At the Friday Night Gemini Gala in Toronto, the CBC picked up seven more Gemini Awards, including George Stroumboulopoulos’ third Gemini as host of The Hour.

This Hour Has 22 Minutes won the best comedy series award for the seventh time, beating fan favourite Corner Gas, which is now in its last season.

The Englishman’s Boy picked up two more Geminis for Best Dramatic Mini-Series, and best lead actor for Nicholas Campbell’s work on the Guy Vanderhaeghe television adaptation.

Ron McLean won the best sports host Gemini for his work on Hockey Day in Canada. And Ian Hanomansing won for Best News Anchor for his work on CBC News at Six in Vancouver, beating out Peter Mansbridge and Kevin Newman.

The CBC series Intelligence, which was cancelled this year, won the Gemini for Best Dramatic Series.

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	Awards	Posted at 6:04 pm (30 Nov 2008)

Carol Morin, a familiar face to many northern television viewers as the former host of CBC Northbeat, has won a National Aboriginal Achievement award.

Morin was the first First Nations person to anchor a national newscast in 1989 on CBC Newsworld. Since then she’s been recognized as a role model in the First Nations community, and has worked as a host on several networks, “Morin has helped make First Nations peoples of Canada more prominent and visible to the general public,” the awards committee said.

Last year she left Northbeat to run unsuccessfully as an MLA in the N.W.T. assembly. She has since returned to Northbeat as a producer.

Morin won the award in the media & communication category. She will receive the award at the ceremony on March 6 in Winnipeg.

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	North, Personalities	Posted at 11:48 am (29 Nov 2008)

CBC Radio cleaned up in the latest audience measurement report released by BBM.

In radio they call it the book, and it was an outstanding showing, overall CBC Radio One:

• Set an all-time record for total audience share of 11.1 per cent, which is up from 9.9 per cent a year ago;
• Achieved a national audience of 3.5 million listerners, which is up almost a quarter million;
• Set records in Toronto. For the first time ever, CBC Radio One is now the top-ranked station, with a reach of 1.1 million listeners, and again producing the top-rated morning show in the largest market in Canada;
  
• Is in the top three of 20 of 22 markets in the morning show slots.

A bunch of shows had historic high points, including The Current, The World at Six, DNTO, Vinyl Tap, Cross Country Check-up.

This latest book is for September and October. For the full BBM results, click here.

Unfortunately the format changes at Radio 2 were not as well received. It saw its share of 2.9 per cent drop slightly.

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	CBC Radio 1, CBC Radio 2	Posted at 8:37 pm (28 Nov 2008)

In a quick email John Cruickshank explained that his decision to leave CBC News does not reflect on the CBC. “I’m going to The Star because I want to go back to newspapers because I understand them and love them. I miss the feeling of being directly involved with a story from conception or event right to the doorstep,” Cruickshank said.

As far as the concerns about his departure he said “One of the challenges Richard [Stursberg] and I have been working on is how to create more authority and accountability in all senior roles.

I believe the things we accomplished as a team in News were extraordinary. There’s now a great leadership group, we have a great plan, an inspiring and evolving mission and a structure that has brought all the News staff together,” Cruickshank said today.

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	News & Journalism, The Exit Interview	Posted at 1:14 pm (27 Nov 2008)

On the heels of several media outlets reporting about VP of French Sercives Sylvain Lafrance’s expenses, which amounted to almost $80,000 in 2006, it seems Richard Stursberg is next in line.

A report by the Ottawa Sun yesterday says Stursberg raked up $85,000 in expenses over two years.

These stories have been gaining traction for a few days now, so in case you’re not caught up, here’s the background.

Several newspapers are now running stories based on a bunch of Acess to Information requests on CBC executives. The requests first resulted in the Sylvain Lafrance stories. Now Stursberg’s expenses are in the spotlight. The documents were obtained by Ken Rubin who is described as a Sun paper researcher.

Now I don’t know Ken Rubin, or the process to file access to information requests, but if I were him I’d save a few stamps and check this website. It lists all of the executives expenses since 2007 on whatever, whenever.

The site shows that for instance the President of the CBC has a “Business meal with Auditor General of Canada - $23.21″ on June 27, 2008.

Twenty bucks on the auditor general. Hardly seems excessive.

Now don’t get me wrong. There may be some legitimate excessive spending at the CBC, the Sun story details a meal between Richard Stursberg, Rick Mercer and one other person for $616.34. Yes, that’s a lot to spend on dinner, but let’s keep in mind what Mercer does. He hosts of the one of the most popular shows on the network.

Is a $600 dinner an outrageous expense? Or a smart business gesture to keep on of your highest grossing personalities happy?

It should also be said that the money is a combination of personal and business expenses. If Stursberg puts on an event in the atrium, then it goes against his expenses.

But the larger question is: What’s the motive?

The Canadian Press reported that this may be part of a larger strategy to discredit the CBC and lay the groundwork to cut its spending as we head into a recession:

Libby Davies, the NDP heritage critic, said the successive messages point to a government “laying the groundwork” for a whack at its favourite whipping boy.

“They’re sort of cherry-picking now and zeroing in on expenses . . . really setting the stage for something that they want to come up with politically to go after and attack CBC,” she said.

What do you think? Are the executive expenses at the CBC newsworthy? Or is this something else?

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	Access to Information, CBC Policies, Parliament	Posted at 12:59 pm (27 Nov 2008)

The post about John Cruickshank’s resignation sparked a few comments, one of which I thought worthwhile to share here. It’s from Terry LeDrew, a producer in Corner Brook, Newfoundland.

Never met the man. But someone who DID, said tonight he was one of the few who seemed to “get” it, and was saddened by the news.

Me, I think we can speculate and shoot at whatever targets we want right now, and with stories breaking about questionable expense accounts, there’s no shortage of big targets and if you read Tea Makers, no shortage of ammo either.

For those of us who remember the lock-out, who’ve struggled with questionable programming, Frankensteinian  (I made it up, ok?) revisioning projects ever since, it would be easy to sit back and collect right now… payback.

But where does that leave the kids who only ever wanted to be a journalist or a technician with CBC.

Where does it leave our audience, who only ever wanted to hear and see meaningful stories?

What we need right now is an honest discussion of what is happening. How public broadcasting is going to weather this. How we are going to go about our daily jobs, look people straight in the eye, and assure them we ARE credible and that we care about them, our listeners, viewers, and readers.

I’m not sure they have felt that for a very long time…

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		Posted at 10:13 am (27 Nov 2008)

John Cruickshank, the publisher of CBC News resigned today. Cruickshank had been at the corporation for only 14 months, having joined in September 2007. Cruickshank will continue on at the CBC until January 1st.

He is leaving for the post of publisher at The Toronto Star. At the Star he will replace Jagoda Pike, who left the paper to join Ontario’s bid for the Pan-American games.

During his time at the CBC Cruickshank was responsible for splitting the news organization into two areas: programming and newsgathering. He appointed Jennifer McGuire to head up the programming arm. He was also involved in starting to integrate the television, radio and internet operations.

McGuire will now also serve as interim publisher, and will work on a transition plan.

At the newsroom in Toronto there’s a general sense of disappointment and worry. Some staffers wonder what the move says about the state of CBC News. Cruickshank is leaving for a newspaper, an industry which many feel is in peril. A comment on this blog reads “this resignation waves many, many flags.” Others also worry about a change in course before many of Cruickshank’s initiatives have been fully implemented.

So what do you think? Will Cruickshank’s resignation imperil some of the initiatives he launched? And what does the move say about CBC News?

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	News & Journalism	Posted at 5:42 pm (26 Nov 2008)

TSN’s Grey Cup coverage drew on the smallest audiences in the history of the championship game.

The Globe reported today that the English audience was down almost a million viewers to 2.4 million. That’s off 27 per cent from the 3.3 million that watched the game on the CBC a year ago.

The one bright spot for TSN was its French sister station pulled in good numbers, as the game was in Montreal and the Alouettes played.

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		Posted at 6:37 pm (25 Nov 2008)

Shokoor and Qaem Feroz, who were detained by Afghan authorities following Mellissa Fung’s kidnapping have been released.

CBC News interviewed Shokoor shortly after his release, he said “he believes the appeals from the CBC and the Canadian government were the “main cause” of his release.”

Shokoor also said he flagged down a police car immediately after the kidnapping, but the police refused to help.

“That guy told me, ‘Go to the police checkpoint. It’s over there. It’s not our responsibility.’”

When he pleaded with the officers, they instructed him to move away from their car.

“They could have caught them,” he said.

Click here for more.

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		Posted at 7:19 pm (24 Nov 2008)

Sometimes the internal emails that fly around the CBC are pretty classic. This one went out this afternoon.

“As part of the construction required to install new UPS (uninterruptible power supply) servers in the Broadcasting Centre, we will be conducting two separate building operations this week that involve gamma ray scanning and/or core drilling.”

Gamma-ray scanning. Core drilling. WTF?

If it sounds like science fiction, it kinda is. According to NASA gamma-rays are the smallest waves in the electromagnetic spectrum. They’re generated by radioactive atoms and nuclear explosions. Gamma-ray scanning allows you to see into otherwise opaque objects. Here’s a shot of two stowaways inside a container truck by the Department of Homeland Security.

Oh, and one more thing, gamma-rays kill living cells.

So if you’re working overnight in Toronto on Wednesday and Thursday avoid the 6th and 7th floors, for the exact times and locations click here.

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		Posted at 6:12 pm (24 Nov 2008)

In a plainspoken message to employees yesterday, CBC President Hubert Lacroix, announced that there would be no layoffs at the CBC if there’s “any way to avoid it.”

“Where others are contemplating and predicting layoffs, we are looking to put in place and push forward with solutions that won’t involve cutting jobs,” Lacroix said yesterday in a email to employees.

Lacroix said CBC employees are the foundation of the corporation “and we don’t want to chip away at that foundation.” This comes in the wake of layoffs announced at Canwest this week, with CTV predicting similar measures.

Nevertheless cost-cutting measures are being put in place immediately:

• All new-hires will have to be reviewed at the vice-presidential level;
• Significant reductions in travel, hospitality and entertainment expenses;
• Additional reductions in overtime.

Lacroix also appealed directly to employees to help. “You know the details of your particular operations best. Look around; think hard about what it is you do. If you have an idea as to how your unit or department could cut costs over the coming year, pass that idea on to your director. “

So, do you have any ideas on how to cut costs at the CBC? Post a comment below with your thoughts.

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		Posted at 10:54 am (22 Nov 2008)

The latest federal elections introduced some new tools for site visitors to use on our site.

You were able to use your postal code to get riding information, view real time results on an interactive map, view live video, and talk politics by posting comments.

I will be talking about these applications in detail in the next few posts.

Blackout
Providing these features proved to be a challenge. The Elections Act doesn’t allow us to broadcast results to areas of the country where the polls haven’t yet closed. Therefore we were not publishing any results on the website until 10PM ET. This is known as the “blackout” period.

Flash Crowd
Because of the blackout wasn’t over until 10pm ET, that’s when the majority of users came to the site. Let’s take a look at the traffic graph for that particular evening.

The date/time in the graph is in Eastern Time. To give you an idea of the scale of the graph the top of the Y axis would be a value 3.8 times higher than at the bottom. The red arrow indicates the peak, which lasted for approx 10 minutes. As the evening progressed the traffic subsided.

“Elections Mode”
Because of the blackout we had to figure out a way to display results on the site the instant 10PM rolls around. Here’s how we did it:

All of the site assets were uploaded to the webservers hours in advance. We were able to control the display of these assets using Server Side Includes (SSIs).

SSIs allows us to hide or display certain html based on the existence of a variable by using if statements. Here’s an example:

<!–#if expr=”${electionsmode} = on”–>
<results related HTML goes here>
<!–#endif–>

We include a file called “vars.html” at the top of every page which defines the “electionsmode” variable. When it’s time to go live, we just change the “electionsmode” variable in vars.html from “off” to “on” and the new content appears instantly on the site.

Getting The Data
The elections results are delivered to us from another IT department. It is the exact same data feed that is used on-air. We process the results every 30 seconds and spit out XML data for our applications to use. The process works like this:

1. IT FTPs the raw election data results to our server.
2. CBC.ca’s Java application sucks in the raw data.
3. The application applies business rules, calculates percentages, then outputs XML files.
4. Process is repeated again in 30 seconds.

The XML files are used for the flash map and riding result pages. Because this process only happens every 30 seconds, you might see a delay from what you see on Television. This is because TV does not have this post-processing and transforming that we do.

The Flash Map
The flash map was developed by Tom Klepl, a very talented flash developer. He worked closely with the system administrators to ensure that the map was designed in such a way that it played well with our CDN (Akamai).

The map allows users to zoom in to their riding and see real time results of who is winning the race. As well, it gives a general overview of all the ridings in Canada. One of our interface engineers, David Raso, produced the following time lapse video of how the country voted on election night.

In Part Two
In my next post, we’ll go into further detail on how the postal code search works (hint: no php, java, or database required!) as well as how we dealt with users who would post election results in comments!

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	, CBC.ca web site, Under the Hood	Posted at 4:09 pm (20 Nov 2008)

The CBC is planning some big changes at its Montreal HQ. The building is surrounded by a four hectare lot. According to the Gazette, the CBC plans to build 2,000 new housing units on the site and move its operations to a new building.

The project is projected to cost about $1.6 billion, all of which is planned to come from private developers - no taxpayer dollars on this project. The plan also entails opening up a few streets that the current lot blocks off.

Montreal employees, what do you guys think about the plans?

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	Centres, Montreal	Posted at 12:34 am (20 Nov 2008)

Having worked at the CBC building in Toronto for several years, I’ve always been amazed at the number of pedestrians that stop to pose for pictures with the Glenn Gould statue in front of the building.

In the summer it’s literally a constant stream of people snuggling up to silent Glenn. In fact in the last few years he’s had so many people sitting on his lap that the bronze is totally worn down. It’s smooth and shinny. I’m sure the famous recluse would be amused at the irony.

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	Toronto	Posted at 12:01 am (20 Nov 2008)

In the last couple days both CTV and Global have announced layoffs. The question on many people’s mind is wether the CBC will follow suit.

Last week Canwest Global announced it is cutting five per cent of its workforce. Which works out to 210 broadcast and 350 publishing jobs. Today CTV announced a hiring freeze and some layoffs.

Both blame the global economic downturn, sagging ad sales, and a recent CRTC rejection of extra fees for the three main networks.

With CBC currently facing a budget shortfall many employees are wondering if a hiring freeze, layoffs or some belt-tightening is on its way at the Mother Corp.

Currently senior executives seem to leaning in favour of maintaining current staff levels but reducing some costs. I’d expect an announcement on that in the coming days. Stay tuned.

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	, Behind the Scenes, Financial	Posted at 11:00 pm (19 Nov 2008)