Three CBC radio shows have been picked for distribution in the United States by Public Radio International.

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.

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	As It Happens, Q, Wiretap	Posted at 5:38 pm (20 Apr 2010)

This week Q makes its American radio debut. The hit CBC Radio show is being broadcast as a one-week pilot run on WBEZ, the public radio station in Chicago, as well as other Public Radio International affiliates in the United States. The WBEZ blog says “We’re testing out a show on our air and asking you to share your thoughts on it… We want to know what you think of this show.”

The CBC and PRI haven’t yet decided to offer this show full-time to public radio stations – and we’re not certain whether we’d take it if they did. That’s where you come in. We’d love to hear what you think – good or bad.

So far the comments on the WBEZ blog have veered between “hating it” to “love it” to “the show’s ok.”

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	Q	Posted at 3:59 pm (26 Jan 2010)

Jian Ghomeshi spoke about the situation in Iran recently with the web site rabble.ca. In the interview Ghomeshi said the Iranian people are “inspiring the world right now.”

Ghomeshi said the a lot of people are suprised at how connected the Iranians are, “they’re tapped in… I’ve been on the internet with my cousins in Iran in recent years, we’re talking about Radiohead. They know what’s going on in the world.”

“They also know they can’t express some of what they believe or how they want to express themselves in the streets of Iran,” the host of Q said.

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	Q	Posted at 10:30 pm (06 Jul 2009)

It’s generally assumed that a viral video is a momentary diversion. It’s something that pops up out of the blue, entertains you for a few minutes and then disappears as quickly as it arrived. But what if you or your show is the source of that video? Can a video gone viral have a lasting impact? Well over at Q the answer to that question is yes.

It’s been over two months since Oscar winning actor and musician Billy Bob Thornton’s disastrous interview with Jian Ghomeshi. That’s two months for the senior team at Q to assess the impact the video has had on their online properties.

“In the first 24 hours our (YouTube) channel had over one-million views. It was the number one video in all of Canada and I saw it hit number three in all of YouTube, although it may have gone higher. In that first day we also had over 1,200 people subscribe to our channel going from 2204 to 3409. The numbers continued to be astronomical for four days until they dropped below 250,000 views a day,” wrote Ben Aylsworth, senior producer of Q on Bold TV in an email.

Arif Noorani, Q’s executive producer said that their website went from an average of 20,000 page views a week which is high for radio programs to 300,000 during the initial week. The Q audio podcast on iTunes we went from being ranked anywhere from 20th to 50th, to being in the top five of all podcasts for that week. The video podcast made it into the top ten.

But here’s the interesting part. While the numbers have dropped down since their initial spike. They have stayed higher than they were before the video went viral.

“All our numbers are higher than they were before the video and this is two months later. We have definitely expanded our core audience and broadened the number of loyal viewers/listeners…(our website) regularly ranks in the mid-30,000s. Q is often the top-ranked or second-ranked program site in radio,” wrote Noorani.

Aylsworth said that Q’s YouTube views are on average 50-75% higher than they were before the video.

So what steps did they take to capitalize on the video as it spread?

“We made sure that the video of the interview was up as soon as the show was over both on the CBC site as well as Q’s YouTube site. Q’s goal is to be cross platform and provide our content in as many places as possible. We also Twittered the link. We didn’t editorialize around the interview, just pointed people to it and let them judge for themselves,” wrote Noorani.

“I would also add here, immediately after the interview we discussed strategy for getting this material out there. We decided to contact all of the major global media outlets, including CBC, to see if they were interested in footage, embedding, linking, etc…,” wrote Aylsworth.

Jian also did interviews with other media outlets about the Billy Bob meltdown.

So the lesson here is that it’s not enough just to hope a viral video will work magic for your show’s numbers. Q was proactive. They encouraged the video to spread by featuring it prominently on their sites and they pushed out outward by making clips available to whoever wanted them.

If only every bad interview had such good consequences.

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	Q	Posted at 5:00 am (12 Jun 2009)

In case you haven’t heard about this yet Billy Bob Thornton and his band The Boxmasters were on Q with Jian Ghomeshi this morning. The interview, uh, ahem, well, it didn’t go very well.

Billy Bob said he was upset because Ghomeshi referred to his acting career in the introduction to the interview. He said he’d told the producer to focus on the band and not mention his acting.

The highlight was when Ghomeshi asked him about his former and current tour-mate Willie Nelson, and Billy Bob replied that he’d never met him.

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	Behind the Scenes, Q	Posted at 3:19 pm (08 Apr 2009)

Beginning in September, CBC Radio’s arts show Q will follow The Current, and air from 10 to 11:30 a.m.  with a two-hour expanded broadcast on Friday mornings. Q will continue to air at 10 p.m. (10:30 p.m. NT) each weeknight., and Jian Ghomeshi will continue to host.

Taking Q’s former mid-day time slot will be Aamer Haleem, who is new to the CBC and radio. Haleem is currently a VH1 personality and host of the show Bands Reunited. He was host of VH1′s Top Video Countdown, interviewing celebrities like Madonna. Haleem was born in London but raised in Canada, attending the University of Toronto and the the Humber College School of Journalism.

CBC Radio icon Shelagh Rogers will be back this fall with a new program exploring the best in Canadian literature. Rogers will speak with renowned writers and future literary stars, and examine the issues having an impact on books in Canada. It will air Saturdays at 3:00 p.m.

Both new shows will originate from Vancouver.

(Both times +30 min in NT)

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	CBC Radio 1, Personalities, Q, Sounds Like Canada	Posted at 5:14 pm (25 Jun 2008)

Mark Critch and Shaun Majumder riff on, well, each other in their satire of CBC TV and CBC Radio’s young(ish) hosts. From This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

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	Fun Stuff, Q, The Hour with George S.	Posted at 10:48 am (27 Mar 2008)

The folks who run the Strombo fan site, Stroumboulolouli, have posted a great video interview of Q host Jian Ghomeshi.

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	Q	Posted at 12:31 am (17 Nov 2007)

CBC recording engineer Joe Mahoney has a great description of the harrowing first day of Jian Ghomeshi’s daily Q arts show on CBC Radio One:

At one o’clock there’s a newscast. According to our information on this first day, the newscast was six minutes long. There’s a countdown clock in the studio that tells us when we’re supposed to be live on air. It gives us a twenty second countdown.

At 1:04:40 we were enjoying this brief respite, anticipating another minute and twenty seconds before going live again, when suddenly the exec cried out. I looked up and the countdown clock was counting down, one minute early.

Was the clock wrong? Were we going to be live at 1:05?

We hastily decided to trust the clock and start the show. I called master control at the same time to ask them if the clock was right. I needed an answer before 1:06, because if the clock was wrong we would have to restart the show at 1:06. Master told us that as far as they knew the clock was right. So we carried on with the show.

Afterward we learned that we had the wrong information, and that the start time for part three of the show is indeed 1:05.

You can read the full gory details of that first day on air on his blog at http://www.assortednonsense.com

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	How Shows Work, Q	Posted at 12:14 pm (22 May 2007)

Q earns a tentatively positive review from Blogcritics Magazine: “Overall, Q is what I expected it to be – a few mistakes here and there, rough around the edges, and not without dodgy interview subjects (Suzie McNeil from Rock Star: INXS and the Toronto performance of Ben Elton’s We Will Rock You, although that interview had good insight into how reality shows actually work).  Still, as debuts go, Q shows some promise. It doesn’t stray far from the CBC/public radio mandate, but I like that the show has potential to cover territory unfamiliar to CBC Radio and I hope Q exploits that in the near future.”

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	Asides, Q	Posted at 11:48 am (23 Apr 2007)

CBC Radio One’s new daily afternoon show, Q, is now on the air.

Have you had a chance to listen to Q?

What do you think?

(Note: This is a forum for comments about Q, not Freestyle, which Q replaced.)

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	Q	Posted at 12:24 pm (17 Apr 2007)

The name of Jian Ghomeshi’s national CBC Radio afternoon show has been decided, and it is:

Q

That’s it. Just Q.

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	Q	Posted at 6:50 pm (20 Mar 2007)