At a second quarter financial update that he labelled a “non-event” today in Vancouver, Richard Stursberg said the CBC is weathering the economic storm. “It’s a better story than we had anticipated,” Stursberg said concerning the recession and staff layoffs. He said the advertising revenue picture has not been as bad as expected, “the numbers have held up and are quite good.”
The Executive Vice President of English Services said it’s good when the updates are “non-events.” He said it indicates fewer concerns about the state of CBC finances.
Stursberg spoke at length about the general media environment in Canada prior to focusing on the CBC’s situation. He said the advertising market in Canada is facing a “structural decline” because of the recession. He added that the impact of the economy has been most acutely felt at Canwest, of which some units are now in receivership. Stursberg said the current economic environment strengthens the argument broadcasters have been making concerning the fee-for-carriage debate. It’s a “very very difficult environment, very tough economically,” he said.
Nevertheless he said CBC Radio has had the best summer on record, while on TV the numbers have “generally gone up,” based on the averages of the first three weeks since the fall TV season launched. He highlighted the ratings for Dragons’ Den, Heartland, The Rick Mercer report, and Battle of the Blades.
He also touched on the relaunch of CBC News, saying it has been a “gigantic undertaking,” while calling the criticism “pathetic” saying it “revolves around whether people are standing or sitting.”
“One thing we should remember is that the papers are owned by our competitors… so I think you can draw your own conclusions about where they are going,” Stursberg said.
Today at noon at the CBC Building in Toronto, Chris Straw, manager of in-house productions and Chris Boyce, the programming director of CBC Radio are holding a seminar on the inner workings of CBC Radio program development.
If you’ve always thought you had a great idea for a radio or TV show this seminar may be for you. The discussion will be held on the ground floor of the atrium near the front street entrance of the CBC building in Toronto. Seating is on a first come, first serve basis.
Unfortunately, I don’t think there are plans to stream the seminar online, however if I find I link I’ll post it here.
Now that the new CBC News Network is a day old and still slightly jaundiced, The National has been reborn standing up, and Peter Armstrong settles in at World Report, I thought I’d cobble together a few of the online reviews. Not surprisingly most of them focus on The National.
Reporters and host Mansbridge are a little overexcited with their impressive new circumstances and crackling format. There was certainly a breathless, first-date ambience to last night’s debut presentation, and a few smirks.
Canada’s public broadcaster’s new look was partly crafted with the help of American consultants… CBC’s new focus on breaking news, faster graphics and personalities was evident on the first day of its re-launch. But some changes, such as anchor Amanda Lang’s clear glass desk with view of her legs, surprised industry watchers.
It needs to be said that the stem-to-gudgeon relaunch of CBC news today — radio, cable network, flagship newscast, website — shows a hearty re-dedication to the proposition that news matters, and that the public broadcaster should be putting news at the centre of its mission, that should be applauded….
But the CBC relaunch is a bit of a mixed bag. The deeper news hole is, clearly, a hell of a challenge to fill on a day when there actually isn’t all that much going on in the world. And no amount of frenetic urgency from a dizzying succession of hosts, all of them bolt upright on hind legs as though they had been forbidden the use of their asses (jazz hands, everyone! Motion motion motion!) can substitute for the purposeful use of the extra time the network has allotted itself.
The pop-culture blog Mondoville says “it feels like the last stand — figuratively and literally,” while Bill Brioux wrote on his blog:
CBC made the leap into the age of short attention spans with the premiere of their new news look Monday night. Segments zipped by in the blink of an eye and the newscast seemed to pick up speed as it went along…. The crazy fast pace caught up with the news which flagged a bit towards the end. Still, a pretty impressive opening.
Finally, over at The National’s blog, viewers weighed in with a mix of comments, this being the most popular from Middlesister:
I really do not quite understand the logic of having Peter Mansbridge stand up, but honestly, LET HIM SIT DOWN……it is silly, don’t fix it if it’s not broken.
Evan Solomon on the set of his new show, Power & Politics.
Calling it “biggest change in the history of CBC News,” Jennifer McGuire, general manager of CBC News today announced the revamp of CBC Newsworld as CBC News Network, a new host for World Report on CBC Radio, and a bunch of new shows that together dramatically change the face of CBC News.
Among other things, the revamp includes a bunch of new websites, including a revamped site for The National, a website for Mark Kelley’s new show Connect and a new politics portal.
“We are not content to sit back and passively let the revolution in the news industry hit us. Rather, we went looking for solutions so we could continue to set the standard for others in Canada,” McGuire wrote in a blog posting today.
“Watching two greedy parties battle each other for financial advantage and self-exculpation inspires revulsion. Finding their partisan propaganda about the righteousness of their cause ubiquitous is even worse. But Canadians are now bearing witness to a putrid campaign between the country’s television stations and cable providers.”
Blake Lambert on the fee for carriage battle between the cable companies and broadcasters. His full article on the subject is available here.
“We’re expanding the notion of what politics means to people. We won’t just cover the Hill but also how we interact with the rest of world, with businesses, with NGOs. Let’s be honest, buying a cup of organic coffee is a political statement, since that kind of act touches so many lives.”
Evan Solomon explains what viewers can expect from his new show, which launches today on CBC News Network (aka Newsworld) at 5 pm Eastern.
“I attempted to purchase tickets for the November 1st show. I went online and phoned the Ticketmaster number simultaneously at noon on Monday, October 19th. How the tickets could all be sold out at 12:01 is mystifying to me.”
Sharlene Kopec wonders how tickets to the live tapings of Battle of Blades could be sold so quickly, yet ended on online ticket sites the same day for almost 20 times the original price. She made the comments on the show’s Facebook page.
I found a promo video of for the revamped CBC News on the CBC’s image gallery.
As you can see the news fonts have changed, as have the on-air graphics. You’ll also notice that there are a few shots in the video with the new look for Newsworld, I mean, CBC NN! Here’s a screengrab (sorry it was cropped in the original):
“We may start to play with how much of the country sees the Leafs or the Sens or the Habs based on team performance and matchup.”
Scott Moore, the executive director of CBC Sports said that Hockey Night in Canada is considering limiting coverage of the Toronto Maple Leafs if the NHL team’s early season slide continues. He made the comments in an email to Sun Media this week.
“We are ready to make changes whenever we have to,” the show’s executive producer, Sherali Najak told the Sun. “We’ll watch every week and rely on the numbers, but what we’ve learned is that fans want to see some variety.”
Today is the last day of voting in the Great Canadian Song Quest, a CBC Radio 2 contest that pairs musicians with Canadian places and turns them into songs. The campaign has attracted entries from across the country, but I’m sure a nudge-nudge favourite is Dildo, Newfoundland.
Despite the awkward name, the small town was named “one of the top 10 most beautiful communities in Canada by Harrowsmith Country Life Magazine,” or so it says on the town’s song quest blog. So if you’re leaning towards Dildo, or any other of the entries, today’s the last day to make your voice heard. Voting closes at midnight.
“Late in the day, someone from CBC tweeted that some hostages had contacted us. We weren’t reporting the fact that we had become involved for a bunch of reasons.
But here is a really important principle. We should not tweet what we wouldn’t put on the air.
One reason we didn’t let on is because we didn’t want every other news organization jumping in. Not for competitive reasons, but because the chaos could be dangerous…
What could we say about this that wouldn’t inflame the gunman? Are we putting the hostages more at risk if we report this conversation or anything we learn from it?”
Esther Enkin, the CBC’s executive editor of news operations, explains some of the issues that came up during the hostage taking in Edmonton when one of the hostages and the hostage taker himself contacted the CBC newsroom in Edmonton. Her full blog post is here.
The Current covered the conversation between some of the hostages and CBC producer Gareth Hampshire this morning. You can listen to that here.
A new system that measures what people watch on TV is shaking up the industry, causing some major concerns at some shows and channels, while boosting the fate of others.
Previously television and radio ratings were based on what a representative pool of people said they’d watched or listened to. It was a trust system. No longer. Now the ratings are collected via small pager-like device that detects what is what is on by listening for an inaudible signal embedded in the broadcast. And this new system is causing some pretty dramatic swings in the ratings.
Some shows, like sports, children’s and some prime-time programming have benefited handily. The Globe reported yesterday that the prime time numbers for both CTV and Global are way up for many top shows, House and Grey’s Anatomy up both up by more than 20 per cent. The season premiere of House drew 4.4 million viewers “audience numbers of that size have not been seen in years,” Grant Robertson wrote in Globe.
The system is also creating some losers though. The Weather Network has seen its ratings shrink by 10 per cent, and there’s some obvious concern at the CBC, where audience numbers for The National are down.
Today the some senior managers at the corporation sent out a note to staff in an effort to debunk some of the rumours that have been circulating about the new ratings system. Their “Myth #1″ was that The National “The National has taken a big hit under [the new system].”
There’s obviously some concern. The ratings for The National have dropped by more than 10 per cent. The average for September 2009 was 532,000 viewers. That’s well under last year’s average of 671,000 when Parliament was prorogued and Obama was elected. More worrisome though, is that the ratings have slipped since the summer, which is usually the low point of a ratings year.
“As we’ve been saying from the outset, we’re going to take some time before we draw any firm conclusions about what the numbers are telling us,” the letters says, “although we recognize the unease any downward movement can create.”
The managers said they’re hoping to see the ratings recover in the next few weeks, “As we said, we’re keeping a close eye on the numbers, but it’s still too soon to draw any conclusions.”
A frame from a draft version of The National’s new opening animation.
Some big announcements were made today at the CBC News renewal presentation. The presentation unveiled the on-air face of CBC News after months of work on the news renewal project and included a new look and format for The National, a new host for CBC Radio’s World Report and a name change for CBC Newsworld – which is to be renamed the CBC News Network.
As part of The National’s new look, which include a new set of graphics, opening animations and a set roster of 14 reporters, it was also announced that the show would release an early digital edition at 6 p.m. Eastern which will allow viewers to create their own lineups. “What Canadians are telling us is, ‘Let me decide what’s important.’” Peter Mansbridge said to cbc.ca.
“We’re constantly changing,” Mansbridge said, adding it is necessary to “understand our audience and the challenges we face in a constantly changing technological world.
“We had a disastrous relaunch in ’92 or ’93, after Barbara Frum died. The National went from 10 p.m. to 9 p.m. with no research, no thought, just change for the sake of change — it was disastrous. But this doesn’t smell like disaster,” Mansbridge told the National Post.
The revamped show will include more business and consumer coverage, and Wendy Mesley will also be hosting a regular segment on the show that aims to discuss the main news story of the day.
The announcement also introduced three the names of three new shows, The Lang & O’Leary Exchange with Amanda Lang and Kevin O’Leary, Connect with Mark Kelly and Power & Politics with Evan Solomon.
“These are the most significant changes ever undertaken by CBC News,” Richard Stursberg, Executive Vice President, English Services, said “The new CBC News is the result of the single, biggest audience research project ever undertaken by CBC – Canadians told us what they wanted and we listened.”
The news renewal project has been ongoing for months with the aim of integrating radio, television and online news into a single operation and to provide more immediate news coverage to Canadians. The new look will launch of October 26th.
Howard Bernstein’s blog Medium Close Up, published an anonymous email that is apparently from a “concerned group” of CBC News staff to CBC President Hubert Lacroix.
Bernstein, a former television producer who worked at CBC, says the email is “a terrible indictment of where CBC News is at today. Low morale, poor leadership, and a general malaise have overtaken the place.”
I cannot verify that the email is authentic, although I find it surprising that news staffers would misspell John Cruickshank’s name as “Crookshank”. Further comments over at the Tea Makers also raise doubts about the authenticity of the letter, one commentator says “Are you joking? This wasn’t written by anyone who was in the station that day,” while another chimes in “I can’t believe anyone has fallen for this.”
Now John Doyle at the Globe and Mail has picked up on the thread and wrote about the letter today.
Do you work at CBC News, if so what are your impressions? Is this email an accurate representation? Or is it a fake?
The Tudors, the Fifth Estate, and CBC’s coverage of the Beijing Olympics picked up a bunch of hardware at the Gemini industry galas on Monday and Tuesday nights.
The CBC’s coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics lead the way with five awards, including best live sporting event, best analysis, best feature, best play-by-play and best reporting.
The Fifth Estate also won four awards for best writing, best direction, best host and best news information series in an information program.
The Tudors won four Gemini awards. The historical drama about the life and times of Henry the VIII won for best photography, best editing, best production design and best sound in a dramatic series.
The Tudors is a CBC co-production between Peace Arch Entertainment, Reveille Eire in Ireland, Working Title Films in the United Kingdom and the CBC. The show is shot in Ireland, with most of the post-production work done in Canada.
The industry event, held over two nights in Toronto, celebrated the best Canadian youth, comedy, drama, variety, news, sports, documentary and lifestyle television. The rest of the awards will be presented on November 14th in Calgary.
The full list of awards associated with the CBC is after the jump. Let me know if I’ve missed any.
RT @SNAcommunity: Executive director @Jamil_Mahmood was on CBC's Information Radio, talking about the Gang Action Interagency Network http://t.co/1W7QIIce […]
