By Catherine Tait, president and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada
In 2022, CBC/Radio-Canada asked hundreds of people with disabilities: If you had a magic wand to make accessibility barriers disappear in one area, which one would it be?
Employment? Built environment? Transportation? Any of the other seven priority areas in the Accessible Canada Act to make Canada barrier-free by 2040?
The answer? None of the above.
Canadians living with disabilities said that attitudes were the greatest barrier they face to full and equal participation in society. Few people understand what life is like with a disability, and many hold incorrect assumptions…
Continue Reading
CBC Kids announced Thursday it has greenlit a new preschool series, Go Togo, from award-winning Toronto-based production company Gazelle Automations.
Comprised of 27 five-minute episodes, the series will introduce preschoolers aged three to five to early math concepts “through the fun and excitement of big public transit vehicles (in miniature scale),” says a press release.
Production wrapped last month and the series is scheduled to premiere this fall.
“Produced using real animatronic characters and handmade sets, the series follows Togo the subway car and his friends Stella the streetcar and Wheeler the bus, as they…
Continue Reading
By Connie Thiessen
CBC News has announced its intention to launch 14 new free ad-supported streaming (FAST) channels, featuring breaking news, weather, and news headlines.
CBC News BC and CBC News Toronto are already live and available to stream via CBC Gem, the CBC News App, and the Roku Channel, as well as Samsung TV Plus and additional platforms in the coming weeks. CBC says within a year, they’ll be joined by 12 additional FAST channels serving Calgary, Edmonton, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, the North, Nova Scotia, Ottawa, P.E.I., Quebec, Saskatchewan and Windsor.
The public broadcaster has been moving further…
Continue Reading
Subscribing to a paid TV service is still something done by two-thirds of Canadians, according to the latest TV Distribution report from the Media Technology Monitor, a product of CBC/Radio-Canada.
Thirty-seven per cent of Canadians subscribe to a fibre-based TV service, while 20 per cent subscribe to cable and 9 per cent to satellite TV, according to the report. Francophone Canadians are more likely to subscribe to a paid TV service than anglophones (76 per cent vs. 63 per cent), the report says.
While subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services are still ahead of…
Continue Reading
Canadian Heritage has announced the appointment of Sylvain Lafrance as chairperson of Telefilm Canada. In addition, Deborah MacPherson and Claude Doucet have been appointed as members of Telefilm’s board of directors.
The five-year terms of all three appointees began May 9.
An expert in the fields of media management and communications, Lafrance worked at CBC/Radio-Canada for more than three decades. Before leaving the national public broadcaster in 2011, he held the position of executive vice president of French services, where he led the integration of the Crown corporation’s radio,…
Continue Reading
Following Meta’s decision last August to block Canadian news content on its Facebook and Instagram platforms, nearly three in 10 online Canadians (29 per cent) say they are using the websites or apps of Canadians news organizations more, according to a new report from the Media Technology Monitor (MTM), a product of CBC/Radio-Canada.
The most popular source among Canadians for online news are Canadian news broadcasters, the report says.
“While Canadians are mentioning traditional outlets like TV and radio as being used more for news content, 18 to 34 year olds are looking…
Continue Reading
Minister of Canadian Heritage Pascale St-Onge announced Monday the appointment of an advisory committee that will provide policy advice on the role, mission and governance of Canada’s public broadcaster, CBC/Radio-Canada.
The committee composed of seven experts and specialists will be tasked with providing advice “on how to strengthen and renew the public broadcaster so it can continue to fulfill its important social, cultural and democratic functions,” says a Heritage press release.
“CBC/Radio-Canada is a cornerstone of Canadian culture,” St-Onge said in a statement. “For almost 90 years, our public broadcaster has been a…
Continue Reading
By Christopher Guly
OTTAWA – The head of CBC came to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on Tuesday proudly declaring that the public broadcaster’s “financial outlook has improved” since last December when it announced plans to cut 600 jobs to offset an estimated shortfall of $125 million, and had been reduced to about $20 million, resulting in no need for further payroll cuts to balance the books at CBC/Radio Canada.
But several members of the committee, which has been scrutinizing the employment reduction at the English-French broadcaster, were more focused on…
Continue Reading
Public broadcasters CBC/Radio-Canada, RTBF in Belgium, SRG SSR in Switzerland and ZDF in Germany, in collaboration with non-profit organization New_ Public, on Tuesday unveiled test concepts of possible solutions to transform how their websites, apps and other digital platforms are used for public conversation.
“By encouraging open and diverse conversations, public broadcasters aim to play a crucial role in stimulating informed public debate that is essential to democracy,” reads a CBC press release.
Tuesday’s announcement follows the launch last year of the broadcasters’ joint initiative, the Public Spaces…
Continue Reading
CBC on Thursday announced its spring and summer slate of original podcasts, featuring the new anthology series Split Screen as well as in-depth examinations of a curling scandal, the rise of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the Bre-X goldmine fraud.
In its first season, Split Screen traces the true story behind Kid Nation, one of reality TV’s most controversial experiments, which was cancelled shortly after its 2007 debut. Borrowing its premise from William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, the show’s producers took 40 kids into a makeshift desert town to fend for themselves and create their own…
Continue Reading
