The Age of Persuasion, a fascinating radio program about the black art of marketing, is finally available as a podcast.

The show, which uses tons of TV and Radio clips from ad campaigns has been struggling to get the legal rights sorted out to podcast for, well, it seems like forever.

The host of the show, Terry O’Reilly, personally made the announcement on the show’s blog, a few days ago.

Since the launch the podcast has been in the number 1 spot on iTunes’ top podcast list.

The show is also beefing up its web site. This season they’re adding lots of visual material to accompany the shows. Last weekend’s post was about green marketing, and with lots of images and YouTube videos, it’s a really fascinating entry.

The show is also celebrating it’s recent launch in the Chicago market. Under a distribution deal with PRI it was picked up by WBEZ in Chicago, the third largest radio market in the U.S.

If you haven’t heard the show before, you need to check it out, in my opinion its one of the best shows CBC Radio has to offer, you can find out more here.

As Bill Brioux, the Canadian Press television critic, said on his blog, last week’s episode drew 925,000 viewers.

Brioux  says this surprising given that the show is not a promotional priority for the corporation. He says the cast has come to describe the show as “the series between two shows CBC promotes.”

“Being backed into a tight corner seems to have emboldened the cast and writers,” Brioux wrote yesterday. With little promotion coming from the corporation, they’ve taken matters into their own hands.

In October they released a video of 80 year-old Gordon Pinsent reading bits of teen-sensation Justin Bieber’s memoir. That video has 60,000 views.

This week they were quick to react to Danny Williams’ resignation and put together another Pinsent bit. They uploaded this clip in advance of tonight’s show:

The show airs tonight (Tuesday) at 8:30.

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.

According to The National’s blog, Murphy is dealing with some “minor medical issues, and he’s decided it’s best to take a break from the studio until the end of the year.”

We wish him the best in his recovery.

The headline says it all. Bravo to the 22 Minutes crew.

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.

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

Kim Fox, the social media guru at the CBC pointed out how much she likes this promotional poster for CBC Radio’s Wiretap. I have to agree, it’s a fantastic poster.

The poster was done by Montreal artist Jack Dylan for a live show in 2009. You can find out more about Jack and his work at his web site. I love how he incorporates the super hero references into his work.

The Hour has been renamed George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight.

Strombo announced the name change last week in a tweet to his followers.

The name change is part of a revamp that sees the show cut back to half an hour, a new set (which looks fantastic btw) and a tweaked format.

“We’re never going to change the core values of the show — in a sense the show is going to be the same,” Stroumboulopoulos told CBC News:

On The Hour, we helped work with what Mike Bullard had done previously, helped build late-night television in Canada — to start that conversation that we could have late-night shows in Canada — but we think the next step is to … evolve it.

The show launches on September 20th.

It’s almost fall, and our national obsession returns.

The NHL announced the schedule for the HNIC broadcasts today.

All in all the CBC gets 87 regular and pre-season games, including 29 all-Canadian matchups.

The TSN channels have 124 games.

But the CBC gets dibs on a real classic, the Heritage Classic in fact, which hasn’t been played in Canada since 2003 when the Habs faced the Oilers in a freezing rink in Edmonton.

This year the action is in Calgary, and again features the Habs. It should be amazing.

Otherwise the ceeb is ponying up 13 hours of coverage for the 11th Hockey Day in Canada extravaganza including a NHL tripleheader featuring all six Canadian-based teams.

Hockey Night in Canada, now in it’s 58th regular season is considered by wikipedia to be the “world’s oldest sports-related television program still on the air.” So there.

The entire broadcast schedule is after the jump.

CBC’S HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA

2010/11 BROADCAST SCHEDULE

SCHEDULE SUBJECT TO CHANGE / DISTRIBUTION TBD /

ADDITIONAL BROADCASTS MAY BE ADDED

Saturday, September 25          10 p.m. ET      Pre-season: Anaheim at Vancouver

Saturday, October 2                7 p.m. ET        Pre-Season: Detroit at Toronto

Thursday, October 7               6:30 p.m. ET   NHL Face-Off

7 p.m. ET        Montreal at Toronto

10 p.m. ET      Calgary at Edmonton

Saturday, October 9                6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Ottawa at Toronto

7 p.m. ET        Montreal at Pittsburgh

10 p.m. ET      Los Angeles at Vancouver

Saturday, October 16              6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Ottawa at Montreal

10 p.m. ET      Edmonton at Calgary

Saturday, October 23              6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Toronto at Philadelphia

7 p.m. ET        Montreal at Ottawa

10 p.m. ET      San Jose at Edmonton

Saturday, October 30              6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        NY Rangers at Toronto

7 p.m. ET        Boston at Ottawa

7 p.m. ET        Florida at Montreal

10 p.m. ET      Washington at Calgary

Saturday, November 6            6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        2010 Hall of Fame Game: Buffalo at Toronto

7 p.m. ET        Ottawa at Montreal

10 p.m. ET      Detroit at Vancouver

Saturday, November 13          6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Vancouver at Toronto

7 p.m. ET        Ottawa at Boston

7 p.m. ET        Carolina at Montreal

10 p.m. ET      Calgary at San Jose

Saturday, November 20          6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Toronto at Montreal

10 p.m. ET      Chicago at Vancouver

Saturday, November 27          6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Toronto at Ottawa

7 p.m. ET        Buffalo at Montreal

10 p.m. ET      San Jose at Edmonton

Saturday, December 4                        2 p.m. ET        San Jose at Montreal

6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Boston at Toronto

7 p.m. ET        Buffalo at Ottawa

10 p.m. ET      St. Louis at Edmonton

Friday, December 10              7 p.m. ET        Montreal at Detroit

Saturday, December 11          6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Montreal at Toronto

10 p.m. ET      Tampa Bay at Vancouver

Thursday, December 16          7 p.m. ET        Boston at Montreal

Saturday, December 18          6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Toronto at Vancouver

10 p.m. ET      Minnesota at Calgary

Saturday, January 1                12:30 p.m. ET Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

1 p.m. ET        NHL Winter Classic: Washington at Pittsburgh

6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Toronto at Ottawa

10 p.m. ET      Calgary at Edmonton

Saturday, January 8                6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Boston at Montreal

7 p.m. ET        Tampa Bay at Ottawa

10 p.m. ET      Detroit at Vancouver

Saturday, January 15              6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Calgary at Toronto

7 p.m. ET        NY Rangers at Montreal

10 p.m. ET      Edmonton at Los Angeles

Saturday, January 22              6:30 p.m. ET  Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Washington at Toronto

7 p.m. ET        Anaheim at Montreal

10 p.m. ET      Calgary at Vancouver

Saturday, January 29              6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        NHL All-Star Super Skills

Sunday, January 30                 6 p.m. ET        58^th NHL All-Star Game

Saturday, February 5              2 p.m. ET        NY Rangers at Montreal

6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Toronto at Buffalo

7 p.m. ET        Edmonton at Columbus

7 p.m. ET        Ottawa at NY Islanders

10 p.m. ET      Los Angeles at Calgary

Sunday, February 6                 3 p.m. ET        New Jersey at Montreal

Saturday, February 12                        12 p.m. ET      Scotiabank Hockey Day in Canada

2 p.m. ET        Ottawa at Edmonton

5 p.m. ET        Scotiabank Hockey Day in Canada

6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Toronto at Montreal

10 p.m. ET      Calgary at Vancouver

Thursday, February 17            9 p.m. ET        Montreal at Edmonton

Saturday, February 19                        6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Ottawa at Toronto

10 p.m. ET      Dallas at Vancouver

Sunday, February 20               5 p.m. ET        Heritage Classic Pre-Game

6 p.m. ET        NHL Heritage Classic: Montreal at Calgary

Saturday, February 26                        6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Pittsburgh at Toronto

7 p.m. ET        Philadelphia at Ottawa

7 p.m. ET        Carolina at Montreal

10 p.m. ET      Boston at Vancouver

Saturday, March 5                 6:30 p.m. ET  Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Chicago at Toronto

7 p.m. ET        Montreal at Tampa Bay

10 p.m. ET      Edmonton at Colorado

Saturday, March 12                2 p.m. ET        Montreal at Pittsburgh

6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Buffalo at Toronto

10 p.m. ET      Vancouver at Calgary

Saturday, March 19                6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Boston at Toronto

7 p.m. ET        Tampa Bay at Ottawa

10 p.m. ET      Colorado at Edmonton

Sunday, March 20                   6 p.m. ET        Montreal at Minnesota

Saturday, March 26                6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Toronto at Detroit

7 p.m. ET        Washington at Montreal

10 p.m. ET      Calgary at Edmonton

Saturday, April 2                    6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Toronto at Ottawa

7 p.m. ET        Montreal at New Jersey

10 p.m. ET      Edmonton at Vancouver

Thursday, April 7                    7 p.m. ET        Montreal at Ottawa

Saturday, April 9                    1 p.m. ET        Ottawa at Boston

6:30 p.m. ET   Scotiabank Hockey Tonight

7 p.m. ET        Montreal at Toronto

10 p.m. ET      Vancouver at Calgary

The web site Digital Spy has the story:

The CW has dropped sitcom 18 To Life from its schedule.

The network picked up the Canadian sitcom last month and was expected to air all 12 episodes of the first season.

However, the series debut on August 3 attracted less than a million viewers. Ratings have continued to drop and the CW has now decided to replace the final six episodes with repeats of family drama Life Unexpected.

The CBC’s Steven and Chris are gearing up for a massive launch in the U.S.

According to the TVNewsCheck site, the show is launching in a bunch of test markets in the States in September:

Steven and Chris will make its U.S. debut in broadcast syndication on Sept. 13, with clearances on stations in 50 markets covering about 40% of the country.

This is according to Ritch Colbert, a principal at Program Partners, the company representing the show in the States.

The CBC in-house production is set to roll out in several U.S. markets including San Franciso, Austin and Hartford.

“It’s a phased rollout,” says Colbert. “The fact that we have 50 markets is a legitimate test to see how the show performs in a variety of competitive situations and environments.”

I chatted with Mark this afternoon about the initiative, and what attracted him to it.

Mark Kelley: I had a strong attraction to this because I grew up in a house of volunteers and both of my parents were lifelong volunteers and I knew no other life.

My mother, despite the fact that she was raising four kids, was always volunteering. She was incredibly active throughout her life. She never took a paying job, once she was married. But she worked every day of her life as a volunteer.

And my father worked as a volunteer literally till the day he died. He died in the place where he had been volunteering for seven years, which was a palliative care centre.

So I have always been inspired both by my parents and the example that they set.

So when I was approached to discuss this idea of volunteers, for me it was a natural fit.

And I’m also a strong proponent of the idea of volunteering. I volunteer as much as I can in my own life because of what my parents have done, and because of the need that I see all around me.

There are so many organizations desperate for volunteers. And I try to combine my volunteering with my children. So I volunteer to coach teams or volunteer for things in their schools so I don’t have to choose between my kids and volunteering. I wrap them up together.

I think that’s what we have to do as volunteers. We don’t have to look at volunteering as some sort of burden or necessity. It’s actually something you can do where you really explore something that you want to do outside of your professional life.

I think our problem is that all too often we look at volunteering as something that takes away my time. But in fact it can be so enriching to be a volunteer on a sideline that you feel very strongly about.

And it can be an hour a week or an hour a month, you just have to have that feeling that at some point, somebody has to step up and get involved.

How are your kids reacting this project?
Mark Kelley: I’ve talked to them about the importance of volunteering. And I had this experience where one day – I get home at 9:45 every night and I’m tucking my oldest son into bed – and I said: ‘how was your day today?’

He said ‘it was great’
I said: ‘what did you do?’
‘We made sandwiches for the homeless. And took them to Dundas Square.’

And I just about feel off the bed.

Because I didn’t encourage him to get involved. I knew nothing about this until he’d gone out and done it. It’s this volunteer project that they’re having in some Toronto schools.

So I thought in terms of life going full circle, and I love how this was being passed down from my parents to my kids.

And what I really want to do, whether it’s with my own family, but obviously, more importantly throughout the country, is to really put the emphasis on volunteers. Because volunteers traditionally are not people who ever seek the spotlight. Typically they’re just people who go out there to help quietly.

And I want to do two things through this project. First, to say thank you, by shinning a little light on them for the work that they do, and ask nothing in return. And secondly, I want to show that volunteers are us. They’re everyday Canadians. They’re not super-heroes. They’re everyday Canadians who have busy lives, but still find time within those busy lives, to go out there and make a difference.

And what I want to is to demystify the notion that they are super-people and inspire people to do more. The question is not why, but why not.

To learn more about the initiative, or to nominate a Champion of Change, visit the website.

Ross McAuley, a Toronto photographer, recently uploaded this drawing of Jonathan Goldstein, the multi-tasking host of CBC Radio One’s Wiretap.

Mark Kelley returned from the Gulf Coast oil spill recently, and brought back a memento for the Connect newsroom.

The deal with see PRI offer Q, Wiretap, and As it Happens to public radio affiliates across the U.S.

The news follows a week-long trial broadcast of Q in several radio markets in the States last January.

I had the opportunity to discuss the news with the Executive Director of Q, Arif Noorani:

Q seems to be on a bit of a roll lately, what does the distribution deal mean for the show?
I think the deal is very exciting for the show, because it opens up our content to an even broader audience.

One of Q’s main goals is not only to create the show but to get that content to wherever people consume it, Youtube, podcasts, whatever, because there’s a huge audience online, and now there’s a huge potential audience in the United States.

How much of a factor was Q’s cross-platform strategy in this? And did the Billy Bob play into this as well?
I think our visibility on many platforms is a factor. They’ve never mentioned Billy Bob, but they’ve been introduced to Jian as a host, the mix of conversation, the style of in-depth interviews. There was awareness of the show. We didn’t have to sell them very much, because they already knew the show.

How will you balance the show for both a Canadian and American audience?
The mix we have right now is a good one. I don’t see changing that. It’s a show that has appeal to Canadians but also to an international audience.

Will the show in the States be the same as the CBC version, or is it being revised for the American distribution?
There’s no plans to change it. We’re committed to producing the show with Canadian content but also an international outlook. There’s no plans to change that.

But the version of the show will be an one hour version, just because that’s the U.S. format. We may have to take out some of smaller features to get it down to a one-hour version, but it’s no different than what we do already for the evening broadcast on CBC.

The veteran CBC journalist is moving to The National, where he’ll join Duncan McCue as a regular West Coast contributor.

Over the years Hanomansing has frequently appeared on the show, most recently during the Olympics. On the internal CBC portal they recapped his career so far:

Ian joined CBC News in 1986. During this time he has had a wide variety of assignments as a reporter, anchor and interviewer. Among the major stories he’s covered: the Exxon Valdez oil spill and San Francisco earthquake (both in 1989), the Los Angeles riot (1992), Vancouver’s Stanley Cup riot (1994), the Hong Kong handover (1997) and numerous Olympic Games. He hosted Pacific Rim Report, which focused on Canada’s connection to Asia; Times 7, a joint venture between CBC News and the New York Times; Canada Now, a national supper-hour newscast; Still Talking Hockey, a sports-themed late night program on CBC British Columbia; and Feeling the Heat, a summer series about the environment on CBC Radio One. Ian won the 2008 Gemini Award for the best news anchor.

What do you think of the move?

The campaign’s picking up a lot of steam. To date they’ve received over 18,000 pledges to participate.

The campaign invites participates to complete one challenge a day. By completing the challenges you’re also entered into a draw for a trip for four to Cancun – I guess so you can then go on to make better choices on the beach in Mexico : ).

If you think you’ve got the next million dollar idea, or you’ve invented a better mouse trap, or even some wacky board game, you could pitch it on Dragons’ Den.

The hit CBC show is holding auditions across the country. A post on the show’s web site says, “due to overwhelming demand, producers are expanding the search to over 40 stops.”

The full schedule for Dragons’ Den auditions in all the cities hasn’t been figured out yet, but some have already been arranged starting in early March.

Need a little help with your pitch? Dianne Buckner is offers up tips for pitches, and the late Dragon Laurence Lewin, shared the following wisdom, “It is not up to me to understand the entrepreneurs business. It is up to the entrepreneur to explain it clearly to me.”

This could be big.

This morning Andy Barrie announced that he will be retiring from Metro Morning.

The host of the CBC radio’s Toronto morning show said on the air today he will be relinquishing the chair after 15 years.

“Andy is part of our station and that station is like an extended family,” said Susan Marjetti, Managing Director CBC Toronto. “He will continue to be part of that family and certainly part of this station’s rich history.”

^{The crew assemble after Andy Barrie announced his retirement this morning. Photo via metaviews.}

Barrie told the Globe and Mail that there “has been a lot of stress these last three years.” Barrie has fighting a public battle with Parkinson’s Disease since 2007. At the time he said he hoped to continue “waking you up every morning, as long as my old bod allows me to keep answering that 4 a.m. wake up call.”

But he admitted last week that the daily grind of hosting daily radio show was wearing him down. “Fifteen years is more than anybody’s held this job. A guy’s got just so much stamina,” he said to the CBC.

Hosting a show like Metro Morning is a little like driving a high speed vehicle down a highway and occasionally I would feel myself veering off onto the shoulder or towards the centre line. Globe and Mail.

The same year he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, his only brother was killed in  a car accident in Russia. He was dealt another blow last February when his wife of 40 years died of cancer.

“It’s not mortality, it’s unpredictability,” he says quietly when asked what the last few years have taught him. “Life turns around in different directions for the better and for the worse.” Globe and Mail.

This morning Barrie said the “this is, for me, good news! This is my idea… this is what I’m really ready for.” The full script of his retirement announcement is here.

Barrie’s last show will be on March 1st.