Memo: Strategy 2020: Local news changes coming today
Starting Oct. 5, CBC audiences will begin to see on-air changes including one-minute local news updates.
Today our audience will see the first on air changes locally from Strategy 2020. Canadians are seeing local news more often on CBC TV, giving us more contact points with the audience throughout the day and evening.
Our new one-minute local news updates have gone on the air, first in Newfoundland and Labrador and now rolling westward every hour on the hour (from 2:59 through 5:59 local times, and again from 7:59 p.m. through 9:59 p.m, a half-hour later in NL). We call them “TV Hourlies”, as homage to the hourlies on Radio One, which are a mainstay of our service. We expect these will be too.
We believe that by reinforcing our connection with local communities we are increasing the bond between Canadians and their CBC. These connections will increase even more as we accelerate our pace of growth on mobile and desktop, which also starts today. You’ll be seeing much more about that in the weeks and months ahead as the volume and frequency of local stories steadily increases and expands across the various day parts. You'll also see our new mobile website by the end of October. We'll be adding local news alerts to our very successful mobile apps for both Apple and Android devices by the end of this month as well.
Today also marks the new start time for our evening news programs, at 6 p.m., the time most preferred by Canadians for local news on TV. More than the start time is new. Our local evening news programs will evolve new formats and new ways of story telling to complement our continuous approach to news.
The industry is in the midst of the largest shift in audience behaviour since the advent of television. We are on a path to becoming much more digital, much more nimble, more ready to serve audiences on the devices and at the times of their choice. All the while still being committed to the highest standards of journalism and editorial leadership in our communities.
I know many of you have been working through the summer to create and refine these new approaches to local news. It has been a lot of change in a short period of time. We will be checking in regularly and your feedback will help us evolve what we are doing over the next few months.
Please know your work is really valuable to us. It’s greatly appreciated. You are an outstanding group of colleagues, professionals every one, trying hard to get it right. Working together, we will.
Congratulations and thanks for everything that you’ve done to bring us to today.
Jennifer McGuire, General Manager and Editor in Chief, CBC News and Centres
H.G. Watson was J-Source's managing editor from 2015 to 2018. She is a journalist based in Toronto. You can learn more about her at hgwatson.com.