Robert Paterson's Weblog

XM/Sirius Merger - Doc is first

I have been searching for smart comment on the merger. Guess who is first?

Doc

Satellite is One to Many no matter how many channels

I feel that Satellite Radio is like the Cutty sark. The ultimate in an old approach.

What is Public Broadcasting - Voice Promo Girl?

Where is CBC Radio going? I see a worrying trend - the idea that if they only had more young voices on air that were cool that CBC would pick up audience and hence become more "Public. So we have Freestyle, we have Sook Yin Lee on DNTO and Brent Bambury on GO.

Is being a public broadcaster defined as being popular? Is seeking to be cool and attracting a younger audience as the prime strategy going to take CBC to more influence?

What has happened in the US is that as commercial radio has chased the ratings they chased either the trivial or the dogmatic. The result is that there is a kind of bipolar world of either Entertainment Tonight/Clear Channel of spoon feeding or a Fox News/Religious Right you are with me or against me dogma.

NPR have doubled their audience in the last 10 years to over 30 million because, I think, that people who wanted to hear both sides, who wanted to go deeper, who wanted discourse were desperate to belong to a community where civic discourse was still alive. NPR news is maybe the only news source in America that provides all sides of a story. Fundamentalists of all shapes and sizes hate it. So it is criticized for being soft on Palestinians but also for being in the control of the supporters of Israel. Music on NPR goes beyond the performance and offers the best possible commentary - whether it is Beethoven or Hip Hop, you have an opportunity to learn more.

What NPR have found is that if they aim for all those that are curious, that like to think, that have an open mind. They get a powerful audience both in terms of numbers and in terms of profile. They also have, as a by product, set up support for Civic Community in the US. The values of NPR represent that values of a society that is and thoughtful.

So here is my point. I think that Public Radio should be the voice of the culture of civic community. Its voice iterates with the voice of those that are inquisitive and engaged. This segment is the civic bedrock of a sound community. They are not just pointy head university grads but people from all walks of life who have an open mind.

My fear is that CBC's is drifting into trying to be popular and is therefore on a path of trivialization.

Promo Girl - what do you hear when you hear her voice? What is the message that you receive?

I hear "Corporate", "Trivial" and "False". I hear plastic and I hear scripted.

She is becoming the voice of the CBC. Worse, large chunks of the national space are going down the trivial route. FreeStyle is entirely surface. Go on Saturday morning and DNTO on Saturday afternoon take up most of the day and stay resolutely on the surface

Where does this take CBC?

More later

How does the New Nexus work in Real Time with Citizen Journalists?

Here is a wonderful piece by Elliott Massie (via Learning Post) who observed how the CNN News Team are drawing in and filtering and then broadcasting a flood of blogs, video, photos coming in from Citizens and how their own journalists are turning to use satellite and final cut pro locally to turn around material immediately.

Major extract follows

NPR - The New Nexus that links Citizen Journalism to the World?

This week NPR launched a large Podcast Directory

What we are seeing is the idea of the Long Tail being enacted in Radio. Until now, radio was confined to the "shelf space" of the dial. Now there is there is no limit to the amount of content. Now the more niche the better. Hugh's ideas of Bespoke Radio come into play. With NPR's "Brand" it will be able to become not only a source of great national radio but also will be able to access the "citizen journalist" resources of its over 780 local communities.

Imagine bloggers in Baton Rouge feeding into NPR's local stations there - imagine how this local feed now branded by NPR will work not only nationally but also globally?

Imagine NPR's high quality national newsroom becoming the nexus for a world of bloggers who are on the ground say in Paris today where there has been another fatal fire in an immigrant packed apartment building. Add a feed from blogger in Paris following the hospitalization of President Chirac?

Now NPR has a global news gathering organization that could never be replicated by any conventional broadcaster. The cost? Not a penny more than what it is doing. The web will become the main carrier of radio soon as Katrina is showing us. Citizen journalist will become the main feeds and stringers. Here is what is happening with local stations in New orleans who have had to leave the air and go to the web 100%.

NBC affiliate WDSU-TV moved its entire operations to two sister stations, one in Jackson, MS, and another in Orlando, FL after Hurricane Katrina knocked off the staton's power. The station is continuing its news coverage on the Web. Photo courtesy WDSU-TV in New Orleans.

Imagine NPR and the BBC and CBC joining forces in the Nexus work? Now the voice of the public can not only match the CNN and the Fox voice but overwhelming beat it in immediacy and quality. Here is About.com doing its best to cover Katrina. How much stronger would the offering be by NPR if they put their mind to it. Imagine this type of system pulling in not only immediate news but every type of art and review, every cooking idea etc?

It is now easy to download and to upload a Podcast. What will be increasingly hard as millions of citizen journalists emerge is to make sense of they say. If NPR, CBC and BBC increasingly saw themselves as the Nexus - they would find their new role.

What might happen to the world? Power would be taken from the commercial media. A more inclusive voice and hence a more inclusive culture would emerge.

Podcast on the Future of CBC and Community Medie

Well I have done it - David Cormier has come to the aid of the most inept podcaster, Rob P, and helped me with a not bad interview about the the future of CBC and community media. We recorded this just before I got home and heard about the plan for 150 CBC staffers to do what we had hoped for - establish a new CBC online.

Here is the link with the "liner notes" so you know what you are getting into. Sorry about the verbal tick - "you know". I will do my best to lose it now I have heard it

Walking the line for the gang at CBC - What a contracting life can be like

Well I never thought I would walk the line at a picket but there I was this morning for an hour on University Avenue. I will not put in the 4 hours a day that the full time folks are doing but I will do an hour a day.

Why? Every workplace is really a community with all the norms of every community. These are my buds.

I am the lowest of the low at CBC, a part time contractor - the kind of position the CBC want more of and that the full time staff fear will be their fate. I occupy the same low life job at UPEI where I am part of a growing band of sessional lecturers. I also work as a consultant, spending sometimes years in and out of the same organizations.

So what is it like being a contractor? If these organizations are like a body, a full time employee is like a body part. I am more like useful bacteria that say digests food. They key for people like me to be useful not just to the management but to the whole corpus. I do my best to join the community. I need community as much as a paycheck.

I think that in the end formal organizations will be much smaller and will mainly have a lot more folks like me attached. But attached not at an arms length way like today but attached as we see in the film making business where say a lead director gets a film and calls his 5 go to guys, one of whom is his favorite photographer. He then makes 5 calls one of them to his favorite electrician and so on. One of the aspects of contract work that makes people fearful is that there is a pretense that every job is a new experience and that it should be contracted de novo. The Feds whole contracting ethos is built on this idea - of course it only applies to regular folks like me. There is also the idea that you remain as a contractor still dependent on one client. Bad move - that is when you do lose your power. But if you have several clients, then you are the free agent. You have power and you have freedom.

In the end there is more security in having say 5 contract jobs than one full time job. Nor do you lose your community if you really join.

CBC Staff BBQ Friday 26th August

Many of my friends are walking the pickets at CBC. Parkdale Doris, aka Cynthia Dunsford, was on duty at 6am this morrning. Matt Rainnie was there yesterday afternoon with his family (CBC have disabled all the normal links so I cannot link to Matt)

As you can imagine it is a sad way to spend your day - walking outside your work home - hoping that this will all be over before you have to think about how you will pay your mortgage. Knowing that all the decisions will be taken by people that you cannot influence.

This Friday the gang will have a BBQ. It will cost about $100 to fund the food etc. Please drop by this week before Friday and help out with some of this $100. Have a chat with the people that are part of our community. You don't have to have an opinion about the lockout. That has nothing to do with the individuals that we all know. How I see us "supporting" them is to acknowledge by our presence that we care about our friends who are isolated and not a little fearful about what will happen to the and to their families.

When you have a hard time would you want that kind of support too?

Community Broadcast Centre - An Experiment

Well folks, here it is a first attempt here of a community news site

We have the first volounteers. See the sidebar marked Contributors. As more of you sign up, I will add you and your sites.

I have set up a very simple site on the basis that its features and functions will grow as we discover them.

I see this primarily as a site where we can comment on the news rather than break it. I open with a post on why I think that our banks are in such a mess today. This week is when their results for the quarter are released. My hope is that because we are beholden to no organization we can seek a truth that is hard to find when advertisers or government pay your bills.

Please give this a whirl and add your two cents, or five.

More comment on CBC

From Alan

...... Are we starving an elephant in a foolish attempt to make it a fox or are we actually witnessing the glorious changing course to a better new horizon. I get the sense neither - I sense that we are watching another wave of management consultancy in action, short-term thinking and no big idea at the end of it. Propping of one sort or another by any other name. Drifting.

From Craig on CBC and Alan

Al was up early and was musing about the CBC lock out. His comments are reflective and show some insight into a changing media landscape. The absence of the CBC has been, for me, much like the absence of hockey. Yawn, no real concern to me.

Oh, for sure my old habits have changed. I no longer hear Karen Mair over coffee (and I miss her) and I no longer nod off to nap in front of the TV watching the local edition of Canada Now. This was the limit of my exposure to CBC. The radio is on during the day at my home, to give the canine occupants a voice to listen to, but they have been uncomplaining regarding the changes.

For some time now, I have not depended on the CBC for any meaningful information and have relied on other sources for entertainment. Using the term entertainment in the same sentence as CBC seems oxymoronic. For entertainment I look and listen elsewhere.

As I know some of the good people who work (or have worked) at the CBC, I have long suspected that the programming quality, unsettled moral and weird decisions flow from the top and have nothing to do with the dedicated and hardworking people who toil on the front line. I want to love the CBC; it seems like the Canadian thing to do - but I just can’t. They started to lose me a long time ago, and now my listening and viewing habits have changed. I don’t think they will get me back.

I wonder if I am alone.

CBC Unplugged - A Site where CBC Reporters will be Podcasting

Thanks to Peter a link to CBC Unplugged where CBC Staffers plan to Podcast. They start with a show from Fredericton taking about their side of the lock out

Maybe there is a silver lining here - When the lockout is over CBC staffers will have embraced the new technology and will transform CBC into more of a community organization.

What will that mean? Who knows?