The 'new' news at CBC
Dan Say
and none authoritative like the "interim publisher"
Just trying to be cheap and feed the television maw for
pictures.
Sorry CBC, radio does it better and faster and with more
authority.
Global is down to 40 cents today CGS.A.TO so you might
buy a newspaper or 10 along with extra channels on the
cheap if the Aspers want to bail out.
Unveiling of CBC News Renewal Project posted by Anonymous
From: Jennifer McGuire
It's time to unveil the work we've been doing around the CBC News Renewal
project. Join us on Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET for a look at the work that has
been done so far. It's the beginning of a process that will involve many of
you in the months to come.
Staff in Toronto is invited to join us in Studio 41 on the 10th floor. The
presentation will be available for staff in the Centres through closed circuit
on Channel E.
We'll also take your questions both in studio and by phone. If you would like
to ask a question during the Question & Answer period, here are the numbers to
call:
-1-888-789-9572 (outside Toronto)
-416-695-7806 (Toronto)
-Pass code for callers is 36182#
Please join Richard Stursberg, Todd Spencer, the CBC News leadership team and
me. We look forward to discussing this new chapter in the evolution of CBC
News.
Jennifer McGuire
Interim Publisher
http://teamakers.blogspot.com/2008/12/unveiling-of-cbc-news-renewal-project.
html?showComment=1228321980000#c4657948165275221750
Dan Say
(cheap, cheap) news gets a makeover and
priority as seen by Stursberg and his yes-minions
CKO-All News all the time, remember?
SRC is the model if you consider
"Because of the strength of its brand, we’re stripping it
across seven days a week starting September 2009.
This means that Saturday Report and Sunday Report
will be replaced."
Shorter National, stripped across the week as SRC
does, local means (Montreal there, Toronto on
English side)
No one will watch. Sunday and Saturday shows
dead. It's the CNN model (250,000 normally,
6 million in crises) all over again.
Dull, dull and now senior reporters or analysis.
Canada is foreign but the CBC ain't going to go
overseas, or reflect that in lives of reporters.
Make CBC Radio its own news service, they do
a better job, and buy Canwest Global at 40 cents
and get newspapers in addition.
News renewal presentation
http://newsrenewal.vox.com/library/post/news-renewal-presentation.html
* Dec 3, 2008 at 1:12 PM
* Post a comment
Marcia Young of The World This Hour introduces Jennifer McGuire, Todd Spencer,
exec director of news content, Jonathan Witten, Jane Inito, Cynthia Kinch,
Neil Morrison. We’ll also hearing from Richard Stursberg, John Cruickshank –
“he’s here and he’s just back from American Thanksgiving.”
Setting a course for CBC News in the future. Based on a lot of research with
you. For flagships like National, World Report, CBC.CA, local services. Also
be changes to the way we gather news on all platforms. (Gives teleconference
numbers.)
McGUIRE: I have to start with an apology. I’m a hacking, coughing mess at the
moment. I just wanted to start by talking about what today is about and what
it’s not about. Today really is about us revealing and sharing with you what
we think is the strategic direction forward for CBC News. It’s not about
revealing the end stage, what programs will look like. You own that work. Our
work in looking for CBC News in the future. That’s what today is about – to
share our thinking, to fully engage in this process as it moves forward.
STURSBERG: I just would like to say one little thing to begin with. We’re
going to try to show you the total architecture, if you will, the blueprints
for what the news is gonna look like. I think it’s very important to keep this
conversation to ourselves, because this would have tremendous competitive
advantage if they found out where we’re going.
I know it’s been a very, very busy, even crazy, time, given the astonishing
amount of news that’s going on over the last while (Olympics, Mellissa Fung,
elections.) But I also want to thank all of you for your considerable efforts
in this areas. As you know, we owned the federal-election night and we owned
it absolutely flat-out. The National exceeded the target we set this year. The
local shows are doing better this year than last year. We’ve just set new
records in radio. World Report is number one in the country and this is the
best book ever for CBC Radio. Online, CBC.CA continues to develop among the
most popular news sites in the world – in the country.
I think you should all be very proud of what you’ve been doing. We certainly
are. But I want to emphasize one very important thing: This is a good-news
day. None of what we are doing here with respect to news renewal is a reaction
it (the economic crisis). CBC News is and will remain strong, and in fact I
would describe it as absolutely mission-critical to both CBC News and the CBC
brand. John Cruickshank has done an absolutely fasntastic job of building on
our plans for future success. (His) good work will continue on without delay
(even after he leaves).
Our commitment to the new CBC News will be the top priority for CBC English
Service in the next three years. We will do what we must to ensure that CBC
News renewal is a success.
McGUIRE: We thought it was important today that John Cruickshank have a chance
to speak to the change project. John? (Applause.)
CRUICKSHANK: I think that makes me publisher emeritus for a little while
anyway. (13 months ago: No news organization where all the parts are
functioning together.) We’re going to have a structure that makes some sense.
Began a process to decide what public broadcasting should be in this country
across all platforms to depend and diversify the voice CBC has.
We also understood that our audience is changing and the way they consume news
is changing very, very dramatically. (Most effective way to do that.) Started
with some research. This was the most effective research I’ve ever seen. This
gave us insight that we’ve been able to build actions on (to) directly target
the audiences we want to get to. And of course many of you have been a part of
the process and part of the beginning of the tactics that will take us to the
next stage. This is a plan that I most wholeheartedly endorse. It’s a plan
that I began to develop in concert with you that will get us from a series of
great programs to being a great news service. More feet on the street and will
allow us more effectively to talk to Canadians about what engages them most in
a continuous way. Target our reserouces where they need to be targeted in the
future – to CBC News.ca and to Newsworld. It’s a plan that will work and be
effective as we go forward.
As you can imagine, all the senior news people are anxious to get it
implemented, but we’ll be watching from the sidelines – but with enormous
enthusiasm for what we’re going to do. I will tell you it was a long time ago
that Mansbridge started to needle me on this. (Still a great reporter in our
country and our organization.) (Thanks everybody especially f“for all your
kindnesses to me.”)
McGUIRE: Just to remind you again about sort of the agenda this afternoon,
we’ll be presenting for our plans forward. This is about building on success.
Wheat we’re trying to do today is create a plan to deal with the changed news
environment, different ways people are consuming (her phone rings) news, take
a step outside of ourselves and look to the future in 10 years and see if
we’re where we should be.
So going back to the research. What we see is that news overall has a category
(unclear): People who consume news are telling us that you’re all sort of in
the middle. We think there is real differentiation between what CBC provides
and others do, people don’t see that differentiation.
People tell us what they want has changed. And it doesn’t fit into a 9 to 5
model or a Monday to Friday model. News is a 24/7 reality in the minds of
people.
People more and more aggregating. They don’t get their news from one show
anymore, from one platform anymore. These are all themes in the research that
we felt we had to deal with. In the future, it’s entering the digital phase.
If you look at your own habits, you know that it’s true. It’s changed. We used
to set our dials. We’re now much more an audience of news grazers. (Some
problem with slides.) You can see right now that people are migrating across
platforms. This is Canadian news consumers. Red are the Canadian news
consumers we don’t reach. We reach only half of them.
Opportunity to convert audience across the green and across platforms but also
the imperative of chasing the news consumers that we don’t have. Argue from a
public-broadcasting argument – most of our news audience is an older audience,
we skew to a different part of Canada. From a business or revenue perspective.
Only half of news consumers use us. That’s of course a significant finding for
us.
How do audiences see us? Oh, you lost the slide. OK. The truth of the matter
is we delineated, by attribute, things that people take the news for. We
measured CBC, CNN, Global, CTV, and we found there is some variation among the
networks. CTV scores a little bit higher on friendly, we scored higher on
depth, but all in all consumers feel pretty much the same an the mark is a B–
or a C. Not bad, but nobody (is on top), and we expected much higher scores in
terms of our relationship with Canadians.
(Yet more trouble with slides.) We also see when we measure drivers of how
people connect with us emotionally, you see CBC is the red line, CTV is the
blue diamonds and Global is grey. You see middling scores, 6 and a half, 7, in
terms of us making people feel well informed. These are fairly soft scores.
When we map drivers against what Canadians say they want, (it’s similar). They
want the real story, for us not to take sides, for us to present all sides,
inform about Canada, as you’d expect. What you see is what the audience wants,
how they rate us, and the competition.
The biggest gap are around real stories, presents all sides, not take sides.
We’ve seen this in other research – that there’s cynicism for what we do and
an appetite to cut through and create sort of meaning and understanding. We
know from research that we are well positioned to achieve this. Mandate
matters. We can achieve delivering audiences against those.
In terms of engagement, we have to do a better job in a different kind of
competition, that’s what they’re telling us. We’re seen as old-fashioned.
Everybody is pretty much in the same place (charismatic, innovative), so it
isn’t a CBC problem, it’s a category problem.
CBC overall, and I just want to show the next slide again – this is how we see
ourselves vs. the competition, and you’ll remember the consumer line was about
6.5 to 7, and we’ll go to the next one, Fred, and this is how we see our
competition. I don’t see this as a bad thing. I want us to be passionate about
what we do. It think the challenge for us is to really understand the
competition and really understand the audience expectation.
The burning bridge for us in all of this is when you measure brand,
relationship people have with us, and ask “How likely are you to use CBC News
in the future?, ” you can see the numbers, and this is consistent by platform,
we’re sitting at 21%. Three years ago, the numbers were (unclear) than that.
So while our numbers are a big success story in terms of loyalty, consistently
we see softening we have to pay attention to.
Position CBC News for the future in three ways:
Position for how people want news, a structural element.
Engagement and how people are interacting with our news. This will be further
put forward in the development process of this exercise.
(There wasn’t a third.)
We have to rethink some of the assumptions in our organization. Currently we
have newsgathering designed for programs. Built around servicing The National
by and large, so Newsworld would be last in line for priorities and online not
there (at all). In the future world, we see a stream that feeds the consumer’s
appetite: Newsworld, CBCNews.CA, local news, the hourlies, constantly updated
and refreshed, still within the values but constantly hot 24/7.
Then you have the programs, which are built around “value-add.” This is a
shift in the way we do things. We’ll explore this together – not all the
details are in line – but this is absolutely where we’re going.
SPENCER: (Spoke to over 200 people who worked for CBC News.) What do we need
to do and how do we deliver? We don’t control when people get their news. We
need to be organized around that reality. That means paying attention to a
24/7 news cycle and being able to react.
Position ourselves to deliver coverage 24/7 in all of our centres.
Breaking-news and update model in most of our centres.
Invest in cameras, trucks, to deliver pictures, sound, and text.
Integrate assignment across all platforms, taking a one-news approach to how
we assign. The hub-based assignment process that you’ll learn more about.
Cooperation between local and national assignment desks.
Online will be the first place we break news. They tend to be last in the
line. Shifting to the now for online and Newsworld specifically.
(Catherine Gregory leading work on multiplatform assignment desk.) Have to do
a lot of work before you can evens ay the word “integration.” Two different
languages? computer systems? Can give you two logins, but I don’t even know
how to use the radio one if I work in TV. Two pieces to do right away:
Single assignment desk, collocated 4th floor Toronto. Complete by September
2009. 2 radio studios and 6 radio booths March 2009. Staff start moving in
August 2009.
Local Toronto show CBC News at Six moves to 3rd floor in August 2009 to be
closer to radio colleagues.
Moving workstations: We have multiple cultures here. We want to take the best
of those cultures and put them together. Moving is a (traumatic) process and
we want to be sensitive to that. John Bainbridge is leading that project.
One iNews system that will be used by everyone. Get that done before you do
anything else, you all told us. Upgrades February, training and transition
March. (Missed who’s leading that.)
McGUIRE: Programs. THe National is a success story. People feel stronger about
The National than they do about CBC News in general. Iconic show, iconic host.
Taking that and positioning it for the new world. People don’t get their news
first at 10:00 anymore. John Whitten has been and will continue to be the lead
on the National project. Because of the strength of its brand, we’re stripping
it across seven days a week starting September 2009. This means that Saturday
Report and Sunday Report will be replaced.
MAN: We’re creating an on-demand early national – a ten-minute version
available by 6:00 PM each night. Flexible in length. Updated easily. Push to
cellphones, PDAs, podcasts, anywhere we can find a home for it. Punjabi,
Chinese perhaps. Would Peter be doing those versions? (Laughter.)
Could allow people to create their own kind of programming (later maybe).
Creating a more consistent on-air theme, building the full hour around Peter
and personalities the audience would know. Broaden its appeal. Begins in
earnest in January. Loo, writing, format. How to hold an audience better for
the hour – a real issue for us.
Also build around trying to move the program from an intro/item format to a
nightly live news event. (Like election night) when Peter is around moving
about and creating excitement on the air. Taking attributes of that program
and baking them into the process. [Holograms?]
People aren’t as engaged as we’d like them to be. Will create engagement. More
consistent on-air team of personalities. Transparency – you see a little of
this in the National now, telling people how we got the information and what
we do and don’t know.
Audience growth strategies. Keep the audience we now have.We don’t want to
lose the audience we have. What we’re really look at specifically is to target
areas like Toronto, Vancouver, by sharing local reporters. Specific, targetted
attempt to grow audience.
Local news. A new National will have a local-news anchor that starts near the
end of the hour and rolls over the top of the hour, though we haven’t finished
that development process.
McGUIRE: Decision to go with a seven-day National has nothing to do with the
quality of the (weekend shows). What do we have to do? 24/7 is what. That’s
what led us to the decision that we came to. This is not a value decision.
It’s purely a strategic one.
World Report: The most-listened-to show on radio. Best share ever. 1.7 million
listening to talk radio whom we aren’t reaching. We reach a healthy share of a
very narrow demographic, mostly 50 to 65+. World Report – strong brand, but
we’re not seeing the kind of relationships we really want in terms of how
people feel about us.
(Tasks:) Grow 35–49(-year-olds). Digital world. A world where polka aren’t
hearing news on radio first.
BRITISH-ACCENTED WOMAN: [Missed first two minutes of remarks.] (Will lead in
some way.) A very thinly resourced program at the moment. OUr radio pie is
actually shrinking, and digital is growing. ANd there’s an enormous potential
for us in mobile. CBC Radio news switching to CBC Audio News, think of it as a
way you can use it and push it out to other platforms and cellphones and audio
widgets, it changes the nature of how you think of that package of news. Ten
minutes of program was probably a good length, a very usable length, for
digital media.
There’s also a need (to fit) with morning shows. They feel sometimes that
World Report doesn’t quite fit their style. They feel the own that space much
more in their regions. Ten-minute show allows us to have our information and
regional headlines right slam up against World Report and put us on an equal
footing with highly commercial radio markets to allow us to do ten on the :10,
a huge factor in the morning. Allows us to challenge the commercial spaces now
given a ten-minute newscast.
Ensure there’s always a driving and a sensibility to World Report. Total of
four editions in each region, 5 AM, add one on weekends (6, 7, 8, 9 AM).
Making that emotional connection with audiences, especially 35–49, capturing
the real story. Ensuring that personal relevance is embedded in stories we
choose to d. Taking account of the makeup of a contemporary Canada. Affects
the way we align our worldview. Think of Mumbai – that would have played well
in the central region here and also in British Columbia and also in Quebec
where it had particular resonance. Our plan is to update those programs more
often and play more specifically to each region.
Editorial resources. Mumbai – should we actually have a presence in India? And
when you look at the contemporary makeup of Canada, that would look like
something we’d need consider quite seriously .
Much more contemporary sound, greater range of story treatments. Chris Hall
doing his fabulous early-morning hits. Economic reporters live in the morning.
Wonderful CBC characters, rich storytelling, but a greater range of it.
Greater emotional range, and also the serious and funny on each ten-minute
newscast. World Report: A heritage property that we have going forward. World
Report: A hot property.
McGUIRE: Personal relevance comes up again and again. CBC News matters to
Canadians. When we ask them personally if it matters to them personally,
that’s where we start getting disconnect. It’s a theme that keeps coming up
again in the research.
Newsworld. Again, an audience success story. We’re the number-one news
network, 6 million viewers a week – 2/3 are 50+, half over 55, half of those
over 65, mostly in Ontario. Audience satisfaction and loyalty. Even those who
use Newsworld the most (say other stations are their favourites). In 2010, the
carriage (requirement) comes up for Newsworld, and what is (required today)
becomes a choice then.
It’s really important we invest in Newsworld and give the talented team a
chance to turn it into a news network that’s hot 24/7. We’re one of the oldest
specialty channels in the country with awareness levels that don’t match TSN
or some of the newer arrivals.
Position as a hot network 24/7. Appetite for transparency and the real story,
repositioning it in news – making it at the front of the line so it can be
constantly evolving and breaking news as it stands. We’re also rebranding it.
Again: CBC Newsworld, no awareness.
WOMAN: Been at Newsworld a year and a half. What we plan to do: New branding.
Everything about Newsworld in terms of scheduling changes takes place as of
September 2009. Values of being 24/7, hot, and live. Daytime about live events
and breaking news. Morning news will set the agenda, like World Report.
Stories unfold as they happen. Newsworld will not wait for the definitive word
on anything before we report the story. We’ll tell you what we know when we
know it and tell you how we know it.
Prime time is more personality-driven, context, understanding, opinion,
debate, interaction with audiences. Net investment in the prime-time strategy.
Development there starts in January.
Newsworld and online being the first priority as news breaks. Give the network
an authentic, Canadian feel. Also applies to our intentional bureaus.
Fundamental principle to cover local news stories when they break – propane
explosion in Toronto, shutdown of the subway in Montreal. Survival
information. Inherently interesting to people in those communities and
inherently interesting to people across the country.
Bottom of screen in L shape: Local weather, local news and “survival
information.” Obviously dependent on capital funding and some technical things
that I don’t completely understand.
Changing our presentation style. Less formal. “Far more accessible.”
Transparency, open up the process, pose questions. Like Suhana Meharchand’s
show during the election. She could move around and engage people on the
assignment desk.
Physical space we’re talking about developing is much more open. Host freed
from behind the desk.
Much more modern style in look, tone, language. “The story is developing.
We’re on it. Don’t move away!” 75% of people who watch the channel are
grazers. Grab those people and keep them there.
Strategic relationships with CBC.CA for breaking news and live events.
McGUIRE: We know that the biggest growth is in the CP24-style specialty
channel. (Hopes to get the funding for the L-shaped screen.)
CBCNews.CA: Digital space as complete CBC News brand experience. Peaks at
certain times of the day, different from competitors’. Map it against staffing
and when stuff gets refreshed, you see why. The expectation online is
“constantly updating and fresh.”
More in a local digital presence for CBC News. Hierarchy of viewers’ needs:
Local, national/international, documentary/current affairs. We know from
research we’re underdelivering locally.
Local: One of our strengths and one of our challenges. The message today is an
investment message.
MORRISON: 24/7. Means our coverage capacity will be increased to 24/7 across
the country. Covering off whatever blind spots we have right now.
Full integration of local news resources. Already exists in varying degrees.
Try to bring everybody up to the same level. Lines up around the hub. Local
management of all resources, but against some defined accountabilities and
expectations.
Local online: The first-up for content. Content goes first for online rather
than being held for broadcast. Want to put online a breaking-news ticker – a
landing pad for everything that comes across the assignment desk. Implies a
redesigned local experience.
Extend through the drive period. 6:30 local newscast and a 7:00 blend of
national and local. [He used a radio term and explained it “for non-radio
people.”]
Local news runs across the top of the hour to hold on to the audience.
Position late local TV as being the first up in every market. Builds on
Vancouver’s 11:00. Live reports. Runs around 10 minutes. Heavily formatted.
Local TV news updates beginning at 4 PM all the way to newscast. Live, and
with real updated content.
McGUIRE: Writing a development bible right now for all projects. Full-scale
development happens in January.
Natalie Clancy, CBC Vancouver: Jonathan, how will this 10 minutes work on The
National? (Sounds really exciting.) Last 10 minutes of the program? Right now
we do 5 minutes right at 11:00, but starting earlier sounds brilliant. Local
news beginning for 10 minutes before 11.
A. This will all be modelled in development. Start before 11 when there’s a
natural turn in the audience and carry it over the top of the clock.
Q. Which markets are you thinking? All markets?
[Not answered.]
Q. from woman: I just wanted to ensure that our coverage of aboriginal people
changes as well. Native people, while our numbers may be small, our history
makes us significant, and we occupy land where most of Canada’s wealth comes
from. Land claims here in Ontario are holding up a lot of development here.
The stories we tell are relevant to many Canadians. Don’t reach for the
regular grab bag of drugs, dependency, failure and look for new things such as
success stories in education despite the fact there’s been no new money for
education in ten years and a doubling in population. [Continues for some
time.] (Applause.)
A. I totally agree with you.
Q. from Susan Oakes, CBC News Online: Who’s going to read this on Global
tomorrow?
A. Yeah, it’s a secret from them. And that’s a tricky thing with a news
organization. It’s not, obviously, going to be a secret forever. When
(everything is ready) we’re going to invite them in and show it to them.
There’s a huge amount of work yet to be done. Everybody out there in Global,
in CTV, in CITY would love to know what we’re talking about now, because that
would give them huge advantages in terms of trying to counter what we’re
doing. These are competitively sensitive issues, and I think if we want to
succeed we are more likely to succeed if we are quiet about them.
But we’ve been trying to be much, much more open in terms of what’s going on
in the organization. We gave people a day-long briefing, put them up on iO,
put up second-quarter results. If you can talk openly this way we can all
engage in a much richer and much fuller kind of conversation collectively.
WOMAN: We’re going into a development process. Things might change. We’d like
to tell the CBC story, but would like it to be a concrete story.
Q. from man, possibly Derek Stoffel: We’re working for 18 million different
deadlines already. Talk to us about workload.
A. Assignment desk will handle that. I have no problem with eight CBC
resources being at an event (if we can justify that). (Mentions one news event
where it was decided many platforms could be done by one person. But might
need to assign different people in other cases.) The integration expectation
is not you do something every day for every platform. Internally you can’t be
the one who wanders around the building making sure different places get your
content. The next phase of the hub is supposed to do that, take your soundbite
and put it through the system.
[Ignored another question, which sounded like a plant, about how this is going
to work.]
MANSBRIDGE: You didn’t have to clap. I was asked if I would participate and I
wasn’t told what to say and I didn’t decide what to say (until just now). I
could ask Richard for round two of our discussions from earlier this year.
I guess what I want to say after listening to this and after this great
process of the last few months, I don’t think any department of the
corporation is being asked to adapt to change more than we have, especially
over the last 15 years. Budgetary, technological. We have to handle them at
our own level. Change can be difficult and can hurt sometimes. Change with
research background i s a good thing. Doesn’t mean research will tell you
exactly what to do, but it gives you the tools to discuss, as this group is
already doing, based on the kind of data that’s come up.
Some of that material strikes as as far from the way others perceive us. We
find that odd and we question it. We know none of our competitors do that. So
we are different. But we can’t be blind to the fact that there are things that
are happening in our world, broadcast, online, where our viewers, readers, are
expecting change. In some cases they’re ahead of us.
(Our numbers are good.) Online, they’re almost crashing because there’s so
many people trying to get on. Great organizations don’t stand still. Here
we’ve got data. Work toward some of these changes. I think it’s exciting.
We’ve faced that kind of stuff before, and some of us have been through a lot.
When we were told with a couple of weeks’ notice we were going to 9:00,
changing the format, changing the name, it was based on no research, but we
had to deal with it. Terrible. We all know we can lose an audience. It can
happen overnight and take years to get it back. We have to be careful. But
it’s an exciting time that lies ahead and I’m looking forward to it. That’s
all I have to say.
Q. from John Corcelli, CBC Archives: Renewing Patrick Brown and Don Murray?
A. This is the last place to talk about personalities, but we hope we can
continue our relationship with Don and Patrick.
Q. from man: With a 24/7 news operation, you run into quiet times and where
there’s a struggle to fill the time. How do you reconcile the 24/7 operation
with good, high-quality content?
McGUIRE: We will have newscasts 24/7 on Newsworld but not wall to wall.
Q. from woman about engaging with younger people, not just 35–49s.
McGUIRE: That’s the mean age for talk-radio listeners. When we talk about
broadening the audiences, it’s doing so beyond 50+ and 65+. That’s a loyal
audience for us but we’re a public broadcaster and we’re paid for by all
Canadians. I do believe in programming trends. Be specific enough about who
you’re speaking to. Don’t compromise the journalism, just position it in
places that are relevant to people.
MAN: Traditional TV and radio, for that audience it’s just not there.
MAN 2: Biggest consumers of mobile and Internet-based platforms are younger.
Dan Say
CBC attempt to cut costs of news by closing
Saturday and Sunday shows, even as they hire
more Vice-Presidents and prepare more bonuses.
CBC's Wallyworld to go L-shaped for screen ads
like local cable indices.
It seems like it's all stuff made up while crying
in their scotch at a bar some late night.
MEDIA
CBC to retune its TV news division
GRANT ROBERTSON December 5, 2008 Globe and Mail
CBC is planning to overhaul its television news divisions, moving The National
to seven days a week and revamping CBC Newsworld, after a recent market study
showed some of the public broadcaster's key programs weren't registering with
Canadian viewers.
Saturday Report, a half-hour update between Hockey Night in Canada games, and
Sunday Report, a magazine-style show, will be replaced by The National on
weekends, starting in the fall of 2009.
The staff will likely be reassigned to other shows.
"That's probably a little less than a year away, but that's something that
we're moving towards," CBC spokesman Jeff Keay said yesterday.
The CBC wants to leverage its better-known brands, while backing off others
that have struggled to take hold.
Market surveys indicate TV viewers recognize The National, but lack awareness
of other significant CBC brands such as Newsworld.
"We've done a considerable amount of research on this," Mr. Keay said. "It's
not stuff that we're just thinking up and doing."
Executives are particularly concerned that Newsworld, the cable news channel
CBC launched nearly 20 years ago, still scores poorly in consumer awareness
surveys compared to other long-time specialty channels such as TSN.
Newsworld will be rebranded, and will be given a new look that will see the
video portion of the screen share space with more text and graphics, including
weather and local news reports.
The new look is being compared with Toronto's CP24, a channel that devotes a
significant portion of its screen space to graphics and news. However, it has
not been decided how far CBC will go with that approach on Newsworld.
Such a move could allow for on-screen advertisements, but Mr. Keay said that
hasn't been contemplated yet.
The changes were discussed at an internal meeting Wednesday.
The National may also be converted from a traditional news-desk format to a
less formal structure, executives said.
The staff of Saturday Report and Sunday Report will likely be reassigned to
other shows.
CBC also believes it needs to break news faster.
Its website will be called upon to handle breaking stories first, and
Newsworld will not necessarily wait for the definitive word on a story before
beginning to report, the meeting was told.
The broadcaster said the revamp is strategic, rather than an effort to cut
costs.
Dan Say
CBC is in the tinkering mood again
December 5, 2008 – 4:28 pm | Posted in Opinion, TV |
Someone at CBC has been doing “market research” again, which means a few good
ideas and a lot of really bad ones:
* Replacing “Saturday Report” and “Sunday Report” with “The National”:
Good. It’s your evening news show, why should it have different names on
different days? Sure, it doesn’t have The Mans, but that’s not the end all and
be all of CBC Television
* Rebranding CBC Newsworld: Bad. Anyone who hasn’t heard of Newsworld
either doesn’t have cable or doesn’t use it to get news. Neither of these
things will change with a new name.
* Putting more on-screen graphics on CBC Newsworld: Bad. I mean, there is
some room for improvement in the graphics department, but using CP24 as a
guide is a bad way to start, and the idea of putting a bunch of graphics on
screen like weather reports and news crawlers (does anyone read those things?)
will just make it look like CTV Newsnet, in a bad way.
* De-formalizing The National: To make it more like The Hour? Gonna have
Mansbridge stop wearing ties and give the news while breakdancing? I doubt
people ignore this program because of its formality.
* Reporting rumours: You’re kidding me, right? Quoting directly from the
Globe: “Newsworld will not necessarily wait for the definitive word on a story
before beginning to report.” If that’s true, it means Newsworld’s journalism
standards have taken a major hit.
---------
http://blog.fagstein.com/2008/12/05/cbc-news-tinkering/
Patty Winter
>CBC to retune its TV news division
>
>GRANT ROBERTSON December 5, 2008 Globe and Mail
>Newsworld will be rebranded, and will be given a new look that will see the
>video portion of the screen share space with more text and graphics, including
>weather and local news reports.
Gargghhh....my condolences to my friends in Canada.
Patty
Dan Say
Toronto Globe and Mail story showed a picture of the
local Toronto channel CP24 to show the L-shaped frame
of ads, up and across crawls that might be proposed.
I'd say a CNN model, but put the picture in the upper
left third, and then the rest of the right and bottom are
weather, news, stock crawls or postage stamp sized
indicators of Dow, Weather etc.