Today, when I checked out the Democracy Channel Guide, I noticed that The Agenda with Steve Paikin is available as a video podcast. If you don’t know (or don’t live in Ontario) The Agenda is TVO’s daily current affairs program, and it’s excellent. As a podcast, they offer the entire program as a large downloadable .mp4 file.
You hear that CBC?
TVO offers the entire program as a download.
Not just a selection of clips, like The Hour podcast. Or a ridiculous Windows Media stream, like The National. Or a bizarre collection of flash videos on the official CBC YouTube channel. Or a partnership with a video site that no one uses. Or like on the radio side of things, a daily “Best Of” podcast of a single interview from The Current, or As It Happens.
Did I mention that TVO offers the whole show? Each and every day? All of it?
TVO runs itself on $60 million in government dough. The CBC gets about a billion.
Seriously, this is starting to get embarrassing. Give me one good reason, as someone who contributes to CBC’s billion dollars a year, why I can’t subscribe to and download the programming I pay for. It’s very quickly becoming unacceptable.
In terms of online video, the CBC is no longer falling behind. It has fallen behind.
Comments 9
It’s funny, but until reading your post I wasn’t fully conscious of the truth of your words.
The CBC was early to the game with streaming audio and video; while they’ve continued to have small innovations — I like the fact that I can watch my local PEI newscast while on the Italian riviera — their model has always been “Internet as bastard stepchild of the TV and radio.” In other words, the web gets the table scraps.
In the meantime along has come Flash video, YouTube, Google Video, et al and we all carry mobile video cameras in our pocket phones.
Posted 15 May 2007 at 7:14 am ¶You’re fired. Please pack up your things and leave.
Posted 15 May 2007 at 8:52 am ¶Ummm… don’t you work there? Can’t YOU do something about it?
Posted 15 May 2007 at 9:11 am ¶Avery, I do work there.
And as much as I wish I could do something about it, I can’t.
Posted 15 May 2007 at 5:00 pm ¶That’s no way to be a team player, Misener. Have you vacated your cubicle yet?
Posted 15 May 2007 at 5:07 pm ¶Amen.
Also, Dan, you forgot to mention the neat little RA files. I wish CBC was more consistent in which formats it offers its web site visitors.
Posted 16 May 2007 at 7:52 am ¶TVO has no advertisers. CBC does. Advertisers don’t like it when you offer the product they are paying to run their ad in without their ad.
Posted 18 May 2007 at 12:32 pm ¶Mike, you’re absolutely right.
When MuchMusic offered a downloadable podcast version of their VJ search, they actually included commercials (for shampoo, I think). There’s no reason the CBC couldn’t include commercials. That said, I’m not so sure a public broadcaster should be running commercials.
Posted 22 May 2007 at 9:29 pm ¶Is that true that there’s no reason they can’t include commercials? Commercials are copyright-protected as well, with music and actors and writers etc. I’m sure those rights and IR issues would be clearable - lord knows it’s in the best interest of their creators - but it’s not a given that you can just put all TV commercials on the internet.
Posted 23 May 2007 at 12:32 pm ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 1
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