Why CBC has it Backwards
I have had a couple of exchanges with a number of people about my CBC frustrations, including Justin and Ouimet. I suggested that we need a CBC 2.0, and that if CBC doesn’t want to play - by, for instance, not allowing people to use their RSS feeds as RSS feeds, by doing deals with AOL, by wanting to charge for podcasts - that the rest of us should just tell CBC to stick it in their Freestyle, and build CBC 2.o without the CBC. One response was, “how can you build CBC 2.0 without CBC?”
But it seems to me that CBC per se is not so interesting - it’s CBC’s content (OK and nostalgia, and an idea of a unifying voice of diversity thoughout Canada - or something). But really it’s the content, which has also come from a vision of what CBC ought to be, that more or less I have supported in the past.
But if CBC becomes CBC-AOL Inc., well I guess I’ll listen if they provide me with good content — for free. Which I expect they won’t. But I don’t see any reason to prefer CBC-AOL over, say Global.
So if they go that route, the rest of us will just have to create CBC2.0, or Public Broadcasting Canada (PBC), or whatever you want to call it, and if CBC doesn’t want to play, well what can you do? If that happens, then CBC does not deserve the name.
Producing & disseminating audio is so cheap and easy now, and so much wonderful audio will be produced in the coming years — by smart public broadcasters, and also by joes and janes at home — all of it accessible on net. Why listen to CBC if they insist of becoming AOL audio, and do not understand what’s happening on the web? Why support an institution that does not reflect anything i believe in? (freedom, the responsibilities of a public broadcaster, diversity, non-commercialness etc).
This hasn’t completely happened yet, and Tod Maffin assures me the CBC podcast strategy will be interesting … so we’ll wait and see what develops.
It may be strange that I put so much emphasis on podcasting - but I think it represents everything exciting about the net, and audio - finally CBC & others don’t control what gets produced, exciting! - if CBC can’t understand what that shift implies, or even what the net is FOR, well then…
It was also suggested by some in the know that the strategy for CBC’s web presence seems to be to try to piggyback on a larger company - AOL or whomever - to generate visitors. And the “problem” is that this has worked fairly well — they are getting hits and ad revenue — and convincing CBC that a better interactivity/rss/blog/podcast strategy will get them the same results is difficult. CBC sees that approach as “risky.”
Which is bizarre. What about the experience of other successful public broadcasters? Shouldn’t that be the template? BBC and Australia Radio National, NPR (now at an astounding 223 podcasts!)? BBC is probably one of the most-visited sites in the world. Do you want eyeballs, BBC got em, by giving away their content, not by doing exclusive deals with AOL. Where is the risk with this approach? It’s not like RSS is complicated technology … not as if podcasting is exepnsive. Host on archive.org if you’re so worried about bandwidth. The problem is this: CBC wants to be a business instead of a public broadcaster.
Again: CBC wants to be a business instead of a public broadcaster. This is a problem.
Slightly aside, but related, my own CBC listening has trickled to almost nothing recently. I work at home, so radio (audio) of some kind is on almost all day. The Current is good, but: montreal’s morning show is terrible, Sounds Like Canada is (increasingly) pablum, Freestyle is truly unbearable, Montreal’s Radio Noon call-in makes me cry, evening news is fine, but too short, and As It Happens usually pretty good - but then you have to get through Shelagh (again), and I’ve already listened to the Current. So I switch to something else before Ideas, which of course is excellent, but I rarely remember to switch back, so rarely hear it.
There’s so much available online (for Writers & Company see ARN’s Books & Writing, KCRW’s Bookworm, Mobylives; for Ideas see: ARN All in the Mind, ARN Science Show, BBC In Our Times, BBC Documentary Archive. For Dispatches, see: BBC From Our Own Correspondents. And NY Times is podcasting now too! plus lots of great DIY podcasts, to get better and better). CBC still has good content but I can’t get it when I want it, so I listen to other stuff.
And so CBC fades from interest for me. Which too bad, but if CBC does not care much about listeners like me, I can’t get too choked up about it.
All the big players have figured out where the web is going, see:
Yahoo gets social (from the Globe & Mail)
In any case, it’s worth remembering that Yahoo and Microsoft haven’t gone away, and Yahoo in particular has been making some moves recently that are aimed squarely at the “Web 2.0″ market that Google (and Microsoft) also covet — that is, the world of blogs and “social bookmarking” and so on. They are small moves, but when combined with some of the other developments at the company they make for an interesting picture. Yahoo CEO Terry Semel told the Globe and Mail’s Grant Robertson recently that Google is where the Internet is, and Yahoo is “positioned for where the Internet is going.”
And Dave Winer, rss inventer, on:
how to make $ on the internet:
The way to make money on the Internet is to send them away. Google proved this, in the age of portals that were trying to suck the eyeballs in and not let them go, Google took over by sending you off more efficiently than anyone else. …
Yahoo doubled their share of the online news market by adopting RSS and sending readers away as fast as they can. Who to? Their competitors, of course.
Where do you go to get the latest from CNN and MSNBC? Yahoo. Makes sense.
Now the fundamental law of the Internet seems to be the more you send them away the more they come back. It’s why link-filled blogs do better than introverts. It may seem counter-intuitive — it’s the new intuition, the new way of thinking. The Internet kicks your ass until you get it. It’s called linking and it works.
And finally, back to podcasting, here’s a little warning from Vancouver’s
Notes from a Teacher:
As I said, I filled in the [cbc podcast] survey and I hope it helps give the CBC a push. When they do come around, though, I’m afraid it’ll be too late for me. My podcast time card is full with pieces (primarily from the US and Australia) that I consider essential and I can’t add anything to it without shedding something, and I’d be loathe to do that.
Which is one of the things about a new media age, driven by the speed of ‘net evolution: Snooze. Lose.
ie it’s not just me that thinks CBC is going the wrong way, but Google, Yahoo, Dave Winer, and some guy in Vancouver. All of whom are a hell of a lot more interesting than AOL, which will die soon with CBC because they have the web backwards.
Hi - thanks for the posting. :-) I’m passing your posting along to some of the senior folks at CBC.
I do want to address one of the points you raise, that NPR and the BBC are doing it and thus should the CBC. And I totally agree with you! I wish we could.
Our dilemma is two-fold: bandwidth and music.
1. Bandwidth: The costs of transferring data around in the kinds of volumes cbc.ca does costs more in Canada than in the U.S. And, frankly, NPR and the BBC has more money than the CBC. NPR sells ads in its shows (this show brought to you by Acura) which is something CBC Radio has never done — and would be a challenge to introduce to an audience not used to hearing that. In Britain, the average citizen pays $120 per year for their public broadcaster. In Canada, you pay about $30 in taxes each year (this I’ve only heard second-hand, so don’t quote me — but Canadian public broadcasting is one of the least-funded services in the world).
2. Music: In both the U.K. and the USA, they deal with fewer music rights-holders, and they’ve already cut deals to be able to permit music downloads (that includes ANY commercial music in a podcast — even if only 10 seconds if used!). It’s well known that Canada has one of the most complicated music rights systems in the world. We are in talks with all the various groups (SOCAN, SODRAC, CMRRA, AFM, WGC, ACTRA, and more) but some of them want a lot of money.
So, in short, it’s a money thing. Hell, if we could afford it and it was a wise use of taxpayer money, we would podcast everything! But we just don’t have the money.
We do have some choices, and I would welcome your thoughts on which direction you and your readers would prefer:
1. We could put ads/sponsorships at the start and end of each podcast.
2. We could charge money for podcasts.
3. We could cut our radio programming back and redirect it to podcasting.
4. We could petition the federal government for more funding (unlikely, in my opinion).
Nevertheless, we are planning for an expansion of our podcasting initiatives in the new year.
I’d welcome your thoughts!
Tod
Comment by Tod Maffin — December 18, 2005 @ 3:32 am
Hi Tod,
Thanks for the response. Information like this is important; and I can sympathise with the constraints.
BUT broadcasting is on the verge of HUGE shift with podcasting etc. I predict in 2-5 years most audio/visual content will be consumed on a computer through an internet connection, ondemand - rather than radio and television. CBC must have a coherent strategy to deal with this future, as a relevant Canadian public broadcaster - and not just as a business like any other. I don’t think they do. See their comments about the AOL deal.
So the question is not just about making a few bloggers and podcasters happy, but rather about the existence and survival of CBC itself. This is what is so frustrating: that CBC is going the wrong direction towards “walled gardens” etc. on the net, which is fine (though wrongheadded in my view) for a private broadcaster, but unacceptable for a public broadcaster, and (as I argued before) potentially in violation of the Broadcast Act.
The way in which broadcasters operate will change siignificantly in the coming years. There will, I suppose, be hard choices to make. I don’t know the answer to the dilemmas (tho I can tell you there are MANY radio shows - I won’t name names, tho I have before - that I would happily axe from the CBC budget in order to finance podcasting).
Re federal funding: what about a big online campaign — there would be volunteers, I am sure — for fed funding to help drag CBC into the digital present? The feds have (or had) a big fancy innovation & access strategy, this could be part of it.
As for the bandwidth cost, what do the numbers for a high-volume download look like? Say for 1,000,000 downloads of a 15 MB mp3? Money seems to be the main problem, and I really don’t have a handle on what high-vol costs would be.
Comment by hugh — December 18, 2005 @ 11:30 am
Thanks for these posts.
Content is King and that’s what CBC (and SRC) should be all about. Good content is expensive. Agreed. That’s where the BBC has a great advantage. Agreed.
In the Internet era however, isn’t it so that content dissemination is way cheaper than what it used to be? What is the cost of owning and operating an FM transmitter network across the whole country compared to the cost of owning and operating a server farm with an equivalent bandwidth? My feeling is that the latter is probably much lower.
Finally, why would CBC have to pay for the bandwidth? When it comes to distribution, Peer-To-Peer (P2P) networks are very efficient AND free to the “transmitting” end. The end-users share the network costs by providing their own bandwidth to retransmit the content to other users. And you know, this is probably no problem. As more and more canadians get “flat fee” broadband access, the cost for bandwidth “sharing” will be approximately ZERO$!
P2P and broadcast networks have quite similar properties… when content is popular.
I recently started a blog to write down some thoughts about the future of broadcasting: www.broadcasting20.org.
Please feel free to visit and comment!
Thanks,
Francois.
Comment by François — December 19, 2005 @ 12:37 am
hi francois yes! check this post from ouimet:
cbc downloads
saw your blog last week (you linked to librivox)… looks good, grabbed your feed.
Comment by hugh — December 19, 2005 @ 9:24 am
Hi Hugh,
> I predict in 2-5 years most audio/visual content will be
> consumed on a computer through an internet connection,
> ondemand - rather than radio and television.
We disagree on predictions then. ;-) Yes, podcasting and on-demand technologies will see a huge growth and its users will be passionate about it. I’m one of those uber-keen users! And I would agree that if iPods and MP3 players were free, your prediction would come to pass in 2-5 years.
But remember that to play the on-demand game, it costs us users money. iPods are not cheap. We also need to pay for an Internet connection, not to mention the “time cost” of setting it up, etc.
Now you and I would be happy to do that because we love on-demand media, but the majority of Canadians are perfectly happy to listen to the free radio in their car and watch video programming on the TV in their house that’s already paid for without paying-per-show.
> CBC must have a coherent strategy to deal with this
> future, as a relevant Canadian public broadcaster -
> and not just as a business like any other. I don’t think they do.
But surely you understand that unless the federal government gives the CBC more of our tax dollars (something that is unlikely to happen), the CBC will have to find the money to provide that service to you. You say you don’t want to pay for it — and fair enough. But then if the CBC isn’t getting any money to cover the production costs, how can it happen? As I mentioned in my previous post, there are lots of options… money could come from advertising, from user subscriptions, from cutting back existing programming, or from more tax dollars. But those are the CBC’s only options.
> there are MANY radio shows - I won’t name names,
> tho I have before - that I would happily axe from
> the CBC budget in order to finance podcasting).
Heheheh… I don’t mind you naming names! ;-) Okay, fair enough. Hell, there are shows on CBC that *I* wouldn’t mind axing. BUT, here’s the other part of the logic chain I think you’re forgetting — what does the CBC replace that time slot with? It could pull two hours of Show X every day and, yes, free up money for podcasting. But then what will listeners hear in those two hours? CBC has to provide SOME programming in that time slot.
So again, the dilemma. Do we produce light-fare but entertaining content in times when studies show that’s what people want to hear (thus requiring fewer people and freeing up money) or do we replace the pulled show with something highly-produced, investigative journalism, etc (which, of course, everyone says they want).
By way of example, Freestyle is operating with two people fewer than the show that was previously in its time slot (The Roundup). So money was freed up there and part of that money is being used to enrich other services like podcasting, but in exchange there are fewer people to produce the content that people say they want — documentaries, long-form interviews, etc.
It’s a catch-22.
Incidentally, not only has CBC’s funding not increased in years, it actually loses more than one million dollars each year through inflation. Costs of production increase (salaries, Internet connections, etc.) but funding from the federal government has flatlined.
I don’t mean to sound like a whiner, but I do think it’s important that everyone knows the full story here. As my mom used to say, money doesn’t grow on knees. (She had a problem occasionally with metaphors. )
> Re federal funding: what about a big online
> campaign — there would be volunteers, I am sure —
> for fed funding to help drag CBC into the digital
> present? The feds have (or had) a big fancy
> innovation & access strategy, this could be part of it.
I think that’s a great idea!
Comment by Tod Maffin — December 19, 2005 @ 1:27 pm
Hi Tod, thanks again for stopping by to comment - much appreciated, and my CBC-rage is subsiding! (ps sorry you got spam-blocked for a bit there).
Re: on-demad
Lets see what happens with audio & video on demand. I’m not saying that the old stuff won’t be around; and perhaps not the MAJORITY of listeners … but I do predict that in 5 years time, you will be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn’t use on-demand on a regular basis. in 10 years it’ll be a done deal, and people will say: “remember when all you could listen to on the radio was the stuff they forced you to listen to?” People used to say: who wants their news from a website instead of a newspaper? you can get a wee ipod thing for less than 100 bucks, which is less than a radio. the software’s still a bit user intensive. what about a little wireless updater that fires your latest podcasts from your pc to your ipod. coming, i am sure.
shall we define the terms and make a bet: I’ll buy you a beer in Montreal if I win; you buy me a beer in Vancouver if you win.
re: funding
First I would cut the salaries of all the CBC management, starting with Rabinovitch. :) OK, but really: how’s this for a counter-threat: the creative web 2.0 crowd will be beating down federal doors looking for funding to promote all sorts of cool projects in the coming years. saying: “CBC does not represent canada, they are so bloated and old-school, here’s where the EXCITING projects are, why don’t you cut CBC,s budget and give us some money to do some really interesting things with media podcastiing and vlogging and really see canadian voices and innovation.” ie. CBC can be part of it — and partners in CBC 2.0 — or they will compete with the creative Web 2.0 crowd, who in past years would have been CBC’s loudest supporters, but now have turned agaiinst the CBC because CBC can’t understand web 2.0….2.0 is going to happen whether CBC wants to play or not, and if they don’t play they will lose the suppor of the best and brightest. you need content in order to cut Freestyle? I can give you loads of content that no one is getting paid for right now — in fact, I think you have similar ideas youself :) if CBC supports this stuff, any content worries you might have will disappear in a Toronto minute. and I guantee it’ll be more interesting than Freestyle.
re: funding 2
the web 2.0 crowd will be the innovators, the creative elite of Canada soon. to alienate us is suicide for CBC. I understand the funding constraints, but CBC can’t afford not to find a way to be involved.
re: funding 3
throw caution to the wind, and start p2p & torrenting, dammit. screw the all the “reasons” not to. what if CBC got behind torrenting 100% and said: this is the cheapest, best way to diistribute the content. we’d be crazy not to! after all, taxpayers fund our programming, if we can find a cheap way to get it to them we will. But NO, CBC sees it’s content as a business opportunity.
re: campaign for CBC2.0 & funding
A manifesto is brewing!
Comment by hugh — December 19, 2005 @ 8:33 pm
I wonder, though I don’t know, how much would be saved if the CBC (radio, television and .ca) zero lined their marketing budget - not audience relations but media buys - radio, television, newspaper ads, billboards etc., just rely on their own airwaves to advertise their own programming.
Comment by Justin — December 23, 2005 @ 5:48 pm
yeah! and put their marketing budget into podcasting … if they podcast all their content, how much coverage would they get in the media? what if they started podcasting video and audio? Torrenting… lots of press coverage I bet.
Comment by hugh — December 23, 2005 @ 7:22 pm