Why Radio 3 Isn’t Really a Radio Station… and what it means for CBC Radio
Steve Pratt, the boss at CBC Radio 3 says that Radio 3 isn’t really a radio station, “It’s more like we try to be experts and help people discover new Canadian music,” he said recently in the free daily Metro.
Pratt says that Radio 3 is more like an ecosystem – an organic community. “A lot of the tools on the website are designed to help people discover and get to know artists and then be able to share stuff they like with their own social networks,” he said.
There is no doubt that Pratt believes in strongly in online distribution, but only to an extent. For instance, he doesn’t believe the web should be a dumping ground for content.
He said on his blog in May, regurgitating TV or radio content online is a bad strategy because it doesn’t necessarily address what the audience wants. “It is this ease of ‘copying and pasting’ content on the web that often leads to a lack of thinking about serving the unique needs of the audience online,” Pratt wrote.
All of this puts Pratt in an interesting position. As the director of CBC Radio 3, he wants to avoid being saddled with corporate-wide solutions that don’t met his needs and he wants to try to experiment as much as possible. This sometimes puts Radio 3 at odds with CBC corporate mandates. But as Pratt says “a one-size fits all solution for the creation and distribution of digital content isn’t sufficient and can possibly hamper your success and growth.”
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Steve is absolutely right that using the web to regurgitate content is a waste. Sure, there has to be some of that, because some segment of the audience will want it (and it’s reasonably easy to do).
However, using the unique features of the web — interactivity, social media — to reshape CBC’s content in novel ways *is* aligned with CBC’s corporate direction to become a content company and not a platform company.
It’s too bad that Steve feels hamstrung by corporate tools that don’t allow him to do that.
However, if CBC Radio 3 did get a proper broadcast license all them years ago, it’s interesting to ponder how the service might be different now and whether Pratt’s position might be different. I suspect it would be.
With various new ways to broadcast coming down the stream (i.e. HD Radio, Internet via Mobile Handheld Radio, etc.) it stands to reason that CBC Radio 3 might actually be a radio station in the next 10 years.
The “content company” is total baloney.
If this were the case, you’d have “digital programming” responding to the needs of the content areas, or at the very least in partnership.
They only report to god.
I don’t believe Steve thinks he’s hamstrung, I think he’s trying to point out that the rest of the Ceeb has problems with implementing things.
I’ve met the guy and he’s probably one of the most forward thinking management types in the corp.
He’s done a good job positioning radio 3 as the testing ground for new strategies.
Steve has done a remarkable job with Radio 3 and that is, in large part I think, because Radio 3 never had to deal with being a broadcaster and because. Radio 3 (as its own entity as opposed to a show on Radio 2) was able to invent itself anew without the history and requirements of a broadcaster and without having to cater to the CBC’s traditional audience. By this I mean that he never had to consider ‘will older viewers grasp this’? and other such questions that tend to handcuff the CBC in trying to move forward into a digital age.
Radio 3 started fresh, has slowly built it’s audience and has set it’s strategy and cooperation by working with that audience: Through their blog they constantly ask “What do you think about this?” “What do you know that we don’t?” “Who are you listening to that we don’t play?” and “Who do we play that you don’t listen to?” – Because Radio 3 is small, light and flexible they are actually able to respond to the answers they get without forming committee’s, commissioning reports or hiring consultants.
The result is a large and growing audience that is fanatically loyal to Radio 3 because they not only feel a sense of ownership, but they know for a fact that they have some say in Radio 3′s operation and programming – they’ve seen the evidence of it.
Additionally if part of the CBC’s mandate is to
1. be predominantly and distinctively Canadian,
2. reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audiences, while serving the special needs of those regions,
3. actively contribute to the flow and exchange of cultural expression,
and
4. contribute to shared national consciousness and identity,
They accomplish all of that better than any other part of the CBC. Radio 3 is 100% Canadian (thanks in part to a 77% vote for all Canadian programming by their listeners.) Radio 3′s listeners gather at their computers (or Sat. radios) from all over the country (and elsewhere in the world) to talk music. At this point many of them gather away from radio 3, online and off, to share their love of music.
All of those listeners can name scores of bands, from all over Canada, that they first heard on Radio 3 and the listers then go to concerts and by records by those bands – which has led to considerable growth in the Canadian ‘music industry’ at home and abroad. (We now export as much music as we import.)
It has also sparked the creation of other websites and communities around Canadian music – for example if the people at Aux.tv deny that Radio 3 had a direct influence on them – they are lying. Radio 3 also led to the creation of my site NxEW.ca which brings together music fans from across the country to share ideas, information and reviews (since Radio 3 doesn’t have the budget to have correspondents all over the country – nor the time to cover all of Canada’s hundreds and thousands of talented musicians.)
Radio 3 is absolutely the CBC’s greatest online success story. Does that mean that Steve can tell the CBC how to move online more effectively? Probably not. Can CBC corporate tell Steve how to make Radio 3 better? Absolutely not. A lion and a shark are different animals. Both may be impressive but if they compared notes on how to live neither would get much out of it.
Still the CBC needs Radio 3 as a model because eventually (and maybe not as far in the future as you think) all the broadcast towers will come down and the CBC as a whole will have to survive in the online world.
In my opinion there is old media and new media and you can’t be both. A radio or television broadcaster (even a print publication) can have an online presence, even a strong online presence but it is still old media. Watching a television show online may be convenient but it does not make it new media. The online audience can tell that they are looking at it outside of it’s natural environment. The internet has a different culture and different audience expectations.
I currently and temporarily am working at Bande à part, the French counterparts to Radio 3, and I can tell you that our vision’s very similar to Steve’s for R3. Our shows are broadcast on both Espace Musique (Radio 2) and Sirius, but we also have a window on the Internet with eight webradios, weekly original video contents.
One of my older co-workers at Radio-Canada.ca once told me that you may be better off doing what you want to do to experiment on your off-time, and then speak with your managers with the accomplished fact…
I also see the future in the multiplication of devices. We think in television + radio terms, but I think that we should in fact see it as video + audio, which can be used on a regular TV or radio set, but also a mobile phone or, one day, those smart eyeglasses with augmented reality built-in!
So, we are indeed contents providers — experts and leaders as well.
numbers people. what are the numbers?
how many are listening at any given time to the stream?
and what’s the not bullshit number of actual web visitors?
Cedric: love Espace Musique. I listen frequently.
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@schmuck – I don’t think they are going to post the actual numbers on a public blog.
@justin
why the hell not? its’ a public service and other numbers are eventually published (however sketchily) for tv and radio.
what are they hiding? their ‘success’?
What strikes me about this post, apart from the pretentious airhead nonsense spouted by Pratt, is that you seem to have a secondary agenda here, Paul.
You and Steve have a problem with “corporate-wide solutions” without specifying what they are. Or specifying what alternatives either of you have to offer.
Don’t like being told what to do by the CBC? Then who is forcing you to stay?
As for anything that Mr. Pratt claims to be accomplishing pales by comparison to Mr. Sochan – http://www.thestar.com/business/smallbusiness/article/668697 – the real thing
@scmuck – other ratings are published by the companies that do the ratings. If the CBC did them internally they likely wouldn’t be published. There are competitive advantages to knowing what’s working and what isn’t – audience demographics – ratings and times of day and not sharing that information with your competitors.