You’ll be seeing advertisements on CBC Radio web pages soon.
The increase is necessary to pay for increasing costs in streaming CBC Radio online and producing and distributing podcasts, CBC Radio head Jennifer McGuire told staff yesterday.
“We cannot grow in these spaces at the expense of our existing programs and schedules,” she said in a staff memo. “To date, we have managed to keep in step with technology and listener/user demands by stretching existing resources to cover other platforms. As a startup strategy this has served us well, but it is not sustainable and is certainly not a formula for growth. The hard reality is that we need additional revenue to do this important work.”
To gain that revenue, McGuire says CBC will be extending the banner ads you currently see on CBC.ca pages, such as the News and Entertainment pages.
Traditionally, CBC Radio has kept itself free of any commercials or sponsorships. Last year, CBC Radio began adding short sponsorship messages at the beginning of some podcasts, also to help pay for them.
CBC Radio currently has 54 podcasts, making it the largest single podcasting organization in Canada. The CBC Radio 2 portal page, with Concerts on Demand and live streaming, attracts more than a million page views per month.
What do you think? Given that CBC Radio just can’t produce and distribute podcasts at no cost, was this the right way to increase revenue? If not, what revenue source would you have found if you were in charge?
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Not sure what else you can or should do at the moment, but I also know that I simply Do Not Want this state of affairs to have to continue.
I understand there is a cost associated with bandwidth. Podcasts are the new, "Re-run." As I understand it the production cost has been paid. ie Rewind
Perhaps there is communications partner, such as Bell, Telus, or Rogers, that could offer discounted bandwidth in exchange for a commercial announcement instead of the GM commercials.
If banner ads are necessary on the CBC pages I would hope they do not appear at the top of the page and push content down. That drives me crazy. And hey aren’t we sponsoring these pages with our tax dollars? Sorry it had to come up.
There are production costs associated with podcasts as well, and a bandwidth deal like that wouldn’t actually be the most useful thing in the world.
You could campaign for a decent level of funding for the CBC, but bearing in mind that we’re heading into a
recession and the government is planning a spending freeze, I wouldn’t be too optimistic about your chances.
I don’t think anyone wants it to be honest, except for the advertisers, but it’s this or no website.
Cut the miliary budget, cut expense accounts and salaries of MPs,
carge Mulroney and Schreiber for costs to public and if none of that works, take ads for ecofriendly only products.
While I personally agree with at least 50% of your platform, I also wish to sarcastically wish you the best of luck.
Banner ads are a great way to pay because the content remains free to the user. The alternative would be something like a licence fee as the BBC does. That would be a hard sell.
Banner adds are not an effective way of using screen space to generate revenue. Take a look at the studies on useit. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/banner-blindness.html
ads are a disgrace on the CBC, makes the site look like a cheap blog. The ads start back in the summer of 2005 with the CBC lookout, and they never looked back, shame.
Bring in the licence fee like the BBC, may cost a little more, but will be worth it. Just take it off our T4’s that way we will save the costs of people knocking on doors asking to be shown proof of a paid licence fee.
Frankly, with the latest plans of gutting Radio 2 of even more of its classical programming, it won’t matter much to me. I will no longer be listening to Radio 2, thus there will be no reason to visit the website. The CBC has lost its way. I am desolate.