Alan Neal will replace Adrian Harewood as the host of CBC Ottawa’s afternoon drive show All in a Day.

Harewood left the show to join the local TV evening newscast.

Neal will be a familiar voice to listeners. He formerly hosted Bandwidth and Ontario Today. He has been a ‘guest’ host on All in a Day for some time.

Neal believes in reaching out to his audience, he’s a regular at community events, and connects with listeners through his Twitter account. He says using social media brings immediacy to the show. ”In a world of instant communications, the program needs to reflect peoples’ desire to interact in the moment — and that’s what I try to do from the hosting chair,” says Neal.

Once the news was announced, an number of people on Twitter congratulated Neal. “He was the obvious choice really,” Bob Durie, a local listener, said.

The show is on top-rated drive show in Ottawa.

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	CBC Radio 1, Ottawa	Posted at 9:49 pm (24 Aug 2010)

CBC Radio 2 reaches 2.1 million people a week, while Radio One reaches 4.3 million listeners each week

This according to the July audience numbers under the new audience measurement system.

Numbers like these contradict claims that are sometimes made on this blog, which is usually along the lines of ‘no-one watches the CBC anymore.’

These most recent numbers repudiate that claim.

Other highlights from the new book:

• the morning shows in Toronto and Calgary are still the most popular on the dial;
• the morning show in Vancouver is the second most popular;
• Edmonton captured it’s highest afternoon share all year in July;
• Calgary’s noon and afternoon audience continued to grow.

Note Nielsen’s definition of reach is: “The cumulative percentage or total of a population that has been counted as viewers at least once during a specified interval.”

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	CBC Radio 1, CBC Radio 2, Changes to CBC Radio Two	Posted at 9:40 pm (17 Aug 2010)

After a long and rocky search for a host to replace Mike Finnerty as host of CBC Montreal’s morning show Daybreak, the CBC has found the perfect candidate.

Mike Finnerty.

Finnerty had hosted the show before he left for a job in London last summer.

After he left Nancy Wood stepped behind the mike, but the CBC let her go after a few months. The decision caused a bit of uproar in the local media in Montreal and disappointment among regular listeners.

I mean it wasn’t Conan vs Leno by any means, but people thought that Wood should have been given more time.

Now Finnerty has decided to return to Montreal and take up the hosting job again. He’s signed on until 2014.

Yesterday the CBC’s Steve Rukavina asked Finnerty about the controversy. “Here’s what I would say. It’s really not my place to say anything about what the CBC did and how the CBC acted,” Finnerty said, adding, “I completely understand that there was a lot of upset and I followed it from afar, and in many ways it broke my heart. Because I love that show. I love Daybreak. It was really hard to see the program coming under such trouble and listeners being upset.”

Now a corner has been turned, and whatever you thought of the last period, and whether you were a big fan of Nancy’s or not, now things are moving in another direction.

“I think we can rekindle the magic that we had,” Finnerty said.

The whole interview is available here.

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	CBC Radio 1, Montreal, Personalities	Posted at 6:25 pm (21 Jul 2010)

The summer lineup on CBC Radio is going to sound quite a bit different this year.

Natasha Fatah, currently a producer with ‘As It Happens,’ will be hosting a national radio show for the first time.

“I’m really nervous, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t. But I feel really strongly about this project, so that gives me a lot of confidence,” she said.

The new show is called Promised Land and it will look at the stories of the harrowing, exciting and often-dangerous escapes to Canada, as told by the immigrants and refugees who endured them to get here.

“The thing is that we, we meaning the CBC, focus a lot on the immigrant experience, but we focus so little on that time span that people take to get here, and that’s something we really wanted to capture,” Fatah said.

“The stories show how much people have to go through to get here,” she said, “they have to put their lives at risk.”

The new show will run for 10 episodes this summer. Every episode will feature a different person’s story told by the immigrants themselves.

The summer lineup also includes several other new shows and hosts, including shows from Jann Arden and David Suzuki. Arden’s new show, called Being Jann, will be a mix of storytelling, music and interviews.

Suzuki will be hosting ‘The Bottom Line with David Suzuki.’ It explores the disconnect between our modern values and our relationship with the earth, and features some well known guests including actress Ellen Page and Preston Manning

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	CBC Radio 1	Posted at 3:20 pm (26 May 2010)

^{Andy Barrie is passing the Metro Morning torch to Matt Galloway}

Matt Galloway is to replace Andy Barrie as the new host of Metro Morning.

Galloway already hosts the Toronto morning show every Friday. Additionally, since 2004 he’s been hosting the afternoon drive show in Toronto, Here and Now, so he’s familiar with both the show and the city.

Barrie announced he was retiring from hosting the show last week. The full press release of the announcement is after the break. [Read more →]

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	CBC Radio 1, Toronto	Posted at 9:43 am (08 Feb 2010)

^{Science & Sons}

Science and Sons, a Toronto design shop is working on prototype of a radio that only gets two stations – CBC Radio One, and CBC Radio 2. The prototype is called ‘RADIO CANADA’, and is “a homage to the cultural significance of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.” The design was inspired by dedicated CBC listeners who are permanently tuned to CBC Radio.

The prototype also acknowledges two different broadcast eras, on one side is an analogue tuning gauge, while the bottom has an electronic display and dial.

^{Science & Sons}

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	CBC Radio 1, CBC Radio 2	Posted at 2:31 pm (28 Jan 2010)

The CBC recently dropped the windows file format it was using for its live audio streams and switched to the mp3 file format, an iTunes and iPhone friendly format.

The switch means that tons of CBC Radio One and Radio 2 live feeds are now available on iTunes (under the Radio directory) and the iPhone app.

The switch was made over the last month. “The reason was simple,” Angela Misri, the manager of digital radio, said “we wanted to deliver a more robust, expandable, browser/OS agnostic listening experience.”

Misri added that this is the first step “in making it easier for everyone to listen,” and that they are still working on a few bugs but are happy with the switch so far.

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	CBC Radio 1, CBC Radio 2	Posted at 2:10 pm (19 Jan 2010)

CBC radio continued its winning streak with the latest spring 2009 book. Although down slightly from the winter 2009 survey, CBC Radio One’s overall share 19 per cent higher than this time last year.

Of the seven markets surveyed both CBC Radio One stations and their respective morning shows rank either first or second. Both World Report (at 7 a.m.) and As it Happens had an outstanding book, with share increase of more than 30 per cent over this time last year.

Here’s a graph of the CBC Radio One share since last year in Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver:

CBC Radio in Vancouver had a particularly good showing, passing CKNW for the market lead. ”This is the highest ranking we’ve had in recent memory, in the last 20 years, and as far as I remember this is the first time we’ve been the top station overall,” said Johnny Michel, managing director of CBC British Columbia told the Vancouver Sun. 

Here is Ottawa, Toronto and Winnipeg:

BBM defines share as the estimated total hours tuned to one station as a percentage of total hours tuned to all stations. Of course share only captures people who listen to radio.

CBC Radio 2′s share is about the same as the last survey.

The full survey is available here.

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	CBC Radio 1, CBC Radio 2	Posted at 4:40 pm (03 Apr 2009)

In a letter to the Ottawa Citizen, former CBC President Tony Manera, said he objected to ads on CBC Radio.

The possibility of advertising on CBC radio is not a new idea. It has been considered and rejected in the past, for valid reasons.

The traditional distinctiveness of CBC radio would be further eroded by the presence of commercials. That insidious process, unfortunately, has been underway for some time. In a well intentioned, but poorly executed effort to broaden the traditional base of CBC radio listeners, many of its most loyal supporters, upon whom the CBC’s survival as a public broadcaster depends, have become disenchanted, discouraged, disengaged and pretty darn unhappy…

One of the most irritating features, on both CBC radio and television, is the incessant running of “promos” and “trailers” telling us what’s coming up next, or later, or tomorrow, or next week.

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	CBC Radio 1, CBC Radio 2, Executives, People	Posted at 4:24 pm (11 Feb 2009)

In response to Heritage Minister James Moore comments on advertising on CBC Radio, Michel Tremblay, senior VP of corporate strategy said today that advertising on CBC Radio “is not currently being considered.”

But others say that Moore’s comments amount to an invitation for CBC management to look at advertising on CBC Radio as a way to make up the looming budget shortfall.

Charlie Angus, the NDP heritage critic, who raised the issue with on Monday told the Globe that he was surprised by Moore’s comments. “He revealed his government’s inclination to support the introduction of commercials on CBC Radio.”

A CBC press release said Moore’s comments come on the heels of a series of meetings between the CBC and the Feds “to obtain some flexible financial measures” that will help the corp “to alleviate the burden of the recession.”

The CBC has long pressed for more flexible mechanisms to raise revenue, including last year’s failed bid to introduce subsriber fees. A submission to the CRTC in 2007 said “In the Corporation’s view, no service should be subject to regulatory constraints which would preclude it from generating sufficient revenues from the service it provides.”

Advertising on CBC Radio would require CRTC approval, and there’s some speculation that Moore’s comments may have been intended to encourage the CBC to submit a request.

Both the Globe and the Star have more on the subject.

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	CBC Radio 1, CBC Radio 2, Parliament, The CRTC	Posted at 12:05 am (11 Feb 2009)

Heritage Minister James Moore hinted yesterday that advertising on CBC Radio “is an option.” The Minister made the comments during an exchange with NDP heritage critic Charlie Angus, but then seemed to back away from them. Below is a transcript of the exchange:

Charlie Angus: Would you consider opening CBC Radio One and Radio Two up for commercial advertising?

James Moore: Yeah I mean, CBC has a lot of pressure… Look we’re working with Hubert Lacroix and people at CBC in order to get a full sense of the scale of the problems that they have. Commercial advertising is an option  that has been talked about for some time. I would frankly consider anything so long as the end result is to have a strong national public broadcaster that serves Canadians as best as possible.

Charlie Angus: So you would consider opening advertising onto Radio One and Radio Two? That has been discussed?

James Moore: It has not been discussed with CBC – Radio Canada. It’s not something that I’m looking at doing. But we are very conscious of the needs of the CBC – the pressures that they’re facing. I would work with them on any option that they think would work to best serve their mandate in serving Canadians.

The Minister made the comments during a heritage committee hearing that’s online here, scroll along to the 1:12:11 mark to watch it.

Advertising revenue currently accounts for about 20 per cent of total CBC funding. Although some advertising already exists on CBC Radio, such as podcast sponsorships and ads on radio web sites, CBC Radio earns very little money from these deals. CBC Radio’s total budget for 2009 is around $140 million, of which less than $1 million is from self-generated revenue.

Ian Morrison, spokesperson for the watchdog group Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, told the Citizen Radio One and Two ads could generate up to $95 million a year.

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	CBC Radio 1, CBC Radio 2, Parliament, The CRTC	Posted at 12:44 pm (10 Feb 2009)

CBC Radio cleaned up in the latest audience measurement report released by BBM.

In radio they call it the book, and it was an outstanding showing, overall CBC Radio One:

• Set an all-time record for total audience share of 11.1 per cent, which is up from 9.9 per cent a year ago;
• Achieved a national audience of 3.5 million listerners, which is up almost a quarter million;
• Set records in Toronto. For the first time ever, CBC Radio One is now the top-ranked station, with a reach of 1.1 million listeners, and again producing the top-rated morning show in the largest market in Canada;
  
• Is in the top three of 20 of 22 markets in the morning show slots.

A bunch of shows had historic high points, including The Current, The World at Six, DNTO, Vinyl Tap, Cross Country Check-up.

This latest book is for September and October. For the full BBM results, click here.

Unfortunately the format changes at Radio 2 were not as well received. It saw its share of 2.9 per cent drop slightly.

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	CBC Radio 1, CBC Radio 2	Posted at 8:37 pm (28 Nov 2008)

Beginning in September, CBC Radio’s arts show Q will follow The Current, and air from 10 to 11:30 a.m.  with a two-hour expanded broadcast on Friday mornings. Q will continue to air at 10 p.m. (10:30 p.m. NT) each weeknight., and Jian Ghomeshi will continue to host.

Taking Q’s former mid-day time slot will be Aamer Haleem, who is new to the CBC and radio. Haleem is currently a VH1 personality and host of the show Bands Reunited. He was host of VH1′s Top Video Countdown, interviewing celebrities like Madonna. Haleem was born in London but raised in Canada, attending the University of Toronto and the the Humber College School of Journalism.

CBC Radio icon Shelagh Rogers will be back this fall with a new program exploring the best in Canadian literature. Rogers will speak with renowned writers and future literary stars, and examine the issues having an impact on books in Canada. It will air Saturdays at 3:00 p.m.

Both new shows will originate from Vancouver.

(Both times +30 min in NT)

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	CBC Radio 1, Personalities, Q, Sounds Like Canada	Posted at 5:14 pm (25 Jun 2008)

On this date in 1965, Cross Country Checkup debuted with a debate on a national, publicly funded health care system. Years later, we have the national health care system and a radio program that continues to entertain and provoke. (Although I really do miss the standard two-question opener to each caller from years back: “Cross Country Checkup, where are you calling from? What do you think about ________”)

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	Asides, CBC Radio 1, Cross Country Checkup, Today In CBC History	Posted at 11:08 am (16 May 2008)

The Irrelevant Show is set to debut on CBC Radio One on June 26. This Edmonton-based show will showcase local talent and offer listeners Pythonesque sketch comedy that shows that Alberta is about more than oil sands and cowboys.

The show has commissioned 120 sketches, which calls for a lot of funny from Edmonton’s hottest comics and sketch comedy writers. It will air Thursdays at 7:30pm.

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	Alberta, CBC Radio 1	Posted at 10:39 am (14 May 2008)