Debating the CBC’s Integrated Content Model
For the last couple years the CBC has been pursuing a multi-platform content strategy. The strategy is based on transforming the CBC into a content company that publishes on multiple platforms, the web, TV, and radio. A key plank of the strategy involves integrating the news staff from the three services together.
The embodiment of that strategy is now being hammered out, sometimes literally, in newsrooms across the country as the radio, TV and web departments cram into the same space.
Some see this integrated approach as a mistake.
Peter Rukavina, a CBC Radio contributor in Prince Edward Island, thinks the CBC’s integrated content strategy is misguided. Content is not “generic slop that you ladle out of the universe, pass through a magic content-massaging machine, and then distribute on multiple “platforms,” he wrote on his blog on Sunday. Under the new process “we’re going to end up with is a gelatinous mass of poorly reported “content” that is capable of truly informing absolutely no one.”
Rukavina says the the reporting process itself is what creates the content. “Most importantly the medium-specific reporting process, is what conjures this thing called “content” into being,” he wrote on his blog.
Rukavina even put together some graphics to illustrate his argument. He writes that the integrated model looks something like this:
The problem with that, he says, is that “radio, television and the web are reduced to lowly status as “content delivery vehicles”. He says the integrated newsroom approach “ignores the notion that, dare I say it, the medium is the message and that the storytelling capabilities of each medium each have unique qualities.” According to Rukavina a better approach would for the three services to create their own unique content, with separate structures for radio and TV and the web.
Rukavina’s blog post illustrates some of the problems under the integrated structure. He describes an incident from last week in which a TV story ran on the radio that pointed to things that you need to be able to see.” Another example had a radio reporter referring to someone in a ‘black shirt.’ Rukavina says these are a “glaring demonstration of a larger underlying problem.” But is that true?
Obviously as we integrate the newsrooms there will be bumps along the way. The question is whether these problems will damn the process entirely, as Rukavina suggests, or whether they are merely transitional issues that will eventually be trumped by the benefits an integrated approach.
What do you think?
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He may have a useful point here. Possibly several. More as I think on it, unless someone else figures out how to expand upon Mr. Rukavina’s commentary first.
When I wrote about referencing-visual-things-on-the-radio as a “glaring demonstration of a larger underlying problem” I didn’t mean to suggest that I anticipate a coming torrent of similar gaffes, but rather that such gaffes are but one small demonstration of a fundamental difference between storytelling with sound and storytelling with pictures.
These differences are not things to be overcome as “bumps along the way,” they are part of the very fabric of each medium.
A journalist charged with effectively crafting a story for a television audience is unlikely to have the time, skills, or tools to properly tell the same story, simultaneously, for the radio.
This is web: It may be integrated content with multiple delivery vehicles but that is the integrated internet – content available via multiple channels, on demand and customizable. Being a web person it’s great with me. It will be interesting to see how television and radio audiences react though. Personally I don’t think they’ll significantly note the difference.
In terms of news specifically I think an all hands on deck – sharing information and ideas – approach represents the best use of resources: more stories and more informed stories.
One man’s “significantly notice” is another man’s “will be apoplectic with rage at.”
I think it would be equally fair to say that a journalist charged with effectively crafting a story for a radio audience is unlikely to have the time, skills, or tools to properly reformat the story visually, for the television.
And neither group may have the time not the skill set to be able to report in the interactive-print format that is online content.
Or perhaps they all can do it, but can they do it well?
( I should say I work for all the branches and am not involved in direct content.) It will be interesting times.
The elephant in the room is how this model will evolve with the various business models. Radio generates no revenue and has no advertising in both the news and non-news capacity while Television and CBC.ca both generate revenue via advertising. This may be a way to get much needed added monies to Radio or Radio may end up being viewed as the CBC’s older, yet financially less valuable relative.
I don’t think, unless I’m missing something, that they will be asking radio people to tell stories on television or vice versa. I believe this is more about sharing ideas, information and resources – each specific skill group will then tell the story in a way that works for their audience.
@justin.
you’re wrong. asking radio people to do tv stories and vice versa is EXACTLY what is going on.
integration…. talk about a sausage factory.
i completely agree with peter r, it’s absolutely diminishing the quality of what you hear and see on tv and radio with almost no thought to retraining people for the medium that they probably never learned to do, or at least never learned to do WELL. i mean for god’s sake, at least re-write and re-edit the damned TV pack for radio, or re-write the damned radio script so it fits with the pictures.
otherwise don’t edit a pack at all, just write some copy on it, pull a clip and call it a day.
funny how integration went from “this will not mean more work for you” to “do exactly twice as much work, but not nearly as well as you did it before”.
integration was and still is a good idea in principle…sharing contacts, story ideas, resources, work space, sometimes even sharing reporters. but how it’s working out is not how it was presented…to me at least.
CBC BC is already trying that, with tiny cameras for the radio people. Not good.
The SRC french side uses that in the Yukon division where there are few staff and it ne voit pas clair. Better to do only radio and have someone with wild film.
How many times has a “local” CBC reporter voiced over a US news story such as a science discovery or some such.
CTV thinks that CBC-TV should be killed off. Radio seems to last and with the new technologies can do more than As It Happens in various locations these days.
What CTV thinks of CBC’s TV arm is irrelevant, as what they want killed off is still useful to me – and many others – in several respects.
Sounds like the large heads in the NPO have been working on more charts!
This is another example of what happens when people who have not done the work are allowed to make decisions. It’s all theory, but without experience it’s only a partial solution.
Jack of all trades = master of none. It’s more
of a continuing effort to dumb down the CBC.
Welcome to the content provider that is less relevant
with each passing day.
@The Dude
The only person I see with any charts around here is the original complainant.
“The embodiment of that strategy is now being hammered out, sometimes literally”
I’m having trouble envisioning this. Does that mean I’m more of a radio guy?
Somebody get this guy a Foley artist!
(I think he’s referring to the construction work going on to build the news hub.)
In this rapidly shifting media landscape all we should expect of our reporters and news gatherers is to be as accurate as possible and as timely as possible with news and information.
It is the job of managers to give those who are on the front lines of news gathering the most effective and efficient tools to do their job.
So if a news organization wants reporters to report on breaking news via twitter – make sure they have twitter berry for their black berry – it seems obvious but having dealt with a lot of clients the obvious is often overlooked.
Start small, experiment, see what works and what doesn’t.