CBC TV is planning to drop Saturday Report and Sunday Report next fall and make The National a seven-day-per-week show. A world in total Mansbridgevision! :)
The CBC wants to leverage its better-known brands, while backing off others that have struggled to take hold.
Market surveys indicate TV viewers recognize The National (i.e. Peter Mansbridge, with CBC News - BD), but lack awareness of other significant CBC brands such as Newsworld.
"We've done a considerable amount of research on this," Mr. Keay said. "It's not stuff that we're just thinking up and doing."
Executives are particularly concerned that Newsworld, the cable news channel CBC launched nearly 20 years ago, still scores poorly in consumer awareness surveys compared to other long-time specialty channels such as TSN.
Newsworld will be rebranded, and will be given a new look that will see the video portion of the screen share space with more text and graphics, including weather and local news reports.
The new look is being compared with Toronto's CP24, a channel that devotes a significant portion of its screen space to graphics and news. However, it has not been decided how far CBC will go with that approach on Newsworld.
I found this interesting too:
CBC also believes it needs to break news faster.
Its website will be called upon to handle breaking stories first, and Newsworld will not necessarily wait for the definitive word on a story before beginning to report, the meeting was told.
A big change in thinking from my relatively short tour of duty there back in 2003.