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“The Horror! The Horror!” CBC News gets an extreme makeover
November 3, 2009
- Posted by
 A barrage of bullets has hit the CBC as TV critics, journalism professors and CBC mainstays attack the re-launched news, but news veteran Peter McNelly may stand alone in calling for a ceasefire. Last Monday, CBC Television News re-launched itself with a slick new look and a bracing new format. The result was shocking. Not the changes themselves – the CBC had been telegraphing them for months with a new emphasis on hard news coverage and live on-the-scene reporting. The shock was the overwhelmingly negative response. The CBC's website was jammed with angry posts. Emails were flying. The tweets were outraged; and The Teamakers blog, where disenchanted CBCers go to vent their spleens, was packed with predictable excoriations. If the critics were to be believed, the barbarians in CBC's upper management had sacked the cathedral and defrocked John Doyle's "Pastor Mansbridge." The charges implied the CBC had committed the journalistic equivalent of a crime against humanity. The indictments:
It's easy to attack this new emphasis on live coverage as superficial, or news on the cheap. But all last week, CBC News Network tapped its editorial bench strength with dozens of live hits on the H1N1 story at clinics all across Canada. The CBC was doing its job as a national broadcaster: Connecting viewers from coast to coast to coast on a major breaking story. We were seeing the unified assignment system in action, and it looked great. The change comes at a price. The CBC’s tradition of finely crafted visual storytelling is taking a big hit. But You Tube and cell phone video have all but replaced this venerable craft. Who needs a fleet of camera crews when citizens record the house fire next door, the beating in the laneway and the hit and run accident at the intersection? As for The National, it looked like it had just awakened from a ten-year coma. Gone were the endless headlines. Gone, the faux Wagnerian splendor of the old set with the anchor enthroned in some Valhalla of the gods. Gone the bloated, dull news reports delivered in what seemed an interminable 2:45 seconds or more. And, most refreshingly, gone was the CBC's patronizing "eat this, it’s good for you" attitude toward its own journalism. In its place – a driving effort to get the news, to get it fast and to bring the audience into the story. Ever since the Mulroney and Chretien governments' budget cuts to the CBC in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, the corporation has been struggling to decide how to define itself. The debate has generally followed two lines of argument. The first argument is that CBC Television News should adopt what's been called the "PBS" model. In this scenario, the CBC would focus on in-depth reporting and analysis and stop competing with the private sector for viewers. Who cares if anyone watches as long as "the decision makers" do? The other model, the one on which the CBC has finally and clearly bet the house, is to join the 21st Century with all the modern media tools it can muster and go determinedly after a younger audience. When you look at the ratings, this strategy seems obvious. On Oct. 29th, for example, sixty percent of The National's audience was fifty-five years old or older. For CTV, the figure was 56 per cent, according to BBM Canada. The numbers fluctuate, but the trend is somewhere between 55 and 60 percent. Television news as we have known it for the last three decades is facing a demographic death sentence. Young people won't watch it, and it's not their fault. In the digital era, the stalls at the marketplace of ideas are fully stocked. Discerning information consumers must now navigate a multimedia menu to stay informed. The good old days of omniscient father figures in anchor chairs telling the children what they need to know are over. CBC Television News has simply admitted this and moved on, bravely and dramatically. By mid week, the bugs and glitches were being smoothed out. On Thursday, The National gave ten minutes of coverage to the H1N1 story, leading off with a beautifully written report by Ioanna Roumeliotis. So much for superficiality. Mansbridge's At Issue panel was sitting down – not standing – and joking about it. Rex Murphy followed, barking away, as always, more cur than mudgeon. The CBC's news universe had not come to an end after all. Those in the choir of denunciation lament that CBC Television News has turned its back on them. Broken a tacit understanding between the broadcaster and its viewers to keep doing things more or less the way it has always done them. But an organization that sees itself in a fight for survival will do whatever it thinks necessary in order to survive. That's what the changes at CBC Television News are really all about. If the people who turned up their noses and turned off their remotes never watch CBC again, it's a risk the CBC is clearly prepared to take. Journalism does not belong to the people who make it. It especially does not belong to those who imagine their mission is to save journalism from its perceived vulgarities. Journalism belongs to all of us. This is particularly true in the CBC's case because we pay for it. Instead of complaining, we should wish the CBC well; because this time, they just may have gotten it right. Peter McNelly has been teaching broadcast news to Ryerson journalism students for seven years. He spent 20-years as a producer, editor and manager at CBC in both television and radio news, and as a training consultant for CTV News. Five journalism watchers live blogged for J-Source during the first airing of the relaunched The National on Oct. 26. Read the commentary here. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
SO LITTLE FOR THE MIND! I SAID ADIOS AFTER THE FIRST WEEK EXCEPT FOR AT ISSUE & REX MURPHY. MAYBE IF PETER COULD DISAPPEAR NOW THAT HE HAS REVEALED HIS TRUE COLOURS,AND YOUNGER DIANA SWAIN< GEMINI WINNER< REPLACE HIM, I MIGHT LOOK AGAIN, BUT THE WHOLE FORMAT IS SO IRRITATING I AM SURE I WOULDN"T STAY EVEN THEN. Alice
Hi, Claude: The audience for The National - according to the ratings I see - has been stable for some years. The argument against change has always turned on the fear of losing the core audience; but CBC Radio One targeted a younger audience and has done rather well. It seems to me that solid journalism is in the CBC's DNA, and what we really have in this new look is, simply, a new look. I bet that in another month or so, if the CBC suddenly switched back to the old look, everyone would see how dated it was.
The danger in targeting a younger audience, of course, is that you risk losing your older, core, audience in the process. Don't the numbers suggest that this is already happening?
So if the 18-35 cohort doesn't come aboard, isn't it then a double calamity?
I may be alone in this, but I still feel there is a way of presenting news content that appeals to all demographics . . .
So sadly true, Denise. My "favourite" is the one where the distressed wife anxiously awaits the result of her anxious husband's phone call as he tries to get life insurance.
The criticisms of the National's new look might be superficial, but if CBC is really seeking a younger audience, they'll have to find other advertisers. Almost every commercial addresses the 'Q-tip' crowd -- drivers, denture wearers, bathtub users, mortgage-free owners, etc. Who do they really expect to be watching?
As always, my good friend Jeffrey Dvorkin's comments merit thoughtful consideration. I think he makes a good point about the risk of thinning out the quality of CBC Radio's reporting because of the new roles many of these reporters will have on CBC News Network. But this is, it seems to me, a question of how best to manage reporting resources rather than a solid critique of the idea of unifying the assignment process.
One other point: Jeffrey says it's "offensive to think that a younger audience is not interested in context or in-depth reporting."
I agree. I never said or suggested that. What I said was that young people won't watch television news in its traditional format.
Case in point: On Oct. 29, BBM overnight ratings for The National totalled 664,000 viewers. Of these, only 59,000 people - or just under 8% of the total audience - were between the ages of 18 and 34 years old.
Who'd want to bet their future on those numbers?
First, Peter is one of the most graceful writers ever to defend the indefensible. He almost had me convinced. The problem is that The National just isn't the authoritative voice it once was. But efforts to involve the audience are, imo, too little and too late. If The National really wanted to involve the public, it would have programmed to its core and not done this.
Two: Putting radio reporters on may broaden the coverage, but it does so by making everything thinner, especially radio. the danger is that radio become content fodder It's also offensive to think that a younger audience is not interested in context or in-depth reporting. Tell that to our students.
Third, the business of tv news has always been about technology. He (and it's usually a he) with the most toys wins. Peter and I are both found-ins at The National where we both saw how the latest technology was a justification over journalism.
Finally, it may look good, but has the history of public broadcasting lead us to this?
I have great respect for Peter McNelly as a professional and a friend. But we disagree on this one, which is the mark of true friendship.
The biggest story the National has had to cover since its relaunch is H1N1.
On this topic Peter McNelly refers to "a beautifully written report by Ioanna Roumeliotis. So much for superficiality."
Neither that Roumeliotis item, nor any other of the National's HINI coverage seen by me, has included any estimates of disease prevalence and vaccine efficacy -- two absolutely essential bits of evidence in any story about severity and impact . Yet the Cochrane Collaboration recently released an authoritative study covering these matters.
If you don't nail key facts about the big story, all the rest is simply window-dressing.
Peter Calamai
Finally, a cogent analysis of the new CBC news. Thank god there isn't the attitude of the chicken little evident and the sky is falling, the sky is falling so common to all the other negative comments.
For me it is all about audience. The CBC is trying to get a younger audience. The task is a tough one because younger people are not watching news on TV and what is even worse, the young audience is not growing into watching it, which used to be the case. Today a TV audience is getting older and older and with nary a younger viewer in sight.
At least the CBC is trying but whether it will work only time will tell. And after a couple of months the ratings will be the key to it all.
Any ratings within a day or even a week are meaningless as anyone who has ever worked in TV full well knows.
Alright then, it may save them, that's what I'm hoping, but I also hope the content isn't dumbed down. Though I like Mark Kelley's Connect show on the News Net, he should still report for the National too, in my opinion.
Many of CBC's journalists are fabulous.
Long live the National!