CBC Radio’s top two executives have been moved to a new integrated news division, as part of changes that further the Corporation’s movement toward integration.

Jennifer McGuire, currently executive director of radio, will become Executive Director of News Programming and Deputy Head of News. (Until a replacement is found for her position, she will continue to hold the radio office.) Former vice-president of radio Jane Chalmers left the CBC a couple of months ago. Weeks later, that position was eliminated.

Todd Spencer, formerly head of radio production, will also move to the integrated news organization as Executive Director of News Content.

“The core strength of Radio remains with its gifted team,” Stursberg wrote in a memo to staff posted on its new intranet. “Our intention is to search internally, as we need someone who can hit the ground running and understands the Radio service.”

Larry O’Brien will take on the role of Senior Director, Radio Production and Resources on an interim basis; CBC plans to fill the position for the integrated organization within six months.

* Read the CBC’s backgrounder on these changes [internal link only] on iO, the new CBC intranet.

QUESTIONS

In an all-staff meeting held this morning, moderator Michael Enright confronted Richard Stursberg on the decision.

“Why I am seized with the feeling that TV is strip-mining radio of its senior management.”

Stursberg: “We’re lucky that we have incredibly gifted people in radio. The issue isn’t radio being strip-mined, but we can certainly take advantage of those extra-ordinary resources for the purposes of all. It’s a mistake to say that Jennifer and Todd are leaving radio. They’re not. They’re going to News, which is a television and radio function.”

CBC News publisher John Cruickshank characterized the changes as “a reverse takeover of news by radio.”

“But the examples you give are television,” Enright continued. “Take an example or World Report. It has the largest news audience in the country — TV or radio. I don’t think the criticism you have of TV apply universally to radio.”

Cruickshank: “CBC Radio News is brilliant five days a week from nine to five. Our issue has to do with ‘Are we going to be a 24-hour breaking news organization?’ In other words, are we commited every day, all day or just during particular shifts.”

Enright: “But how is that going to work? They tried this with BBC Radio and it was a disaster. They’re reorganizing and trying it again. Isn’t one of the dangers of this integration is the stories will become less distinctive — everyone covering the same things across all the platforms — and radio would lose in all this because television has the greater force field. We’re going to be ‘sucked into’ this.”

Cruickshank: “CBC Radio News is already quite powerful. It’s very significant in the structure that nobody is aligned specifically to television or radio, but that everyone has lots of experience in all the media. We are not talking about finding efficiencies by sending [TV] people with no radio experience out to do stories. Our agnosticism is around content — being a content company. It’s enormously important that we have the right content on the right platform.”

Enright: “Suppose there’s a story that radio could cover with a phone, but television needs pictures, so we all have to wait?”

Cruickshank: “No. There will actually be a desk which will [think about] who needs this. Will it be radio? Television? Newsworld? The regional shows? We can make a sensible decision about what kind of staffing we need there. Right now, we’re not coordinated in that way. We send too few or, worse, too many people [to cover the same story]. We need a centre where we can decide where a story is going to go — like a slot organization: “That’ll go to radio and Newsworld and that’s it.”

Stursberg: “Our commitment to Canadians about news is that we are there with the news as it happens, whenever they need it. If radio news can get to it first — boom, it goes to radio. It goes out as quickly as possible.”

From the floor: “Everything you talk about is what it means for news. The only thing I can see in this organization chart about Current Affairs is there’s no more current affairs department at all. This gives me great concern.”

Stursberg: “One of the things we wanted to do was to make sure thigns sat in appropriate places, so one of the conversations Jennifer and I had was what do we do with radio current affairs vs. radio news. In the old days, current affairs was theoretically inside news. In reality, it never really was. It was always managed by radio. If a show is fed by news gathering, it is a news show. If it is not, it is not. In the future, the radio current affairs shows will not sit within NCAN, they will sit within radio where, as a practical matter, they are already. When we say current affairs shows, we mean everything from Ideas and onward. Those shows are the pillars of radio’s primetime schedule. The commitment to those shows remains absolutely intact.”

CBC employees: Did you attend or watch/listen to the announcement? Are you in radio? What do you think about these changes?

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