it real simple, something punchy, think­ing about the fact that we’re going to be reaching a lot of people during their afternoon commute and we’re going to be providing a soundtrack for that….

As for the description of Drive as a “songwriters’ show,” Terfry hopes that the term is inclusive enough to reach as many listeners as possible, while opening up the spectrum of musical guests that will join him in the studio every week to talk about the creative process and even play a song or two.

“It’s really broad,” he admits. “We use that designation fairly loosely. There’s a lot of talk of songs, and a lot of singer-songwriters pop up on our play­list, as far as I can see it doesn’t really exclude much from what we can play

We’re playing a lot of Canadian stuff, 75 to 80 per cent, but a lot of stuff from around the world in practically every genre you can think of. [We'll play] some hip-hop, which may not be the first type of music you’d think of froma singer-songwriter perspective, but there’s also been those artists you’d ex­pect like Ron Sexsmith and Kathleen Edwards and Neil Young. Neil’s like a holy figurehead around here.

The full article is here.

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	Personalities	Posted at 12:12 pm (28 Aug 2008)

A little infopr0n of the CBC’s Olympic coverage, for those of you who like numbers:

• >90% satisfaction level with CBC programming, among Canadians who watched the Games (CP/Harris Decima)
• 1.29 million viewers: overall average CBC Television audience
• 933,000 viewers: Opening Ceremony
• 8.20 million viewers: Closing Ceremony
• Largest audience: 2.6 million (for Simon Whitfield’s race on Aug. 18)
• 46 million web pages viewed under CBCsports.ca/olympics
  
• >2 million web pages per day viewed
• 3.2 million: live streams served
  
• 1.7 million: on-demand streams served
  

Over to you, CTV. As they say fondly in some regions of the country, “Do your worst, m’ boys.”

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	Olympic Games	Posted at 10:49 am (27 Aug 2008)

Is it just me, or have the the fine folks in the CBC Bureau of Name Allocation* stopped adding a little, er, “inspiration” into their morning coffees?

We’ll soon have CBC Canadian Songwriters and CBC Canadian Composers as names of web radio streams and Radio Two Morning and Radio Two Drive for the…. well, you know.

Fair enough, the rationale is hard to argue with. Simple, descriptive names make it easier for the audience to remember. Besides convenience, that can pay off for us during the ratings weeks. Unlike television, where viewership is measured by a monitoring device attached to TVs, radio listenership in Canada is measured by surveys asking participants to remember what station they listened to and when. This is why private radio stations will tell you the name of their station every three seconds: (“You’re tuned to 92FM where 92FM time is just past noon. 92FM Weather in a moment, but first to Anna with 92FM Traffic.”)

And true, CBC Radio Two Morning will indeed be easier to remember than something “clever” like The Forenoon Acoustics, but seriously, do we have to be so… so… bland?

• Could the late ground-breaking Brave New Waves have been as adored by fans as it was with a name like CBC Eclectic Overnight?
• Would science geeks rally as devotedly around Quirks and Quarks as they would around CBC Science On The Radio?
• Could Definitely Not the Opera and its predecessor Brand X have captured the hearts of Canadians as CBC Pop Culture Saturday?
• Would ratings improve if we changed The Vinyl Cafe to Stuart McLean Reads Loudly From a Book?

Given time, this infection of blandness might even spread to the junior service with shows titled CBC News: Sunday, Steven and Chris, and The CFL on CBC?

Oh. Right.

Your thoughts and further “improvements” to show names welcome, in the comments.

* Incidentally, there is no longer a CBC Bureau of Name Allocation. Budget cutbacks, you know.

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	Fun Stuff	Posted at 10:21 am (27 Aug 2008)

More details are beginning to emerge about the four 24-hour web radio streams CBC Radio will launch next week, along with changes to CBC Radio Two:

CBC Jazz: CBC Jazz will feature a “deep playlist” featuring jazz music and musicians from across the decades.  You’ll hear an emphasis on Canadian performers and compositions (Michael Bublé, Diana Krall) but also favourites like Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, and more.

CBC Classical: CBC Classical will play music from across the centuries includuding pieces by classical composers and performed by the best Canadian and international orchestras, chamber ensembles and soloists.

CBC Canadian Songwriters: Pretty much what it says. Artists heard will include Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockburn, Alex Cuba, Feist, Basia Bulat, Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy, and Greg Keilor.

CBC Canadian Composers: The entire range of music composed by some of Canada’s most reknowned composers and performed by our premiere ensembles. Think John Weinzweig and Christos Hatzis.

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	Web-Radio Streams	Posted at 9:38 am (27 Aug 2008)

Private radio in Canada is basking in some of its best profits in decades.

In a report by Statistics Canada, commercial radio stations reported nearly 20% profit margin (before interest and taxes) in 2007 — that’s the industry’s third best result in 30 years, after 2006 and 2005.

The boom comes despite the emergence of new technologies such as satellite radio, online radio and portable digital players.

From Broadcaster Magazine:

[Statistics Canada] says regulatory changes in 1998 allowed for greater concentration of ownership, which helped radio withstand the competition from other media.The industry also rationalized its operations by transferring AM stations to the generally more popular and more profitable FM band.

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	The Media Landscape	Posted at 12:42 pm (25 Aug 2008)

The CRTC approved a new CBC sports specialty channel Wednesday, but will limit the amount of high-ratings sports like hockey, basketball and football.

CBC SportsPlus is expected to start early in 2009.

As part of the licence, at least 30% of the content must be covering amateur sport, calculated weekly. Also, no more than 30% of weekly broadcasts could involve pro sports and only 10 per cent could be high-profile sports such as hockey, baseball, football, basketball, golf, soccer or tennis.

Calculating weekly, rather than hourly, will make it difficult for new station to exceed its programming limits during high ratings — playoffs, for example — and then make it up in slack periods.

A number of groups, including CTVglobemedia, Rogers, and Score Media, had opposed the proposed channel saying it would unfairly compete against their sport channels.

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	Sports	Posted at 1:31 am (21 Aug 2008)

Sadly this is the last Olympics that CBC will be covering for a while. That said, this is also the most well covered Olympics in CBC history. Partly thanks to the Internet and cbc.ca.

Don’t Feed The Animals
cbc.ca/olympics provides you with up to 12 online “channels” where you can watch Olympic events live. This is possible thanks to the folks in Television (specifically Web Presentation group), encoding software by Digital Rapids called StreamZ, and Akamai.

The Olympic feeds are back hauled by Television to Toronto where they are encoded by the Digital Rapids boxes. They are encoded in Windows Media v8 at 500kbps. This stream is then sent to Akamai for distribution.

In most cases the video you see are raw feeds from the venues. This means that there is no commentary. The only audio you here is ambient sounds from the event.

A lot of people like these feeds as they provide coverage for their sport even if it is not available on television.

Canada Only, Please
Due to licensing restrictions by the IOC, only Canadians are able to view Olympic coverage provided by the CBC. As such, we’ve had to use technology from Akamai to ensure that we follow the rules.

The Akamai method of “geofencing” (as we call it) is more sophisticated than what I described earlier. Multiple methods are used, some of them are:

• Your IP Address. Using a database of known IP blocks and locations.
• Which Akamai DNS server you use. When you look up a host name (like www.cbc.ca) you hit a specific Akamai DNS server. Akamai knows which DNS server is in which country and uses that information to figure out what country you’re in.
  BGP Metrics. In a nutshell, Akamai looks at what other servers/routers you go through to get to the stream. If those are in the country Akamai thinks you’re in, then the confidence level goes up.
• Timezones. Using a piece of javascript on the client side. We figure out what timezone your clock is set to. If it matches with one of the timezones in the country Akamai thinks you’re in, confidence level goes up.
• We have people who watch you.

The methods listed above, plus a bunch of others combine to give a Country accuracy level of 99%.

Trends
Because of the twelve hour difference (in the Eastern Time Zone) quite a few of the events happen late at night and early the next morning.

The above graph shows the number of people watching the streams over the past seven days. The majority of the watching happens between 8pm and 12am EDT, and 6am and 12pm EDT.

Some days are more popular than others (like August 14, versus August 16). The little red arrow you see on August 19, at around 12pm EDT is when the most users were watching the streams ever.

I suspect that the closing ceremonies will generate the most streaming traffic during the Olympics.

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	CBC.ca web site, Specials, Under the Hood	Posted at 2:11 pm (20 Aug 2008)

A few months ago, when Rhiannon Agostinho tried looking for a group on Facebook where she could chat with people about the CBC and its happenings, she came up empty.

So she started her own. Today, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation group is one of many of Facebook groups where thousands of fans gather.

Rhiannon, an editor at CBC Newsworld, says the group was originally meant for CBC employes, but “Since then, other people have joined and given feedback which is great; I want more of that.”

Raised in Burlington Ontario, Rhiannon has worked at the CBC since May 2006.

An interview with Rhiannon about her earliest CBC memories and what her dream job would be appear below the fold.

Two other Facebook groups have emerged as gathering points for people interested about the Corporation — the CBC fan page was started by Inside the CBC editor Tod Maffin. The other discussion group is I Heart CBC!. Both have about 14,000 members and neither has any official connection to the Corporation.

[Read more →]

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	Fanatical Fans	Posted at 5:00 pm (19 Aug 2008)

The new CBC Radio 2 schedule has been announced and here are the highlights:

Radio 2 Morning, weekdays hosted by Tom Allen, weekends hosted by Molly Johnson.
Weekdays from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., listeners wake up to a mix of contemporary artists and familiar favourites with Tom Allen. The show features a cross-genre look at the best of our nation’s music. The weekend edition of Radio 2 Morning airs Saturdays, 6 – 10 a.m. and Sundays, 6 – 8 a.m. with host Molly Johnson. An acclaimed international jazz sensation, Johnson brings her firsthand experience and perspective as a Canadian performer to the airwaves.

Tempo, hosted by Julie Nesrallah.
Weekdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Radio 2’s classical core takes the prime daytime slot as mezzo-soprano and Ottawa native Julie Nesrallah gives listeners five hours of celebrated classical music. With anecdotes, insight and the occasional studio guest, Nesrallah’s vibrant delivery and intimate knowledge of classical music makes for an upbeat, modern, and informed show.

Radio 2 Drive, hosted by Rich Terfry.
Airing weekdays from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., Radio 2 Drive, is hosted by innovative Canadian funk/hip hop artist and passionate music fan Rich Terfry (he performs as Buck 65). The country’s premier destination for new music and emerging Canadian talent, Radio 2 Drive boasts 75 per cent Canadian content from a range of contemporary musical genres with a focus on singer-songwriters. From time to time, Rich will be joined in-studio by artists for interviews and live performances.

Farrago, hosted by Jurgen Gothe.
Farrago wraps up the weekend on Sundays from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Jurgen Gothe presents listeners a medley of music drawn primarily from his own collection, accompanied by his unique and off-the-cuff commentary. Sophisticated and amusing, the program features new discoveries and unheralded gems presented within a new theme each week.

Note: All programs air one half-hour later in Newfoundland

What do you think of this new lineup?
(Please keep comments about the new shows, please.)

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	CBC Radio 2	Posted at 4:10 pm (19 Aug 2008)

Jonathan Dube, director of CBC’s digital media, will leave the CBC Monday to return to ABCNews.com after a three-year stint here.

Dube joined CBC in 2005 as Editorial Director for CBC.ca, responsible for overseeing editorial content and staff. Last year, he took on the role of integrating CBC News across all digital media platforms.

“Under his leadership, the site has more than doubled its traffic,” said Todd Spencer, executive director of news content for CBC News, “[Making it] the top rated Canadian news site in both unique visits and quality of news coverage.”

Since joining CBC’s online team, Dube launched commenting on all news and sports stories and the incorporation of user-generated content into the site, expanded the news site to include new sections on technology, consumer life, diversions, visitor feedback and revamped money and health sections. As a result, the amount of daily content published on the site has more than doubled, and the length of user visits has significantly increased.

At ABCNews.com, he will help steer strategic planning, business strategy, editorial content and production. He has also worked MSNBC.com.

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	CBC.ca web site, Executives	Posted at 2:56 pm (19 Aug 2008)

CBC Radio in Montreal is looking for a new host for its Radio Noon show.

Besides about five years of on-air or equivalent experience, you’ve got to understand the culture of French Canada and have extensive knowledge of current affairs, in particular of Quebec public affairs.

Your English musts be very goods and the Frenchs pas le mal.

Finally, in a requirement that seems to rule me out of all CBC work these days: “Extensive general knowledge.”

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	Getting a Job, Human Resources, Montreal	Posted at 12:45 pm (18 Aug 2008)

Fans of the CBC Radio show Disc Drive won’t be waiting long to hear long-time host Jurgen Gothe. Gothe will host a a new weekly show, tentatively titled Farrago on CBC Radio 2.

Last night, Gothe hosted a DiscDrive concert at the Vancouver Playhouse. (Have photos? Email them to insidecbcblog@gmail.com )

Jurgen is currently Food & Wine Editor of Vancouver Lifestyles Magazine, and contributes regular columns to the journal: “Carte Blanche” and the popular “Travels with my Appetite.” He has been approached by a major Canadian publisher to create a new book based on his “Travels” column.

CBC announced a few months ago that Gothe’s 23-year old Vancouver-based show on CBC Radio 2 would “leave the schedule.”

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	Personalities	Posted at 9:42 am (15 Aug 2008)

Any other retro gold out there on YouTube et al that might might be fun to share here?

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	Retro	Posted at 11:38 am (13 Aug 2008)