News to you

Big changes are afoot at CBC News, according to a three page insert in Maclean's, faxed to me this evening by a CBC spokesperson when I inquired about the coming overhaul.

The ''across-the board rethinking'' takes effect next Monday, Jan. 9 - although details are sketchy. It is said to affect every aspect of CBC News, including TV, Newsworld, radio and CBC.ca.

Here's what the lobby group Our Public Airwaves says will be among the changes:

In some cities local supper hour news programming that is now at 6:30 p.m. will move to 6 p.m. - jumping ahead of the national news on Canada Now.

In both Edmonton and Montreal, pilots of new hour-long local supper hour news programs will launch.

In the glowing Maclean's piece, which concentrates on the infamous CBC News Study (see here and here), there's no discussion of last year's devastating eight-week lockout of 5,500 staffers nor of dwindling audiences for TV in recent years. There's nothing about how CBC is getting beat by CTV on federal leaders' debate nights, and less about how that lockout cost Radio One a quarter of its audience - although most of it has since been recovered.

Nay, the Maclean's piece is all happy talk about graphics and music with no programming specifics.

Just for the record, nowhere on the relevant Maclean's pages is there any indication that they are indeed advertorial. But they sure smell bought and paid for to this expert (and currently congested) nose.

It seems an awfully strange move to acquire this kind of promotion and not exactly explain what one is promoting. Nowhere does the piece tell me where to tune in and when.

Maybe in this climate, when so many of the media own, or are owned by, TV networks, CBC feels it has to resort to buying any coverage, let alone positive coverage, of itself. After all, CTV and Global can often count on getting it for free from their sister newspaper properties.

Still, it seems that paying for coverage is an odd thing for a journalistic organization to do - and to do it with taxpayer dollars.

Then again, maybe the revamped Maclean's, which appears to be meeting with some resistance from regular readers, is giving the space away for free.

Speaking of Maclean's, as already reported by my Star colleague Martin Knelman, editor-at-large Ann Dowsett Johnston has ankled for McGill University while I'm hearing that assistant managing editor Patricia Hluchy might be joining the Star.

Comments

[Bill Lee]

See the Teamakers blog
for some comments on the
set. Permalink
http://teamakers.blogspot.com/2005/12/new-look-for-newsworld.html
Delayed until 23 Jan for the
main CBC News according to
informants in N&CA because
they are not ready

Burman's last hurrah?

And will the Conservative government
(Hello Bev Oda!) fire Rabinovitch and others?

[Bill Lee]

3 page insert?

Besides how do they do three pages?
it was a 16 page insert in the
current (rush out and read one
on the stands or your local
library) whose cover said to
keep on the stands until 16 January.

And it was all about TV, not about radio.

Why Maclean's? Are they the kind of
viewers the CBC wants?
What about the senior service, Radio?

Why not ads in the Chinese media that Torstar owns?
Why not adverts in national papers?
Why not the first item, the defenestration
of Chandler and Stursberg?

[Antonia Z.]

Bill, I am hacking and wheezing over my keyboard, with a killer sore throat and a low-grade fever. I ain't going nowhere to read Maclean's right now. But I must say I am curious about your Chandler/Stursberg comment so I might bundle up, warm up the car and drive to the drugstore to pick up more Buckley's and a copy.

[Dana]

Awww....poor Merry Sunshine...a code to begin the year...a doctor I once had prescibed the follwing - put on the kettle and pour 6 to 8 oz of boiling water into a cup, squeeze in a whole lemon, add a tsp or more of honey and finally an ounce and a half of brandy - repeat as often as desired. Your cold is going to last at least 5 days no matter what you do - you might as well spend the time a little numb. Honest, that's what he said. He doesn't practice anymore but he was a good doctor.

The CBC needs to do something. Maybe even anything to change the perception of irrelevant antiquation they've acquired. Paint probably isn't enough but you never know.

[arthurdecco]

Mr. Bill Lee,

Rabinovitch deserves to be fired! I don't care who does it.

...as long as the NDP gets to hang on to the car keys.

[John Anderson]

Odd that the CBC is choosing to advertise in Macleans, now that it has been converted by Kenneth Whyte into a brash rightwing propaganda rag.
Then again, there's barely any centrist media left in Canada. Even the Star has neocons in charge at the upper echelons - ie: David Walmsley, previously "politics editor" at the National Post, and former Conrad Black lacky Giles Gherson, now Star editor-in-chief. The new rightwing slant is certainly evident in the Star's election coverage. No longer sympathetic to the Libs and the NDP, the Star's front page is now aimed, just like the Post, at whipping up Tory support.
Pathetic.
I guess we can thank Michael Goldbloom, another former Conrad Black employee, for this.

[Innkeeper]

It was NOT a Maclean's piece. Rather, it was an ADVERTORIAL. Of course it was glowing. Maybe it was hard for Antonia and others to tell the difference, but I certainly knew that was not a "piece of journalism" from Maclean's, but ... AN ADVERTORIAL (or advertising disguised as editorial content).

[Antonia Z.]

Thanks Innkeeper. But I thought I was pretty clear about the advertorial part when I wrote stuff like:

"Just for the record, nowhere on the relevant Maclean's pages is there any indication that they are indeed advertorial. But they sure smell bought and paid for to this expert (and currently congested) nose.

"It seems an awfully strange move to acquire this kind of promotion and not exactly explain what one is promoting. Nowhere does the piece tell me where to tune in and when.

"Maybe in this climate, when so many of the media own, or are owned by, TV networks, CBC feels it has to resort to buying any coverage, let alone positive coverage, of itself. After all, CTV and Global can often count on getting it for free from their sister newspaper properties.

"Still, it seems that paying for coverage is an odd thing for a journalistic organization to do - and to do it with taxpayer dollars."

That said, CBC called to say that I should have looked at the entire insert -- and I should have. So I am dragging myself out of my death bed to go buy a copy of Maclean's. I guess it's time to subscribe instead of stealing it every week from my massage therapist's office where it is never read.

[Innkeeper]

My apologies, Antonia. I guess I had read your post too quickly and skipped over your mention of an advertorial. I should read before I post comment.
Keep up the good blog.