As social networks grow, and the time spent on these networks increases dramatically, it’s worth considering the CBC’s strategy on social networking sites.

First let’s look at some background on social networks. The number of people using social networking sites is increasing. A recent study in the U.K. found 80 per cent of that online population visited a social networking site in May. In March, Nielsen published a report that found that two-thirds of the global online population spent time on social networking sites or blogging sites.

But even more dramatic is the increase in the time spent on social networking sites. The Nielsen report said social networking sites now account for 10 per cent of the total time spent online – and it’s growing dramatically. The report says that “time spent on social network and blogging sites is growing more than three times the rate of overall Internet growth.”

Television networks in the United States are trying to capitalize on this trend by using social networks to promote their fall lineup in the summer, often months before their conventional promotional campaigns start. “TV networks are trying to determine whether promoting new shows earlier can bring them bigger audiences come September and October,” an AdAge article from a days ago says.

The U.S. television networks are using sites like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to post early peeks at upcoming shows. The idea is that this promotional material can build a community of die-hard fans that will translate into larger audiences in the fall. ”What we’re doing now gives us four months to try to get people to sample and come on board,” Joe Earley, a communication executive at Fox said.

Recently the CBC started to try to mimic that strategy with their fall launch communication plans. For instance the CBC created an official Facebook fan page yesterday. The idea behind that page is to do something similar to what NBC is doing with their network page on Facebook: to give the entire network a voice, highlight content, and provide an entry point to the various NBC shows.

Currently the CBC’s social network strategy is ad-hoc. It’s essentially a victim of its own success. CBC shows, and many CBC staffers have been early adopters on Twitter and Facebook, and as a result there are hundreds of different accounts with different agendas.

This doesn’t sit well with Jill Atkinson whose working on the communications strategy on social networks. “There are way too many CBC Twitter accounts,” she said, “the volume of CBC sites *is* massive, and should be culled.” Atkinson said there’s nothing wrong with individual shows having social networking accounts, but they need to reflect the CBC’s priorities, “not just because it’s a cool thing to do,” she said.

While she was digging around the various social networks Atkinson found that the CBC already had both a Facebook and Twitter account. Neither had posted anything. “We had a Facebook page with 400 plus followers, there was zero content on the page,” she wrote in an email “And we said ‘come on,’ what a missed opportunity.”

Atkinson wants to correct that. “The plan is to reflect… our television priorities and to create a community that acts as a conduit to the show’s individual promotional websites,” she wrote.

It’s an area that has lots of potential for community building and communication. Currently the CBC communicates primarily through newsletters, and although they can reach tens of thousands of readers, a newsletter once a week does not compare to a large Twitter account, like say Anderson Cooper’s, which has almost 300,000 followers, blasts out dozens of updates a week, and  allows for back and forth conversations between the viewers and the show.

The trick is to balance the CBC’s adoption and innovation on these networks, without overloading the audience, “In a nutshell the whole point to doing this is to value add for the audience,” Atkinson said on the phone yesterday.

What are your thought on the CBC’s social networking direction? Are there areas we miss, stuff we need to work on, or converselly pull back on?

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	CBC Policies, Marketing/Promotion, Programming	Posted at 2:21 pm (22 Jul 2009)

Dave Scapillati, the boss of the media sales and marketing department, has left the corporation. The move comes after the department failed to hit its sales targets for several quarters, as corporations pulled back on their advertising spending.

Scapillati, a former Coca-Cola executive, was responsible for introducing some innovative campaigns at the CBC. He focused on non-traditional marketing programs, such as Hockey Night in Canada’s Anthem Challenge, Kraft Hockeyville, and One Million Acts of Green, most of which were extremely successful.

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	Marketing/Promotion, People	Posted at 2:06 pm (13 Feb 2009)

The CBC and the union representing 5,500 of its workers have settled a three-year-old dispute about outsourcing publicity work.

In 2005, the CBC outsourced much of its publicity and media relations to a private Toronto firm. The Canadian Media Guild challenged whether the CBC had a valid business case to outsource the work.

Under terms of the settlement, the CBC will pay the Guild $100,000 to be distributed to affected employees. In addition, three existing jobs in communications will return to the Guild’s bargaining unit later this year.

Further, the CBC and Guild will discuss other publicity work being handled outside the Corporation for shows like The Hour and The Steven and Chris Show.

In all, the Guild says 33 jobs were eliminated as a result of the outsourcing, mainly in Toronto, Halifax and Vancouver.

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	Labour/CBC Unions, Marketing/Promotion	Posted at 4:12 pm (28 Mar 2008)

Every week, CBC employees get this bit of CBC advertising in our inboxes. Prime Picks contains information about upcoming shows. It’s written in a breathless! marketing! tone!

Here’s a sample of one of the items from this week’s issue:

Human Voltage: Struck By Lightning…Faster than a speeding bullet, five times hotter than the surface of the sun, lightning can strike humans dead and unexpectedly. Explore the science behind the deadly and mysterious occurrence in Human Voltage: Struck By Lightning. Airs Wednesday, Jan. 30, at 10 p.m. ET/PT, on CBC Newsworld’s Wild Docs!

I get a lot of emails. We all do. I’ve been trying to cut down on the unnecessary ones, so I emailed Net Pub Eng to try to get off the list.

No dice.

If you’re a CBC employee, you can not unsubscribe from Prime Picks. It’s mandatory.

“With Prime Picks, we’re just trying to keep our own staff up-to-date and (hopefully) interested in what we’re airing,” one of the people behind Net Pub Eng replied. “So no, one cannot opt out of receiving this.”

Weird.

I mean, I get that it’s important to receive memos about important Corporate news like new initiatives and, er, the latest management promotions (ahem), but CBC spam?!

What do you think? Do you read this when you get it?

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	Marketing/Promotion	Posted at 12:40 pm (04 Feb 2008)

CBC’s new daytime show, Steven and Chris, launches today. You’ll see tips on home decor, fashion, food and health. What you won’t see are sponsors’ brands integrated into the show.

Yet.

CBC TV’s sales department is actively looking for companies who want to place their brand directly within the program content.

But it’s not “product placement,” according to Praveen Amirtharaj, CBC TV’s director of marketing. Like previous brand-integrations on CBC TV shows, Amirtharaj says the show’s producers will drive how a product or company’s logo will appear in the program.

On the Gill Deacon Show, which last year held this slot on the daytime schedule, producers asked sales to find a specific company. “It was the producers who came to us and asked us [to sign the board game] Cranium, Amirtharaj told me. “They wanted her to play a game on the show, so we found Cranium. It’s not like we had Cranium sitting on the side and said ‘Gill, what can you do with Cranium?’ It was the other way around. That’s different than the privates who [tell their show producers] ‘I have a stable of products. How many shows can you get it into?”

On the show The Tournament, Amirtharaj says the sponsor, Kia Motors, was sought because the script called for it. “One of the characters guy owned a dealership and another character worked there,” he said. “There was a reason for it to be there.”

How It Would Look
I asked him how brand integration might play out on the Steven and Chris show. “Let’s say the show producers tell us they want to do a story on healthy living and they’re doing a cooking section involving dairy products…. We could say ‘You know what, the Dairy Farmers have a nutritional opportunity with cheese.’ ”

As for disclosure, Amirtharaj says it depends on the show. Sometimes it’s listed in the credits as “promotional consideration by,” but only if the placement isn’t obvious.

Actively Seeking Sponsors
But while Amirtharaj says show producers direct the sales department to find a particular type of sponsor, CBC’s head of “brand activation” Jamie Michaels seemed to be a little more on the hard-sell side. He told Media in Canada that the Steven and Chris show would make an excellent because “It’s got a live studio audience with that kind of feel — which we believe we can really capitalize on in working with sponsors on contesting, giveaways and, ideally, brand integration and branded segments.”

“There’s no question it targets women, so it will work very well for female-skewed products. And we want to leverage that with our sponsors,” he added.

The magazine says the program’s potential exposure for advertisers is “desirable,” adding “The hosts are so high-profile that their frequent public appearances – such as one they did last month for the opening of Home Depot Canada’s ‘Project’ prototype store in Richmond Hill, Ont. – invariably draw excited crowds and often end up on TV news clips.”

No sponsors have been signed up so far. The program, shot in live-to-tape format, debuts today at 2:00 p.m. local time, 2:30 p.m. NT.

What do you think? Have you seen other brand integrations on CBC shows? How did they compare to private stations’ placements?

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	Marketing/Promotion, Steven and Chris	Posted at 9:44 am (14 Jan 2008)

This morning before heading into the CBC to record my tech columns, I turned on my TV and PVR and searched for Fortune Hunters — a new CBC series I wanted to tape.

I did a title search, put a tracker on it, I even found out how to restrict the listing of all shows to only those that start with the letter F.

No dice. Fortune Hunters was not on the schedule, according to digital TV guides across the country.

That’s because the show’s official name (and, thus, how it’s filed in the guides) is CBC News: Fortune Hunters.

In our strange CBC world, Fortune Hunters starts with a C.

Nearly a dozen of our shows have the “CBC News: ” prefix. Personally, I think it’s goofy. I’m sure it seems great around the meeting room table when branding is on the agenda, but nobody in their right mind is going to say “Did you watch Peter Mansbridge on CBC News: The National last night?” And yet that’s how it’s listed and, in most on-air promos, spoken.

It’s not the only peculiarity we run into with digital cable boxes.

• Many shows, like the fifth estate, rarely have the episode details in the listings, opting for a general description of the show. Take the Rick Mercer Report. Each week, pressing your box’s INFO button will tell you that, this week and every week, the show is about how “the comedian takes to the streets, getting Canadian opinions on current affairs.” (In fact, it’s not even accurate. Rick doesn’t do that that often any more.) Would it kill us to put an episode description in?
  .
• And for some reason, CBC’s high-definition channel (at least on Shaw) doesn’t indicate when an actual program is broadcast in HD. According to the digital cable box, the premiere of The Border was not broadcast in high-def when, in fact, it was.

I suspect we’re losing viewers because people don’t bother to watch what the episode is about, or can’t find the show on a digital cable search.

And that CBC News: Sucks.

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	Marketing/Promotion, News & Journalism	Posted at 4:20 am (09 Jan 2008)

The CRTC has rebuked CBC Television for airing a racy promo of its upcoming MVP show about the secret lives of hockey wives.

The steamy soap opera debuts Friday.

The CRTC smacked the Corp after a viewer complained that the ad was a little too dirty to air when it did, before 9:00 p.m.

The scene in question is in a locker room and shows a older woman (the team owner) with a guy (recent rookie recruit) in which she says “Let’s see what $5 million buys us.” She rips off the towel and, although the camera never follows where she clearly looks, the player’s bare rear is exposed.

That ad is now off the air (still viewable on YouTube, though) and has been replaced by new ones, including one in which the new player shows off his abs while female p.r. person says “I’m going to position you as the most visible rookie in the league.”

Comments so far on the full-length YouTube version of the trailer include:

WICKED!!! I can’t wait for this show to hit the air!

and

ok so this is obviously a Canadian rip off of Footballers Wives (MVP’s tag line is “The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives”). Honestly it just looks like another Sex and the City to me.

and

Not bad. Try (redacted).com for naughty cam girls!!!!

The original ad is below.

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	MVP, Marketing/Promotion, The CRTC	Posted at 1:17 pm (07 Jan 2008)

Remember a couple of weeks ago, when CBC’s Derek Stoffel did that bit on customer service for big corporations?

The “How May I Help You?” survey generated quite a buzz, with companies like Sears getting good ratings, while telcos and financial sites like President’s Choice Financial Mastercard dragged behind.

The full results are available online. Anyhow, you (like me) may not have noticed that, although it didn’t make the headlines, CBC tested itself too.

How did we do for customer service? So-so, tied for 15 out of the 40 companies tested.

That puts us behind the Globe and Mail (#9), but ahead of the National Post (#28), the other two media outlets tested.

When evaluating CBC’s customer service, the tester called in to try to speak with Rex Murphy, then leave a comment about one of his shows. The tester was initially told to call back during business hours; on the second call they were transfered to the Talkback line.

The full log/evaluation of the CBC call can be found here (.pdf).

The feature generated a mountain of comments online (381 at last count) from people sharing their stories on various encounters with customer service.

Tod has posted some choice CBC audience relations comments in the past and even caught some flak for it.

So, a question for the non-employees reading this: what has your experience been with customer service at the CBC?

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	Marketing/Promotion	Posted at 1:14 am (10 Dec 2007)

In case you missed it, yesterday CBC-TV tried something new, and held its first “winter preview” of upcoming prime-time programs.

Previewed programs include immigration drama The Border, sitcom Sophie, Douglas Coupland’s jPod, lifestyle series The Steven & Chris Show, reality program The Week the Women Went, and the much-anticipated MVP – “a sexy look at a fictional NHL team of hunky players and the women who love them.”

Special programming includes The Englishman’s Boy, Project X, The Confidential Series, plus the returns of H2O, Test the Nation and Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister.

(Aside: I kept stumbling upon tidbits about the tapings of these shows back in July, when I last did this blog – including jPod, The Border and The Week the Women Went – so I’m looking forward to seeing them on air.)

Today’s Globe sees the lineup as an effort to attract “a younger, more female audience.” And the media has been quick to draw a correlation between CBC’s push and the ongoing American screenwriters strike. CBC executives admit there’s certainly an opening.

“All I see is opportunity – we have a shot,” head of network programming Kirstine Layfield told the Canadian Press. “People are going to be looking for something to watch, and I always find when people watch Canadian television, they are pleasantly surprised. It’s hard, it’s really hard, to make a mark and this is really going to help us.”

A day earlier, Layfield reported interest from U.S. networks in CBC programs . She confirmed that The Border was one of them. Westwind Production’s Mary Darling says Little Mosque on the Prairie is another.

But Writers Guild of Canada president Rebecca Schechter, who also had a hand in Little Mosque, said optimists like Darling are “dreaming in Technicolor.”

“It’s a weird pipe dream,” she said. “American giant conglomerates, they’ve not come across the border to Canada. They have consistently showed no interest in putting Canadian programming on American network television.”

The WGC plans to participate in an international display of solidarity on Nov. 28.

If you are really pining for American content, you’ll be able to get that on CBC too. According to CP, “CBC also said Tuesday it has acquired the rights to Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune from CBS Paramount International. Both shows will begin airing in September 2008.”

As for the Canadian stuff – well, the launch, and its fortuitous timing, managed to create a certain level of optimism. Prolific television blogger Denis McGrath, also a writer on The Border, had this to say of the event:

The impression I walked away with? When Layfield and the new regime started at CBC they took a lot of heat for saying they wanted to redefine and remake what the broadcaster was, and the kind of programming it did. This looks like a pretty vibrant schedule — it definitely has energy and a potential for big pop. I hope the stuff all works. It would be nice for CBC to get a win.

And if the WGA strike is still on, Canadians might actually get a chance to fairly sample their homegrown wares. It’s the best slate I’ve seen from CBC in a while.

What do you think of the winter lineup? Does the U.S. strike present an opportunity for CBC?

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	CBC Television, Little Mosque on the Prairie, MVP, Marketing/Promotion, The Media Landscape	Posted at 4:36 pm (21 Nov 2007)

CBC Radio launches its networks’ new logos next week. Here’s a sneak peek just for those of you on the blog:

I like them, though I’m not quite sure why “one” is spelled out, where as 2 and 3 appear as digits.

What do you think of our new logos?

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	CBC Radio 1, CBC Radio 2, CBC Radio 3, Marketing/Promotion	Posted at 1:25 pm (16 Mar 2007)

This is what happens when a big media company has a division that sells billboard ads. Oops.
     What’s especially ironic about that is that the creation of CBC came out of CBS moving into Canada back in the 30s. Thus the formation of the CRBC. And now history’s repeating itself. [More on the CBC's beginnings.] Thanks to Don Adams from the CBC Museum for tipping me off to this!

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	Bloopers, Marketing/Promotion	Posted at 5:01 pm (18 Dec 2006)