The World Cup is drawing record numbers of online viewers.

The opening match of the tournament drew 269,000 total streams, that’s about a third the size of the television audience of 900,000.

That ratio is much higher than online numbers for the Stanley Cup. For instance the final game between Pittsburgh and Montreal drew 130,000 views online, yet the television audience was 4.2 million.

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	CBC.ca web site, Programming	Posted at 3:53 pm (15 Jun 2010)

With reports circulating recently of low morale in the news department, I had a chance to speak with Carmel Smyth, the president of the Canadian Media Guild’s Toronto branch. I asked her about the union’s approach.

PM: I want to start with morale in the news department. There’s always a certain amount of stress in news, but is it different this time?

Carmel Smyth: If you were to ask me what the big issues are from the people I speak with, they’re workload, news renewal, and the perpetual threat of layoffs.

What happened in news renewal is that so many peoples’ job situations changed all at the same time. People were always moving around in the news department, but this time there’s more people affected than before, all at the same time, and as a result there’s more unhappiness.

It is true that news is under considerable stress. They’ve probably had more changes this years than they’ve had in the last ten.

At the same time the CBC has the best relationship with management that we’ve had in years. Years ago management would manage, and that’s it. Now we’ve agreed to review the complaints that come out of the fourth floor, and they’ve said ‘okay let’s try and work on things.’

They’re reviewing now, how the hub operates… the renewal process is evolving as we speak, people are still being moving around, things are still changing.

There are lots of problems yes. but on the good side there are attempts being made that wouldn’t have happened a few years ago… that’s partly as a result of Hubert [Lacroix].

Grievances are down in the building because there’s a lot of pressure to try and solve them. In the last two years they’ve also made dozens of temporary staff permanent. So there’s lots of examples of how we can work together.

PM: To go back to the News department, and the morale there, is it time for the union to take a harder line?
Carmel Smyth: It’s something we’ve discussed. We’ve taken a harder line in the past. But during this period we’ve decided that we should try and work together.

Maybe it won’t work out down the line, but I think in the short term we’ve made some gains that we wouldn’t have made otherwise.

And I don’t think there’s much appetite for a strike.

Positive things are happening, yes, I know there’s unrest, particularly on the fourth floor. But at the same time, the changes haven’t even been a year, it’s still in a state of flux. We’re a long way from were a more serious labour actions is needed.

PM: So you’re going to give the process more time?
Carmel Smyth: Yes. I think there’s proof that they’re trying. The CBC doesn’t really have to keep meeting with us to try and work on this things. But they are.

We’ll see how far this goes. It’s not like they’re making empty promises.

They’re meeting with us and trying to resolve these things. Now I know things seem slow, but from a union perspective, it’s much, much quicker than they’ve been in the past.

And the other thing is that the union can’t stop decisions about programming. We can work with them to lessen the impact, but they can make the decision about merging departments and units, it’s their prerogative.

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	Labour/CBC Unions, Programming	Posted at 12:00 pm (18 May 2010)

Facebook and Yahoo are attracting TV viewers during big events, like the Super Bowl. People may be going online during the TV shows to talk about what they’re watching. A sort of crowd-sourced colour commentary.

The phenomenon has been attributed to higher ratings for several large television events, most recently the Oscars.

The media research company, Nielsen, says about 10 per cent of TV viewers also go online during these events. Most of that traffic ends up at Facebook, Yahoo or Google sites.

Of those three big sites, people stayed the longest on Yahoo. The viewers that visited that site while watching the Super Bowl spend over an hour there on average. That’s a very long time on a single web site. To compare, visitors to Facebook averaged almost 20 minutes, with most other sites getting traffic for a few minutes.

There’s more info on the Nielsen blog, here.

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	Programming	Posted at 5:49 pm (16 Mar 2010)

CBC News Network announced some big changes to the afternoon and evenings schedule today. The highlight is an increase in air-time for Amanda Lang and the show she hosts the Lang and O’Leary Exchange, which will now run a full hour in a new prime-time time-slot.

When the show launched in October the Lang and O’Leary Exchange ran half an hour between 4:30 p.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern, not an great TV time slot. Now, starting March 1st the show will run a full hour between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. The new prime-time spot for Lang and O’Leary means Mark Kelley’s show Connect, will lose an hour, chopping its original two hour slot in half.

Additionally Lang will also provide a business update at 4:30 during Carole MacNeil’s show, which was also given an extra half hour. Lang seems to have made a positive impression at the CBC since she joined the corporation, she frequently appears on The National and has hosted the flagship news program several times since she came over from BNN last fall.

Jennifer McGuire, general manager and editor-in-chief of CBC News didn’t say what prompted the change, but did say in a press release that “Viewer feedback to the new CBC News Network has been extremely positive.”

Now before you dismiss the quote from McGuire as spin, I should tell you that I spoke with CBC spokesperson Jeff Keay to find out where McGuire was coming from. Keay said that despite the the reaction online, the CBC got “extremely positive” feedback from a bunch of focus group testing after the relaunch.

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	News & Journalism, Programming	Posted at 4:39 pm (10 Feb 2010)

Friday’s English Haiti telethon raised more than $13.5 million, add to that another $6.7 million raised in Quebec for the French telethon, and double it with federal matching funds, and the grand total raised is over $40 million for Haitian relief efforts.

For me, the highlight of the show was K’naan performing his hit song from Troubadour, ‘Waving Flag’.

Funds will go towards a coalition of Canadian NGOs, including Canadian Red Cross Society, Care Canada, Free the Children, Oxfam Canada, Oxfam Quebec, Plan Canada, Save the Children Canada, UNICEF Canada and World Vision Canada.

Over two million people tuned in.

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	Programming	Posted at 4:00 pm (25 Jan 2010)

An unprecedented cast of Canadian superstar musicians, athletes and film and television celebrities has been confirmed for the ‘Canada for Haiti’ telethon. The number of stars involved in this broadcast is unbelievable.

The broadcast will feature live performances from The Tragically Hip, Metric and K’naan, with appearances by Céline Dion, Nelly Furtado, Sarah McLachlan, Barenaked Ladies, Simple Plan, David Foster, Chantal Kreviazuk, Raine Maida, Justin Bieber and Measha Brueggergosman.

They will be joined by a cast of film celebrities including: James Cameron, Michael J. Fox, Ryan Reynolds, William Shatner, Rachelle Lefevre, Joshua Jackson, Pamela Anderson, Jason Reitman, Eugene Levy, Norman Jewison, Tom Jackson, Will Arnett and Sandra Oh. In addition some of Canada’s best known television stars will also appear on the one hour commercial free simulcast, including Brent Butt, Hugh Dillon, Mike Holmes, Rick Mercer and Alex Trebek and humanitarian Craig Kielburger. Star athletes that have been confirmed thus far include Steve Nash and Wayne Gretzky.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Governor-General Michaëlle Jean will also have special messages for Canadians. The show will be jointly hosted by Cheryl Hickey, Ben Mulroney and George Stroumboulopoulos and will be broadcast on Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern and Pacific time on CBC Television, CTV, Global Television, MTV, MuchMusic, and National Geographic Channel.

Canadians can show their support by donating:

Online at CanadaForHaiti.com
Toll-free at 1-877-51-HAITI (42484)
Text AID to 45678 (carrier charges may apply)

Funds will go towards a coalition of Canadian NGOs, including Canadian Red Cross Society, Care Canada, Free the Children, Oxfam Canada, Oxfam Quebec, Plan Canada, Save the Children Canada, UNICEF Canada and World Vision Canada.

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	Programming	Posted at 2:07 pm (21 Jan 2010)

Do you have a great idea for a TV or radio show?

Today at noon at the CBC Building in Toronto, Chris Straw, manager of in-house productions and Chris Boyce, the programming director of CBC Radio are holding a seminar on the inner workings of CBC Radio program development.

If you’ve always thought you had a great idea for a radio or TV show this seminar may be for you. The discussion will be held on the ground floor of the atrium near the front street entrance of the CBC building in Toronto. Seating is on a first come, first serve basis.

Unfortunately, I don’t think there are plans to stream the seminar online, however if I find I link I’ll post it here.

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	Behind the Scenes, Programming	Posted at 10:43 am (29 Oct 2009)

The quote “Nobody Knows Anything” is sometimes thrown around in the TV and movie business. It’s from a book about Hollywood and suggests that prior to the release of a movie (or in this case a TV show) nobody really knows how well it will do.

In Canada, there may be an exception to that rule.

It seems that in this frosty and mostly frozen land, just about anything that has anything to do with hockey does well in the ratings. The latest show to prove the point is Battle of Blades.

‘Battle’, as it’s being called in the corp, is getting a lot of attention from the media. Last week the Toronto Sun even put the show on the front page of their tabloid. I can’t remember the last time that happened for a CBC show.

The ratings have reflected the media coverage. The opening episode on October 4th drew 1.95 million viewers, which is the highest ratings for a debut episode on the ceeb since Little Mosque on the Prairie. Those numbers were only eclipsed by, you guessed it, hockey. The first game of the season for Hockey Night in Canada drew 2.5 million viewers.

Jon Doyle, the Globe’s TV critic, called the show hokey, wholesome and ‘a gimmick’. Nevertheless, the next week’s broadcast, on thanksgiving Sunday, pulled in 1.56 million viewers. The show, for all it’s hokeyness, appeals to a lot of people. Which to me is curious. Why is it that in Canada anything to do hockey scores with viewers? Are we really such a nation of single-minded hockey-crazed fanatics that we’ll swarm to a show like ‘Battle’ while generally ignoring some of the other excellent dramatic shows produced in this country? It’s an open question, feel free to comment.

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	Programming	Posted at 3:25 am (14 Oct 2009)

A dramatic change in the way television and radio audiences are measured could impact the ratings for many shows.

On August 31st, BBM, the company that tracks ratings for broadcasters, will switch to a new system called the Portable People Meter (PPM). It will replace the old diary method in most places. Traditionally ratings have been collected by a representative panel of people that recorded what they watched and listened to in a diary. The old system depended on people accurately and meticulously recording their activity.

Now that system will be replaced by a pager-sized device that ratings panelist will wear on their belts. The device is intended to mimic the human ear, meaning it will be able to hear what people are watching or listening to as long as it’s within hearing range. The PPM will pick up an inaudible audio watermark that identifies the broadcaster, and collect and report that data so that it can be compiled into TV and radio ratings.

The new system will also pick up signals in public spaces. “PPM’s can recognize signals from anywhere. In a car, at a restaurant or bar, at the shopping mall” Jennifer Lang, a senior manager with the research department said. This will likely increase audience numbers to certain types of programming that is frequently on in public places, like sports programs or news. It will also likely make the minute by minute numbers much more encompassing than they were under the diary method.

Another benefit is that the new system will also be able to capture internet ratings. So for instance if television or radio content is being consumed online, the PPM will still pick up the signal, as long as it has been preserved in the file. In order for the meter to pick up the signal online producers will have to ensure that they capture their content from a broadcast source, and that they don’t inadvertantly strip out the signal when they compress the files for online distribution. If it’s implemented properly the new system may have some ratings impact for shows with large online audiences like The Hour, and the Hockey Night in Canada streams and certain radio shows with popular podcasts.

Wether these changes will have a large or small impact on show ratings won’t be known until September, but for the first time in Canada, online audiences will be captured in the broadcast ratings and the results should be very interesting.

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	Programming	Posted at 6:00 am (24 Aug 2009)

The CBC introduced its first iPhone application today. The application streams content from Radio One, Radio 2, and CBC Radio 3, and audio from CBC Television.

The free application works on the iPhone or iPod Touch. It will allow users to listen to as many as 19 live streams and a host of on-demand content. “One of the best features is the integration of the iPhone optimized web site within the application, so that you browse cbc.ca while you’re listening to the CBC,” Jonathan Carrigan, who lead the product development, said this afternoon.

Carrigan said the development was extremely smooth, partly because everyone on the project was passionate about it but also because everyone realized the public demand. He said the CBC’s audience relations department has been getting a steady flow of requests for an iPhone app for several months, so he was very pleased to be able to introduce it today, “this truly is in response to popular demand,” he said from Vancouver.

Carrigan said the application focuses on audio content because “the numbers point to audio being a big opportunity.” He also hinted the CBC is currently working on other iPhone applications for the fall, but couldn’t be more specific.

To get the application click on this link (note: clicking the link with open iTunes)

What do you think of the new app?

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	CBC Mobile, Programming	Posted at 5:26 pm (13 Aug 2009)

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)

A recent report from the lobby group ‘Friends of Canadian Broadcasting’ exaggerates the amount of foreign programming on the CBC.

According to Ian Morrison, a spokesperson for the group, “A full 25% of CBC’s prime time schedule is now devoted to foreign, mostly American, programs.”

^{A graph showing the number of hours of Canadian content on CBC TV during the spring season.}

Morrison made that remark on June 30th as the organization released a report examining the amount of foreign programming on the CBC between Feb 21st and March 13th, 2009.

What the report didn’t say however, is that the amount of foreign programming on the CBC varies widely according to what’s on the schedule in any given week. Although it’s true that there was 25 per cent foreign content on the network during the weeks they studied, more half the time that percentage drops to about 18 per cent.

It all depends what’s movie is playing in the Sunday night movie slot. If it’s a foreign movie, running for two hours, then you get 25 per cent foreign content for that week. If it’s a Canadian movie, which more than half of them are, then the amount of foreign content drops to 18 per cent. (Click here to see the Spring 2009 schedule).

The report also says “Canadian content during prime time on CBC English TV has reached a 20-year low.” But it’s worth noting that the real low point for foreign programming on the CBC was reached in 1981, 28 years ago, when more than 40 per cent of the schedule was foreign (click here to see the 1981 schedule).

In the eighties the CBC schedule looked a lot like an American network with shows like M*A*S*H, WKRP, Three’s Company, Mork & Mindy and Happy Days filling almost half the slots.

By the mid-nineties, the CBC had reversed course and introduced an all-Canadian lineup, but the prime-time audience share suffered, which is why CBC executives made the decision to bring back some American shows into the lineup.

What do you think? Should the CBC go back to airing as much Canadian content as possible, or should it stick to its current approach of about 80 per cent Canadian content?

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	CBC Television, Programming	Posted at 12:10 pm (02 Jul 2009)

Despite the growth of handheld video devices and TV shows on the internet, people still spend more than 9 out of 10 hours watching TV the old-fashioned way, on regular sets.

According to a survey from CBC’s research department, people spent 97 per cent of their time watching programming on regular TV sets, or with PVR’s, DVD’s or video on demand. Only two per cent of the total watching time was committed to watching television online.

The results seem to indicate that although Canadians spend a lot of time surfing online, they are not yet spending much of that time watching television shows. The average Anglophone Canadian now spends just shy of 14 hours a week online, compared to 15 hours a week watching TV.

Of the video content that is being watched online, amateur video is still the most popular, but it’s not growing in popularity. On the flip side watching professionally produced television online is growing quickly. More than one quarter of Anglophone internet users said spent time watching online TV in the last month, an increase  of 50% since last year.

And what are they watching? News. Of all the types of online TV content, news clips or newscasts are the most popular by a mile – 73 per cent of respondents said they had watched news clips or shows in the last month, sports came in a distant second at 46 per cent.

The survey results are based on 6,000 telephone interviews with Anglophone adults residing in all regions of Canada. The interviews were conducted from October 20, 2008 to December 21, 2008 and are considered accurate within plus or minus 1.3 percentage points 19 times out of 20. For more information on the survery contact the CBC/Radio-Canada Research and Strategic Analysis department.

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	Integration, Interactive TV, Programming	Posted at 12:21 pm (30 Apr 2009)

It looks like the CBC’s Calgary-based drama Wild Roses will not be renewed next season. A petition is circulating online that reads: “We, the Undersigned, are fans of CBC’s Drama Series, Wild Roses, which has reportedly been canceled.” The petition has been signed by over 1000 people. 

The petition was created by Tom Niles. He said the news was announced on Facebook by Paul Christie, an actor on the show, who wrote a message on the
Facebook fan page:

As some of you may already know, we got word last week that the CBC has decided to pass on producing a second season of “Wild Roses”. To the disappointment of many, I’m sad to pass along the news.

Jeff Keay, the CBC spokesperson, said the CBC is currently figuring out which shows to renew for next season, and no announcements will be made for the next couple weeks.

Wild Roses averaged about half a million viewers during it’s thirteen-episode run. The petition says the show could have been more popular if it had received more promotion from the CBC.

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	Programming, Wild Roses	Posted at 8:23 am (16 Apr 2009)

Sun Media is saying Heritage Minister James Moore expects between 600 to 1,200 people across the country will lose their jobs at the CBC.

The minister said the public broadcaster should return to its mandate of showing Canadian content in a multitude of platforms instead of being a “taxpayer-supported competitor to private broadcasters… stop chasing revenues and eyeballs.”

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	Layoffs, Programming	Posted at 12:32 pm (17 Mar 2009)