Hi guys, sincere apologies for not having posted in a while.

I’ve been knee deep in the development of the new CBC initiative called Live Right Now.

It’s a massive initiative, straight across the country, and unfortunately it’s been consuming all my time and more.

The idea for Live Right Now is that we, we as a country I mean, can take hold of this epidemic of obesity and poor health in this country by taking a few small steps ourselves. If we then inspire a few friends with our changes, we can spark a movement.

The idea strikes at the core of the problem in this country. We are not necessarily overweight or obese because we don’t care. We care, it’s just that often we don’t know what to do, or we’ve stopped knowing how to do it, or frankly we have no-one to do it with. Taking a few small steps can open a door to learning more, knowing more, and getting back on the right path.

It’s a huge issue, in Canada estimates are that 2/3 of the country are either overweight or obese. Obesity alone affects one in four Canadians.

Think that it isn’t a critical issue? I think I heard that the obesity epidemic will cost the health care system $90 billion dollars. Personally obesity will shave years off your life. Dr. Arya Sharma, an obesity doctor, was saying on the Current on Monday that he doesn’t really see many older obese patients at his clinic. Because they don’t live that long.

Scary stuff.

Anyway, I’ve been working my butt off getting the site for the Live Right Now initiative ready, so, if you’re inclined take a peek, and maybe you’ll find something there to inspire others to change.

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	Health and Wellness	Posted at 9:56 pm (05 Jan 2011)

The new CBC Ombudsman, Kirk Lapointe, has set up a blog, a Twitter account, and an RSS (really something something) feed as he ushers in a new era of social media transparency to his office.

Now don’t get me wrong, my inner nerd is happier than a kid on Christmas about all this social media stuff. It just seems a bit, uhm… contrived.

I hope his office has the staying power to really keep up with it.

Beyond that I really think Lapointe has made a effort to set up the channels in order to be open and transparent here; and that’s truly commendable.

As the first post on the site says:

The CBC belongs to the people of Canada. As the public broadcaster, the CBC plays a unique role in Canadian journalism. At the CBC information is a public service. The Ombudsman is here to ensure CBC upholds its standards and practices to provide you with information programming of the highest quality.

We recognize your right to accuracy, fairness and integrity in CBC’s journalism. And we recognize your right to hold CBC accountable for the quality of its information programming.

What do you think of the new ombudsman site?

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	Our Mandate, People	Posted at 11:18 pm (15 Dec 2010)

In an effort to address the “the challenges of the social media universe,” as Esther Enkin, the executive editor of CBC News, put it, CBC News has released new guidelines for all of its journalists.

The new guidelines, officially known as the CBC Journalistic Standards and Practices, was released this afternoon after having been approved by the board of directors.

The document entirely reorganizes the previous edition. It’s now loosely organized around beats, but there are number of sections around the use of social media.

First off, the document states that the CBC won’t give in to the urge of other news organizations and many blogs in posting first, and verify later.

It says “We are consistent in our standards, no matter what the platform, in disseminating information. If we would not put the information on air or on our own website, we would not use social media to report that information.”

Many CBC News staffers will be surprised to learn that these guidelines also apply to their personal use of social media.

In our personal social media activity, we are mindful of our professional association with CBC, and ensure what we do conform to CBC social media and conflict of interest policies.

These new standards are not dramatically different from other employee conduct documents that have been released in the last few years. However given the proliferation of social media, they represent a renewed effort by the corporation to protect the CBC brand when employees are using social media in their personal lives.

Implicit in this effort is the acknowledgement that social media is public and ever-present and that the lines between personal and professional lives are becoming non-existent.

Enkin said that the guidelines are not set in stone. “Our goal is to make this a living document. It is a tool to help our journalists make smart, ethical decisions in situations where there are many shades of grey, and to guide them to carry out the best public-service journalism we can provide,” she said this afternoon.

The new guidelines are available here. What do you think of them?

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	News & Journalism	Posted at 9:26 pm (17 Nov 2010)

The CBC unveiled a new logo this afternoon to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the national broadcaster.

CBC President and CEO, Hubert Lacroix said he wanted to provide “a space where Canadians can have a voice,” as part of the celebrations. “We want Canadians to talk to us,” he said.

He said the 75th celebrations would start on August 22 2011 and run for 75 days to November.

^{An the image of the CBC’s logos as they’ve evolved over the last 75 years.}

As part of the celebrations, employees are being asked to share their stories of why they choose to work  for CBC-Radio Canada. Employees that submit their stories will have a chance to win a t-shirt.

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	Programming	Posted at 12:43 pm (02 Nov 2010)

CBC News Toronto’s election coverage marked a couple innovative milestones last Monday.

They inaugurated an application that allows a host to control on screen graphics themselves, instead of having the control room do it. And they marked the first use of the immersive graphics at the CBC.

The first innovation allows the host to control the graphics presentation via an iPad in real-time.

“We were the first station in North America to the app on air,” Allan Giacomelli, a senior character generator at the Toronto Production Centre, said. “Usually the control room controls the graphics, now the anchor can control them.”

“It allows the host to tell the story they way they want,” Giacomelli said from his development lab.

As you can see in the video above, they also rolled out immersive graphics, which allows graphic elements to be layered onto a set.

“The next step is to integrate more technology into the newscasts,” Giacomelli said, “we have a lot of innovative ideas that we are planning to try for the next federal election.”

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	Behind the Scenes, Programming	Posted at 9:52 pm (27 Oct 2010)

As the case against Russel Williams unfolded in a Ontario courthouse last week, there was no shortage of horrifying details.

But thinking back to the blanket of media coverage, there was one single piece that really stood out in my mind, and it avoided the graphic details altogether.

It was a live piece of talk-and-tape with David Perry, a professional interrogator, on The National last Wednesday. The piece explained the interrogation techniques that broke Williams and lead to his confession.

The piece also broke format.

In a world where news stories are often two to three minutes long, this piece weighted in at more than 18 minutes.

Some of the single clips alone were five minutes long – unheard of in news.

On top of that the footage was poor, it was from surveillance cameras, no close ups, often you can’t even see Williams’ face.

But not only that, the clips were almost all silence.

In some cases 20 seconds or more of silence hang between the interrogator’s questions and Williams’ answers.

Put that all together and it’s hardly the sort of stuff you usually see on a newscast, yet the team on The National ran with it.

“We didn’t want to overproduce it,” Lara Chatterjee, the producer that put the piece together said. They let the tape speak for itself, without sensationalizing it.

It was a real gamble.

Not only was the piece live to air, but the clips were long, and Chatterjee insisted on not editing them down.

“I went through the entire two hours and forty minutes… and it was awful.” she said. “I sat at my desk with my arms around me… but we had to figure out how to make sense of it.”

She said the tapes, as raw and bare as they were, provided insight into Williams’ character.  She said “we got a look inside a number of things that we don’t normally have access to, the interrogation process, the mindset of a criminal, we tried to make sense of how this whole thing came about.”

The gamble to run with the tapes paid off, the ratings were the highest The National’s seen in months.

“Everyone that worked on that show that night, really took a risk and it really paid off,” Chatterjee said. “We did something really different and we really committed to it.”

It’s a great piece of journalism.

See for yourself. The video of  the first part of the “Interrogation of Col. Williams”, is here. The second part is here.

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	Behind the Scenes, News & Journalism, The National	Posted at 9:50 pm (26 Oct 2010)

Video of the CBC’s annual public meeting is now online.

You can watch video of the event here.

Speaking notes of the speeches are also available here.

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	CBC Policies, Executives	Posted at 7:10 am (22 Oct 2010)

Ryan Couldreyis a photographer working at the CBC. In his own time, he’s made a concerted effort to document all of the old analogue equipment that’s scattered all over the place, yet is a vital part of the CBC’s legacy and broadcast history, which he calls the ‘Broadcast in Analogue’ series.

Here’s his take on an analogue zoom camera, as he says:

Back in the day broadcast cameras didn’t necessarily have fancy zoom lenses, so if operators wanted to get in close they’d have to physically switch lenses, or use one of these bad boys. This is part of the Broadcast in Analogue series.

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	Programming	Posted at 9:19 pm (21 Oct 2010)

Have you ever wondered why the CBC does some of the things that it does?

Maybe you’re puzzled at losing the hockey anthem, or you’ve still got a bone to pick about the new format on Radio 2?

Maybe you’re wondering what direction the corporation will take in the future?

Now you’re chance to put your questions directly to the CBC executives that run the corporation.

On Wednesday between 11am and noon (ET) the corporation is holding its Annual Public Meeting by webcast.

The speakers at this event include Hubert Lacroix, the president and CEO, Timothy Casgrain, the chair of the board of directors, and Suzanne Morris, vice-president and CFO.

You can submit questions in advance via a form here. You have to register to submit a question.

Here’s what I sent in:

What does Richard Stursberg’s departure mean for the future of the CBC; will there be less of a focus on the size of the audience, and a renewed focus on “programming that informs, enlightens and entertains,” as defined by the Broadcasting Act?

If you’re keen to see this question answered, or if you have your own question, sent it in, the site says that if they can’t get to it during the alloted 60 minutes, they’ll post answers to the most “frequently asked questions” on the site following the meeting.

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	CBC Policies, Our Mandate	Posted at 9:15 pm (18 Oct 2010)

The CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada attracted the largest debut audience in the program’s history last Saturday.

On average 2.3 million viewers tuned in for the first game; either a ‘Battle of Ontario’ match up between Ottawa and Toronto or the Habs taking on Pittsburgh, depending on your location.

The ratings for the first game were up 34 per cent from last year.

The second game, Vancouver against L.A. attracted 1.4 million people, up 26 per cent from last season’s Saturday night broadcast.

Unlike many other big TV events, Hockey Night’s record audience isn’t due to the new measurement system, as the system was already in place for last year’s season debut.

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	Hockey Night in Canada, Sports	Posted at 8:59 pm (12 Oct 2010)

The CBC has released the largest study ever of its news coverage.

The study was months in the making. It looked at whether the CBC was balanced in over 15,000 stories on TV, Radio and online. It also involved polling almost 3,500 people.

Jennifer McGuire, the GM and editor-in-chief of CBC News, said this afternoon that the objectives of the study were to better understand:

What Canadian news consumers understand by “fair” and “balanced” news coverage; [and] the degree to which Canadian news consumers feel these principles are being demonstrated through the various CBC News delivery platforms and competitor news organizations.

It’s a big study and I’ll spend some time going through it and provide my thoughts later this evening tomorrow.

In the meantime, take a look for yourself, and if anything jumps out at you, please leave a comment below.

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	News & Journalism	Posted at 4:33 pm (05 Oct 2010)

The CBC’s digital and business development department, essentially the guys responsible for a many of the cool clickity-click projects, a lot of CBC’s online presence, and some of the corporation’s business strategy, is being broken up and split into two units.

The re-organization left Steve Billinger, a key executive during Richard Stursberg’s tenure at the CBC, without a position.

His department will now be split into two units, a revenue unit will fall under to the CBC’s sales and marketing department, while the digital unit will fall under the media operations and technology unit. About 100 staff members are being shifted around as part of the re-organization.

Kirstine Stewart, Interim Executive Vice President of English Services, indicated on the internal employee portal that the move was made to better serve programming objectives. “By consolidating our operations we are better able to react quickly and take advantage of technology changes which benefit all areas of CBC. Digital is not to be viewed as separate; it is in fact central to how we conceive and deliver the best-made programming in Canada,” she said.

The move comes after a similar overhaul was pushed through the CBC’s French services, in which some members of the digital department were assigned to the sales and marketing end of the business. Some insiders think the success of that move prompted the re-organization on the English side of the house.

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	Behind the Scenes, I.T.	Posted at 6:34 am (30 Sep 2010)

The CBC dominates the list of all-time favourite Canadian TV shows.

As part of the Gemini Awards 25th anniversary celebration, the Gemini folks have asked TV critics to send in suggestions of their all-time favourite television shows. Of the 25 most popular submissions, 17 shows were broadcast by the CBC.

The list reads like a romp through the highlights of CBC television: Anne of Green Gables, The Beachcombers, Wayne & Shuster, Mr. Dressup, Da Vinci’s Inquest, North of 60, The Nature of Things, The Rick Mercer Report, This Hour Has 22 Minutes and a bunch more.

Without putting too fine a point on it, it says a lot about legacy and potential of Canadian produced broadcasting. So there.

The full list is here.

Voting on the all-time favourite ends on Sept 30th.

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	Programming	Posted at 10:28 pm (29 Sep 2010)

One of the CBC News’ senior leaders is leaving the organization to pursue a consulting role in the media and communications industry.

Cynthia Kinch, a long-time news veteran who has covered more major stories than you’ve had hot meals, is well regarded across the network. “In her more than 30 years with the organization, she has been a leader, a trailblazer and a mentor. She has set an example for all of us– seize challenge, envision possibilities and celebrate success,” Jennifer McGuire, the GM of CBC News, said.

Kinch contributed to tons of high-profile projects during her time at CBC News. Most recently Kinch was involved in the news renewal project and tackled the massive project of rebranding CBC News Network.

McGuire’s full note is here.

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	News & Journalism	Posted at 9:37 pm (29 Sep 2010)

Hockey Night in Canada will broadcast the first-ever 3D HD hockey games this season. The CBC will broadcast two 3D HD games Montreal versus Toronto on Saturday, December 11, and the Heritage Classic from McMahon Stadium in Calgary on Sunday, February 20, 2011.

The Toronto Sun covered this here, or employees can access the press release on the internal CBC site here.

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	Hockey Night in Canada, Sports	Posted at 9:34 pm (29 Sep 2010)