If case you’re wondering why I haven’t been able to post and get to your comments as often as I’d like recently, it’s because we’ve just had a new baby. Hopefully things will settle down a bit soon.

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	Behind the Scenes	Posted at 3:42 pm (30 Sep 2009)

An anonymous reader left an interesting critique of the new 90-minute local news cast. Although I can’t say I agree with all of it, I thought it’s worth highlighting to spark a discussion on the new format. What do you think about the new format? Leave a comment below.

I don’t know if you have watched the new 90 minute CBC local newscasts where you live. If it happens to be Toronto, don’t bother. The good folks at CBC local news in Toronto have managed to squeeze 20 minutes of news into their 90 minute package. I sure hope it is better elsewhere in Canada but I fear it can’t be. Let’s face it, a city of 5 million has a lot more stories than a city of 250,000 or even a million.

I tried to be fair. I didn’t review the show during the first week to give the producers, reporters, hosts and writers time to get their act together. I even chose an excellent local news day to tape and parse the program. But I was highly disappointed by the effort.

If filling 90 minutes was the goal, then the local news team delivered. There was no dead air. On the other hand the constant repetition of the same facts and pictures over-and-over again was enough to drive even the most passive viewer to throw a brick at the television.

The newscast is broken up into three shows: 5:00, 5:30, and 6:00. None of the programs have a distinct personality and none of them deliver a comprehensive take on the day’s news. Basically each half-hour is the same as the last. Same stories. Same reporters. Same basic feel.

The five o’clock show had three produced news stories, none of them one of the major local stories of the day and only one produced by the Toronto team. The report out of Ottawa on a possible federal election by Julie Van Dusen was dropped in as a kicker, the last story. It was a dreadful piece that broke all the conventions of television reporting, had few pictures and didn’t really explain the story. So maybe it was good to bury it at 5:28. There were two weather casts, the second one overly long and there were about eight minutes of commercials; excessive no? But what was most bothersome was the way the main stories were treated. Four different reporters standing around on the street telling us radio style, what they found. Sure they dropped in the odd clip and picture, but they did not produce reports. Oh, and there were 10 promos for what was coming up later on the 5:30 and 6:00.

The 5:30 newscast opened with the same story done in exactly the same way as on the 5:00. I would have thought it impossible but the “Breaking News” host fumbled her way through the same script making even more mistakes than her first try.
Once again produced stories were hard to find. There were three in the half hour. This time two were produced locally and one was actually on one of the big stories of the day. The “i-desk” sort of produced another story on Ryerson University orientation using a tiny camera that made it look like a bad internet piece. I don’t know why, but the “i-desk” host then promoted the camera he used. Was the camera a freebie? Since when does CBC plug product in the news?

Once again the show was dominated by eight minutes of commercials and two weather casts. It’s easy to fill 90 minutes when half the time is eaten up by weather and commercials. In this half-hour there were ONLY six promos for stories coming up later on the news.

Okay, I said to myself, the plan is to pack all the good stuff into the six o’clock package. I was prepared for a dynamite production in the time slot with the most available viewers.

It was not to be. The six began exactly the same way as the five and the five-thirty. The “Breaking news” desk host once again fumbled her way through the same facts and pictures as we had seen twice before. In this half-hour there were four produced stories. I am being generous. One was a series of man-in-the-street interviews; the lowest form of what passes for journalism. A second was a repeat of one of the produced stories from the first half-hour.

In this portion of the 90 minutes there were, count ‘em, three weather casts and 7 ½ or 8 more minutes of commercials. In fact the newscast was mostly made up of more repetition of the same facts presented in the same way as the first two half-hours.

On a day in which there was a lot of news CBC local produced 8 stories to fill a 90 minute newscast. By my calculation that’s about 15 minutes or ¼ of the time, in comparison there were about 24 minutes of commercials and about 13 minutes of the same weather over-and-over.

90 minutes of bad smoke and crappy mirrors is not going to cut it with even the most unsophisticated audiences. I don’t blame the producers. I blame CBC management. You can’t add airtime to an already starving show and expect success. Without more money and more staff you are dooming the local news to failure. The news people are doing their best with what they have. It would be either folly or stupidity to expect more. From where I sit, the latter wins.

If the local CBC local news is better where you are, please let us know.

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	CBC Television, News & Journalism	Posted at 3:39 pm (30 Sep 2009)

The CBC held its first ever annual public meeting today. The meeting was significant in that the public at large was invited to watch and submit questions directly to CBC executives via a website.

The CBC executives who hosted the meeting included the President and Chief Executive Officer, Hurbert Lacroix, the president of the board, Tim Casgrain and Suzanne Morris, the vice-president and chief financial officer.

Other CBC executives were also on hand to answer questions that came from across the country, in both English and French, and ranged from the CBC’s financial situation to the cost of programming, to the Olympics, to the changes at Radio 2.

One of the subjects that was raised repeatedly during the presentation was the CBC’s finances. Tim Casgrain used the forum to make a plea to Canadians “We need your help… we need the support of all Canadians,”  said in response to a question about the CBC’s financial situation, adding that in a minority government situation the CBC also needed the support of all political parties.

The meeting presented a series of slides that outlined the corporation’s direction and fiancial situation, and highlighted the fact that taxpayer support for public broadcasting in Canada is less than half the average of other OECD countries.

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	CBC Policies	Posted at 12:11 pm (23 Sep 2009)

This post is the result of a recent conversation I had with Kevin O’Leary about why he decided to leave BNN and what his plans are on the new business show with Amanda Lang. As he says below, after Lang decided to leave BNN to go to the CBC, O’Leary had no intention of joining.

But all of that changed after a breakfast meeting he had with Richard Stursberg. This is how O’Leary described the meeting and what convinced him to join the CBC.

When Amanda made her move to the CBC, she called me the night before and said ‘I’m going to move,’ and I said ‘Good luck to you.’ We’d worked together for six years and had a fantastic relationship because, you know, she views the world from, well, you’ve got to remember she’s Otto Lang’s daughter – a famous liberal.

I think the balance is to bring somebody that can bring her back to the side of light, which is the right. She needs me badly to help her with that. Because left alone she’d be dangerous to Canadians watching. So I felt the responsibility of the nation on me, to keep her in check, shall we say. So that was one compelling reason.

But I was concerned we wouldn’t be allowed – in the context of the CBC’s overall, what I call, left-wing agenda – to be what I am, which is a right-wing voice of reason. Richard [Stursberg] made it clear to me that that was not the case, I signed on that morning.

I went to that breakfast with no intention of going to the CBC.

I could see he was about to make material change. There’s no question. Because prior to that I had no intention of moving over. To me the CBC was not an unbiased view, it tended to have a way too left-wing taint to it in my view. I always looked to the CBC to give me the left side of the story not the centrist. And after meeting with Richard it was clear to me that he was going to change all that.

He wanted both views, he didn’t care if there was a conflict in it, he just wanted them both. And I was going to the part of what I call the right wing voice of reason. Now I’m very happy to take that position, I personally think of myself as slightly right of Attila the Hun, and I think we need a lot more Kevin O’Leary’s at the CBC to balance off what traditionally has been a way too complacent view of the world.

Even though CBC is steeped in history and has been extremely successful in the areas of news making and documentary reporting, it still has a responsibility in my view to report both sides of the story, from the left, from the right, so that the individual that watches the content can make up their own mind…

I think we have too much government, we’re over-taxed, we have to change that. We have to look at the role of the individual in this country. We don’t need public medecine. We need a private opportunity as well. We need less of everything the government brings to the table. And we don’t tell that story on the CBC and I’m going to start telling it now.

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	Behind the Scenes	Posted at 6:20 pm (21 Sep 2009)

**Note: this is a guest post by Steve Guiton, Chief Regulatory Officer at the CBC, about the Local TV Matters campaign that the CBC recently joined. In case you’re not familiar with the issues, the campaign centers around the cable and satellite companies paying carriage fees to carry the major broadcaster’s signals. There is some background on the issue here.**

It can all get pretty confusing. You open your cable bill every month and once again the cable companies have decided to raise your rates again.

And at the same time you’re being asked to fork over more of your hard-earned dollars, the cable companies are reporting record profits. – Does that seem fair? Do you think anyone is looking out for YOUR interests?

We’re pleased to see that today, the Canadian government issued an order in council asking the CRTC to explore how negotiating a fair value for broadcaster’s local TV signals would impact Canadian consumers like you. We’re happy to hear that, like us, they’re focused on putting the interests of consumers and Canada’s local television front and centre.

In fact, ensuring Canadian consumers are protected from having to pay more for “value for signal” is one of the key reasons behind the local TV matters campaign.

There seems to be some confusion surrounding this issue, particularly given the misinformation being put out there.

Let’s try to clarify a few pieces of the puzzle.

[Read more →]

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	CBC Policies	Posted at 5:45 pm (17 Sep 2009)

At the CBC fall launch event this afternoon, I had the opportunity for a quick chat with Kirstine Stewart, the general manger of CBC English television. This will be a big season for the CBC, and for Stewart personally. CBC Television has made some impressive ratings gains in the last few seasons under her watch. Gains that she hopes will continue this fall. I asked about her vision for CBC television.

PM: What is your vision for CBC Television?
KS: I really believe that the public broadcaster has to be entertaining and engaging with the public. We get a lot of debate about whether we should be pandering to viewers, whether we should be trying to go out of our way to attract them, and I don’t think we do… You own us. We want to reflect your interests, your passions. Everything you’re curious about we want to explore with you.

That’s what I’ve tried to do, to really create a lineup that really whether it’s sport, entertainment, comedy, it really gives an offering to Canadians of how interesting they are. If we’re lucky enough to get you to watch us, it better be something that you really deserve.

PM: What demographic do you want to capture? Is there a particular demographic that you’re looking at saying ‘I’d like to have more of them’?
KS: I’m always trying to widen the demographic. CBC over the years has been excellent in delivering news and sports coverage, and largely the viewership was older and a bit male – it skewed male. And that’s great, I want to expand that, I don’t want to abandon those viewers because they’re very important to everybody. But a 22-year-old woman out West is equally a Canadian as an 85-year-old grandfather. I like to broaden the audience.

What you see on the schedule, what I’ve tried to commission is a real mix of programming that can engage, hopefully, as wide an audience as possible, but always has a bit of a slant… So I think what I’m really trying to do is offer up a menu of what it is we have, but with the core basis that they’re all great authentic Canadian stories, not just to attract a specific demographic but also to get more people to watch each show.

PM: I’d like to touch on the criticism about the American programming. What’s your reaction?
KS: Unfortunately it’s unrealistic. I would love to be in the position of having a 24-hour Canadian schedule; I honestly cannot afford it on the budget that we’re given. When we put on American programming we do it within the allowance of our license. We have to be careful, we try to be respectful of the rest of the schedule when we take American programming, but knowing that sometimes, and quite often, that American programming brings in larger viewership that can showcase our Canadian shows right after. We did find that after introducing Jeopardy to the scheduled last year our eight o’clock time slot grew thirty percent. That was in part in compliment to Jeopardy as a lead in, and part in compliment to the producers who are making better shows. It’s a combination we need to take advantage of to make sure we have the most viewers possible watching Canadian shows.

PM: Does it surprise you that that criticism always focuses on the American programming?
KS: And not the British ones? It was very interesting to me. Not surprising, but interesting always. Because we had Coronation Street on the schedule in the same slot that Wheel of Fortune is in now for years and years and years.

So yes, I believe because we need to be more sensitive to the cultural sovereignty of Canada versus the United States because we share the border, that can be a trigger for people who want to keep CBC Canadian. But I’ve got to say, it’s more Canadian now that it’s ever been in years. People get a bit myopic or have a short-term memory when it comes to schedules, but I have an old one sitting outside my office: Dallas was in prime-time; it’s got Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. It wasn’t that long ago that we had a very U.S. schedule.

But we’ve kept it Canadian in prime time, we’ve got the only Canadian late-night talk show, we do a lot of things that push the boundaries, that let people know that we make all kinds of Canadian programming.

PM: The TD integration. Do you see this as something the CBC can take advantage of because of how much programming we make? Is there a flip side to that, is there a danger?
KS: We go into this with eyes wide open. We know that the bar is going to be very high for the CBC, in particular as a public broadcaster, when we look at integration. We look at other broadcasters who do this, and we know we are going to be more heavily scrutinized. We are so careful that the integrations are organic and very natural to the story lines and respect the characters and the characterization – that it doesn’t make them do anything wacky or weird. When it’s done well actually integration ends up looking like real life, you know, you take the brand cereal box off the shelf, and that’s what people do in their homes, nobody has blank cereal boxes in their cupboards.

Hopefully, if it’s done in the right way, it will look authentic from the beginning.

PM: Are intending to expand it, or are you at the testing phase?
KS: We’re doing well with it already. Expansion is probably not the right word as much as looking for the right fit with the right shows. We turn down a lot of things, and we only do this when we feel it’s the right fit for the shows. There’s a lot of matchmaking going on. Some shows, and some genres, like Factual Entertainment, reality shows and lifestyle shows in particular, can be really open to product integration, other shows that are editorial like news are going to be less or none. So we’ll take a look at the schedule and we’ll only do it where it makes sense.

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	Executives	Posted at 7:10 pm (16 Sep 2009)

I’m doing a quick interview with Erin Karpluk, the star of ‘Being Erica’, at the CBC’s fall launch event this afternoon in the next few days. If you have a question you’d like to ask, leave a comment below.

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	Being Erica	Posted at 10:28 am (16 Sep 2009)

The CBC has joined forces with Canada’s private broadcasters to fight what it is calling “misinformation” from cable companies.

The CBC, CTV, Global, and A channels launched a campaign called Local TV Matters today to gain public support for fee-for-carriage idea.

The debate has been heating up as the CRTC prepares to consider the fee-for-carriage issue in November. For the last several months broadcasters such as the CBC and CTV, have been lobbying the government to loosen regulations to allow them to negotiate carriage fees for their signals, a system know as fee-for-carriage. The fee-for-carriage proposal is vehemently opposed by cable and satellite companies, such as Rogers and Bell, who are calling it another tax on their customers.

Steve Guiton, the chief regulatory officer at the corporation, says that’s false information. “there’s a certain level of misinformation out there right now.”

“We’re not asking for someone to come along and force a rate on them arbitrarily,” he said this afternoon from his office in Ottawa, “we’re just looking for the ability to negotiate for the value of our signal.”

Guiton said the cable and satellite companies are already charging their customers for the channels, “people are already paying for it, but we just want the opportunity to negotiate compensation for our services.” He told CBC News today that “Over the past five years, cable bills have gone up more than twice the cost of living and their profits have grown by more than a billion dollars.”

The cable and satellite companies don’t see it that way however. “After rejecting it twice, the CRTC has reintroduced the idea of having a fee-for-carriage: a payment to Canadian over-the-air broadcasters that could ultimately end up costing cable and satellite TV subscribers between $5 and $10 per month!,” Rogers vice-chairman Philip Lind said in an e-mail to Rogers customers recently.

“We are profoundly concerned about how these new taxes will affect our customers and the Canadian broadcasting system,” Lind said in a press release this summer, “and we intend to fight them on behalf of Canadian consumers.”

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	The Media Landscape	Posted at 6:15 pm (14 Sep 2009)

After months of hectic development the CBC launched a new video portal today. The portal will contain almost all CBC show videos in one place.

The portal is meant to capitalize on the growth of online video viewing and the steady integration of television and the internet. “This is definitely a significant step in our long-term vision,” Rob Fullerton, the product manager for online video, said today. He said he hopes the audience will come to see the new video portal as a “single destination” for shows, news, sports and live events. He said the new video page is “the best we’ve seen in the industry.”

South of the border, Fox and NBC, capitalized on the growth of online video with their aggregate video player, Hulu. This summer comScore reported that Hulu had become the third most popular video site on the internet, attracting 380 million views in one month. Unlike YouTube, Hulu has also attracted a considerable amount of interest from advertisers. Shortly after the site was launched all of their commercial inventory was sold out.

The CBC video portal is tailored for longer video viewing. The clips are high quality and often full episodes, unlike the shorter clips that you usually find on YouTube.

The content is also chaptered, with ads at the beginning and in the middle of the content, similar to what you would see on TV.

Fullerton said he’s looking for feedback. “It’s important to note we definitely do not see this as the final product,” he wrote Monday afternoon in an email. “One of the reasons we chose to launch at this time is to get feedback from our audience on what they like (and don’t like?) about this media player experience.”

So, what do you think of the new video portal?

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	CBC.ca web site, Platforms	Posted at 1:12 pm (14 Sep 2009)

This picture was taken during Fan Expo,  a yearly fan convention in Toronto.

I don’t know what to say about this picture, I’m at a total loss. Maybe you can come up with a caption for it? Leave a comment below.

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		Posted at 8:38 pm (09 Sep 2009)

Yesterday the CBC launched “The Great Canadian Song Quest“, a social media campaign that aims to draw on Canadians’ passion for the landscape and music.

The idea is to ask Canadians to nominate places they would like celebrated in a song, select the winners, then vote on who performs the songs.

Kai Black, the executive producer of daytime programming at CBC Radio 2, thought up the idea this summer while driving up to a cottage. “We were jammed in a tiny little car, with a bag of chips on my lap, and we saw the sign for Bobcaygeon,” and, as Black tells it, everyone in the car burst into the Tragically Hip song “It was in Bobcaygeon…” he says singing.

“So I thought to myself what if you asked Canadians what places you would want immortalized in song?”

Black says the inspiration for the campaign was last year’s Obama’s playlist. “That went really viral,” he says, “and what it told me that Canadians are passionate about music.”

Right now the campaign is focused on building the foundation on social networks. There are templates for creating your own blog, digital badges and banners, Twitter hashtags and bunch of other bells and whistles. Then on Sept 28th the nomination phase opens and Canadians will be able to start nominating their 13 most music-worthy places.

I think someone has to nominate the flying saucer in Moonbeam, Ontario. What’s yours?

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	CBC Radio 2	Posted at 5:43 pm (08 Sep 2009)

A couple of readers have emailed me recently about an ad campaign for Stella Artois that recycled an old CBC logo. The campaign is apparently running in the tube in London.

Heather Kitching, who originally alerted me to the ads, asked “Is this unauthorized, or is this the CBC’s new method of generating revenue? ”

Here’s another shot of the ad from Sylvain Allard’s blog.

Of course this isn’t the first time the CBC logo has been appropriated. Last year the CBC logo appeared in an ad for a dental clinic in Peru.

It’s also appeared in various other places, including dresses, t-shirts, and strangely a frying pan.

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	Asides	Posted at 10:44 am (03 Sep 2009)