The CBC’s partnership with the National Post is getting broader.

Under a new deal announced Thursday the National Post is set to become the CBC’s preferred print partner, while the Post will give clients the option to run ads on the ceeb.

The deal was reported yesterday in the Post, here’s what they said:

“I think it will drive revenue for both of us,” said Paul Godfrey, president and chief executive of the National Post. “There will be CBC advertisers that want a print component, and there will be people that want exposure on the broadcast side.”

The deal is non-exclusive and will see revenues from “joint sales packages” split, said Richard Stursberg, executive vice-president of English Services at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

This deal follows a content sharing arrangement that was announced last October, and other smaller commercial partnerships.

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	The Media Landscape	Posted at 8:20 am (28 May 2010)

“This year is about giving back to Canada,” Kirstine Stewart, the General Manager of CBC Television said this afternoon introduced the CBC’s fall lineup.

Stewart said the last season saw a new larger audience turning to CBC shows and she wanted to cement that audience with a new slate of programming.

One of the highlights of the new season is ‘All for One with Debbie Travis,’ a show that’s about community heroes, Travis said, it’s about “communities coming together to celebrate unsung heroes… mostly it’s about what makes this country special.”

Other highlights also included the renewal of Dragons’ Den and Battle of the Blades, the later with the announcement that Russ Courtnall and Theo Fleury would appear on the show.

Courtnall said he talked to Wayne Gretzky about appearing on the series “Gretzky said ‘you have to do it’… So I got the blessing of the Great One,” Courtnall said.

They’ll join eight other hockey stars for a second go-round of the kitschy reality show that start on Sept. 26.

The full schedule is after the break.

[Read more →]

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	CBC Television	Posted at 12:51 pm (27 May 2010)

The summer lineup on CBC Radio is going to sound quite a bit different this year.

Natasha Fatah, currently a producer with ‘As It Happens,’ will be hosting a national radio show for the first time.

“I’m really nervous, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t. But I feel really strongly about this project, so that gives me a lot of confidence,” she said.

The new show is called Promised Land and it will look at the stories of the harrowing, exciting and often-dangerous escapes to Canada, as told by the immigrants and refugees who endured them to get here.

“The thing is that we, we meaning the CBC, focus a lot on the immigrant experience, but we focus so little on that time span that people take to get here, and that’s something we really wanted to capture,” Fatah said.

“The stories show how much people have to go through to get here,” she said, “they have to put their lives at risk.”

The new show will run for 10 episodes this summer. Every episode will feature a different person’s story told by the immigrants themselves.

The summer lineup also includes several other new shows and hosts, including shows from Jann Arden and David Suzuki. Arden’s new show, called Being Jann, will be a mix of storytelling, music and interviews.

Suzuki will be hosting ‘The Bottom Line with David Suzuki.’ It explores the disconnect between our modern values and our relationship with the earth, and features some well known guests including actress Ellen Page and Preston Manning

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	CBC Radio 1	Posted at 3:20 pm (26 May 2010)

The silly season.

It’s a term that journalist sometimes use to describe a summer lull during which people go on vacation, hard news gets rare and the bizarre or the frivolous rises to the top of the page.

It seems the silly season came early this year.

A number of commentators have weighed in recently with their two cents to explain a spate of bad press about the CBC.

John Doyle, normally not one to defend the network, said on Monday “the Conservative Party’s current obsession with the CBC borders on buffoonery.”

His thoughts follow an article in the Globe on Friday about the CBC using some song from a band with separatist leanings in a hockey game montage, which may or may not have been edited when it ended up online. Or something like that.

The article was of the tempest-in-a-teapot variety, which the Globe’s readers duly pointed out.

“The attention paid to the CBC by the Globe and Mail is bordering on stalking…” one commentator wrote, while another added: “Every time I log onto G&M, there’s a new CBC ‘embarrassment’ to report on, and they seem to be getting more and more trivial.”

Those comments generally take the same tack that Vince Carlin, the CBC’s ombudsman, took yesterday, when he released his findings on conservative complaints that one of the ceeb’s pollsters is partisan.

It is an unfortunate fact of political life that in the term of a minority government – any minority government – with a fractious Parliament and an election ever-impending, rational discourse is often the first casualty.

Carlin, whose career in journalism is a long one indeed, then goes on to add:

Having observed Canadian public affairs and journalism, CBC journalism in particular, for a long time (going back to the Trudeau governments), I can say that every government − Trudeau, Clark, Turner, Mulroney, Campbell, Chretien, Martin and, now, Harper – has seen the press, and the CBC specifically, as “hostile” to their intentions.

Terry Milewski made a similar point. And if there’s ever a journalist who knows, understands, and appreciates, the notion of government hostility, it’s likely him.

Milewski, you’ll recall, ended up in a grueling battle with Chretien’s Liberals about his reporting on the 1997 APEC summit in Vancouver. That ordeal resulted in Milewski getting suspended, then investigated, then cleared, then re-instated.

None of which has silenced him.

Yesterday Milewski echoed Carlin’s thoughts, although much more succinctly. “If you stick around long enough, the differences between governments seem to fade,” he wrote, adding:

This kind of flashback makes it easier to remember, now that the CBC is being damned as a Liberal propaganda machine, that the Liberals in their day were equally incensed that it was, apparently, an anti-Liberal propaganda machine.

To underline his point Milewski noted that the cartoon at the top of this post – which the globe ran recently to illustrate the Conservative furor at the CBC – had already ran in the paper.

Eleven years ago.

To illustrate the Liberal furor at the CBC.

To which Milewski asked:  “if the cartoon works no matter who’s in power, and if the parties take turns at damning the CBC … isn’t that more or less the way it should be?”

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	The Media Landscape	Posted at 7:56 am (19 May 2010)

With reports circulating recently of low morale in the news department, I had a chance to speak with Carmel Smyth, the president of the Canadian Media Guild’s Toronto branch. I asked her about the union’s approach.

PM: I want to start with morale in the news department. There’s always a certain amount of stress in news, but is it different this time?

Carmel Smyth: If you were to ask me what the big issues are from the people I speak with, they’re workload, news renewal, and the perpetual threat of layoffs.

What happened in news renewal is that so many peoples’ job situations changed all at the same time. People were always moving around in the news department, but this time there’s more people affected than before, all at the same time, and as a result there’s more unhappiness.

It is true that news is under considerable stress. They’ve probably had more changes this years than they’ve had in the last ten.

At the same time the CBC has the best relationship with management that we’ve had in years. Years ago management would manage, and that’s it. Now we’ve agreed to review the complaints that come out of the fourth floor, and they’ve said ‘okay let’s try and work on things.’

They’re reviewing now, how the hub operates… the renewal process is evolving as we speak, people are still being moving around, things are still changing.

There are lots of problems yes. but on the good side there are attempts being made that wouldn’t have happened a few years ago… that’s partly as a result of Hubert [Lacroix].

Grievances are down in the building because there’s a lot of pressure to try and solve them. In the last two years they’ve also made dozens of temporary staff permanent. So there’s lots of examples of how we can work together.

PM: To go back to the News department, and the morale there, is it time for the union to take a harder line?
Carmel Smyth: It’s something we’ve discussed. We’ve taken a harder line in the past. But during this period we’ve decided that we should try and work together.

Maybe it won’t work out down the line, but I think in the short term we’ve made some gains that we wouldn’t have made otherwise.

And I don’t think there’s much appetite for a strike.

Positive things are happening, yes, I know there’s unrest, particularly on the fourth floor. But at the same time, the changes haven’t even been a year, it’s still in a state of flux. We’re a long way from were a more serious labour actions is needed.

PM: So you’re going to give the process more time?
Carmel Smyth: Yes. I think there’s proof that they’re trying. The CBC doesn’t really have to keep meeting with us to try and work on this things. But they are.

We’ll see how far this goes. It’s not like they’re making empty promises.

They’re meeting with us and trying to resolve these things. Now I know things seem slow, but from a union perspective, it’s much, much quicker than they’ve been in the past.

And the other thing is that the union can’t stop decisions about programming. We can work with them to lessen the impact, but they can make the decision about merging departments and units, it’s their prerogative.

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	Labour/CBC Unions, Programming	Posted at 12:00 pm (18 May 2010)

Is the CBC biased?

CBC president Hubert Lacroix aims to find out.

According to the Ottawa Sun:

The CBC has commissioned a study to determine whether its news is biased, the president of the public broadcaster told the Senate finance committee this week.

“Our job — and we take it seriously — is to ensure that the information that we put out is fair and unbiased in everything that we do,” CBC President Hubert Lacroix said.

He said CBC asked outside experts to conduct an independent review of its news gathering and delivery last year.

Lacroix’s comments come on the heels of weeks of criticism from Conservative loyalists who disagreed with the CBC’s decision not to acknowledge that one of its house pollsters and frequent guest on the air also donated substantial sums to the Liberal Party. There’s more on that here.

The study itself was commissioned in January 2009. Results are expected this fall.

What do you think? Is the CBC biased?

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	News & Journalism	Posted at 8:33 am (14 May 2010)

Online viewing of second round of the NHL playoffs has skyrocketed since last year.

The final hockey game between Pittsburgh and Montreal drew 130,000 views online. That represents about 3 per cent of the total audience. The television audience also set records. Drawing 4.2 million viewers, it ranked as the 6th largest audience for a playoff game.

Overall a significant and growing number of people are watching the games online. The Sports department has served up 1.5 million online streams to date, almost tripling the number of streams since last year.

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	Technology	Posted at 7:53 am (14 May 2010)

^{courtesy: The Globe and Mail}

Conservative party strategists continue to accuse the CBC of a liberal bias.

On Friday Tory supporters seized on a viewer-inspired poll that came from a former Liberal candidate.

This is the latest round in an ongoing war of words between conservative loyalists and the CBC. The whole thing started weeks ago when Frank Graves, a pollster who frequently appears on Power & Politics with Evan Solomon, admitted that he had given the Liberal Party some advice on wedge politics. “I told them that they should invoke a culture war,” he said to the Globe and Mail at the time.

That provoked Doug Finley, a conservative strategist who is often described as Stephen Harper’s political hammer, to send out a fund-raising letter to the party faithful. “This episode demonstrates – once again – that we Conservatives are up against a powerful array of vested interests,” Finley wrote.

He then pleaded with them to fight back by first writing to the CBC ombudsman, and second by making a contribution “to the Conservative Party of $200 or $100 right now by following this link. Unlike the Liberals, we can’t count on the vested interests.”

Some Conservatives took Finley’s appeal to heart.

John Walsh, president of the Conservative Party of Canada, sent a  letter to the CBC ombudsman suggesting that the CBC’s relationship with Frank Graves, the pollster, is improper, because the CBC hasn’t acknowledged his political affiliations. Over the last few years Graves has donated $11,000 to the Liberals.

The whole thing then landed on Jennifer McGuire’s desk. She’s the boss of CBC News.

McGuire said the CBC uses Grave’s polling firm because it won the selection process. She said one of the criteria of that process is that polling firms have to “make a specific declaration that they were not affiliated with any political party.” She also said that the CBC confirmed that Graves has no client relationship with the Liberal party, but “we do not require firms or individuals to report on their voting history or donations to political organizations.”

“We believe that his commentary… is within the bounds of normal political analysis and discourse,” McGuire said.

Whether you agree with McGuire or not, it’s worth remembering one thing.

The CBC has become a lightning rod for both the right and the left.

And in both cases the cycle is essentially the same: furious accusations closely followed by fund-raising.

The whole ordeal reminds me of previous efforts from the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.

The last time they rattled the cup, they said they’d learnt of secret Conservative plans to slash the CBC budget. Only a donation could save the CBC.

It’s essentially the same tune this time, a Goliath of well-funded vested-interests up against a flat-broke David. And once again the CBC is stuck in the middle.

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	News & Journalism	Posted at 8:17 am (12 May 2010)

The CBC is heading to south for a talent scouting trip.

The Arts and Entertainment and Factual units are looking for pitches for new shows and series, and they’re hitting the road to do it. First stop was Vancouver yesterday, then on to L.A.  ”We are open for business. We are the only people who make Canadian prime-time series and we’re looking for the best of the best,” Kirstine Stewart said to the Toronto Star yesterday.

Heading to Los Angeles to find Canadian talent may seem odd, but to some, like Donald Martin, a Canadian writer working in California, it makes perfect sense.

It makes good creative sense, and makes good business sense, because a lot of the Canadians in Los Angeles are people who are doing very well, in whatever medium that they are in.

Stewart also hinted that the broadcaster might be bit more adventurous with what it looks at:

What is the next step in what people want to see reflected on their public broadcaster? Now that we have had some success in building a basic kind of audience, and a basic relationship with the public, we’re looking for where we can go that might be a little more experimental, or a little more interesting.

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	Behind the Scenes	Posted at 7:53 am (11 May 2010)

Kevin Newman’s unexpected announcement that he’s leaving Global National left many people scratching their heads.

The move surprised many because Global’s early evening national newscast is pulling in solid numbers, and, he could have easily stayed on for another several more years.

Newman said he has no future plans. He said he’s going to take a break for a while and re-evaluate. “Time for rest and renewal. After 10 amazing years August 20th will be my last Global National. Lots of time to say good-bye,” he wrote on his Twitter account.

The move has led to speculation that Newman may have his eye set on hosting the national newscast at CBC or CTV. Howard Bernstein, a former TV producer for CBC, Global and CTV, said he believes Newman’s agent has already been contact by CBC, CTV or both.

I have no concrete information on this, but there has been so much talk for over a year that I have to believe where there is smoke there must be fire.

He also said with The National’s revamp, Newman might be the right fit. “If younger and flashier is what CBC wants, Peter is not the flavor of the day anymore. Is Kevin Newman the right person to replace Peter? Is there anyone else?” he wrote.

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	News & Journalism	Posted at 8:10 am (10 May 2010)

Mark Kelley returned from the Gulf Coast oil spill recently, and brought back a memento for the Connect newsroom.

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	Connect	Posted at 7:42 am (10 May 2010)

Al Jazeera English began broadcasting in Canada on Tuesday and a couple CBC staffers have moved over to the new channel.

The new network is being managed by Tony Burman, former editor in chief of CBC News. He will be joined by Imtiaz Tyab, who worked at CBC News in Vancouver, and Jet Belgraver, who worked at CBC News in Toronto.

Burman said he hopes the network will fill a “void by bringing another voice in international news,” to Canada.

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	People	Posted at 7:57 am (06 May 2010)