Outgoing CBC Radio vice-president Jane Chalmers sat down with me (well, via phone) for her Exit Interview. Even though she uses the management-speak phrase “leveraging our content assets” (what do they make those people smoke at the Niagara Institute, anyway?), I thought she was quite candid. Best wishes, Jane. 
How long have you been thinking about leaving?
I’ve been thinking about it since the spring. My aunt, who is a second mother to me, died in March, and I was with her to the end. I was sitting at home afterwards and I gathered some letters that my mom who died 18 months earlier wrote to her over the years, and whenever she referred to me, I was off working. I missed a lot of family time because I was reporting or producing or attending some kind of network meeting. These things can be painful. They have a sense of shaking you a bit — checking to see if your priorities are right. And I began to feel like I didn’t always have those priorities straight, so it felt like the right time to realign.
I’ve been in this job for five years and I had specific things I wanted to achieve; I haven’t done everything I wanted to, but I did get to a lot of it. I knew when I took the job there likely wasn’t anywhere to move afterwards but I wanted the opportunity to try out my ideas. Robert Rabinovitch gave me that chance and I will always be grateful for thr opportunity. But the bottom line was pretty clear. We’re going to have a transition [with a new President] and I’d have to make a firm commitment for another three or four years, As I looked inside, I realized that I just don’t have the same kind of energy. These jobs demand a lot of commitment and people in the radio service have a right to expect that.
What kind of commitment will your successor have to make?
I travel most weeks, quite often worked on weekends writing speeches or preparing and even on days off, the radio is on. It’s a full-time commitment. [CBC Radio has] 37 stations, 1,100 employees, and 185 programs. And then we’re doing a lot of development work. I leave home at 7:00 a.m. and usually don’t get back there until 6 and often 7 at night. My neighbours joke with me — they see me drive up and ask ‘Are you ever home?!’ But I don’t see how you can do the job anyother way. it’s important that you’re out and about in the regional stations to listen to the shows, talk to my colleagues, provide feedback and hear what support they need from us. It’s important to talk with listeners in those communities to get their views on our performance. It’s essential. It’s a big country.
You mentioned there were specific things you wanted to achieve. What were they, and did you achieve them?
Before I give the list, I want to make it clear that our success is really possible because of the leaders and our programmers inside Radio. This has truly been a team effort.
First, I wanted to put the emphasis back on creativity and risk- taking. I’ve always believed that if you can work collaboratively with creative people, you can produce great results. I wanted our people to dream about opportunities and their ideas. We turned Program Development into a research-and-development exercise — a lot of emphasis was put on training people, mentoring, consistent feedback and creating working partnerships with different people and different skill-sets across the system. That system led to a lot of new programing and the summer schedules. Making great radio is all about nurturing creativity. We are blessed with an exceptional work-force. So, I hope change isn’t seen as threatening any more. People don’t lose their jobs by trying new things’or when shows don’t work. We celebrate our successes and learn from our experimentation.
Second, I wanted to put the emphasis back on the importance of our regional stations. We increased local programming time and gave regions the ability to unilaterally take the network off and put their local programming on air when it was necessary [for local breaking news, emergency broadcasts, etc.]
I’m surprised they couldn’t do that before.
Not easily, no. So they can do that now, they can make that call, and just let me know after the fact. They know what’s going on in their community and they’re smart and responsible people, so I trust them.
We must give people the freedom and ability to shape programs central to their community. That said, it’s not just about local. Getting it right in communities also informs our choices in network shows. We must always remember that our listeners experience our networks from the perspective of where they live. That’s how we build relevance.
And it’s also how we’ve created more network programs in the regions. I’m really proud of that.
Third, we are braver. More confident. Radio One has become a place where we’re consistently developing our shows, introducing new programs, redeveloping drama and comedy, and we’re showcasing more talent and ideas from the outside. I think it’s a more creative place for our programmers and for listeners. Our listening share is growing - we’re in the top three in most markets - and our national and international awards are at record highs. We’re re-developing Radio Two, expanding our core strength in classical music to more forms of Canadian music-making. Radio 3 with a focus on contemporary music and innovation has really grown and prospered.
Fourth, I think our local radio expansion plan is well on its way. We’ve already moved to FM in a number of markets and we’ve been talking with politicians and meeting with residents in those communities that are growing at a rate much greater than the Canadian population. Do you know that 6-million Canadians in large markets have no local service? These people deserve a local CBC Radio station — there’s a lot of support for the expansion plan. It would bring 12 new stations online’and 3 more for francophones’ if we can bring the plan to fruition. It would require $25 million operating money each year, but that would increase our listening by 100 million additional hours per year. That’s good bang for the buck.
The need is clearly there. The challenge is to get the funding.
Finally, I wanted to build stronger international partnerships and we’ve been very aggressive in that regard. We’ve been getting our shows sold and listened to in the U.S. As It Happens is in more than 100 U.S. cities, Quirks, Wiretap, Ideas, the Vinyl Cafe are making inroads. Our concerts and the Massey Lectures are featured around the world. We feel it’s a really important part of our mandate to expose Canadian talent and ideas internationally.
What do you think CBC’s radio network will look like ten years from now?
I think we’ll be over the air still, but that said we’ll be much more into content on demand and looking at whatever those new platforms are to make sure our programs are on them whenever and in whatever form people require. We’ve already got news on mobile phones, R2 streaming concerts, Sirius Radio etc. We’re looking at more opportunities with our television colleagues. Together, we evaluate every digital opportunity, so it’ll be a mixed bag like it is today, but we’ll be on more platforms.
I can also foresee real potential for high definition radio which will allow us to create new Networks — I dream of a Radio Four or Five — leveraging our content assets to provide Canadians with even better service and choice.
We’re also looking at new kinds of business models, because it’s important people out there understand that while our [over the air] radio service has to remain pure and non-commercial, we’ll have to look at partnerships to pay for providing the extra content, and we’ll have to make sure the partners don’t dilute the meaning of our brand. The public has to know we make the content and it’s not influenced by those partners. I mean, our podcast research shows demand. 1-milion downloads each month and growing. The research also demonstrates smart content appeals to a wide variety of age-groups and backgrounds’in Canada and around the world. We can provide that. A program like Ideas, for example, is finding a brand new audience — the average age [for Ideas podcast listeners] is in their mid-20s. Our content can live anywhere, but we have to get it there and it’s that delivery that’s costing us money from our program budgets. That’s a big challenge.
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