Today the CBC tabled its annual report in Parliament.
I have no idea what that means – who gets it, and where’s the table? So I asked Wendy Duschenes, Manager, Writing & Publishing Services, Corporate Communications (which means she worked on it all year, but her name doesn’t appear anywhere in the 86 pages. “I did get cookies from my boss.”)
She says the printed copies are delivered to certain MPs and key stakeholders, and the report becomes an official, publicly available document. But the online document is now the key.
“We don’t actually print a lot of copies,” Duschenes says. Approximately 1,800 copies are printed for politicians, government departments and libraries – everyone else is directed to the online copy. In the past, CBC printed as many as 10,000 physical copies.
The document is “a way for CBC to account for its money spent, and get some key messages across,” says Duschenes. “This year’s theme is ‘Striking the right balance’ – how to balance the need to provide programming for traditional audiences as well as new ones, and maintain traditional media while adding new technologies.”
It’s a surprisingly pretty document, with an opening photo essay on CBC’s perceived audience (a sort of “These are the people in your neighbourhood” theme.) CBC show photographs and bright colours are used throughout (”But in the printed copy, it’s a lot more red than orange!”) as a way to grab attention.
“There are a lot of annual reports that cross everybody’s desk every day,” Duschenes says. “They question is, how do you get your message across in an interesting way?”
This is Duschenes’ seventh annual report. “You can survive these things. I’ve already started working on the next one.”
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Thanks for linking to the informative and nice looking 2005/06 CBC report.
First of all, some fun stats I generated quickly by using my PDF reader. The following is a list of words and the number of times they appear in the annual report.
ipod: 2
Preserve/preservation: 5
Community: 8
Download: 9
Innovate/innovative: 11
Online: 11
Popular: 11
Arts: 17
Change: 52
International: 56
Balance: 75
Well, I guess “balance” tops the list is no surprise considering the theme of “Striking the right balance”.
I have read through all discussion of download and online viewing and looks like CBC is only allowing download of radio programs. And I am quite disappointed to see there seems to be no strategy or discussion of online viewing or downloading of CBC created TV shows.
I am a big fan of Dragons’ Den (both the UK and CBC series) so I will use it as an example. Currently, BBC Two has put all nine episodes of its latest series of Dragons’ Den online for people to watch. See this link,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/programmes/?id=dragons_den
I think this is a great idea that treats the show’s viewers as kings and queens. And they are showing them in high quality video too. I would love to see my beloved CBC’s Dragons’ Den be also available online for viewing. In the age of YouTube and BitTorrent, I don’t know, as a fan of CBC Dragons’ Den, if I should feel offended that the shows get put onto those medium or they don’t get put on.
Ultimately, CBC senior executives can let the world decide things for them and react when the house is on fire. Or the same executives can take the proactive approach by looking around the world to learn from others’ best practice and then try those on the CBC produced products first.
Here is a Feb 2005 BBC news article that talks about TV downloading. I excerpted the section that talked about BBC’s own experiment. I’ve been following up on this BBC initiative. I would appreciate if anyone can update me on it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4276255.stm
“The BBC ran a trial of what it calls the Interactive Media Player (iMP) last year, which was based on a peer-to-peer distribution model.
It let people download programmes it held the rights to up to eight days after they had already aired. It is looking to do a more expansive trial later this year.
The BBC already allows radio fans to hear programmes they missed online up to a week after broadcast.”
Well, I am here to apologize and correct myself. Looks like CBC executives have indeed been experimenting with put some video content online after all. Here is a Google example,
http://video.google.ca/ca/en/cbc.html
These videos seem to be all short clips at the moment but they are still a good start. Now, the next step is to take a whole show and put it on the internet. Of course, I love to use my beloved CBC show Dragons’ Den as an example. Lets see if and when CBC will put Dragons’ Den on the internet. I look forward to that day.
I make mistakes fast but I hope I correct them even faster. Again, my apologies to the CBC execs. I should have done some research before I open my mouth or moving my hands. I am blaming my typing hands for making me look like an idiot. (smile)