Right Up Your Alley: Kamloops

Rope-a-dope, Ottawa style

In separate developments today, lone holdout Bob Rae fell in line behind Michael Ignatieff's leadership bid, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper extended an olive branch to the Liberal party while giving the Bloc and the NDP the sharp end of the stick. Here's an excerpt from the Prime Minister's interview this afternoon with Peter Mansbridge (emphasis my own):

Harper suggested Tuesday that the coalition had little to do with frustrations over his approach to the economy, but was in fact a conspiracy on the part of opposition parties to bring down the recently elected Conservatives.

 "I think, frankly, after the election - if not before the election - the opposition parties decided that they would work against the government as an essentially unified front," Harper said.

He went on to accuse NDP Leader Jack Layton and Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe of backing the Liberal party into a corner where it was forced to either vote against the government or be "condemned as sellouts."

The future of the coalition, however, has since come into question after embattled coalition and Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion announced Monday he will step down earlier than planned to make way for a replacement.

His presumed successor, Michael Ignatieff, as well as some other Liberal MPs, have signalled they could be willing to work with the Tories on the economy.

Ignatieff - who some say has been lukewarm to the coalition deal - has suggested he'd be willing to listen to Harper if the Conservatives seek cooperation.

So after all the drama, a truce now between two men who turned the tables so quickly and effectively against their other rivals. Coincidence? Or, as suggested here previously, did Mr. Ignatieff and Mr. Harper collaborate to rope-a-dope the Dion-Layton-Duceppe coalition?

Then again, maybe I'm just becoming another crackpot conspiracy theorist. Got to stop watching so much TV (as below).

To share your thoughts about the democracy, expediency, political coalitions, Stephen Harper, Jack Layton, Stéphane Dion, Gilles Duceppe, Michael Ignatieff, diebold, conspiracies, shadowy puppet masters, or anything else about this post with Right Up Your Alley: Kamloops readers, just click on "Comments" (below).

Under My Skin

Things get so crazy in the fall, doesn't seem to matter what a person is involved in, how large or small their family... it's just the busy season. Even weekends that looked laid back until Friday afternoon end up looking more like a 2-day scavenger hunt than anything resembling restful relaxation.

Despite (or in part maybe because of) the two concurrent elections underway, I haven't got the brain power for big ideas.  This last week, it's been the little things that gotten under my skin, hence this lengthy installment of Baker Likes/Baker Doesn't:

Baker Likes:

• It's a booth time! - As predicted in this space a year ago (September 8, 2007 - Expect highway tolls to be in play for next BC election), the provincial Liberals today removed the toll from the Coquihalla highway. Premier Gordon Campbell announced the move this afternoon at the Union of BC Municipalities convention in Penticton.

Throughout the week, it appeared that the Premier had been on the ropes over his carbon tax, with mounting pressure to exempt the North, or cancel the tax entirely. On Wednesday he "blinked" by promising to refund the tax to communities that become carbon neutral by 2012. He looked weak, even Carol James was feeling the wind at her back, crowing that Campbell was "... not listening" to the province's community leaders. Little did she realize it was all a set-up.

By allowing an expression of popular opposition (as opposed to official opposition) to wring this toll from his hands, Gordon now looks like 1). the belle of the ball (long, hard-wraught pun intended), and; 2). a good listener who understands British Columbians.

But in addition to the gifts he bore for municipal leaders, Mr. Campbell also delivered a lump of coal to Jack Layton, who he criticized for promising to tear up the softwood lumber agreement.

“Rip it up? Give your head a shake,” Campbell said. “We won't rebuild the forest industry by ripping up the softwood lumber agreement . . . It’s what’s keeping our forest industry going through what is probably the most difficult period in its history.” - The Tyee

Whatever your stripe, it's hard not to be impressed with that kind of masterful political play. Mr. Campbell drove one through the heart of his own political opposition with a solid forehand, then immediately spread the love around for the federal Conservatives with a surprising backhand to Jack Layton's head. But then again, the anti-Layton sneer works in Mr. Campbell's favour too; does anybody really differentiate between shrill provincial and federal NDPers?

• Sex on the hustings - OK, well maybe not sex on the hustings, but if a picture is worth a thousand words, certainly a lot of chatter about sex, judgement, and one Conservative candidate. Sharon Smith, who represents the Conservatives in Skeena-Bulkley Valley, was captured in a full-monty portrait by her husband after capturing the Houston, BC mayor's office in 2002. The picture was soon after published on the Internet by person's unkown, and even made a splash across the pond in the U.K. press. But everything old is new again in a federal election, so Mrs. Smith is once defending her birthday suit celebration. Between Stephen Harper and Mrs. Smith, have the Tories ever looked so sexy?

• A different kind of sizzle is what caught my eye at CTV.ca, where the network is demonstrating a deft touch with some online tools which this voter found fun and informative. The first, a Canada-wide election heat map, helps one visualize where the leaders are currently and where they've been over the course of the election. It was a neat feature during my first visit, but lacked the depth to pull me back in during subsequent visits; now, if it had provided a link between the leader's stops (represented by push-pins on the map) and the stories that resulted from those whistle-stops, I'd go back again and again. The second tool was better executed, it's a "Pick Your Party" race (at right). Viewers are asked to select from a sequence of unattributed quotes to determine which leader aligns best with your views. It had me guessing to the end.

• No oil please, I'm gassy - Nice to see that legendary oilman T. Boone Pickens continues to put his money where his mouth is with respect to moving America away from its dependence on (foreign) oil. Mr. Pickens just bought Canadian innovator FuelMaker Inc., which produces a natural-gas refueling station for the home, called the Phill. The appliance taps into the natural gas lines already in one's home, to leverage a relatively inexpensive but previously inaccessible vehicle fuel source. Critics suggest his motivation is all profit. Is that a bad thing?
  

• EI option for Self-employed - Prime Minister Harper's pledge to introduce parental EI benefits for entrepreneurs is a fresh and welcome initiative. While the devil may very well be in the details, feedback on non-aligned sites seems largely positive. The move will give many married voters another reason to vote Conservative, while simultaneously appealing to the 15% of the Canadian workforce that is currently self-employed, and which . While I generally prefer governments to limit their roles rather than increase them, family-friendly initiatives that help children spend more time with their own parents represent a welcome departure from the groupthink that encourages parents to place children in the care of others. 

Baker Doesn't:

• Dion goes to the bench - It's about time. Stephen Dion has finally discovered that if he can't win this election by himself, at least least he can lose it with help. One of Jean Chrétien's most dependable tactics was the deployment of lieutenants as foils against his foes. It gave him an opportunity to deliver different messages, but without the responsibility of consolidating those messages into a single unified thread. It also provided a lot of leeway for Mr. Chrétien to attack other party leaders, without the risk of getting muddy himself (not that he ever shied away from that).

But Mr. Dion is only getting it half-right... he's stumping along with them. It's an obvious mistake; he looks a wan in comparison, and is giving many card-carrying Liberals reason for regret rather than enthusiasm. The Liberal leader should assign one of the more aggressive members of the Liberal pantheon to shadow Mr. Harper directly, maybe one of them has what it takes to step up and become "The Grate One" of Canadian politics, à la Esa Tikkanen. The Republicans did it very effectively in Denver; the Liberals should be attacking the Conservative strength here in Canada, and the only way to do that effectively is with a team, not a one-man show. Mr. Harper is in the zone; the Liberals need to get him off his game before he runs up the score.

• 2 legit 2 quit - Why is it that when traditional media is under pressure, bloggers get the blame? This week local journalists gathered at a forum to discuss the present and future of journalism for the benefit of TRU journalism students. The Daily News reported that some of the collected professionals expressed concern that blogs have intruded into the news that people consume locally, like it's an either-or proposition. But if traditional media has lost its appeal, and blogs may be the usual suspect, the actual culprits may actually reside a little closer to home.

Take broadcast for example. Back in 2004, CNN reported on a Pew Research Center for the People and the Press study which revealed that "21 percent of people aged 18 to 29 cited "The Daily Show" and "Saturday Night Live" as a place where they regularly learned presidential campaign news. By contrast, 23 percent of the young people mentioned ABC, CBS or NBC's nightly news broadcasts as a source." Then, in May 2008 Pew told us that John Stewart has become the 4th most admired journalist (tied with legitimate anchormen Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and Anderson Cooper). What does it say about legitimate news media that news satire has become synonymous with news?

I personally have always been skeptical of what I read or hear on any news source. Rather, I read and listen to lots of news stories, editorials, and letters to the editor, then based upon my own experience of how the report of an event can differ from the actual event, I form my own perspective on an issue. Often the thing that drives me online to blogs (and other endpoints) is an on-going quest for more perspective, depth, or awareness of what others think. I do that, surely others do as well. In which case, the legitimate media should be adapting to the cause (evolving viewer/reader/listener/browser behaviour) rather than railing against the symptom (the growing popularity of blogs and other ultra-local/social media).

Despite the inclusive language of CFBX program co-ordinator Steve Marlow, I'm not convinced that blogging is journalism, although in the right hands it certainly can be journalism. But whatever it is, it doesn't require nor desire a nod from traditional media to be deemed legitimate; the consumer has already proclaimed this media 2 legit 2 quit reading. Hammertime!

To share your thoughts about the running man, Hammer, The Grate One, John Stewart, Colbert, Stephen Harper, Stephen Dion, Bob Rae, maternity benefits, the federal election, T. Boone Pickens, Gordon Campbell, the Coquihalla toll, politics,Sharon Smith, Kamloops media, or anything else about this post with Right Up Your Alley: Kamloops readers, just click on "Comments" (below).

Not Journalism

OK, now that I've finished patting myself on the back, the reason I appeared at the Radio-Television News Directors Association professional development conference on the weekend is that broadcasters are exploring blogs - and other online phenomenon - as a source of information. While, as Mel Rothenburger suggested, many bloggers perceive mainstream media to be the competition, the news professionals at this conference didn't give me the sense they felt likewise about us. That doesn't mean they aren't skeptical.

Traditional media have been somewhat sidelined by the rapid exchange of images, information, and opinion between non-traditional publishers and consumers on the Internet. Fairly recent developments have seen CNN formalize its relationship with citizen journalists via a managed iReport segment on its own home page - complete with an assignment desk, featured iReporters, an iReport bureau in Second Life - and its standalone iReport web service, to which people can upload their "Unedited. Unfiltered. News." items. A small number of iReport items make it to the CNN.com home page, where they stand alongside headlines and stories generated by the organization's own reporters.

When CTV.com relaunched in January, it also incorporated a nascent iReport feature, called MyNews. It includes a call to would-be citizen journalists to "Send us your cell phone pictures." Unfortunately, this call to action is way tardy to the action. If media organizations really want to leverage citizen journalists, they must habituate people to the act of uploading images and content to their proprietary services before any actionable news items are recorded. That way, when a newsworthy event is captured, novice citizen journalists already have the network's email address in their camera-enabled cell-phones, and the practice of sending images to that media endpoint has already been established. If the network instead waits until after the news item has been captured (as it is now), they are at risk of losing the images to competing services like YouTube. I'll discuss how the media might establish those behaviours in a subsequent post.

So, although Canadian media are just beginning to exploit the chaotic and evolving citizen journalist phenomenon, it doesn't mean they haven't tried.

You might recall that a little over a year ago, both Global and CTV broadcast video of a Marine Atlantic ferry battling massive waves in the Cabot Strait between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia (below). Unfortunately for the networks, the ferry wasn't in the Cabot Strait, nor was it in any Canadian or North American waters. In fact, it seems that the images captured a distressed ferry in New Zealand.

Wherever it originated, at some point the dramatic footage was uploaded to YouTube, where it was observed by maritime Canadians, who in turn reported it to Global and Newfoundland's CTV affiliate. Neither network confirmed its authenticity with Marine Atlantic, and so ran completely separate and erroneous reports.

The challenge in the newsroom is pretty significant. It's easy to use information from blogs, social networking sites, and citizen journalists. The hard part is using that material while maintaining accuracy and credibility.

That's why I'm content to blog about the news that other people (essentially, mainstream media) collect, rather than covering events myself. I don't consider myself to be either a citizen journalist, or a threat to conventional media. If anything, it's the opposite; through my links to the media's stories, I (like many other bloggers) actually help drive more eyeballs to media web sites.

This blog is about my opinion and perception. While I reserve the right to report on issues that others don't (or won't) cover, for the most part I prefer stuff I can link to; otherwise it's just too much damn work.

This is my hobby. This is not journalism.

To share your thoughts about news media, bloggers, citizen journalists or any other subject with Right Up Your Alley: Kamloops readers, click on "Comments" (below).

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blog

Contrary to the apprehensive ramblings of Friday's post, my participation in an afternoon panel at the Radio-Television News Directors Association's BC Regional professional development conference yesterday went off without much ado.

The prelude to the event was nerve-wracking. In the hours before the event I worried away about my shaking hands and tight chest, but the beta-blocker did its job right on cue; I was able to think and speak clearly, and to my surprise actually enjoyed the experience (à la Slim Pickens).

My co-panelists in the blogging forum were Kamloops News Editor Mel Rothenburger and CTV BC Online Web Manager Heron Hanuman. Moderated by CFJC TV-7 Anchor/Producer Bill O'Donovan, the focus was the relationship between blogs and newsrooms, journalists and bloggers/or citizen journalists.

Mr. Rothenburger got us started, and provided a pretty stark assessment of blogs and bloggers. I won't get into the specifics of what he had to say because he's already published much of his perspective in The News. He did however remark favorably upon the quality of this blog, which was flattering, but left me wondering if quality is the thing, or rather familiarity.

Familiar, perhaps because a middle age guy with a blog isn't prone to publishing the same spectrum of language and inconsistencies and vitriol and vanity that is common on the Internet, but which would not pass editorial muster. If that's the case, then maybe the much narrower spectrum of language and inconsistencies and vitriol and vanity published here is less representative of the chaotic and exciting online revolution than Saturday's audience would have hoped.

Mr. Hanuman provided some quite remarkable statistics regarding the growth of the blogging phenomenon (which I am unable to regurgitate here), but which certainly grabbed everyone's attention. CTV launched a new web site earlier this year, and on the left coast Heron is leading the charge. Now, the fact that they're trying doesn't mean they're getting everything right. But vibrant online media strategies aren't deterministic, so working a specific technique will seldom generate predictable outcome x.

As Rob May wrote last November in his Business Pundit post Understanding the Stochastic Success of Social Media Tactics, one should "look at aggregate results, not individual results"; employ a variety of promising techniques, and maybe enough of them will hit close to the mark that the net result (pun intended) will be positive.

I posed two questions to the assembled broadcast news directors. The first was pretty straightforward: what is your objective? Many organizations (not just news organizations) approach the Internet with poorly-defined purpose, so it's impossible to measure failure or success. Is the objective to use blogs:

• as a source of stories or background within the newsroom?
• as a distribution mechanism for news and information from the newsroom?
• as a mechanism for attracting a new audience?
• as a mechanism for retaining an existing audience?
• as mechanism for generating more revenue or reducing costs?

Maybe none of these are relevant, but I certainly came away with the impression that at least some of the broadcasters in BC are feeling enough pain to overcome their natural reticence about engaging us amateurs. Some professional journalists expressed real concern about citizen journalists (I'll examine the difference between bloggers and citizen journalists in a future post). Many professionals perceive citizen journalists with well-earned skepticism. But that skepticism has really become an excuse for avoiding and delaying the development of strategies for effectively engaging the average Joe on the street with a handy-cam, who by purpose or circumstance happens to be in the right place at the right time to catch something newsworthy.

Which brings me to my second question. It's been 17 years since George Holliday captured Rodney King being beaten by a group of LAPD officers. It was one of the biggest news stories of the year. What has the media done since then to encourage, expedite, and exploit the power of citizen journalism? In many oppressed jurisdictions overseas, Mr. Hanuman pointed out, citizen journalists play a major role in the development of an effective and fledgling free press. Here in Canada and the US however, the media really hasn't done much to advance the yardsticks since 1991. In the interim, the news media have discovered themselves to be somewhat marginalized by the average Joe, who now uploads his newsworthy images to YouTube, or his blog, or what have you.

I'll explore this further in subsequent posts. In the meantime, the credits for Constantine are rolling, so it's time for bed.

To share your thoughts about news media, bloggers, citizen journalists or any other subject with Right Up Your Alley: Kamloops readers, click on "Comments" (below).

Wendy Mesley Gets Lectured at Thompson Rivers University

I attended the standing-room-only Wendy Mesley lecture this evening at Thompson Rivers University. Ms. Mesley, a veteran CBC journalist and anchor of Marketplace, spoke about her experience with breast cancer both as a patient but also as the journalist who challenged the Canadian cancer establishment with her Chasing the Cancer Answer documentary.

Ms. Mesley (at right) spoke to a friendly audience, several of whom didn't hesitate to pitch a tent once they had the microphone during the Q & A period. Ms. Mesley's sometimes confused expression (accompanied by an increasing number of rolled eyes by long-suffering attendees) didn't slow down several long-winded sermons delivered by a representative of Save our CBC Kamloops, a nursing instructor, a denier of climate change deniers, etc.

While the subjects of her lecture included a broad mixture of politics, journalism road stories, cancer survival, and investigative reporting, what fascinated me right out of the gate was the first thing that came out of her mouth.

Immediately after approaching the lectern at the Clock Tower Theatre, Ms. Mesley acknowledge a little discomfort with her microphone headset, and the fact that she was standing at the foot of a theatre with a couple of hundred people staring down at her. As an anchor she typically works in a studio with no audience, not even human camera operators.

Throughout the presentation she expressed unease and fidgeted with the headset, until she finally knocked the wireless unit/back pack off the lectern. Hanging as it was from her headset cord, she fumbled with it for a minute while looking off-stage for a technician to help her. Unfortunately, no assistance was forthcoming, so she toughed it out by herself. Visibly flustered, Ms. Mesley carefully picked up her train of thought verbally while scanning her notes to re-establish her place, then just talked her way through it until the colour left her cheeks, and her pace resumed. While a couple of hundred people isn't the biggest audience in the world, she still did a great job picking things up despite the obvious fumble with unfamiliar equipment.

Her apparent self-awareness didn't, however lend itself to much depth in her response to my own question about how her cancer experience has changed her as a journalist, specifically in respect to becoming part of the story. Despite admitting earlier in the evening that prior to her cancer, she had resisted to "going all Oprah" over stories, once she was diagnosed she injected herself quite effectively into her documentary.

Maybe she was a little defensive, having faced sharp criticism over her documentary from the likes of the Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente, who in 2006 wrote:

There's every reason to admire Ms. Mesley personally. But her journalism, in this case, is another matter. Chasing the Cancer Answer is stunningly simplistic. It peddles the biggest of the conspiracy-theory myths about cancer and its causes. It's full of misleading information and fear-mongering. It ignores a vast body of serious science. And it does a profound disservice to the public, many of whom rely on the public broadcaster for responsible and balanced journalism...

Advocacy journalism is all very well. But Chasing the Cancer Answer omits (or misstates) a number of important facts. To start with, there is no cancer epidemic. Overall cancer rates (as opposed to the number of cancer cases) have been relatively stable for more than a decade. While the incidence of some cancers have risen, others have fallen; overall, you have no more chance of getting cancer than you did 10 years ago. What pushes up the number of cases is that cancer is overwhelmingly a degenerative disease of older age, and our society is aging. Cancer is our second-biggest killer — but that's because we're living long enough to get it.

Her unsatisfying response is most likely my own fault, as my question wasn't very specific or well-formed.  Like most of the others who asked questions, I somehow expected her to intuit and sympathize with my intent. In fact, most of us who had a crack at the microphone appeared guilty of being more interested in what we had to say than what the speaker had to offer.

I was actually looking for Ms. Mesley's perspective regarding her decision to inject herself into the her documentary, to discover at what point the threshold for doing so was achieved (OK, that was my inside voice, it was a little more challenging to articulate my thoughts with a microphone in my hand). Why? Because some commentators have very accurately described amateur bloggers as self-absorbed. In fact, most of us spend so much time writing about ourselves that it is quite literally our specialty. Most of the blogs I read (and produce) feature posts in which the author fully participates in the story, either as the central figure or just a plain old loudmouth. 

What I do and what Ms. Mesley does are worlds apart; she's a professional journalist at the top of her game (which includes chasing a story in our area), while I'm just a hobbyist with a digital voice recorder I can't figure out. But in some respects maybe bloggers and journalists are alike, and being struck by our distant cousin's acute self-awareness is a case in point. If professional journalists can - and maybe, should - become part of the story, certainly bloggers should have similar latitude?

At Behind the Headlines (a blog written by the editors of the Lexington Herald-Leader about their editorial decisions), the subject of reporters becoming part of the story was addressed last summer when a reporter took possession of evidence in a homicide investigation. Assistant metro editor Dori Hjalmarson described the dilemma as follows:

Normally the ethical muses of journalism frown on reporters becoming characters in the news they are writing about. Herald-Leader reporters and editors go to great lengths to balance and separate our jobs and our personal lives. It’s our duty to tell stories through others’ voices, to present other points of view – not our own.

Wendy Mesley isn't the first journalist to become a big part of the story (think of the extremes to which Hunter S. Thompson pushed the limits of journalism almost forty years ago), and she hasn't made a practice of it since Chasing The Cancer Answer was initially broadcast. But if not, then why not? And, how should we evaluate journalists? Based upon the large majority of cases in which they conform to dispassionate best practices, or those infrequent cases in which they stray away from them?

To share your thoughts about becoming part of the story, long-winded questions, the cancer industry, or Wendy Mesley with Right Up Your Alley: Kamloops readers, click on "Comments" (below).

 

Media Spotlight on Kamloops Blogs? It Ain't Nothin' But a Zen Thing

If bloggers crave attention, Daily News editor Mel Rothenburger dished up a round on the house this past Saturday with his Armchair Mayor column, in which he provided readers with an introduction to, and brief assessment of, the Kamloops blogging scene. The column, Beware mainstream media: the bloggers are here provides a timely counterpoint to my own recent examinations of Kamloops' major media web properties.

<<< OK, if you made it through that last sentence without snickering, go back and read it again to the tune of Carly Simon's You're So Vain. >>>

The former Kamloops mayor gave top marks to media professionals who blog, a number of whom are employed by his newspaper. Amateur bloggers (including yours truly) received a little more scrutiny, which oddly enough is exactly the thing that many amateur bloggers both desire and fear.

For the most part Mr. Rothenburger is right on the money about blogger sensitivity; discussions about real and perceived slights can often take on a life of their own. Case in point is the story about the Tournament Capital Centre's basketball hoops over at www.KamloopsInsideOut.ca, and the subsequent coverage of the same story in the Daily News. When one considers the parallel discussions of the issue at ProBlogger.net and WritingForward.com, the combined thread now includes more than 80 posts and comments!

While Mr. Rothenburger stops at referring to the lot of us bloggers as, "sensitive" and "self-absorbed", others aren't nearly so restrained in their criticism. Author, broadcaster, and silicon value entrepreneur Andrew Keen, for example, wrote the book on us. In Cult of the Amateur: How today's Internet is killing our culture, Mr. Keen argues that, “what the Web 2.0 revolution is really delivering is superficial observations of the world around us rather than deep analysis, shrill opinion rather than considered judgment.” Damn... if it hadn't been for Mr. Keen and his big mouth, we would have pinned the death of culture on that guy who makes antler lamps years ago!

Anyways, all this online dialogue is something that newspapers can and should be putting to good use. Some Canadian and US newspapers are responding to the blogging phenomenon by selecting amateur political commentary posted on their own newspaper web sites, and incorporating it into ongoing election coverage. Why? Well, because a lot of people are opinionated and self-absorbed!

By selecting and printing just a single column-inch of amateur commentary per day, these newspapers attract repeated online visits by more people who hope to see their own names and opinions in print. And by growing the reader/writer relationship from two dimensions on paper into something that includes an intimate and interactive online experience, newspapers have an opportunity to convert dwindling print subscribers into committed online participants. And of course, more eyeball$ for advertisers.

So, in counter-counterpoint Mr. Rothenburger, mainstream media needn't beware the blogger. Rather, if you don't mind shouldering some of the responsibility for the death of culture, instead consider becoming one with the blogger. Ommmmm...

P.S. - To Mr. Rothenburger's point about my run-on Blog Disclaimer and Comments Policy, in retrospect I did incorporate pretty well everything I could think of or copy that might C.M.A. (a not-so-insignificant task in Canada), other than of course the option of keeping my mouth closed. While it may not be the most elegant, sound, or effective blog policy around, at almost 500 words surely it must be one of the longest!

To share your thoughts about free speech, blogging, antler lamps, the media, or the death of culture with Right Up Your Alley: Kamloops readers, click on "Comments" (below).

 

Online Media Properties in Kamloops: TV

In this continuing series about online media properties in Kamloops, today's post provides an assessment of what local TV stations are doing online.

Comparing Kamloops TV stations isn't as straightforward as comparing radio stations, given there is really only a single TV station with scheduled broadcasts (sorry, Shaw). As a result, I compared our local station - CFJC-TV - with the CanWest station in Kelowna, CHBC News. Both stations dropped their CBC affiliation in 2006, and continue to collaborate on sales and share programming schedules.

Now, when I personally am looking for an update on a local story, the first place I typically look online is either at the CFJC-TV web site or at the Radio NL web site. Neither location provides a lot of information, often just a couple of sentences, but sometimes it's enough to at least temporarily satisfy the news jones.

Nevertheless, it is obvious that a CHBC priority is to develop a comprehensive online strategy, and this is no doubt a result of CanWest's Internet focus, as per that company's 2006 Annual Information Form (emphasis my own):

Our online and new media strategy is to continue to build our strong internet presence in order to leverage our editorial content across multiple media, provide integrated solutions to our advertisers and to cross-promote our publications, broadcasting and internet operations. We intend to capitalize upon the promotional and editorial capabilities of our integrated newspaper and video production in order to create Canada’s leading network of local content websites. The internet is complementary to our existing businesses and a significant potential source of new revenue.

In fact, CanWest's 2007 Annual Report claims that the company has managed to increase the volume of unique visitors to its online web sites by 30% over the previous year. That kind of growth doesn't happen by accident.

The elements of the CHBC web site that most interest me include:

1. The widespread use of video news stories. Many of the video news stories appear to have been lifted straight off the station's news broadcasts (which seems like a no-brainer), but for some reason many local TV stations have difficulty pulling the trigger when it comes to streaming their own video content online.
2. Once you've found a video story of interest, you can actually send a link to the story to a friend. This is a great feature that delivers real value to the media consumer, but it also generates more traffic to www.chbcnews.ca site when friends follow links back to stories at the web site. Unfortunately the "Send Story" function is paired up with a "Print Story" feature, which is at odds with video streaming both conceptually and in practice.
3. CHBC provides a virtual tour of the station, including 360° images of every room. Essential? No. Cool? Absolutely!
4. The volume of information available. Visitors really have an opportunity to hang out and get lost. Thank goodness for the virtual tour map so we can find our way out again!

Now, while CHBC has developed an engaging online presence for media consumers, much like CFJC-TV it doesn't appear the station is doing much with respect standalone banner or video advertising online. I suspect that for the moment CHBC is content to draw a growing online to its web site, but at some point it will need to exploit all those eyeballs; it's one thing to build a great web site, but something else again to make that web site profitable.

So, here is the comparison. As you can see the display format differs somewhat from the Radio comparison, it will probably change again when I publish the newspaper comparison (coming soon). 

Station	CFJC TV-7 Kamloops	CHBC Kelowna
Link	www.cfjctv.com	www.chbcnews.ca
News
News	Yes	Yes
Sports &  Schedules	Yes	No
Roads	Integrated road reports	Basic road reports Link to William R. Bennett bridge construction update
Weather	Yes	Integrated weather forecasts                Weather forecasts for all the communities in the CHBC broadcast area
Playlist	- n/a -	- n/a -
Listen Live	No	No
Display Current Song	- n/a -	- n/a -
Information
Music Charts	- n/a -	- n/a -
Program Schedule	Yes	Yes
Program Archive	Recipe archive	News archives with search
Online Contests	No	No
Loyalty Program	No	No
Privacy Policy	No	Yes
Advertising
Standalone Ads	No	Yes
Video Ads	No	No
Real Estate	No	No
Offline Advertiser Directory	No	No
Convergence & Consumer Engagement
Video	Icetime (Blazers)	Current and breaking news stories on video Roberts on the Roads (local events and people) CHBC Bridge Cam
Syndication (Feeds)	No	No
Consumer Content	No	Send us your pics (scenic still pictures) NewsHawks - contribute news videos (tips, etc.)
Comments	No	No
Save/Share Items of Interest	No	Yes
Interactive	Question of the Week	News tips Submit events Virtual station tour
Other	Custom URL icon	Lots & lots of info Community elevations Contact info for regional golf courses, ski hills

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