CBC President Hubert Lacroix’s recent online Q & A session (here, or here) yielded some interesting insights into CBC’s strategy.

Lacroix said that priority will go to “things that enable us to become a content company, to become the most important creator and distributor of Canadian content across all platforms.”

Those comments align with several comments that both Lacroix and Richard Strursberg have made over the last couple years about producers becoming content creators on multiple platforms instead of being radio or television or online producers.  That dedication to content producing was reinforced when cbc.ca was spared any layoffs in last week’s cost cutting.

Now on the face of it, this seems like a smart move. However the view from the trenches is a little different.

Outside of news on cbc.ca most of the online content creation – ie the guys that put content onto multiple platforms – is done by online producers. For the most part these producers are attached to shows. Cutting the production budget of shows, will put pressure on their online budgets, which means less, not more, content on multiple platforms. This will actually move the corporation further from creating and distributing content on multiple platforms effectively.

Take the show Being Erica for instance. This is a show with a innovative online presence. The main character of the show ‘Erica’ is online, in character, and uses the internet to interact with the audience and advance the storyline. As I said before this is an innovative strategy. But cutting back on episodes of the show will put pressure on that strategy and I worry impede the progress CBC has made as multiple-platform broadcaster.

For the CBC, how this tension between strategic direction and actual implementation plays out will have significant impact due to the recent amalgamation of the Canadian Television Fund and the new media fund. In the future all shows seeking Canadian Media Fund money will require significant online components. “Doing something interesting online will be a must-have if you want to get CMF cash,” a comment from Kev on this blog says.

Newslab also an article on the subject here.

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	Behind the Scenes, How Shows Work	Posted at 9:15 am (02 Apr 2009)

Web videos have tons of potential practical applications. Video blogs are becoming increasingly popular due to the ease of shooting and production. This recent video blog by Al Thompkins, as reposted by Dan Misener on his blog, shows how to make short videos on the cheap using a “Flip” camera, some simple editing software, and your own ingenuity. It isn’t as hard as you would think.

The Flip camera is a video camera with a “flip-out” USB port that allows you to plug it directly into your computer without a cable. It is available inexpensively, at a price point of around $200 as opposed to the expected $1200 for a digital video camera in the past.

This brings the realm of the video blog into everyone’s reach. Mr. Thompkins runs through the technology and software needed to work with a Mac; it is easily adaptable to a PC simply by just changing the software package to something like Podesk which is tailor-made to produce video blogs and video podcasts.

CBC shows have been taking advantage of this video format and have been posting their own short web videos; check out the following links to get the feel.

Spark – How To Make A Radio Show
The host of “Spark” and co-staff produced this how-to video.
http://www.danmisener.com/archives/334

R3TV (Radio 3 TV)
http://blip.tv/file/258335/
This contains some fun stuff, a music video, and interesting commentary in the manner of an internet video rather than a sleekly produced TV Show.

ZeD:
http://zed.cbc.ca/go?c=ZedCandidHomepage
While cancelled, the videos on this page try to keep the feel of an amateur internet video and give you the general idea of what is possible.

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	CBC Radio 3, How Shows Work, Other Internet, Podcasting, Production Gear	Posted at 1:45 pm (03 May 2008)

Nora Young and the over-caffeinated crew at Spark have put out a quirky little video about how to make a radio show.

If you’re looking for Radio 101, look elsewhere. This tongue-in-cheek production is Radio 001. (For instance, one line from the piece: “When you’re in the studio, say the words and phrases that you wrote down earlier into the microphone.”)

Be sure to watch for how they get the audio tape into the recorder. I’d been trying to figure that out for years now!

Here’s the embed code if you want to share it on your blog:

<object width=”425″ height=”355″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/WsFbcKlc26c&hl=en”></param><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/WsFbcKlc26c&hl=en” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” wmode=”transparent” width=”425″ height=”355″></embed></object>

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	Fun Stuff, How Shows Work, Spark	Posted at 11:39 am (17 Mar 2008)

And you think the new Toronto recycling program is wacky.

Check out the CBC’s last significant recycling campaign. With the tagline “You Can’t Rewind Resources,” the recycling box showed a picture of a reel-to-reel tape, er, reel.

The tipster who sent this in said:

This has been holding pens on my desk for about 25 years!

Yes it is upside down in the holder in case anyone asks.

I must have reversed it sometime ago and now it’s stuck with age)

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	How Shows Work	Posted at 11:08 pm (18 Oct 2007)

As Vancouver continues to move ahead on its myCBC rollout, the new CBC News at Six set has now had a full week of on-air use. Similar in design to the Calgary newsworld set (large space, red and white primary colours), the Vancouver set includes a large weather centre fro which recently moved CBC meteorologist Clare Martin does extended forecasts.

Photos by CBC’s Mike Hennigar.

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	CBC News at Six, How Shows Work, Vancouver	Posted at 8:13 am (09 Oct 2007)

Complaints received by the CBC Ombudsman for English Services continued to decline this year for the fourth year in a row. The number of reviews requested also continued to decline.

However, in his report [pdf], Vince Carlin chastised CBC News for failing to identify sources in a number of instances.

…Relevant information about either a source of information or a presenter was left out—information which would have been useful for a viewer / listener / reader in understanding the story. Does the person quoted have an interest in the story, or an ideology to propagate? In order to maintain our standards of fairness, it is vital that we provide that information.

CBC management says it’s already taken steps to correct this. In its Response to the Ombudsman [pdf], management said:

…The Editor in Chief has already taken steps to ensure that proper attention is given to this issue. The Ombudsman’s observation has been directly drawn to the attention of senior programmers along with a request that they review best practices with their teams. They will also emphasize among all staff the importance of providing context so that the audience can weigh and judge information given by a particular source.

Carlin also warned that even programs which fall under CBC’s Factual Entertainment division are “presumably subject to Journalistic Standards and Practices.” He writes: “I think it important for producers in
that area to be aware of the implications of policy on their programs.”

During the fiscal year 2006-07, the office received 1,817 complaints, communications and expressions of concern, including 1,326 about information programming. There were 65 fewer communications about information programming than last year, which was an election year.

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	How Shows Work	Posted at 1:02 pm (01 Oct 2007)

I caught this great photo on Flickr.com of CBC Radio Vancouver’s Sheryl Mackay chatting with author William Gibson and local newspaper columnist John Burns about Gibson’s “Spook Club Country” book.

The show will be broadcast later this month and will be podcasted on Words @ Large.

If you capture an interesting moment at or about the CBC, just send it to me or upload it to Flickr.com and tag it “cbc.”

Photo: “The Bookclub” by jmv

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	How Shows Work, Vancouver	Posted at 10:45 am (10 Sep 2007)

Early every Wednesday morning in Vancouver, I sit in a small studio and do interviews with the regional morning shows from CBC Radio One for my technology column (most shows air it the following day). At 7:00 a.m., though, I have a 15-minute break, so lately I’ve been heading down to Studio 5 and hanging out with Natasha and Shelagh from Sounds Like Canada. This morning, as a tape piece aired, I guess I kept subconciously checking their clock to make sure they didn’t run over or something. Finally, Shelagh smiled, leaned in, and said “It’s okay. We’re on it.” Once a clock-watcher…

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	Asides, How Shows Work, Personalities, Sounds Like Canada	Posted at 9:26 am (23 May 2007)

CBC recording engineer Joe Mahoney has a great description of the harrowing first day of Jian Ghomeshi’s daily Q arts show on CBC Radio One:

At one o’clock there’s a newscast. According to our information on this first day, the newscast was six minutes long. There’s a countdown clock in the studio that tells us when we’re supposed to be live on air. It gives us a twenty second countdown.

At 1:04:40 we were enjoying this brief respite, anticipating another minute and twenty seconds before going live again, when suddenly the exec cried out. I looked up and the countdown clock was counting down, one minute early.

Was the clock wrong? Were we going to be live at 1:05?

We hastily decided to trust the clock and start the show. I called master control at the same time to ask them if the clock was right. I needed an answer before 1:06, because if the clock was wrong we would have to restart the show at 1:06. Master told us that as far as they knew the clock was right. So we carried on with the show.

Afterward we learned that we had the wrong information, and that the start time for part three of the show is indeed 1:05.

You can read the full gory details of that first day on air on his blog at http://www.assortednonsense.com

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	How Shows Work, Q	Posted at 12:14 pm (22 May 2007)

DNTO‘s pop culture professor and neurotic jock, Nick Purdon, is working on a brand new radio show — and he needs your help!

But first, some background. The show is called “Hidden City,” and it willl air this summer on CBC Radio One. The idea is to explore the hidden things — unwritten rules, behaviours and activities that most of us don’t notice but are integral to life in the city. It is about exploring the life of that unique human creature known as the “urbanoid.”

One of his episodes is about noise in the city, and he’s interested in exploring it at the micro-level — as in, the noise that drives neighbours crazy. So he and his production team are looking for people who are currently at war with a neighbour about loud music, barking dogs, shrieking kids, or any of the gazillions of noises that drive the modern urban dweller batty. They want people who’ve been feuding for a while. People who’ve tried to reach out to their neighbour, to no avail. People who are at their wit’s end.

Do you know of such a person (or maybe it’s you!)? Email Sara Tate at sara_tate@cbc.ca with the subject line “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!!”

* Note: The term “whack,” of course, coming from the Latin whackus, meaning “to air a radio story about.” Has nothing to do with mobsters.

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	DNTO, How Shows Work	Posted at 2:58 pm (23 Apr 2007)

Ever wondered what the news anchor does in between the commercial breaks? Now, you don’t have to wonder. Turns out, because the CBC News at Six is broadcast live (and without commercials) on the Internet stream in most regions, some on-air staff use it to say hi to people who might be watching the stream.

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	How Shows Work, Winnipeg	Posted at 11:29 am (19 Apr 2007)

You think you know your microphones? Let’s see if anyone can suggest what microphone this is. Does anyone know anything about it?

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	How Shows Work	Posted at 1:02 pm (12 Apr 2007)

This is a video from 1998, in which then-Winnipeg anchor Diana Swain introduces viewers to the CBC’s new home in the city. Even though it’s no longer “new,” the video provides a great tour behind the scenes of the construction of the newsroom and studio.

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	How Shows Work, Winnipeg	Posted at 11:27 am (02 Apr 2007)

The guy behind This American Life (a great documentary/storytelling radio show in the U.S.) has put together a short series of videos that elaborate on his model of good storytelling in the media. Worth watching.

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	How Shows Work	Posted at 10:41 pm (15 Feb 2007)