James Moore, the minister responsible for the CBC, appointed Edward Boyd to the CBC board of directors today.

The press release outlines Boyd’s experience:

Since 2006, Mr. Boyd has been Chief Executive Officer of 58ninety Inc., a Toronto-based agency that provides digital marketing solutions to clients such as Unilever, Molson Canada, and Expedia. Before joining this company, he worked as Principal at Counterpart dsr, an agency specialized in maximizing the use of Internet and direct marketing. Prior to that, he served as President and General Manager of Iceberg Media.com, a pioneering Canadian Internet broadcaster and provider of custom streamed music solutions. He has also occupied various positions in the new media and marketing industries, including President at Indigo Online—one of North America’s largest retailers of books and music—and Senior Vice-President at Young & Rubicam, a firm specialized in direct marketing and advertising.

There’s more after the break.

[Read more →]

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	Board of Directors	Posted at 11:20 am (26 Apr 2010)

A survey of national CBC Radio News reporters has been leaked online.

The survey results paint a dispiriting picture of morale amongst national radio news reporters.

The survey revealed that 90 per cent of the reporters feel that the ‘radio culture’ is much worse than it was a year ago, many of them felt that the storytelling ideals of depth, intelligence, and investigation were disappearing under the news integration process.

The radio news division has for years maintained a strong concept of a unique radio ‘culture’. Ninety per cent of the reporters said this culture is an important factor in the success of the service. But they also said it’s in jeopardy. “Our culture is dying,” one reporter commented.

Most of the comments revolved around the loss of radio craft, the increased workload, and the perception that TV staff don’t understand radio and yet they’re swamping radio positions, especially senior positions.

Now before everyone gets the impression that this survey is indicative of a crisis at CBC News, it’s worth noting that this was a survey of less than 30 national radio reporters.

It doesn’t paint a picture of morale at the CBC in general, or even at CBC News in general. Nevertheless it does point to a problem in some quarters.

“The problem is not the HUB per se. The problem is that radio news has been overwhelmed by TV and no one up there seems to realize it or more importantly, care,” a reporter commented.

The survey was done in the wake of the news integration, in which the assignment desks for radio, online and television were brought together under the same department, called the Hub, to better coordinate and assign the news gathering process.

Cathy Perry, the Executive Producer of CBC News, was instrumental in creating the Hub.

“We’ve all been through a tremendous amount of change. And not all of it has been easy,” she said.

Perry, who worked in radio news for years, also said “radio assignment was the thing we changed the least… We hoped to protect radio in the issues of assignment and craft.”

“We still have radio reporters whose primary responsibly is radio. And TV reporters whose primary responsible is TV, because we want to protect their craft,” she said.

But she admitted that the integration has been hard, “It’s a learning process for everybody,” she said.

That sentiment was echoed last December by Todd Spencer, the Executive Director of News Content in a note to staff. He said the Hub had notched some significant achievements since it launched, but “it’s not perfect.” He wrote that there are no overnight successes in a change of this magnitude.

Perry said that the management team within news is reacting to the survey. She said they had a conference call about it, and they’re trying to make some immediate changes to address the concerns of the radio reporters. She said there are ongoing discussions about other changes.

“We’re talking about how to make the hub work better for everybody.”

We’ve had a bit of revolution, we brought everybody together. it hasn’t been easy, but the hub is only six months old.”

I asked her if these issues are growing pains, or something else. To which she replied it’s hard to tell. “If we’re still having this conversation in 5 years, then we’ll know.”

Perry said that she thought it was unfortunate that the survey ended up online. “I think we just hurt each other here,” by doing that, she said. “We should be able to have these debates and share opinions without having it go out on the internet.”

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	Behind the Scenes, News & Journalism	Posted at 2:39 pm (21 Apr 2010)

Three CBC radio shows have been picked for distribution in the United States by Public Radio International.

The deal with see PRI offer Q, Wiretap, and As it Happens to public radio affiliates across the U.S.

The news follows a week-long trial broadcast of Q in several radio markets in the States last January.

I had the opportunity to discuss the news with the Executive Director of Q, Arif Noorani:

Q seems to be on a bit of a roll lately, what does the distribution deal mean for the show?
I think the deal is very exciting for the show, because it opens up our content to an even broader audience.

One of Q’s main goals is not only to create the show but to get that content to wherever people consume it, Youtube, podcasts, whatever, because there’s a huge audience online, and now there’s a huge potential audience in the United States.

How much of a factor was Q’s cross-platform strategy in this? And did the Billy Bob play into this as well?
I think our visibility on many platforms is a factor. They’ve never mentioned Billy Bob, but they’ve been introduced to Jian as a host, the mix of conversation, the style of in-depth interviews. There was awareness of the show. We didn’t have to sell them very much, because they already knew the show.

How will you balance the show for both a Canadian and American audience?
The mix we have right now is a good one. I don’t see changing that. It’s a show that has appeal to Canadians but also to an international audience.

Will the show in the States be the same as the CBC version, or is it being revised for the American distribution?
There’s no plans to change it. We’re committed to producing the show with Canadian content but also an international outlook. There’s no plans to change that.

But the version of the show will be an one hour version, just because that’s the U.S. format. We may have to take out some of smaller features to get it down to a one-hour version, but it’s no different than what we do already for the evening broadcast on CBC.

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	As It Happens, Q, Wiretap	Posted at 5:38 pm (20 Apr 2010)

^{Vintage Rick Mercer, doing his famous segment ‘Talking to Americans.’}

Ever wonder how Rick Mercer’s crew puts together those ‘Talking to Americans’ videos?

If you don’t know the segment, let me fill you in. Rick Mercer used to have a segment on his show in which he traveled to the States and asked Americans to comment on about absolutely absurd topics, like the fight to save Canada’s capitol building, supposedly an igloo, from global warming.

In one of the most famous bits, Mercer put that question to former former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee. Hilarity ensued.

Today, Steve Brawner, a freelance journalist, revealed what happened behind the scenes that day and offered a glimpse into how the bits were produced.

One day, a Canadian film crew arrived at the door and made a vague request for a quote from the governor congratulating their country about some igloo that had been found there. I assumed it was an important archaeological discovery and, trying to be accommodating, notified the governor, who agreed to make a quick comment on his way out the door. And that’s what happened.

Only it’s not all that happened. It turned out that the nice reporter actually was Rick Mercer, host of “This Hour Has 22 Minutes,” which fills up part of that 22 minutes by ridiculing Americans for their lack of knowledge about Canada, much to the delight of Canadians.

During the bit, Mercer duped one Arkansan at the Capitol into believing that Canada’s capitol building is an igloo that Canadians were trying to rescue from global warming by covering it with a dome. Huckabee later briefly appears on the video to say exactly what he was asked to say: “Hi, I’m Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas wanting to say, ‘Congratulations, Canada, on preserving your national igloo.’” The video implies that Huckabee also fell for the joke even though he said nothing about Parliament or global warming. But audiences then and now believed Mercer’s version of the truth.

The video was a topic of conversation when Huckabee ran for president in 2008 and no doubt will return if he runs again. And why wouldn’t it? A leading presidential candidate looks thoroughly uniformed and gullible, when in reality he mostly has been the victim of dishonest editing.

Of course, whether it’s dishonest or comedic is in the eye of the beholder.

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	Behind the Scenes	Posted at 5:48 pm (15 Apr 2010)

^{Some of the pins in Chris Piecuch’s CBC collection}

Chris Piecuch is putting together one of the biggest, if not the biggest, collections of CBC swag in the country.

He says it all started rather innocently. “When I first worked here [CBC Toronto] in 1998,” he said “I purchased and blue, red and white CBC Sports lanyard at the CBC Shop.”

“From there, the ‘obsession’ grew and through many gracious colleagues, personal volunteer efforts and just plain asking people ‘where did you get that?’ or ‘is there any extra/leftover?’ my collection grew.”

Piecuch says he’s always looking to add things to his collection. Right now, he’s on the hunt for any pins or other gear from the Olympics.

To date his collection includes pins, t-shirts, lanyards, hats, scarves and bunch of CBC posters among other things. There’s a couple more pictures after the break.

If you’ve got any CBC swag lying around your office, I’m sure Chris would be delighted to take it off your hands.

[Read more →]

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	CBC Merchandise	Posted at 5:06 pm (13 Apr 2010)

Tonight was Ian Hanomansing’s last night co-hosting CBC News: Vancouver.

The veteran CBC journalist is moving to The National, where he’ll join Duncan McCue as a regular West Coast contributor.

Over the years Hanomansing has frequently appeared on the show, most recently during the Olympics. On the internal CBC portal they recapped his career so far:

Ian joined CBC News in 1986. During this time he has had a wide variety of assignments as a reporter, anchor and interviewer. Among the major stories he’s covered: the Exxon Valdez oil spill and San Francisco earthquake (both in 1989), the Los Angeles riot (1992), Vancouver’s Stanley Cup riot (1994), the Hong Kong handover (1997) and numerous Olympic Games. He hosted Pacific Rim Report, which focused on Canada’s connection to Asia; Times 7, a joint venture between CBC News and the New York Times; Canada Now, a national supper-hour newscast; Still Talking Hockey, a sports-themed late night program on CBC British Columbia; and Feeling the Heat, a summer series about the environment on CBC Radio One. Ian won the 2008 Gemini Award for the best news anchor.

What do you think of the move?

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	The National	Posted at 10:59 pm (08 Apr 2010)

Debbie Travis is coming to CBC Television.

The home-makeover queen’s show will hit the prime-time schedule this fall and Travis is looking for community heroes.

The new show will focus on “that person in the community who devotes their time and energy to helping others.” If you know someone like this you can nominate them on her site.

Travis, best known for Debbie Travis’ Facelift and Debbie Travis’ Painted House, is also the executive producer of several other lifestyle shows including Buy Me, Property Shop, Income Property & Maxed Out.

This new show represents a new direction for Travis, in that it expands her roles on as lifestyle host, but isn’t directly based on home renovations.

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	Personalities	Posted at 10:10 pm (08 Apr 2010)