TORONTO – Breaking news from the CBC: It is no longer a TV network but a "content provider." This, according to the CBC’s Richard Stursberg who was a keynote speaker at Tuesday afternoon’s Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto.
"We will be there on whatever platform you need us to be on," said Stursberg.
The executive vice-president of CBC English Services, brought lots of slides to demonstrate how the CBC is already positioning itself to deliver content online and to mobile devices like the iPhone.
Stursberg said that CBC’s traditional strengths in news and sports position it well on the Internet where a Forrester study he cited found web users prefer to watch news and sports content online.
He also highlighted that the amount of unique monthly visitors to the CBC web site has jumped from 2.23 million five years ago to 4.45 million today. The site has also signed up 322,000 new members, an increase of nearly 300,000 in just 14 months. He says in the past month alone members posted 243,000 comments to the web site, an indication of their "level of engagement,” he said.
And moving to the iPhone platform the CBC last month recorded 920,000 page view, more than double what was recorded last September.
In the area of special events he said the CBC was concerned that the heavy streaming of its Olympic coverage last year would cannibalize its television coverage, but found it complementary – that viewers typically watched the programming on TV first and then turned to the web for more highlights.
CBC is also finding popularity with podcasts, with 787,000 downloads last month.
And while the CBC no longer should be considered a TV network, Stursberg still acknowledges that TV is still overwhelmingly the strongest medium for promotion. With that in mind he sees an opportunity for more content producers to tap into the CBC to distribute their programs on multiple platforms.
However, this past March the CBC announced it would cut up to 800 jobs as part of its strategy to make up for a $171 million shortfall in 2009-10. In CBC’s news division, a total of $7 million will be cut from the news division, including 80 jobs in radio news, current affairs and TV current affairs. Stursberg didn’t mention the cuts or how it would affect the transitioning of CBC into a content company.
– John Bugailiskis
