CBC has rolled out step two in its podcasting trial and the reaction is mixed, largely because instead of offering full versions of such shows as Ideas and The Current, the Mother Corp is offering only “best of” packages updated once a week, instead of the full, daily broadcast.
That’s curious, given that in many other ways the CBC has been in the forefront of using the internet to strengthen its offerings. Its news site is deep and rich and makes extensive use of multimedia and its late (and still lamented) Radio 3 was one of the best and most cutting edge of the web-based zines anywhere on the net.
Tod Maffin, who has done yeoman’s service in getting the CBC to podcast, has an explanation for the weakness of the current offerings in a comment at his I Love Radio blog. Here’s what he has to say, in part:
Believe me… I and EVERYONE at CBC would have loved to provide daily episodes in full, morning newscasts, and much more. We tried every which way to make it work.
The simple fact is — we can’t afford it.
The bandwidth costs to provide that would be enormous. (We need near 100% uptime and that ain’t cheap.)
As much as we’d love to, the CBC hasn’t received a permanent funding increase in 30 years and I don’t expect we’ll be seeing one any time soon. So we just don’t have the money for bandwidth or to hire the extra people we’d need to do daily podcasts. (As it is, existing producers are just adding this extra work onto their already swamped day.)
I can understand that. We can argue about the wisdom behind CBC spending decisions, but given that podcasting remains a relatively minor player in the new mediascape, it probably doesn’t make sense to throw a lot of resources at it.
But I can’t help but wonder how other public broadcasters manage to get their stuff out (a fer instance: Radio National in Australia has 33 podcasts, most of them full programs).
I really admire the effort and energy Tod has spent in putting podcasting on the CBC menu, but I won’t be signing up for too many (if any) of CBC’s podcasts just yet. Part of that is the length of time that it’s taken CBC to get this point — it launched the first stage of its podcast trials more than a year ago. My podcast listening time is all full up at the moment and there’s nothing compelling enough about the best-of format to convince me to jettison one of my current favs. Maybe later.
UPDATE: Fine Young Journalist has some things to say about this, too.
TAGS: CBC, PODCASTING
