Corrections: The excerpt below, from Jeffrey Dvorkin’s blog, ‘Now the Details‘, is inaccurate. It refers to an incident in which the hub in Toronto ordered a show in Montreal to lead with a particular story. I was told over the weekend that  that the hub is an assignment desk, and as such it doesn’t decide the lineup of individual programs – that is left to the sole discretion of the shows. So it’s not inaccurate to say the hub in Toronto “ordered” what a Montreal show should lead with. Also Dvorkin refers to a radio series on Russia that was vetoed by the TV side, apparently this never happened, the series was simply put on hold because of the earthquake in Haiti. The original excerpt is below:

CBC Montreal’s local supper hour newscast had an exclusive interview with a former Mafioso. A good local story since an organized crime turf war has broken out and the son of a jailed don was shot to death recently. The Montreal show led with that story.

The “Hub” in Toronto had ordered that the lead should be the death in Ontario of a child with H1N1. When that order was ignored, the executive producer in Montreal found herself reprimanded by management.

The worry among the demoralized staff is that a bureaucratic mechanism has now imposed itself with the effect of stifling journalistic initiative. Stories that might make good radio but without a visual component are rejected. A radio reporter proposed a series of stories from Russia, but without the agreement of the tv side, it was vetoed.

An excerpt from well known journalism professor Jeffrey Dvorkin’s blog, ‘Now the Details‘ about the CBC news renewal process and how it’s working out for the people in the trenches. I can’t comment on the accuracy of the post, I just found it interesting. The blog post also mentions that there are obvious synergies/efficiencies from the hub approach.

What’s your experience with the hub so far?

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	Media Coverage	Posted at 3:28 pm (14 Jan 2010)

The term used to describe the swine flu (Mexican Flu, H1N1 Influenza A, North American Flu) outbreak has become controversial.

The original, and colloquial name, “swine flu” has run into objections from pork producers who say that it spreads fear about eating pork. You can’t get swine flu from eating pork.

Fiona Fleck, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization explained to the New York Times on Wednesday that the World Health Organization would start using the term “influenza A(H1N1)”

In Canada both CP24 and CTV has started using the term H1N1 flu. The CBC continues to use the term swine flu, because the term “H1N1 Influenza A” is a lot put in a script, “but more importantly, at least one infectious disease expert we consulted says it is inaccurate,” a CBC producer said.

The WHO take a different stance on the issue. “We’re a scientific organization. A(H1N1) is a scientific name. That’s it. But the scientific name is not very user friendly. I think it would help all of us if we could find a name that’s easier to say that’s more popular.”

Fleck suggested there could be a competition, and members of the public could come up with a better name.

Swine Flu naming contest anyone?

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	In Plain English, Media Coverage	Posted at 1:38 pm (01 May 2009)

Over the last few weeks the CBC has received a ton of criticism and attention in the media, culminating with Heritage Minister James Moore’s comments from last week that the CBC should “stop chasing revenues and eyeballs.”

On Saturday, Kirstine Layfield, the executive director of programming for CBC Television, responded to some of the criticism.

People say the CBC is chasing eyeballs. Personally, I have never met an eyeball. I have met Canadians from across our great country who have eyes — and ears and hearts and minds. They have a thirst to understand their world from a Canadian perspective and a desire to hear their own stories and music. This is the audience of the CBC.

Layfield also addressed some of funding issues, ratings, and competition with the privates. Her full comment is here. It’s worth a read.

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	Executives, Media Coverage	Posted at 10:45 am (23 Mar 2009)

The announcement that the CBC will freeze executives salaries and cut executive bonuses in half has not gone over well with CBC staffers.

“This means that the compensation for each of our eighty or so top managers will on average be reduced by 10 to 20 per cent next year,” CBC President Hubert Lacroix wrote on Wednesday.

Lise Lareau, president of the Canadian Media Guild, told the Globe the clawback “rang the wrong way” to many people. Most CBC staffers don’t receive performance and incentive bonuses, “What’s a bonus?” a commentator on this blog asked. ”You remember that time there was half a sandwich left in that boardroom and you got to it first? That was your 2008 bonus,” another replied. 

The reaction was covered in a story by the Canadian Press last night.

CBC spokesman Marco Dube explained that cutting the bonuses and freezing salaries will save the about $1 million this year. Based on those figures, even if the bonuses were eliminated entirely the savings wouldn’t likely amount to more that a couple million dollars a year, which would help, but it’s a long way from addressing a revenue shortfall that stands between $150 and $200 million.

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	Executives, Media Coverage	Posted at 8:18 am (20 Mar 2009)

CBC President Hubert Lacroix gave a speech last week that had some interesting factoids fun facts about the CBC:

• Canadian’s personal annual contributions to CBC/Radio-Canada is $34 a year, less than a dime a day. The BBC receives $124 per Briton, and funding in France was $65 per citizen in 2007;
• CBC audiences download close to two million podcasts every month;
• In addition to offering its services in English and in French in five time zones, the national public broadcaster also provides coverage in eight Aboriginal languages, in eight international languages for new and aspiring Canadians, and nine languages via our worldwide radio network.

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	Media Coverage	Posted at 1:17 pm (02 Mar 2009)

The Tyee, B.C.’s left-leaning online newspaper, has published a column critical of CBC’s Facebook experiment. A snippet:

For the CBC’s part, they defend the contest with just this on the contest’s ongoing blog. “Just so you know — here at the CBC, we’ve received some complaints about the fact that we’ve continued to let this project continue, because “the wish list has been highjacked by anti-abortion lobby groups.” Our response? There’s no such thing as ‘highjacking’ with this project. Who ever can best organize their wish, and get the most people to support it… will come out on top. I guess the whole point is to BE good at lobbying for your wish.”

So “The Great Canadian Wish List” is in fact “Canada’s Next Top Lobbyist”? Okay, fine. So if I put “I wish for a return to slavery” up, and I get 3,000 bigots to join Facebook (or 1,000 bigots with three accounts each, for that matter), then that should be Canada’s greatest wish?

Give me a break. Popular doesn’t always mean right — which is why we elect politicians to debate issues and don’t just hold popular votes every week. And for that matter, popular on Facebook doesn’t even really mean popular.

I dunno. I mean, come on, how are we supposed to learn about new technologies and social networks if we don’t experiment? The Facebook project might have its problems (I personally am more upset there isn’t an equivelent Canadian platform we could have used, than the actual results) but at least we’re poking around and learning.

And that’s a far cry from the previous spirit of “Uh, we don’t understand it, so let’s not do anything about it and keep on keepin’ on like we always have.”

Points for effort, at least?

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	Media Coverage	Posted at 2:57 pm (21 Jun 2007)

The Globe and Mail this morning reports:

Last summer’s dust-up over Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story, in which CBC Television withdrew the $7.9-million drama under pressure from the descendants of the NDP leader’s old political foes, has reached a sunny resolution for the miniseries’ embattled writers and producers.

At the Cannes MIPTV broadcast marketplace on the French Riviera earlier this spring, Giant‘s producer, Kevin De Walt of Mind’s Eye Entertainment, revealed that a deal had been struck with Hallmark International to air the two-part drama on Hallmark specialty channels in 156 territories, from Scandinavia to the Middle East.

The deal means that Prairie Giant can be screened again, something that looked unlikely after CBC cancelled a scheduled rebroadcast and suspended sales of Prairie Giant DVDs, citing uneasiness over the way it had been dramatized.

In 2005, when CBC invested $1.2-million in the biographical drama, and the Saskatchewan NDP government put in $600,000, the Opposition Saskatchewan Party complained that the project was politically partisan. The Opposition renewed the attack after Giant was broadcast in March, 2006, and seen by more than 800,000 viewers, in part because Tommy Douglas’s old adversary, Liberal premier Jimmy Gardiner, was depicted as a reactionary xenophobe with a drink in his hand.

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	Media Coverage, Specials	Posted at 4:12 am (21 Jun 2007)

The National Post has published a story about editor-in-chief Tony Burman’s career at the Ceeb. Here’s a snippet:

Christopher Waddell, associate director of the School of Journalism at Carleton University, said the CBC News of today pales in comparison to its “glory days” in the 1980s but he credited Mr. Burman with recognizing the opportunities provided by the Internet early on, launching cbc.ca.

Peter Mansbridge, anchor of CBC’s flagship newscast The National, said that in fact, CBC brass wanted to axe the regional newscasts altogether, but Mr. Burman vociferously opposed the move. “As Tony has done many times, he laid his body in front of the roaring train,” he said.

The full story is published here.

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	Executives, Media Coverage, News & Journalism	Posted at 11:35 pm (20 Jun 2007)

In an article leading this morning’s Globe and Mail Review section, reporter Gayle MacDonald described CBC TV’s Fall 2007 season as “sexier”.

After years of so-called high-impact miniseries that largely left viewers cold, CBC Television has unveiled a slate of fall shows that it says reflects a new belief that audiences like to be given time to really get to know TV characters.

Kirstine Layfield, executive director of network programming, promised a “new direction at the CBC” and acknowledged that “the audience had changed.

“People like to meet characters. They like to fall in love with them, and stay with them for a while. Our goal is to increase the number of people coming to the CBC,” Layfield said, adding that in 2006 the network enjoyed its best prime-time season in five years with shows.

…

Layfield called 2006 a “year of building” at the CBC. She and her boss Richard Stursberg, executive vice-president, English Television, said they’re gunning for 2007 to be the network’s best for ratings in 10 years.

Also in the Globe this morning is an article about the CBC’s new metric for measuring the “public value” of its programming — PARC.

I’m guessing my own formula below is now out of date?

Show Budget (C) – Angry Complaints (X) + Number of
Gin and Tonics required by producers (GT) / Lockouts (L)

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	CBC Television, Media Coverage, Programming	Posted at 7:33 am (30 May 2007)

Watch it… if you can bear to stomach the excessive money-wasting the Corp has done on its “plush sofas and ashtrays.” Great job by The Hour.

Watch the video at http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/video.php?id=1431

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	Health and Wellness, Media Coverage	Posted at 11:20 pm (01 Mar 2007)

After an amazing 2.1 million viewers tuned in for last week’s debut of Little Mosque on the Prairie, media watchers have been itching to see what would happen with episode two.

And CBC gave them plenty to talk about. Episode two was slated to air on Monday night, but to the confusion of viewers and pundits alike, the first episode was repeated instead. The replay pulled in 606,000 viewers, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Episode two ended up airing on Wednesday night instead, and drew 1.2 million viewers. (CBC employees: audience numbers for the past three days are available on the intranet.)

A decline from the debut was expected, and any Canadian series that pulls in over a million is good. According to the Globe’s Guy Dixon

A CBC spokesman said yesterday that “we’re very pleased with the way the program is doing.”

In comparison, CTV’s hit sitcom Corner Gas has drawn an average audience of 1.4 million so far this season.

But the big question being asked in the newspapers is, why the switcheroo?

Their consensus opinion seems to be that CBC didn’t want to put the second episode up against the Golden Globes and the debut of 24. (Who would? Those shows pulled in 2.5 million and 1.5 million for CTV and Global on Monday.)

The Toronto Sun posits this theory that CBC was surprised by the huge debut numbers, and worried about how to follow up:

But because Little Mosque opened so huge, the CBC is wary that the numbers for the second episode are going to seem disastrously small by comparison. They’re worried that practically every newspaper in the country is going to write about how Little Mosque went up against the Golden Globes and 24, and lost three-quarters of its audience, or whatever.

The article goes on to quote a response from CBC executive director of programming Kirstine Layfield:

“We knew it was going to confuse the press, and we knew some people would just assume that the CBC messed up, but this was a thought-out decision that was made for the benefit of the show,” Layfield said.

Another Sun article (they’re enjoying this) described the reaction of Carlos Rota, who stars in both Little Mosque and this season’s 24 (talk about a career year!)

“Are they out of their minds?” he said on the set of Fox’s 24, where Rota has a key role this season as CTU analyst (and Chloe’s ex-husband) Morris O’Brian.

Like all the Canadian critics on the press tour, Rota, who plays Yasir on Little Mosque, was flabbergasted by CBC’s programming strategy. “First of all, they premiere it on a Tuesday, then move it immediately to Monday, then show the wrong episode…?” Rota vented.

For the record, according to the Little Mosque website, the show will continue to air on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. (8:30 NT), with repeats on Mondays at 9:00.

Speaking of the web, the first episode of Little Mosque is making a bit of a splash on YouTube (even though it was not posted there by CBC; the online version starts two minutes into it, and includes commercials.)

The YouTube episode is broken into four parts. The first part has already had more than 30,000 views, with the other parts receiving over 17,000 each. Even the news story promoting the series has had more than 14,000 views.

Finally, the Royal Canadian Air Farce has plans to cash in on some of the Mosque mania tonight. According to the Sun:

Coincidentally, CBC’s long-running comedy program Royal Canadian Air Farce will continue the network’s unique tradition of making fun of its own with a short Little Mosque-themed bit tonight (8 p.m.).

The theme is that the CBC is so overwhelmed by the success of Little Mosque that all of the public network’s shows are going to adopt Little Mosque stylings (everything from Don Cherry and Ron MacLean to The National).

And Air Farce also points out that Little Mosque‘s debut audience was “the equivalent of two years total of The Hour With George Stroumboulopoulos.” Funny stuff.

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	Little Mosque on the Prairie, Media Coverage	Posted at 1:37 pm (19 Jan 2007)

Why Stursberg’s days may be numbered (Toronto Star): “Despite Stursberg’s admitted aspirations — he speaks of “going for my 25-year pin” at the CBC — if he can’t deliver on the audience numbers he has been pursuing, his time may be up as soon as that of his boss… With the Conservative government’s own appointee at the CBC helm, Stursberg’s continued presence would rely on the network’s performance — whether by his own measure, ratings, or any other — and he has precious little time left to improve it.”

CBC joins push for carriage fee (Globe and Mail): “Citing a growing mismatch between its financial and cultural burdens, the CBC will ask the [CRTC] on Monday to sanction the principle of carriage fees for conventional broadcasters. If it were approved, Canadians would pay an additional, unspecified fee to cable, satellite or telco providers to receive the CBC, CTV, Global Television and CITY-TV. They now receive such signals without cost.”

Network battle looms for hot sports (Globe and Mail): “The CBC could easily lose this one, but don’t count it out. The demise of the venerable Hockey Night in Canada, a CBC brand, is the sort of publicity the NHL doesn’t need. The league could renew the CBC deal and appease TSN by giving it more Canadian content in the regular season and playoffs.”

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	Media Coverage	Posted at 2:02 pm (25 Nov 2006)

• “CRTC should listen carefully to Jessica” – Canadian Media Guild
  “What are the odds that [today's teen] knows who her mayor is? Not very good. And it’s almost certain that she has no idea what’s happening at her municipal council or even her school board. And, if she happened to be interested, it wouldn’t be very easy for her to find out through new, or even old, media.”

• “CBC at the Crossroads” – Playback Magazine
  “The fact that the network has not been able to launch one true hit . . . speaks to largely ineffectual promotional efforts. The talents involved in a number of CBC projects that have recently gone to air have spoken up in recent interviews, practically begging the network to push their shows, whether on air or elsewhere.”

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	Media Coverage	Posted at 11:03 am (24 Nov 2006)

The time slot hosting The Rick Mercer Report and This Hour Has 22 Minutes is now beating the American programming it competes against every Tuesday night from 8 to 9 p.m. The St. John’s Telegram newspaper calls it “a herculean feat for Canadian programming.”

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	Asides, Media Coverage, Programming, Rick Mercer Report, This Hour Has 22 Minutes	Posted at 12:33 pm (10 Nov 2006)

American newsmagazine Time Magazine has covered CBC’s trials and tribulations, reporting that the Mothercorp was “leaderless and groggy from cumulative misfortune.” Among the items the magazine notes:

• French viewers are outraged by the airing of a drama series

• A politician is charging the CBC has “shown favoritism toward his opposition in reporting a provincial election.”
• It’s reported that the CBC is not making a profit on the vast majority of its programming

The Time article concludes that “the CBC was striking evidence of the trouble that is inherent in government operation of a medium of communication in a free society.”
     Sound like the same old same old? It should. The article was published in 1959.

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	Media Coverage	Posted at 7:31 pm (06 Nov 2006)