Two people have been appointed to the Board of Directors of CBC/Radio-Canada.

Joseph Handley is the retired Premier of the Northwest Territories, a position he occupied from 2003 to 2007. Throughout his political career in the Northwest Territories, he held many positions, including Minister of Finance; Minister of Resources, Wildlife and Economic Development; and Minister of Aboriginal and Intergovernmental Affairs and Housing. Prior to his political involvement, Mr. Handley was Deputy Minister for the Government of Northwest Territories and, before that, a teacher.

George Cooper is — wait for it! — a lawyer. (I know. Who’d have guessed?!) He’s a senior partner in the law firm McInnes Cooper in Halifax and has been involved in a number of academic and professional activities, including serving on the boards of Black Bull Resources, the Canadian National Railway, and the University of King’s College in Halifax. He is a Member of the Order of Canada and is also a former Member of Parliament.

I’m just sayin’. Have a good weekend!

Later this week, I’ll be presenting a keynote address to the B.C. Association of Broadcasters called The Future of Broadcasting in a YouTube World. One of the things I ran across in the research was how easy it’s become to put an ad on radio and/or television.

Putting an ad on any Canadian television station is still a somewhat labourious process involving traffic coordinators, account managers, ad agency reps, and so on

In the U.S., though, it can be as simple and point-and-click.

If you’re in television sales, you really owe it to yourself and watch this short video from Google on how their new ad-buying system works.

Last week, Peter Mansbridge celebrated being in the main chair at CBC Television News for twenty years. To celebrate this anniversary, the producers snuck in a video of Mansbridge’s first broadcast twenty years ago in the following broadcast.

Video will pause for a bit at start. Surprise happens after Coyne’s comments.

CBC president Hubert T. Lacroix spoke to Parliament’s Heritage Committee Thursday afternoon. I was recording the speech on my computer as it streamed but, uh, I ran out of hard disk space. <sigh>

Never mind. The federal government probably would have asked me to take down video of the committee hearing.

(UPDATE: As Mike mentioned in his comment, the Heritage Committee has now posted the video online.)

After the jump, the text of his speech.

Relax, enjoy, and smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

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Today at 3:30 p.m. ET, CBC President Hubert T. Lacroix will be appearing before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, his first appearance since starting as President and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada in January.

Lacroix, who will be accompanied by Richard Stursberg and Sylvain Lafrance, will address the Committee’s recent review of the CBC/Radio-Canada mandate, highlight some of his priorities for the Corporation, and reiterate the call for a seven-year Memorandum of Understanding with Canadians that would define CBC/Radio-Canada’s role in the evolving media landscape. His address will be followed by a question and answer period.

The proceedings will be webcast here.

Over at the Canadian Media Guild, they are talking about a new policy brought down by management that CBC employees will not be reimbursed for passport fees when travelling for work. Employees are encouraged to still file the expenses and then take it up with the union if expenses are denied.

Good arguments could be made for both sides in this issue.

• On one hand, there really aren’t that many companies that would reimburse passport expenses, as the passport has personal as well as business use.
• On the employee side, some employees actually do only go out of the country on business and choose to spend their vacation and other time in Canada only - the CBC may arguably have more employees that are inclined to do this than other organizations.

There is also the good old “we’ve had it and now it is being taken away”, which doesn’t sit well with anyone. Kind of like having a nice holiday party every year and then being told you have to pay for admission.

What do you think about the new passport policy? Fair? Unfair?

Photo by HJL used under Creative Commons licence.

Broadcaster.com featured an interview with Richard Stursberg, Vice-President of English Services at the CBC, this week. Really nothing all that new — basically the same arguments and explanations as we’ve heard, but, for the record, a brief summary of the interview is after the jump, below.

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We learned yesterday that the Corp has inked a deal with APM for the Canadian rights to its extensive catalogue of library music — currently at 250,000 tracks. (The agreement lets us use APM music on all CBC/Radio-Canada platforms and on any third-party “platform” with whom CBC has a contract.)

At first, I was super-excited! ‘Finally,’ I thought, ‘We can download the songs right from our desktop!’

See update, below.

Because the current process of getting music on air seems downright quaint by today’s technology standards. Here is the process.

• Search for it in a slightly temperamental database (but a huge improvement over the past days’ Prolog, which was invented in 1725)
• Write the spine number(s) down on a little piece of paper
• Walk to the music library in your building (down four storeys for most CBC Radio shows in Vancouver)
• Find the CD
• Take it into a little booth and record it manually (i.e., in real time) into Dalet or check it out and rip it at your workstation
• Walk back down to the library to return it.

No, it’s not arduous work, but when you’re under deadline and you need a five-second SFX cut of a hockey crowd, it can be painstaking and often those fine production values you know you’re capable of get dumped because there’s just not enough time.

So when I saw the announcement of us licencing APM music, I figured — great! Most music is digital already (read: iTunes) so now we can just download the tunes!

No dice. We can download “sample” tracks (i.e., not broadcast-quality) and get metadata. But when you need the actual song, get on your walkin’ shoes because they’re on CDs in Toronto (and regions that asked for them).

Why, in this digital world, is this still happening? I’m assuming it’s because of some obscure set of rights the publishers maintain, but really, I’m stumped. It makes sense for the publishers (huge savings from not having to distribute CDs) and licencees (huge convenience improvement.)

What am I missing here?

UPDATE: Turns out the licence agreement is for production music only and not commercial music. That’s certainly a huge step forward — not just that we can download needledrop to our desktop, but more importantly the rights we have now extend to every platform. This includes, finally, both podcast and broadcast rights. (Many radio producers, including myself, made two versions of their pieces — one for broadcast and one for podcast because we had separate rights agreements for each platform.)

Spark producer Dan Misener is getting married shortly. So when he headed over to the H.R. section on the CBC intranet… er, portal… er, iO! to get some information about benefits and time off, he was surprised to find this:

Have you ever had any strange Mothercorp experiences as a result of your own nuptials?

This week on Spark, Virginia Postrel explains the cultural currency of type (full interview) and a chance to play Font, Coffee, or Baby Name? and using zenware to focus on your writing (full interview).

Beginning in July 2008, and continuing through to 2010, CBC will provide more than 90 total hours of daily coverage of the legendary Calgary Stampede on CBC Television, CBCSports.ca and bold, (formerly CBC Country Canada). This makes it the most extensive coverage ever of the Calgary Stampede on CBC. CBC will also serve as host broadcaster for the duration of the agreement.

The CBC will dramatically increase resources devoted to covering local and national news in Alberta generally and Calgary and Edmonton in particular.

Saying it’s moving to fulfill a commitment to local newsgathering announced nationally last year, CBC News will be doubling the number of newsgathering resources in Alberta by adding approximately 25 new assignments for television journalists based in Calgary and Edmonton to focus on local and national stories originating in Alberta.

At the same time, however, the CBC said it would move to Toronto the two hours of programming for CBC Newsworld, which are currently being produced in Calgary.

Actually, no, the CBC didn’t actually say it would “move” the programming from Calgary. The news release actually said it would “reconfigure to Toronto.” Wha?! “Reconfiguring” is the new corp-speak for “move?”

I guess it’s the same as executives not being able to ever say a show was “cancelled,” when, in fact, it was. The closest they seem to come up with is “Moved off the schedule.”

Really, who the hell is writing this stuff?!

About two-thirds of CBC employees have now taken the Respect in the Workplace workshops since they started ten months ago. The sessions surfaced in response to the employee Wellness Survey, which was done in 2005. The results identified a lack of respect and civility within the Corporation.

A source close to the CBC just leaked the final exam to InsideTheCBC.com.