Never going to live this down

Newly discovered fossil of Tyrannosaurus rex eating an angel complicates Creationism debate

Yes, CBC’s response to a CRTC proceeding vaguely concerning the Internet really is as bad as people say it is.

The [T]he Corporation is meeting the changing needs and preferences of Canadians via its 29 services, including traditional television and radio, the Internet, satellite radio, podcasting, cellphones and PDAs.

The Corpse is selling iPhones now?

  • [O]ver the last decade[,] per-capita hours of Internet use have increased to 10 hours per week while total weekly hours of usage of TV and radio, together, have remained stable.

    So people have their Internet turned off at work 30 out of 40 hours a week?

    During how many of those 10 Internet hours per week is the TV also on? We knew about two-screen viewing as far back as 2001.

  • The Internet simply provides people with another tool to personalize their consumption of video and audio content: Broadcasting content found on the Internet does not provide a replacement or substitute for traditional broadcast media, particularly entertainment programming.

    Except of course for those people who watch all their TV shows on DVD and who pay to download BSG every week on iTunes.

  • [F]or the average Canadian, broadcasting content found on the Internet is not a replacement or a substitute for traditional media. Internet usage is replacing some activities in Canadians’ lives – but not their usage of television and radio.

    Nobody said anything about “replacing,” and anyway, we aren’t talking about average Canadians. The group that gets all its news and entertainment from the Web first is invisible to CBC mandarins. They’re exceptional, not average – except they are average for people under 30. CBC mandarins don’t know anybody under 30. Even their kids are older than that now, and have their own kids at McGill doing a master’s in museum studies.

    E-mailing, instant messaging and social networking are Internet activities that serve to replace other more traditional activities, such as physically meeting or talking on the phone…. These are the types of activities that are driving Canadians to spend time using the Internet. They are not activities that are substitutable with TV and radio usage: These activities are completely different [from] the time spent with traditional media.

    Again: We’re not talking about substituting the Web for TV. For a lot of people, it’s already happened. But as long as CBC acts like that isn’t really happening, it certainly will.

    I need to remind you of Clark’s Law of the New York Times: Any media organization that doesn’t act as though it is about to be replaced by the Internet will be.

  • “Professional video content”

    This is the part that kills me:

    Virtually all of the professional video content that is being consumed on the Internet continues to originate from traditional media. Conventional television broadcasters… have a cornerstone role in creating original Canadian television content for all media platforms.

    Only because they’re too incompetent to put anything decent online.

    Listen: How many gumtoothed news-parody shows is the CBC running? Two? Down from three?

    How many of these shows are so chummy with the power structure that they waltz into offices on Parliament Hill bearing swords and have sleepovers at 24 Sussex?

    Creationists must be right after all – Darwinism cannot explain why invertebrates jump the evolutionary queue and get their own TV shows. I certainly didn’t know they could get two more shows, functionally identical to the first and all competing for food in the same ecosystem.

    Then what comes out of nowhere? The Onion News Network (also at iTunes). No goddamned captioning, but nothing online has captioning. Except when they do fake captioning.

    Fake caption on video has floating astronaut saying TELL MY WIFE I DIED WITH DIGNITY

    It’s a news parody, just like the Onion is, but it’s “on TV.” Kind of. It downloads automatically to my (legit) TiVo via wifi. We watch it on a television screen, but it is not “television” in any sense. It arrives on a computer with an attached display exactly the same way it would arrive on a computer with an attached display. And by and large, it’s great.

    • Congress struggles to come up with cool name for anti-drug initiative
    • Volatile India–Pakistan standoff enters 11,680th day
    • High school Tony Awards honor nation’s biggest drama-club nerds
    • U.S. finally gets around to closing last WWII internment camp
    • Warcraft sequel lets gamers play a character playing Warcraft
    • New wearable feedbags let Americans eat more, move less
    • Horrific 120-car pileup a sad reminder of Princess Diana’s death
    • NHL star called up to big leagues to play for NFL team

    Even the bad segments aren’t as embarrassing as Rick Mercer (note lack of italics or possessive). One of these was so good I transcribed it. We live for the crawling ticker on news reports.

    Another segment: “Historic Blockbuster store offers glimpse of how movies were rented in the past.”

    Try this one for CanCon: “Historic Globemedia Temple (formerly Canadian Broadcasting Centre) offers glimpse of ‘television’ of the past.”

    The Onion News Network only exists online, you can watch it anywhere there’s a net connection, and it does in three minutes twice a week what 30 minutes three times a week fail to do. The Corpse could have done it. Now it’s obvious why we didn’t.

    14 Comments

    • Fake Ouimet says:

      Anonymous at 1731, yes, I did. Good catch. Now can someone explain to me how, when I reëdit a Blogger post and make sure to also reëdit the timestamp, it gets timestamped at the date and time of the reëdit?

    • Anonymous says:

      Didn’t you mean, “And anyway, they’ll all be dead in 15 years, taking the Corporation with them“?

    • Anonymous says:

      See downunder’s ABC’s “The Pool”
      for the shoebox of user contents on the internets.

      http://www.pool.org.au/about

    • Anonymous says:

      Kids has been posting online content since the start. There was a small gap there when the tv people got hold of it and turned it into a listing service for their shows, but it was then rebuilt. Some of it is pretty amazing.

      Not one mention of gaming in that CBC response. I guess the kids are too busy doing research and email.

    • CBC.ca dudette says:

      If this is true, then 2% of the budget sounds so measly. Until you do the math, and you realize this means, what, $2,400,000? Keep in mind that a lot of the content is taken from TV and Radio, a lot of it rewritten newswires, the rest of it, what there is of it, is “original content.”

      That’s more than 2 million dollars?

      Part of me says this is way too much, for what we get. The other part of me says, why are we spending so little on what is clearly the emerging platform of the 21st century?

      Is there anyone out there who will tell me that in the future, the number of people listening to radio and watching tv will grow, while the number of people using the internet will fall? You don’t have to be a futurist of the Maffin quality to guess that internet use is PROBABLY going to expand.

      So here, then, is our vision at the CBC: the internet is a big shoebox in the sky in which you can store all your professionally-made video clips. And chat with your friends.

    • Anonymous says:

      Anonymous 12:54, get with the times. Radio has been treating online like it did TV 60 years ago, with the same result. Except for the people who get it, and do stuff like podcasting and other ventures that make sense, attract a new audience, and even carry (gasp!) ads. Sports online actually turns a profit, and perhaps helps pay for your salary.

      If you went to that budget roadshow you’d have seen that online accounts for less than 2% of the budget. So enough of the paranoid b.s. about it killing the radio budget. Utter nonsense. Of all radio’s problems, “competition” from its own online division is just about the least. In that sense, perhaps the CBC’s CRTC comments had it right.

      And a radio person complaining about not making money is really, really amusing.

      Alternative Girlfriend, you are right about jPod’s potential and demographic, but it was not an interactive show. It did have that seizure-inducing website (love to see Joe’s accessibility analysis on that one) and you could watch TV online, but it was hardly essential to the show. You are right about the stats, though – the sooner CBC and everyone else starts counting online stats as real numbers the better.

    • Alternative Girlfriend says:

      Fake Ouimet, this is my favourite post yet!

      & For Anonymous at 9:15 a.m.

      jPod had tremendous potential. In fact, the reason it got unceremoneously booted from the CBC sched was because Generations Google and XBox were watching
      it online and not Traditionally. This age group should not be ignored, and if the CBC thinks it will survive in the future of Downloaders, iTuners, Podcasters, 2000 Digital Cable Channels, Hulu, YouTubers Abyss they really do have their heads stuck in the sand and will be left in the Techno Dust.
      http://firefly-alternativegirlfriend.blogspot.com/2008/05/wise-words-from-stroumbo.html

      Unfortunately, the CBC has covered their ears to the pleas of jPod Fans to keep this brilliant show.

      The Mothercorpse never even gave it a chance, and what were they thinking airing a show aimed at the younger demographic on Friday Nights? That's also another reason people watched it online, because they weren't staying in on a Friday Night to watch TV, but out and about with their friends who were also not staying in.

      We cry foul because The Ceeb never bothered to count online views. There's also a problem because only people who own their own homes qualify for an outdated BBM Ratings Box. So you could have 100 000 College Kids watching jPod in their Dorm Rooms and not one Rating point will be given.

      Here is a wonderful Video featuring David Kopp and Torrance Coombs of jPod discussing the shows' cancellation and the following Fan Reaction.

      http://www.vancouveriam.com/videos/43a2b8765a49

    • Anonymous says:

      Wait, “new media” is a revenue source? That’s funny, the cbc’s new media projects look like a giant sinkhole for cash from here…

      Funny how cuts to radio seem to go hand in hand with budget increases to new media. Very, very funny.

    • Fake Ouimet says:

      Maffin wasn’t the inspiration for this posting.

      And yes, the Tea Makers under Fake Ouimet is going to be about fonts! fonts! fonts! and how the Windoids at the CBC misuse them. But only sometimes. I warned everyone I’d cover my own boring shit, but would try not to be boring about it. Feel free to skip!

    • Anonymous says:

      Your best item so far in this format, FO. Although – painful as it must be – you should probably hat tip Tod, who did the story a week ago. I know it’s your shtick, but it’s really hard to read past all your typographic corrections. I know those nits you are picking drive you nuts, but you sacrifice flow, and readers, whose eyes have rolled away before reaching your point.

      Anyhow. This really is an important story, and only bloggers seem to care. Not like we’re going to get hardball questions or straight answers fed to us on iO.

      For half a dozen years now, CBC has seen the internet as just another distribution mechanism. That’s why CBC.ca is lumped under Digital Programming and Business Development, and can be covered by Stursberg in another sweeping “on all platforms/where and when Canadians want it” toss off line, so he can get back to talking about English TV Drama and High Impact Specials.

      Can anyone name a truly innovative, cross-media initiative since ZeD? Not just using teh internets as an input mechanism (hockey theme) or an output mechanism (Olympic streaming) for traditional programming, but creating new, multimedia content that couldn’t exist on just one platform. Well, these comments just prove that you won’t see it. CBC doesn’t believe in it.

      But I bet they believe in the internet as a cheap way to transmit television. I imagine they’ve already pitched the idea of broadband delivery as a way of servicing those places they can’t afford to build new towers, especially with the new HD requirements.

      If their vision for the internet is simply as a cheap delivery mechanism… ouch.

    • Anonymous says:

      Early is radio prime time and the last place we have a meaningful audience. Who is convetous of the potential ad revenue here I wonder?

    • Fake Ouimet says:

      Anonymous at 6:48 (up early, are we?), congratulations! You’re the first commenter on nouvelle formulation Tea Makers to combine “state” and “broadcaster” in the same paragraph.

      CBC really is much too reminiscent of the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea, isn’t it?

    • Anonymous says:

      Please calm down, everyone. There is no reason to get upset about affairs at the CBC. It is plain to see that the institution is finished. The programming gets worse and worse, the numbers go down, successive Governments of differing stripe happily see effective levels of funding steadily decline … and nobody cares. Canadian could give a shit about CBC. Why should they? Mostly, when it’s not agonizingly mediocre, it stinks.

      But the state has to have some sort of public broadcaster so let’s start a conversation about what comes next. It probably won’t involve a big building full of pensions in Toronto, or a load of towers strung across the landscape, or the kind of content that is already provided, in abundance, on private services.

      Stop bitching. CBC is over. Maybe its time had come. Move on to something better.

    • Anonymous says:

      Thank god for Rick Mercer. Intelligent and proudly Canadian.That's why it's the highest rated A & E program.

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