The ratings for CBC television are the highest they’ve been in five years.

A number of shows are lifting the season market share, which is up 17 per cent since last fall, jumping for 7.9 to 9.3.

“We had more consistently higher-rated shows. Now we have a 1 million-plus club with ‘Heartland,’ ‘Rick Mercer Report’ and ‘Battle of the Blades.’ When you have more consistency with more shows across the network, it lifts everything up,” Kirstine Stewart said to Variety.

Stewart talked about the ratings during the CBC’s winter launch event today in Toronto. The launch unveiled several new shows including a show called ‘Death Comes to Town’, an murder mystery serial from the Kids in the Hall, filmed in North Bay.

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	CBC Television	Posted at 8:51 pm (24 Nov 2009)

They’re durable, and they make you look really good when you…don’t have your jeans on. Even if you’re just out climbing a mountain or something, it’s fun to know you’re rocking a little leopard print. It’s like having a bottle of champagne chilling in your fridge, ready for any occasion.

Erin Karpluk, the star of Being Erica, on the number 1 thing she can’t live without in this month’s Toronto Life.

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	Asides	Posted at 4:48 pm (24 Nov 2009)

^{Sticky notes from a CMG executive meeting in November (via Tenneson Woolf).}

It really takes courage for someone inside an organization to invite a different way of meeting. They know clearly what they don’t want to continue. They have some sense of what they want to move toward. Yet, it is in the end, a paradigm shift. When the habit is presentations from a podium, sitting in circle is a courageous act. When the history is blasting grievances, small group conversations about values and possibilities are a courageous act…

It takes courage to work in new ways. Particularly with your immediate colleagues and friends. Yet so needed in the pioneering and evolutionary time we live in when we must risk the letting go of the old to find our way to the added benefit of the new. At the Guild. At CBC.

Tenneson Woolf, a ‘consulting, coaching, and community building’ guy offers his insights on a recent CMG (Canadian Media Guild) meeting in which they sat in a circle.

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	Behind the Scenes	Posted at 4:26 pm (23 Nov 2009)

The hue and cry about the changes at The National has veered into the ludicrous.

Tod Maffin recently asked fans of the unofficial CBC Facebook page “what kind of chair would you offer Peter Mansbridge as a gift?”

The image above is Tod’s suggestion, there are a few more here: creepy, woody, handy, asinine.

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	Asides	Posted at 3:15 pm (23 Nov 2009)

No, this is not revamped look for the CBC, it’s actually movie by an outfit called T-Mac Productions out of Nashville, Tennessee. The trailer is, ahem, well it’s not at all like working at the CBC, that’s for sure.

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	Asides	Posted at 4:38 pm (20 Nov 2009)

CBC executives appeared before the CRTC hearings in Gatineau Quebec this morning.

As yesterday, the fee-for-carriage issue dominated the hearings. The CBC asked for the right to negotiate a price with cable and satellite carriers for its conventional television signals.

“The conventional television financial model in Canada is collapsing,” Hubert Lacroix said in a press release this morning. “The CRTC needs to recognize what conventional broadcasters bring to the services that cable and satellite companies offer their customers,” the CBC president added.

During the hearing Executive Vice President of English Services Richard Stursberg said “those services that are drawing the smallest audiences are the one’s making the most money, there’s something odd about that.” He said the conventional broadcasters are the heavy lifters in the industry. They attract the largest audiences, yet broadcasters are not paid for those signals.

Unlike previous hearings, CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein was much more conciliatory during the CBC presentation, which he said he was well organized. He said “We’re all striving for a solution in which Canadians don’t have a higher bill, or if they have a higher bill they get a better product.”

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	The CRTC, The Media Landscape	Posted at 11:02 am (17 Nov 2009)

The fee-for-carriage battle that has pitted conventional broadcasters and their Local TV Matters campaign against cable carriers and their Stop the TV Tax campaign has finally ended up in the hands of the television regulator, who is hearing arguments on the issue this week.

At the packed hearings CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein often seemed exasperated with the approach from both sides. He pressed officials repeatedly on why the carriers and broadcasters couldn’t solve this issue themselves. “Why is it so difficult for you to sit down and negotiate?” he asked a Rogers official.

Von Finckenstein said he was very frustrated by the messy, public battle between the conventional broadcasters and the cable and satellite carriers, the likes of he had never seen before. “I have trouble realizing why we are in this mess.” He said broadcasters and carriers are in a “symbiotic relationship. There should be a symbiotic solution.”

Nevertheless Von Finckenstein realized that the fee-for-carriage argument is contentious and long-running. He noted it was first discussed at the CRTC in 1971. Still Von Finkenstein is looking for a resolution of the issue, saying the debate is not “about enshrining old business models…” but “establishing a framework for group approach.”

Von Finckenstein said he didn’t want the CRTC to impose a solution, he said he wanted the two sides to come together and figure out a way to split the pie. “I don’t understand why you don’t realize it’s in your long-term interest to come to an agreement.”

“I think [the carriers] and the broadcasters are destroying each other and chasing viewers off the medium.”

CTV President, Ivan Fecan said the current problems affecting broadcasters are long-term and not caused by the recession. Adding that without a new system some conventional television broadcasters would not survive. Fecan proposed that CTV would black out popular programming if they can’t come to terms with the cable and satellite carriers.

After lunch, Canada’s largest cable company, Rogers, presented to the commission and took aim at the CTV proposal. Nadir Mohamed, CEO of Rogers, “Canada’s conventional television broadcasters are not in a state of crisis,” he said conventional broadcasters have been overspending on American programming and said broadcasters get about a billion dollars a year in subsidies, “they do not need a bailout.” Other members of the Rogers team said the CTV proposal was “simply fee-for-carriage under another name.”

Various reporters are covering the hearing on Twitter, you can follow along here, the hearings are also live on CPAC, you can watch online here.

The hearings in Gatineau, Quebec are expected to last 10 days. Transcripts will be posted online daily.

Other coverage:

CBC: Carriage fees dominate CRTC hearing
The Globe: CTV proposes TV shakeup and CRTC blasts both sides in TV dispute
The Star: Local programming dying, CTV tells CRTC hearing

And if you’re having trouble making sense of the whole issue, here’s a link to a YouTube video that explains it all.

Where do you stand on the issue? Do you agree with the broadcasters, the carriers, or neither?

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	The CRTC, The Media Landscape	Posted at 2:34 pm (16 Nov 2009)

CBC journalist Linden MacIntyre has won the Giller Prize. He won the prize for his book “The Bishop’s Man” about sexual abuse in the Catholic church.

MacIntyre was considered to be a bit of a dark horse candidate for the honour. He said his success was due to an “an accident of consensus.”

MacIntyre is well respected at the CBC for his journalism, for which he won nine Gemini awards. He has been co-hosting The Fifth Estate for almost 15 years, prior to that he worked on the Journal.

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	Personalities	Posted at 12:04 am (11 Nov 2009)

On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, you may be inclined to check the CBC archives.

The site is a digital archive of CBC footage and includes thousands of historical milestones, including then U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s famous speech at the Brandenburg Gate in which he implored Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”

The site also contains historical anecdotes, like this one:

In a column for the Wall Street Journal 20 years after Reagan’s Berlin speech, his daughter, Patti Davis, wrote that both the U.S. State Department and the National Security Council vehemently opposed Reagan’s entreaty to Gorbachev. “They called it crude, unduly provocative, even unkind,” wrote Davis. “They argued that to speak about tearing down the wall would give Berliners false hope.”

The CBC also has a site dedicated to the fall of the wall, the site includes testimonials of people affected by the wall.

For a more innovative treatment check out this page from the BBC. It asks “Where is the Berlin Wall now?” and tracks down chunks of the wall that have been scattered across the globe.

If you can’t get enough of this kind of stuff, you may also want to check out this site from the New York Times that overlays photographs from 1989 with photographs from 2009. It’s a vivid way to present how much Berlin has changed in twenty years.

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	Asides	Posted at 4:10 pm (09 Nov 2009)

Our relations with the public and with those with whom we deal in business must be frank and firm on all occasions but they must also be always most courteous. We are in a rather vulnerable position because the public expect much of us. This, in a sense, is a compliment. The confidence which we enjoy places a heavy responsibility on all of us. It is not proper anywhere to ignore the complaints of even the remarks of individuals, friendly or otherwise. In our case it is disastrous.

A message from Gladstone Murray, the CBC’s General Manager in 1944, as the corporation undertook an major overhaul of its radio services. The message was printed in ‘Radio’ the CBC staff magazine in November, 1944.

I should bear this in mind when I’m commenting on the Tea Makers!

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	Asides	Posted at 4:31 pm (04 Nov 2009)