Ouimet over at Teamakers is throwing her hat into the ring as a candidate for CBC President. Me too. Here is my 6-point plan:
1. Podcast everything audio (none of this “best-of” stuff), and put *all* CBC TV on Youtube (leave the ads in).
Do you want people to consume your stuff? Then let them.
2. Allow all non-commercial stations to use your programming (maybe commercial, too)
I was struck, while in the US recently, that NPR radio shows pop up all over the radio dial on college stations. College stations here should be able to play CBC programs too. See above.
3. Focus internal production on: News and Documentary
A public broadcaster sinks or swims on its news and documentary programming – at least that’s where it’s reputation lies. Stop trying to make dismal “entertainment” programming. It sucks. Just stop it. You are wasting money. (Mostly).
4. Increase budget for external Canadian productions
On radio, much of the good stuff is done by external producers. I don’t know much about TV, but I bet you buying good Canadian-produced programming is a more efficient way of getting good stuff than trying to produce it yourself. And this does just as much to support Canadian culture etc as fat CBC production budgets would.
5. Focus the CBC’s Internet strategy and hire more people who understand the Internet
CBC.ca is getting better, but still isn’t good enough. See point 1. The focus should be: providing tons of good content online, and making it easy to find. Set up a conference with the world’s leading public broadcasters: BBC, Australian Broadcasting Corp, CBC, NPR …and try to figure out what best practices are. Share your experience.
6. CBC Labs
Open content shows? Kids with cameras? Young producers showcase? CBC documentary contests? etc. CBC has done some good stuff here, but lets open it up more. “CBC Labs” with a mandate to “explore the evolving landscape of broadcasting in the Internet age.” Budget, oh, say, $2 million. RIP Zed & Radio3 … Oh, and: Put it all on the web.
In addition to this, I will do everything in Ouimet’s platform, which makes me 6 better.
Great points, all of them. Agree whole heartedly.
I like that you just lifted Ouimet’s platoform and made it a subset of your own. Can you do that? Can you GPL a platform? Or CC-sharealike it? ;)
You’re right about the CBC producing bad entertainment. I’ve been having to turn off my radio more and more – especially this summer.
I also agree with most of it, although the R.I.P. for Radio 3 is unnecessary. Radio 3 is actually ahead of the CBC curve – they have a blog where they actually engage in a two way conversation with listeners, everything is online (you don’t need Sat. Radio to listen), they do 3 audio podcasts, 1 video podcast and regularly post interviews and studio sessions and it is fairly open – a wide variety of Canadian artists from all over the country get airplay, not just the better known acts – it has one of the most diverse playlists on radio. It’s sad that they don’t have their slot on radio 2 anymore but I think that they are doing remarkable things within their budget. I’m actually trying to get them on CBC Television r3tv.publicbroadcasting.ca
Oh, they also have a really neat tool coming that will let you customize your playlist and take it with you – have a look at my facebook profile http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=676355194 – scroll down below the “Information” section.
At any rate – no RIP, if anything they should be asking the people at R3 for advice.
Sorry I should have clarified: RIP R3’s ahead-of-curve website, and play on radio waves.
but: long live R3 as flagship of a) indie music play b) web success c) young audience attraction. the sorts of things CBC should support rather than cut.
indeed R3 is evidence that some great things can happen at CBC, and should be encouraged not discouraged.
R3: I remember discounting them completely a few years ago when their site was completely flash. I have zero tolerance for that shit. Maybe i’ll have to give them another try now that it’s just *mostly* flash.
Podcasts: Unfortunately, CBC radio has been cutting deals with a contract that assumes single airs with possible re-runs, but has no accounting for podcasting etc, so any time there is paid talent or any kind of contract all old programming is legally unnavailable for podcasting. What needs to happen is that someone at the CBC legal department clues in and changes the documents so that they say something like “oh yeah, and you came on CBC to get heard, so let us podcast it too to reach the whole audience”. Who would have that as the clincher in not signing?
Having hosted some live audio streams at an event, I can attest that it is a lot cheaper to serve an mp3 file as a podcast 100 times than to have 100 people listening to a live stream. The way the bandwidth gets chewed up with live streams, and the way you ahve to constantly have enough bandwidth available for the maximum possible listeners means that the live streams are both expensive as hell (compared to a comparable podcast listenership) and sound TERRIBLE (they lower the quality so they can up the max number of listeners), especially compared to nice clean mp3s. Pushing the streams on people is so self-defeating it hurts.
Great list!
Jer is right about the rights issues, but it isn’t just legal shortsightedness. Try going to a TV producer and telling them to come up with an extra 20 per cent (or whatever) in their budget just in case those web guys want to do something with it, but it won’t count in their Neilsens, and it won’t make TV ad revenue. Or tell the corp bean counters to cough up an extra 20 per cent for each show (and therefore make 20 per cent fewer shows to put on the television.) I personally think they should, but I don’t get to make the decision.
As for “who would have that as the clincher in not signing?” Lots of people. ACTRA, for starters. They won’t allow anything from CBC with actors on the web. At all. Zero. Shortsighted too, but not just CBC’s problem.
Downloads are great, but you really do need to offer streams for live listening too. Not really fair to tell the web listeners to wait until tomorrow for their news.
all great suggestions!
what do you make of the CBC’s attempt to control their employees who blog?
http://www.insidethecbc.com/bloggingrules
i personally take it to be a rather loud declaration of their ignorance re: new media & the web.
@jer:
-R3’s current website sucks, their last one was flash & conceptual, but should have been morphed into a nice standards-based site (instead of getting killed)…but they have done wonders in podcasting, which is what I care about .
-contracts: as president I would change the contracts. everything podcasted, everything on youtube (and elsewhere), otherwise, you are fired.
-streaming: I don’t really care about streaming, but if it’s being used then my CBC will keep it up. if streaming is expensive, then maybe the streaming division will be pay-as-you-listen. (just kidding).
-oh yeah: everything bit torrented too.
@paul:
-the nice thing about being president is you can say: we are going to podcast everything and put everything on youtube. if you disagree you’re fired. … ditto for complaining about Nielsens. or rather, this should be CBC policy through and through, and not be left to the individual producers. surely it’s not a producer’s job to figure out the distribution means of their product?
-and I cannot believe that anyone needs 20% more budget to convert to mp3/mov and press: “upload now.” Hell I’ll do it for free for my favourite shows.
-20% fewer shows: given the crap produced maybe a 50% cut in number of programs, with a corresponding 50% increase in budget for good shows should happen. i have a long list to start my scalpel attack.
-ACTRA: this is probably more complex, but one of the things I would do as president is host the conference: “Public Broadcasting in the Digital Age” and invite ACTRA to attend, and try to work this out. I suspect there is a solution to be found, but one must be found.
-streams, see above…but what about those of us who *want* to listen tomorrow. right now we are discriminated against.
@matt: says that doc: “Such blogging should be done on an employee’s own time, posted through a personal e-mail address and not channeled through CBC/Radio-Canada’s e-mail system.” wtf???? or, translation: “we do not know what the Internet is, however we would like to violate your rights as Canadian citizens anyway.”
(That being said, I think CBC is within it’s rights to have a blogging policy. I think an employer is right to demand that it’s employees not do things in public that harm the employer … they already have a code of conduct for journalists, and there’s no reason why that shouldn’t extend to blogging. still “must get approval from your supervisor” is a bit much. but if i had an employee working for collectik who kept a blog about how shitty collectik was, i would fire them. the problem here that CBC needs to figure out is how to deal with the balance between legitimate criticism – which is healthy – and something more negative and damaging…and bloggers need to use their judgment about that themselves).
re: streaming – Of course, I wasn’t at all saying that live streaming should be killed, but instead that FORCING interested/curious parties to use it is not only seriously sucky for the users, but self-defeating for CBC, as it costs more and lowers quality. If you could get half the listeners to download mp3’s instead then not only would those listeners like be happier to listen to their favorite show, but those who want the live stream (for news etc) could be offered a higher bitrate and better quality, so they MIGHT ACTUALLY BOTHER.
Right now the stream is so sucky that it’s worth going out and buying a shitty broken stereo that only has a working radio just to listen to CBC, if that’s what you want, though you might stop wanting something if it requires legacy hardware just to hear it.
@jer: yup.
Good dialogue going here! The 20 per cent I mentioned wasn’t the cost of digitizing – hell, any kid can do that. It’s for the unions (musicians, performers, writers) and independent producers and content creators (read: almost all CBC-TV programming outside of news and sports) who have traditionally held rights outside of first TV broadcast, and made money on them. They want to be paid more to give away more rights, and who can blame them?
You are right that it should be a corporate-wide policy to buy these rights or nothing at all, and I guess if ACTRA says no, well, we air nothing with acting in it. And yeah, there’s some crap on the air – but what’s your plan to fill the 20 per cent of dead air you’ve created? Repeats?
re: 20% … ah. i see. i think that contract needs renegotiation! There is a legit concern for ACTRA that says: “we act, you pay us money based on showing the show on TV… and if you start making more money using our stuff on the web, then we should get a cut of that.” which is fair (… although, another thing I would do as CBC prez is kill advertizing). but there is a deal to be done here. right now ACTRA’s stance means the content isn’t getting out to the net, which is bad for the audience, bad for CBC and bad for actors. so nobody wins here.
But to the extent that CBC would make ad revenues from online stuff, I agree that ACTRA deserves a cut.
PROPOSAL: do a one-year agreement with ACTRA to try a new CBC internet strategy, and see what the result is, and agree to keep in discussions all the way through to come up with a sensible solution for everyone.
re: what would I fill the air with? podcasts. how about all the fantastic podcasts from BBC, Australian Radio National, NPR etc that I now listen to instead of the CBC? how about doing a deal with all of them to swap content? and: put out a call for podcast documentaries, shows etc, find good exciting DIY stuff from young producers. etc. And, I would fund good shows instead of trying to attract an audience that is never going to come by putting moronic pablum on the radio (Freestyle, Sounds Like Canada). In short I think it’s a bad argument to say: “we are forced to make our programming crap because we have so many hours to fill.” CBC is choosing to make crappy programming because someone is making crappy programming choices. and, sadly, the result is that generally, no one is listening.
but anyway, if I get put in place as president, my first order of business will be to convene all the CBC bloggers to have a pow wow about how to move forward – and Ouimet can participate via pseudonymous IM.
well, I like some of these ideas.
but there’s a reason some of these things haven’t been done; in particular the first two are non-starters.
as for (1), the rights issues haven’t been resolved, and they probably won’t be anytime soon. You can probably get stuff like The National and The Fifth Estate up and going online okay, but anything else will just be cannon fodder for lawyers.
However, a simple one-week radio archive would be nice. Surely SOCAN would be able to find a way to agree to this sort of thing.
as for (2), the fact is that campus stations in Canada *don’t want* CBC programming. Their mandate, unlike many US college stations, is to be an alternative to what’s on the dial already. (and you’ll probably find that a lot of campus/community radio staffers hold the cbc in high contempt… either that, or they wind up quitting campus radio to work for the ceeb.) An early inception of Radio 3 tried offering a show (for free!) to campus stations across the country. Guess how many accepted?
(4) I’m puzzled, because most radio production is done in-house, and it’s television where stuff gets farmed out more. So the situation you’re looking for exists already.
As for the internet, I have an even more radical proposal: enough fooling around with wepages, and get back to broadcasting.
Hi Helen,
Let me take these step by step “the rights issues haven’t been resolved, and they probably won’t be anytime soon. You can probably get stuff like The National and The Fifth Estate up and going online okay, but anything else will just be cannon fodder for lawyers.”
I think the CBC needs to look at some short term agreements – give them a percentage at first and renegotiate next year, or two years from now. See where things go and what the business model starts to look like.
“you’ll probably find that a lot of campus/community radio staffers hold the cbc in high contempt”
No, not in my experience anyway. Most of the campus/community radio people I know or have talked to like the CBC. They do, obviously, want to do their own programming. But they have nothing against the CBC and the right offer might sway them to air some CBC programming.
“As for the internet, I have an even more radical proposal: enough fooling around with wepages, and get back to broadcasting.”
Um…you’re still thinking that they are different things. They’re not, or soon won’t be. Your TV, Radio, Telephone, DVD player, cell phone, computer … will soon all be one and the same – just different sized versions of the same thing. To think of them any differently at this stage is suicide.
> As for the internet, I have an even more radical proposal: enough fooling around with wepages, and get back to broadcasting.
Your use of the word “webpages” to describe the concrete form of “the internet” gives away your lack of knowledge of how the “internet” works and underscores what Justin said about media convergence. The Internet is a pipe, through which any information can travel. Right now, the main great stream of information is through HTTP, a.k.a. “the web”, and the most common form of textual information transfer is through “pages” viewed in a browser. For proof that web pages are on the downslide compared to other information streams you only have to look as far as podcasts, which use http to transfer but dont’ have to involve pages at all (eg. downloading through itunes).
Your call to return to broadcasting effectively discounts all of the infrastructure changes that are helping us do more with media. By ‘broadcasting” do you mean only broadcasts that travel through public airwaves in innefficient and low-quality formats? Like, free wireless tv which only gives me CTV at my place? Because ‘the internet’ comes through cable pipes just like cable, and CBC is only ‘broadcast’ because cable carries the CBC signal along with the others. Would you say that people using TiVo-type PVR technologies with CBC is wrong as well? Such technologies just do the same thing for TV that CBC could, EASILY, do for their radio listeners using their web/internet presence.
Man, ur getting my media-muscle all riled up with that crap. At least let the CBC TRY to get new technologies right before forcing them to only use outdated modes of production and distribution.
hey, now… I’m all for streams and archives and broadcast like stuff over the internet.
I specifically said “web pages” for a reason. What I’m not in favour of is robbing core services to pay for stuff that’s not clearly in our mandate… for example a lot of the print-style news & arts coverage on cbc.ca.
I would argue that the “news & arts coverage” is the core of the CBC’s mandate – the “if nothing else you must do..” part of the mandate – if you’re going to gather the news anyway, putting it in print form on CBC.ca costs nothing compared to any other form of media.
Point taken about “as for the internet”, though as Justin points out, isn’t that news the best thing CBC does? I know they’re MY preferred source of text news for canada on the web.
Technically, they may be dodging the mandate on some level by using text, but the concept of “broadcast” in this case, AFAIC, refers to (or should) “we put it out there and as many people as possible use it, without having more production/distribution costs”, in the sense that printing newspapers might be considered innefficient etc, rather than in the sense of constraining it to non-textual communication.
An even bigger question is whether CBC should do what they’re supposed to do (moving-pictures and audio) or what they’re good at (assuming that more people agree with me and Justin about the news on cbc.ca than dont’)
I personally enjoy Newsworld and find it highly watchable compared with the rest of the shlub on free-CBC, and the text part of the cbc.ca site satisfies the same need, non-corporate-biased news without an activist agenda (to mix with activist sources ;). I think the reason that text so popular online is mostly that it was always been easier to deliver high quality text over the internet than video/audio.
If anything, what CBC needs is to synchronize it’s online text content with it’s currently-offline audio/video content, so that now that text isnt’ the only thing you can get over the internet properly (because of things like flash video and podcasting) CBC can fully use the medium, rather than directing people back to the dying media that CBC and it’s contractors are used to.
justin, in fact the print elements of cbc.ca cost a lot. the people who write those articles are generally not doing duplicate radio or TV pieces.
Sure, just like those people who make radio and TV aren’t generally doing print. It’s good to port stuff onto other delivery mechanisms (which is really what a lot of the podcasting is) but there’s also room for specialization in each media line.
Jer is exactly right – there is a need to meld together the audio/video/text together better, but that really is the gist of what’s going on – take the things the corp is good at and put it onto the platforms people are migrating to. You have to be careful about bandying about the word “print” like we’re making newspapers and straying completely from the mandate (which was mostly written before any of us were born.)
And cost is all relative – a web reporter probably makes the same as a radio reporter, but it’s a little alarmist to say the web is “stealing” from core resources. The entire new media operations combined make up a little over 1 per cent of the total staff.
I’ll have more to say, but for now, in response to this:
“The entire new media operations combined make up a little over 1 per cent of the total staff.”
I say: wtf? you must be joking!
I’m not. Last year Sue Gardner reported the number of new media employees as 160. The CRTC put the staff at 10,730 in 2005. That’s 1.49 per cent.
I’m sure both numbers have fluctuated, and new media is responsible for its share of those employees that keep the whole corporation afloat, but still, you could shelve the whole online operation – web pages, streams, archives and podcasts and the rest – and it wouldn’t change the financial picture much. And that doesn’t even account for the revenue it generates, or the eyeballs it reaches.
Heather in saint john: “in particular the first two are non-starters.”
HM: if by “non-starter” you mean no one has bothered to make this a priority to figure it out, i would agree. if by “non-starter” you mean “it cannot be done” then I disagree. It’s at #1 for a reason, because I think it is a fundamental requirement of a public broadcaster to broadcast its wares to the public. and the internet is probably the most powerful means of distribution we’ve yet seen. so it should be top priority to make sure that CBC understands and uses the internet intelligently. (vs investing in a commercial venture like satelite radio).
So if there is negotiation to be done with ACTRA, SOCAN etc, then lets get going, at the highest level. But anything not caught under those silly rules should be slapped on the web post-haste.
Oh, and how about special copyright rules for CBC – as they have with other public broadcasters in the universe.
HISJ: “as for (1), the rights issues haven’t been resolved, and they probably won’t be anytime soon. You can probably get stuff like The National and The Fifth Estate up and going online okay, but anything else will just be cannon fodder for lawyers.”
HM: so: lets get the easy stuff up right now, and get our sleeves rolled up to deal with the other stuff now.
HISJ: “However, a simple one-week radio archive would be nice. Surely SOCAN would be able to find a way to agree to this sort of thing.”
HM: you are hereby invited onto my negotiating team.
HISJ: “as for (2), the fact is that campus stations in Canada *don’t want* CBC programming. Their mandate, unlike many US college stations, is to be an alternative to what’s on the dial already. (and you’ll probably find that a lot of campus/community radio staffers hold the cbc in high contempt… either that, or they wind up quitting campus radio to work for the ceeb.) An early inception of Radio 3 tried offering a show (for free!) to campus stations across the country. Guess how many accepted?”
HM: interesting. i don’t know anything about this… but I was just pleased that in the US that good NPR content seemed to be available all over the place. I’d sure be sad to see the crap (freestyle, Q, SLC) getting on campus stations, but it’d be nice to have Ideas, Writers & Co, etc…but I bet you dollars for donuts that campus stations can’t just start broadcasting this content without getting written approval of CBC. which is what I think should happen.
Also a note: NPR seems to know what it’s doing. it makes good programming, across a range of topics etc. but it makes sense, and 9 times out of 10 an NPR station is going to feed you something worth listening to. CBC, on the other hand, gives me maybe a 2:10 good:bad ratio. CBC seems to want to be everything for everyone, and so ends up being not much to mostly nobody. why? bad programming decisions fostered by uncertainty about what the hell CBC is doing, exacerbated by a desire to make “commercially-viable programming.” which, of course, it mostly is not.
so: make good content, and make it available as widely as possible.
HISJ: “I’m puzzled, because most radio production is done in-house, and it’s television where stuff gets farmed out more. So the situation you’re looking for exists already.”
HM: this comes from a couple of good radio shows (O’reilly on advertising, and White Coat, Black Art) both of which i *think* are external productions, both of which are excellent, better than most programming on CBC radio. It comes from the belief that probably a management-heavy beast like CBC is not very good at coming up with innovative programming, though when they get good things, they do it well. or, CBC is making bad programming decisions … and maybe freeing things up to get more fresh voices in there would be a good idea.
i have no comments really about TV, as it’s a mystery to me.
HISJ: “As for the internet, I have an even more radical proposal: enough fooling around with wepages, and get back to broadcasting.”
HM: OK I think all has been said above already. But to reiterate: the CBC’s job is to provide important Canadian content to Canadians, generally of a stripe that is not available thru commercial providers. So, firstly, the web is a distribution channel like any other, and anything CBC does should be put on the web. Otherwise, CBC is not doing its job of broadcasting to all Canadians (for instance, me).
as for “enough fooling around with web pages” … show me a successful news-based company/entity who takes this approach, and I will show you a company/entity that will be gone in 5 or 10 years, if it has not already faded into irrelevance. the web is not some “other” and unimportant sidelight, it will become (is becomming) the prime means of all media distribution in some form or other, eventually. to ignore it is suicide.
if CBC’s core services are getting cannibalized by anything, it’s by shitty productions of shitty shows targeted to an non-existent audience.
Or, enough fooling around, lets get back to making the best stuff in the world, and make sure it gets to people in whatever medium they choose to get it.
And to reiterate: there are many successful public broadcasters doing all sorts of much more interesting things than CBC, namely: Australian Broadcasting Corp (whose line-up of excellent podcasts should make CBC weep with shame), BBC, NPR, Radio New Zealand. Let’s talk more with them, and see if CBC can’t help map out a strategy to make public broadcasting stronger and better and more important for all the citizens of the globe.
The BBC iPlayer may be relevant to this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayerbeta/
Let’s you keep programs for a short time – not burn them to disk though. (Win XP only at the mo – so I can’t try it. Many deeply resent this WinXPness)
I’d be interested to know if a Canadian could get it working.
BBC don’t give their stuff away on YouTube – I suspect that they show it free-to-air in the UK, and then subsidise costs by selling it abroad. YouTube would kill that. They also have to pay the actors repeat fees.
As far as web-distribution models, I think the Comedy Central Motherload (http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/) system is a much better example than the controversy-embroiled BBC madness. It uses a customized youtube type flash player to show recent videos, while also forcing you to sit through ads between clips (one ad per two or three short videos). It works amazingly well and on all platforms, and the ads actually end up getting seen.
TABULA RAZA.
Terminate all contracts.
Fire the lawyers and get new ones.
Terminate “entertainement” production. Beef up editorial.
Make an anouncement: “I CAN HAS PIPEZ AND AIRWAVEZ. PLEASE COME CLOG THEM.”
I make a mean molotov… ;)
just two quick rejoinders:
ABC Australia makes the most boring radio shows ever. And the CBC rebroadcasts the worst of them on the overnight service.
And when I say that the online services rob from the core services, I speak from experience; I’ve been on the radio side for 17+ years, and I can tell you that the funding for new media has been carved out of the other services: cbc budgets have gone down, not up.
Please hazard a guess at, for example, the annual price tag for the old Radio 3 webpage. And then multiply it several times: we’re talking at least a million dollars. Now ask yourself: have radio shows been getting better in the past 10 years, or worse?
re: Australia Radio National, I don’t know what CBC carries overnight, but, for my money:
-The Science Show is the best science show going
-The Book Show is one of the best author/book shows around (and incidentally carries tons of Cancon from the Blue Met festival)
-All in the Mind is probably the best radio show i’ve heard
-Late Night Live is always a treat to listen to…
-Philosopher’s Zone …. is the only radio show I know of dedicated to philosophy, which is extraordinary.
re: Budgets … you speak from 17+ yrs of experience of working in radio, watching bugets and quality shrink. that’s fair enough. but in a billion dollar org, you cannot look at your budgeting in such a narrow sense. CBC has a mandate to produce good Canadian content, and spread it to Canadians (among other things). so you have to look at the whole operation and ask: does this help us achieve our mandate or not. i argue that ignoring the web is suicide, and probably illegal (cf the Canada broadcast act). so if you can’t ignore it, you have to do something with it. with TV Radio and Web, you have 3 divisions, serving different markets, with different purposes. But those 3 distribution means are a reality, and to ignore one because you’ve always had the other 2 is short-sighted, and … well … bad.
eg, R3 is consistently one of the most popular podcasts on the net – at least in Canada, promoting all sorts of canadian indie music across the globe. good on them. their website may have been expensive – too expensive, sure – but it was innovative and interesting. it needed to change anyway, to evolve with the web – and ditch the flash. instead it got canned (more or less). was it worth a million bucks? probably not. but R3 in general probably is.
but as mentioned previously, i have a few radio shows i’d hit with a scalpel without any qualms. i don’t know enough about TV to say.
but i would suggest that having a public broadcaster pumping out purchased foreign commercial content, in order to sell ad time (competing w commercial broadcasters), in the age of cable, probably doesn’t make much sense.