The newsroom merged their radio, television and online resources into a single unit last year, despite losing several positions. The president’s awards are meant to honour innovation and accomplishment across the CBC.

CBC President Hubert Lacroix visited the station yesterday to present the award. He said the station’s adaptability was “the only way to survive.”

When you take out nine total positions in reporting, if you want to continue giving to Windsor a window and a mirror of what it’s all about, you need to cover the community and you need to be in the community and the only way to do this was to merge the teams.

There’s more on Lacroix’s visit here.

According to a survey from CBC’s research department, people spent 97 per cent of their time watching programming on regular TV sets, or with PVR’s, DVD’s or video on demand. Only two per cent of the total watching time was committed to watching television online.

The results seem to indicate that although Canadians spend a lot of time surfing online, they are not yet spending much of that time watching television shows. The average Anglophone Canadian now spends just shy of 14 hours a week online, compared to 15 hours a week watching TV.

Of the video content that is being watched online, amateur video is still the most popular, but it’s not growing in popularity. On the flip side watching professionally produced television online is growing quickly. More than one quarter of Anglophone internet users said spent time watching online TV in the last month, an increase  of 50% since last year.

And what are they watching? News. Of all the types of online TV content, news clips or newscasts are the most popular by a mile – 73 per cent of respondents said they had watched news clips or shows in the last month, sports came in a distant second at 46 per cent.

The survey results are based on 6,000 telephone interviews with Anglophone adults residing in all regions of Canada. The interviews were conducted from October 20, 2008 to December 21, 2008 and are considered accurate within plus or minus 1.3 percentage points 19 times out of 20. For more information on the survery contact the CBC/Radio-Canada Research and Strategic Analysis department.

• Programming will be led by Jennifer McGuire, who will become Executive Director of News Programming and Deputy Head of News. In her new role, she will define the mandate, voice and tone of news programs across all platforms—Radio, Television, Newsworld and CBC.ca.
• Todd Spencer will join News as the Executive Director of News Content. Todd’s extensive experience in this role while in CNN’s Asia bureau will bring insights to his team and to News generally.

The new structure, under CBC News publisher John Cruickshank, appears like this:

• Executive Editor of News: Esther Enkin
• News Programming: Jennifer McGuire
• Strategy and Innovation: Heaton Dyer
• News Content: Todd Spencer
• Finance: Iain McIntosh
• Don Knox will be “senior director”

* Read the CBC’s backgrounder on these changes [internal link only] on iO, the new CBC intranet.

REACTION FROM STAFF

These were among the questions posed by CBC staff at the announcement:

“What changes will occur to local news?”

Cruickshank: “We’ll see a level of coordination through the country through the newsrooms and the new universal desk, coordinating with the assignment desks, so there’s a coordination with all newsrooms across the country. Jennifer will bring programming expertise to the newsrooms, supplementing the beginning work we’re doing with the Magid [U.S. news consultants] folks.”

“What kind of resources are you putting into reporting?”

Cruickshank: “Over time,we really want to focus on folks that are audience-facing — people who are on-camera and on-mic who are actually engaged directly with the audience. That’s got to be an evolutionary thing, but it simply has to happen. The first steps have to do with communications and coordination, though.”

“I thought I heard the words ‘investment in local tv news.’ What does that mean for the poor souls putting on hour-long shows with six or seven people?”

Cruickshank: “We’ve seen investment in local news, staffing in Vancouver, training, and an enormous amount of research. We’re going to continue to try to engineer our operations so we get more feet on the street. This is going to take time. It’s not going to happen overnight. For most folks, tomorrow is not going to be a different day. This is going to be evolutionary.”

CBC’S QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

The CBC published a list of prepared Q&As on its intranet earlier today. This content comes from CBC Communications (you can tell, since the phrase “extend and leverage the brand” exists in it )

What is changing in News?
We are creating structures that will allow for faster and more complete sharing of intelligence across platforms and across the country. This will permit us to get breaking news on all our platforms faster than the competition and will enhance our ability to break news more often.

Are there going to be budget cuts?
Our overall News budget will remain the same. We continually review our budgets against priorities. As a result, resources will shift to meet those priorities.

What is Esther Enkin’s role? How does it differ from Jennifer’s new role?
As Executive Editor of News, Esther’s focus will be on journalistic policy and standards.

Are there any changes to Current Affairs?
Jennifer McGuire will be responsible for Television Current Affairs programming. Linda Groen continues to be responsible for Radio Current Affairs and Radio Current Affairs will report into Radio.

What changes are going to be made to The National?
We are looking at how we can extend and leverage the very powerful National brand.

What’s the status of Magid?
The Magid consultants will continue to be involved in research, training and strategies to support our evolving breaking news strategy.

So, do you work at CBC News or for a current affairs show? How does this announcement affect you?

The announcement, in front of a live audience of employees at the CBC Broadcast Centre in Toronto, was broadcast via closed-circuit to CBC locations around the world.

During the announcement, Stursberg reaffirmed that the CBC’s continuing commitment to Canadians remains unchanged. “This is not about a change in vision or direction for each service—their respective strategies stay the same.”

* Read the CBC’s backgrounder on these changes [internal link only] on iO, the new CBC intranet.

According to Stursberg, the revised organizational structure will “provide the best support for creating programming” across the CBC’s different media lines — radio, television and digital —but each will continue to pursue its existing strategies.

As part of the newly announced structure, Stursberg announced a revised management committee. Changes will take effect immediately.

In the announcement to staff, moderator and CBC Radio host Michael Enright asked Stursberg “What exactly is the central inefficiency that this reorganization is intended to correct? And who is served by it? What have we been doing wrong so far.”

Stursberg: When i look at the news service and the sheer quantity of resources we have, we don’t have enough breaking stories. I frankly find it strange that the most popular all-news network in Canada is a foreign news network [CNN]. That is untrue of newspapers…. When we look at the array of resources we have — and much of the aueience is watching — Are we available for breaking news all the time? The answer: Nope. Are we the ones who are dominating the newscasts all the time? Nope. We should be the most dominant, original, impoirtant news centres of all in the country.

Enright: “There’s concern about whether television [decisions are now made by] one person. Can you address this amazing centralization that the power and decisio- making lies in your office and you. You might hear the name King Richard mummered in the halls of the Broadcast Centre.”

Stursberg: “I don’t think that’s true at all. What we’ve tried to do is to hire very powerful, gifted, intelligent executives and said “Go and make it happen.”…. I think that over the course of the last little while, we have been able to attract an extra-ordinary colection of execuitves. When executives have left, people have been stunned at [the calibre of their replacements].

How do you feel about the continuing integration of services and centralization of decision-making?

Jennifer McGuire, currently executive director of radio, will become Executive Director of News Programming and Deputy Head of News. (Until a replacement is found for her position, she will continue to hold the radio office.) Former vice-president of radio Jane Chalmers left the CBC a couple of months ago. Weeks later, that position was eliminated.

Todd Spencer, formerly head of radio production, will also move to the integrated news organization as Executive Director of News Content.

“The core strength of Radio remains with its gifted team,” Stursberg wrote in a memo to staff posted on its new intranet. “Our intention is to search internally, as we need someone who can hit the ground running and understands the Radio service.”

Larry O’Brien will take on the role of Senior Director, Radio Production and Resources on an interim basis; CBC plans to fill the position for the integrated organization within six months.

* Read the CBC’s backgrounder on these changes [internal link only] on iO, the new CBC intranet.

QUESTIONS

In an all-staff meeting held this morning, moderator Michael Enright confronted Richard Stursberg on the decision.

“Why I am seized with the feeling that TV is strip-mining radio of its senior management.”

Stursberg: “We’re lucky that we have incredibly gifted people in radio. The issue isn’t radio being strip-mined, but we can certainly take advantage of those extra-ordinary resources for the purposes of all. It’s a mistake to say that Jennifer and Todd are leaving radio. They’re not. They’re going to News, which is a television and radio function.”

CBC News publisher John Cruickshank characterized the changes as “a reverse takeover of news by radio.”

“But the examples you give are television,” Enright continued. “Take an example or World Report. It has the largest news audience in the country — TV or radio. I don’t think the criticism you have of TV apply universally to radio.”

Cruickshank: “CBC Radio News is brilliant five days a week from nine to five. Our issue has to do with ‘Are we going to be a 24-hour breaking news organization?’ In other words, are we commited every day, all day or just during particular shifts.”

Enright: “But how is that going to work? They tried this with BBC Radio and it was a disaster. They’re reorganizing and trying it again. Isn’t one of the dangers of this integration is the stories will become less distinctive — everyone covering the same things across all the platforms — and radio would lose in all this because television has the greater force field. We’re going to be ‘sucked into’ this.”

Cruickshank: “CBC Radio News is already quite powerful. It’s very significant in the structure that nobody is aligned specifically to television or radio, but that everyone has lots of experience in all the media. We are not talking about finding efficiencies by sending [TV] people with no radio experience out to do stories. Our agnosticism is around content — being a content company. It’s enormously important that we have the right content on the right platform.”

Enright: “Suppose there’s a story that radio could cover with a phone, but television needs pictures, so we all have to wait?”

Cruickshank: “No. There will actually be a desk which will [think about] who needs this. Will it be radio? Television? Newsworld? The regional shows? We can make a sensible decision about what kind of staffing we need there. Right now, we’re not coordinated in that way. We send too few or, worse, too many people [to cover the same story]. We need a centre where we can decide where a story is going to go — like a slot organization: “That’ll go to radio and Newsworld and that’s it.”

Stursberg: “Our commitment to Canadians about news is that we are there with the news as it happens, whenever they need it. If radio news can get to it first — boom, it goes to radio. It goes out as quickly as possible.”

From the floor: “Everything you talk about is what it means for news. The only thing I can see in this organization chart about Current Affairs is there’s no more current affairs department at all. This gives me great concern.”

Stursberg: “One of the things we wanted to do was to make sure thigns sat in appropriate places, so one of the conversations Jennifer and I had was what do we do with radio current affairs vs. radio news. In the old days, current affairs was theoretically inside news. In reality, it never really was. It was always managed by radio. If a show is fed by news gathering, it is a news show. If it is not, it is not. In the future, the radio current affairs shows will not sit within NCAN, they will sit within radio where, as a practical matter, they are already. When we say current affairs shows, we mean everything from Ideas and onward. Those shows are the pillars of radio’s primetime schedule. The commitment to those shows remains absolutely intact.”

CBC employees: Did you attend or watch/listen to the announcement? Are you in radio? What do you think about these changes?