CBC and National Post to Share Content

October 2, 2009 at 1:05 am
CBC and National Post to Share Content

This is a strange one. The CBC and the National Post are going to start sharing content.

The frienenemy arrangement was announced in a press release this afternoon, and is effective immediately. It allows the post to republish sports stories in the online national post and sometimes in the newspaper. The CBC will run daily financial stories and podcasts from the Financial Post in cbc.ca’s Money section.

Although the two seem like strange bedfellows there’s a certain strategic logic to the move. The Financial Post has long-standing reputation for its financial coverage, while the CBC excels at sports coverage, especially hockey coverage. Obviously both organizations are straining to get through the recession, and this move would seem to allow both to either increase the number of stories they can deliver or cut back on staff.

The financial details of the move were not disclosed, however it’s worth noting that the CBC has the dominant position in the deal. The CBC’s online audience is much larger than the Financial Post’s, according to Alexa ( an internet traffic ranking service ) the CBC site is the ranked 36th in Canada, while the Financial Post is 1,095. The deal will allow the CBC to firm up its financial section, which is of interest to certain advertisers.

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13 Responses to “CBC and National Post to Share Content”

Kempton says:

Interesting deal, a potentially win-win one.

Hope you are right that CBC was able to negotiate a reasonably good deal with the stronger position but then we don’t really know because the details are not disclosed to us. And we don’t know how the deal is structured which sometimes is the game. (witness how Microsoft negotiated its first deal with IBM long long time ago)

Antimatter says:

Wonder what the union has to say about this?

As a taxpayer, I’m not sure how I feel about having content I paid to develop (sports) gain revenue for the Post.

Anon says:

Sounds like a good arrangement. I know CBC News already shares with Canwest Global on some stories in the Toronto area. One has to wonder how long it will be before the post is either sold or closed. I know they were on the Death Watch list not long ago, with rumours that they would stop publishing. This was at the height of recession bad news.

I like the paper. Stopped buying it a while back though. In Toronto the Internet and free commuter papers seem to fill my needs.

Glad no lock out until at least 2014 says:

Odd the National Post, who loves dumping on the Corpse when ever it gets a chance, will be using CBC content since Canwest already has a broadcast arm in Global. Global on occasion lets CBC use images from their helicopter in Toronto.

Bruce Hoffman says:

So the CBC (funded by the Canadian tax payer) swings a deal with the National Post (the ‘national’ newspaper that has yet to post a profit)? How much tax money is going to the privately held National Post?

Stephen Downes says:

Well they did say they wanted to make the CBC more right wing…. this is a creative way of getting neocon content into the CBC without letting the neocons into the CBC.

Observer says:

I wouldn’t place too much credibility on Alexa tracking results. The only thing Alexa tracks is where people who have downloaded their spyware toolbar on their PC have gone.

Comscore is a much more reliable and waccepted industry standard.

Comscore has CBC either #1 or #2 in virtually every category.

And Gawd… I wish people could come up with something… anything… more original than “the Corpse”. The 90′s are over. Get over them.

Antimatter says:

I agree, Alexa is near to useless.

Comscore is more accepted, but it has limitations as well.

If CBC is 1 or 2 in every category, what’s the point of this deal? It seems like a giveaway of sports content to someone who needs it more.

Not Izzy says:

So I’m guessing those Comscore numbers won’t be available?

Sounds like maybe CBC is positioning to join in the Canwest garage sale.

Paul Mcgrath says:

Not Izzy, I couldn’t find the numbers on Comscore. Although even if I did, it wouldn’t change the argument. The CBC site still has way more traffic.

Not Izzy says:

Thanks Paul.

So what is the internal rationalization for the deal? I agree cbc.ca’s money section needs a lot, but is the trade of sports content an equitable exchange?

I suppose one could argue that cbc.ca has far more traffic, which would mean generating more revenue from FP content than it would be losing by giving content to a site with less traffic. If so, it underscores further that CBC is about increasingly making money, not content.

Which is ok, but it would be good to have it said.

Paul Mcgrath says:

Not Izzy, I don’t know what the internal rationalization for the deal is. That’s a question for Richard Stursberg. As for your comment on the CBC trying to make money, I would say that that’s accurate, and may explain the deal itself. As I said in the post, the money and financial sections of web sites are usually considered premium properties for advertisers, so the motivation may have been to firm up the CBC’s finance section to attract more advertising.