Suggestion Time

I've rearanged the bones of the site a bit, to make it more easily navigable, and to build a structure that will support alot more content. I'd like people's overall impressions of the site, and I'd also like suggestions for what to put in a survey - I'll be running one next week. I've added some new podcasts and a few blogs this week, but I'd also like input. Please send me links to your favourite Canadian blogs, podcasts and sources of info (how to sites, broadcasting sites etc - for the learning secion). I won't have much time this weekend but, the room to grow is now huge.

Heritage Committee Transcripts Available!

A big, BIG note of thanks to Antonia Zerbisias and the folks at Friends of Canadian Broadcasting; While Charlie Angus, Sam Bulte, and the Clerks at the Heritage Committee ignored my requests for transcripts of the 'Gang of Four' hearing, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting got them. I'm posting them on the site, take them, print them, read them, pass them around. Click here to download the .pdf!!

CBC Races Toward Commercial Broadcasting

A flurry of recent moves by CBC's current management call into question how much longer Canada will have a national 'public' broadcaster.

CBC's recent placement of advertising in company washrooms, a move as classy as fishing for pennies in a fountain, has been discussed pretty thoroughly. If you add that to a pair of announcements yesterday, it becomes questionable whether current management has any interest in being a public broadcaster any longer.

First came an email from the CMG stating that the CBC is "negotiating to outource national archive sales to a business unit of the BBC." While the BBC is a public broadcaster and partnerships between public broadcasters are common and generally acceptable, outsourcing the sales and marketing of Canadian History to another country is, to say the very least, questionable.

Next came the big one, from the Globe and Mail

AOL Canada Inc. has forged a partnership with CBC that will see the on-line giant sell advertising for the broadcaster's website and tap into its vast pool of video content.

The deal calls for AOL to become the exclusive seller of advertising to CBC's website, beyond the on-line business the broadcaster brings in through its own TV and radio operations.

AOL officials said the two operations will share the advertising revenue generated by the arrangement. Terms were not disclosed for the ad deal, which began in August but was only announced yesterday, along with the video-sharing strategy.

CBC joins a stable of sites that AOL Canada's parent company, America Online Inc., has the exclusive right to sell advertising for, including TimeCanada.com, CNN.com and SportsIllustrated.com.

This, to me, is a deal that falls squarely outside the bounds of public broadcasting and will make it terribly difficult for the task force, called for by the heritage committee to justify additional funds, or even maintain current funding for a broadcaster that is evidently intent on being commercial and competing with other commercial broadcasters.

I can only hope that Our Public Airwaves campaign for 'A New CBC' has some success. If Canadians want a national public broadcaster, dramatic changes will be needed.

Just Because It's Quiet Doesn't Mean Nothing is Going On

Just Because It's Quiet Doesn't Mean Nothing is Going On


Things have been quiet with publicbroadcasting.ca lately but that doesn't mean that nothing is happening. I've added a bit of content, including putting Rick Mercer's blog in the directory , and adding the Ryerson Review of Journalism to the Journalism directory and to the latest journalism feed. I'll be trying to add more to these in the coming days and, as always, feel free to offer suggestions for sites, podcasts, blogs and vidcasts of interest.

I have also included the feed links of various podcasts, blogs and vidcasts so that you can add them to your own sites, blogrolls, etc., if you like and I've put in a steal these feeds page if you'd like to use the publicbroadcasting.ca feeds. The new 'what's on' section includes the newest episodes of podcasts listed in the directory though obviously not the CBC podcasts as free and unsolicited promotion apparently irritates their lawyers. Video casts are also included in the 'what's on' listing, but only commandN is listed there at the moment. Although Etherworks is also listed in the directory the feed from there does not seem to validate.

I'd also like to take a moment to congradulate all of the fine CBC folk who took home Gemini's over the weekend. Most especially Alison Crawford and Conway Fraser who blogged out of Winnipeg to us during the CBC Lockout.