Daniel Schwartz, one of the founding members of CBC cycling group in Toronto, was hit by a car and seriously hurt while riding his bike last Wednesday.

Paddi-Anne Crossin is putting together a small package to send to Daniel, “to let him know that we’re thinking of him,” she said in an email. Contact Paddi-Anne for more information.

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	People	Posted at 9:35 am (17 Jun 2009)

Several new appointments were announced today at the CBC.

Two of the appointments were in the news department as part of the renewal process.

“Neil Morrison will move into a major program development role with CBC News.” Jennifer McGuire, general manager of CBC News, said in a note to staff. “Later in the week, we will be announcing more details about the Newsworld schedule with more information about Neil’s new role. Stay tuned for that.”

As part of that announcement McGuire also said “Liz Hughes has agreed to take on Neil’s role as Director of News, Centres. Liz will take on the on-going development of local news across the country.”

In Nova Scotia Tom Murphy has been named chief correspondant for the province, he’ll also anchor the CBC News provincial supper hour newscast. CP reports that Murphy will “also become co-host of a new CBC news program that will begin Aug. 31.”

Finally Jill Spelliscy has been appointed managing director for Saskatchewan. In making the announcement Jill Troyer, executive director, CBC centres, said ““With her many years of experience and keen understanding of the province, Jill will bring strong journalistic and programming leadership to the position of managing director—and this will be a homecoming for Jill, as Saskatchewan is her home base, and where she started her career with CBC on local radio and television.”

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	People	Posted at 11:02 pm (09 Jun 2009)

CBC President Hubert Lacroix sat down with Allison Saunders this morning to discuss the impact of the layoffs. Below is a transcript of the interview.

Saunders: It’s been a tough couple of weeks, can you give me a sense of where we’re at?

Lacroix: It’s been really tough at CBC/Radio Canada. We all realize that, me the first.

First off, let’s talk about the redundancy notices. They have been given out… the famous pink slips. I was listening George Stroumboulopoulos who was interviewing our minister on his show a couple weeks ago, and I think he was interviewing him on the day where notices went out. Interesting coincidence.

So 250 notices went out. About 170 in English and 60 in the French network and about 20 across the other corporate components. That’s going to start the bumping process under the collective agreements. We figure it’ll take the whole summer to go through the bumping process and by the end of September we’ll have seen all the departures.

Saunders: In March there was talk about doing everything we could to reduce the number of involuntary departures. What have we managed to accomplish on that front?

Lacroix: Well, we were happy, in some ways, if you could say we were happy about introducing voluntary retirement incentive programs, but we did that. And through the leadership of Katya Laviolette and her team and people in culture there was about 300 people or so that we were able to see the requests met.

Add to that our year-end numbers, March 31 2009, which were a bit better than expected by a couple million bucks. That allowed us to reduce some of the cuts that we had planned, particularly in the regions, so we saved a few jobs there.

We continue to work with the unions, and with the work that we’re doing in reducing our expenses, because I really believe that every job counts, and as I’ve told the world since I walked in here, my first “p” of my three priorities is people, and we are trying to look at every single job and keep it inside our company instead of trying to eliminate it.

Saunders: Obviously it’s been an emotional time for all of our employees. Can you give me sense of how you are feeling about all of this?

Lacroix: I’ve been tough, I know that. You were saying a few seconds ago that this weekend you had to say goodbye to five or six people that you had been working with for 10 years at CBC-Radio canada. A lot of that. A lot of that is happening on each one floors that I walk around on.

So yes, it is difficult. It’s difficult for the people that leave, because I think it’s a great place to work at CBC/Radio Canada. We are a great institution.

It’s difficult for the people that stay on, because they see their friends leave and they also are concerned about the kind of work and stuff they have to do to compensate for these departures.

But that’s where we are right now. The people that stay here, we have all sorts of support that we’ll put in place for them. Whether it’s career counselling or programs of that kind.

I’m looking forward to stop being a number number-cruncher and spreadsheet person because I’ve been doing this non-stop for six months now. So I’m looking to September or maybe end of summer to start visiting the centres again.

I look forward to sitting down with our people, and listening to how they’re dealing with this and wether they have some things to say to me. But in the meantime, as I’ve been finishing my notes with, we have to hang tough. We will survive this and you’ll see CBC Radio Canada will be very strong when we finish this exercise.

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	Executives, Layoffs	Posted at 5:31 pm (08 Jun 2009)

Veteran CBC broadcaster Don Newman has announced his retirement. Newman was well known for his work on Parliament Hill over many years - as much for his distinctive trademark drawl as his lack of patience with political rhetoric and his uncompromising interviews.

His interview with Jean Chrétien in the wake of the former Prime Minister’s retirement stands out as one of his many memorable interviews.

Newman told CBC News that he’d continue hosting the Newsworld show Politics until June. According to the CBC he has decided to take the retirement package.

Newman’s career spanned 40 years and included reporting on events from the Watergate scandal to the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords. A member of the Order of Canada, he has been working from the CBC’s parliamentary bureau since 1981.

During his show yesterday Newman addressed his retirement with characteristic professionalism, saying that he had become something no “that no reporter should - a story himself.”

“I very much appreciate all the kind comments and good wishes that I have been receiving. But I am going to be here for another seven weeks and there is lot of political news still to report.”

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	News & Journalism, Parliament, Personalities	Posted at 11:35 am (05 May 2009)

It seems some prankster has created a parody Twitter account for Peter Mansbridge.

The account is using the handle “petermansbridg.” It’s obviously a joke. For instance one of the fake updates after the Billy Bob Thornton interview says “Ghomeshi needs all the help he can get. I beat him in an arm wrestle last week at our local on Front - didn’t even loosen my tie.”

Another tweet written after the layoff announcements reads “Helping 800 CBCers pack their desks. Many have never witnessed a grown ‘Bridge cry…until today. Farewell noble colleagues!”

There’s been a whole bunch of fake or parody Twitter accounts pop up in the last few months, a practice known as Twitter Jacking or Phweeting (phony tweetering). The list of people with parody accounts includes among others: Vladimir Putin, Osama bin Laden, Dick Cheney, David Letterman, and Lindsay Lohan.

All parody aside, there is some risk to these kinds of phony accounts, especially when they are being used to write to real people. The fake Mansbridge account includes one reply to Ian Capstick, a communications consultant and blogger in Ottawa. The post reads “your bio pics are dreamy. who did them? i need some done.”

To which Ian Capstick replied in the comments below “You know, I’ve never laughed harder at an @reply on Twitter before…and I’m not sure there is any risk of folks mistaking @petermansbridg for the real one for long; speaking of which I hope the real Peter Mansbridge sees that @PeterMansbridge seems to be available. We would love to see him on Twitter.”

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	Asides, Personalities	Posted at 10:46 am (28 Apr 2009)

Michel Saint-Cyr, President of the CBC’s Real Estate Division has resigned.

The move comes as the CBC is trying to sell assets to finance the majority of a $171 million shortfall. CBC President Hubert Lacroix said on Friday that Saint-Cyr “created some one quarter billion dollars in value on a 10-year horizon…” by “monetizing” under-used assets.

Others, such as the President of the Canadian Media Guild, Lise Lareau are less charitable. “The impact of the Real Estate grip on CBC decision-making and the mantra of “monetizing” the public broadcaster’s space cannot be underestimated,” Lareau wrote on her blog.

“Desks were measured with a view to squashing as many people as possible into some newly leased space,” she added.

Lareau also said the real estate division precipitated the layoffs of 80 set and costume designers in Toronto, and that the success of the division served to mask the CBC’s financial crisis. “Here we are eight years after the creation of the Real Estate Power, with a $171M shortfall that Real Estate can’t fix, 800 layoffs on the horizon, and an unleased partly empty building in Toronto,” she wrote.

The impact of the resignation on financing CBC’s shortfall is unclear.

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	Executives, Real Estate	Posted at 10:55 am (27 Apr 2009)

Post City Magazines has an interesting article on Peter Mansbridge; how he got his start in broadcasting, and went to become the CBC lead anchor:

“One day I was announcing a flight in the terminal. A guy heard me. He was from the CBC and he offered me a job there,” Mansbridge says.

Mansbridge began by working the late shift as a DJ. He admits he wasn’t very good at it, but it built his confidence to the point where he could be a radio broadcaster.

“I had never thought of it as a career. At the time, they didn’t have a newscast, so I started one,” he says.

The full article is here.

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	Personalities	Posted at 8:03 am (24 Apr 2009)

CBC Vice-President of Enlgish Services Richard Stursberg was on Maritime Noon Friday talking about the CBC’s financial situation and it’s viability in the face of the layoffs. 

I didn’t have time to tune in myself, but if anyone did, leave a comment below with what he said.

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	Executives, Layoffs, The Media Landscape	Posted at 11:31 am (03 Apr 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)

In a note to staff last night CBC President Hubert Lacroix said the board of directors has approved a plan to sell “enough assets to finance our way through this without deeper cuts.”

Lacroix said he would provide an high-level update to staff on Wednesday March 25th, with specific announcements within 24 hours after that.

Nevertheless Lacroix did share a few specifics:

* No ads on radio;
* No more American programming on English TV;
* Executive salaries are frozen, bonus payouts are cut in half;
* New voluntary retirement incentives, aka a package.

Lacroix added that he will not comment on speculative stories that appear in media until the 25th and 26th in order to inform staff of any changes first.

The big question is what assets could the CBC sell to raise what’s expected to be around $200 million? Local stations don’t appear to be an option, there’s no appetite for that right now. Real Estate might have some assets, but I don’t know of any worth $200 million.

The president’s full memo is available to CBC staff here.

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	Board of Directors, Executives	Posted at 9:05 am (19 Mar 2009)

After a two-day meeting the CBC’s board of directors approved a budget that includes deep cuts in an attempt to grapple with a $200 million shortfall.

There were no further details about the size of the cutbacks. 

CBC President Hubert Lacroix said last month that the current shortfall could be as high as $145 million. Add to that another $60 million in annual funding from the federal government that was not in this year’s budget, and the shortfall ends up being over $200 million. That shortfall is more than 10 per cent of the entire CBC budget, and would represent significant cutbacks. 

Heritage Minister James Moore gave an interview to CBC Radio yesterday. He the CBC has some “difficult decisions to make in the near future.”

He also said when Canadians “turn on the CBC they expect to see Canadian drama, Canadian arts, Canadian kids programming, Canadian news and Canadian content, not American game shows.”

Moore also said he doesn’t favour adding commercials to CBC Radio. 

For an article from cbc.ca see here.

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	Executives, Layoffs, Parliament	Posted at 7:40 am (18 Mar 2009)

The CBC board is meeting in Toronto today and tomorrow to figure out a strategy to deal with the CBC’s revenue shortfall.

I haven’t seen a single update on what’s being discussed at the meetings but there are some interesting clues out there. First off the CBC is likely looking down the barrel of a massive shortfall. Dealing with it will likely involve a combination of cuts and trying to find additional revenue.

Last week Denise Donlon, executive director of CBC Radio, made some abstract reference to monetizing CBC Radio at Canadian Music Week. This follows indications from Heritage Minister James Moore that he might be open to considering ads on CBC Radio. But even if CBC Radio opens the door to advertising in some form, it likely won’t be enough to cover the shortfall.

So expect more cuts on the way.

What will be cut? I don’t know. But it might be useful to look at some of the shows that have been axed so far: Air Farce, Sunday, Steven and Chris, Fashion File. Not that it means anything but it’s worth noting that all of those shows were CBC in-house productions.

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	Executives, Layoffs	Posted at 6:15 pm (16 Mar 2009)

Ever wonder who transfers all those CBC archival tapes into a digital format? Erich Schmidt is your answer. The CBC has hundreds of thousands of beta tapes and film canisters; some of which are slowly getting transferred to digital format and published on the internet as part of the CBC’s digital archives project. It’s an amazing project, but encoding and transferring beta tapes is a time-consuming process.

Paul Gorbould took the image for the CBC’s photo competition.

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	Archives/Vintage Media, Behind the Scenes, People	Posted at 6:04 am (05 Mar 2009)

Joe Schlesinger has earned a lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Journalism Foundation.

I must say I can’t think of anyone at the corporation more deserving on this award. Schlesinger has worked for the CBC since 1966. I can still vividly remember his reports from Czechoslovakia and Hungary as the Soviet Union crumbled.

He covered wars and conflicts, from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf, and examined Canadian foreign policy under prime ministers stretching from Pierre Trudeau to Jean Chrétien.

For more on the award and Joe’s remarkable career click here.

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	People, Personalities, Working for the CBC	Posted at 1:06 pm (26 Feb 2009)