Over at CBC News Network, which has just over one per cent market share, about the same as the CTV News Channel (formerly known as CTV News Net), there is excitement about an uptick in viewers for the morning show, and The Lang & O’Leary Exchange has doubled its audience for the time slot. But other programs like Connect with Mark Kelley are struggling.
And some of the more in-your-face elements of the new CBC News have been dialled down in recent weeks. There are fewer moving graphics, and they’re not travelling quite so fast. The text that crawls across the bottom of the screen has been brightened, and the camera work looks a lot less shaky. “Peter’s still walking,” says The National’s Whitten. “We’re just better at shooting it now.”
Jennifer McGuire says the network will measure the success of the revamp three ways: the quality of the journalism produced in the new format, the engagement of the audience, and just who is watching. “We care about audience breadth, as well as tonnage.” And executives argue that they have little choice but to shake things up. In a fragmenting news market, audiences are demanding more information, in more interactive formats, with fewer filters than in the past. The National is offering its full broadcast online each night, as well as a stripped-down 10-minute early Web edition at 6 p.m., and a four-minute download for mobile devices. (There have been some technical problems with the latter, but the service now has 28,000 subscribers, up from 2,500 the first week.) “We want to try and make some inroads into a generation that’s not into TV,” says Mansbridge. “It’s been an issue for the last decade or two —the audience is getting older. And that’s a ticket to a problem.” Viewer research also revealed another troubling truth: news consumers no longer make much of a differentiation between the CBC and its competitors in terms of trust, or where they turn for the big stories or coverage of Canadian issues. “It’s fair to say that alarmed us,” says Whitten. “And generally, there’s the same level of dissatisfaction—everyone is getting a C+. That’s the sobering part.”
Reversing such long-term trends by an on-screen revamp and behind-the-scenes restructuring seems like a long shot. (Mansbridge delivered The National from a virtual set, sitting in front of a green screen for six weeks as the studios were renovated this fall. Not one viewer noticed.) But it’s hard to damn CBC for trying.
Sitting in his office, the veteran anchor says he figures people will soon forget the show ever looked any different. Having lived through so many past network experiments, he is philosophical. Nothing could be as bad, he says, as when they paired him with Pamela Wallin and moved the news to 9 p.m. back in 1992. “That one really smelled.”
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