CBC Opens ZeD.cbc.ca Code

ivar writes "The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has open sourced (Apache License 2.0) the code used to build ZeD.cbc.ca. The corresponding TV show (typically consisting of content uploaded by the community) aired the announcement last night (Jan 6_, along with the Canadian broadcast premiere of Revolution OS. It's always heartening to see cool things come from a state run corporation..."

Comments

CBC -- BBC

[mj]

CBC has some really great stuff, it's sad more people don't pay attention...

Since moving to Britian, I've seen how far something like the CBC could go: The BBC.

The BBC kicks serious ass. Wide range of great programming. Really insightful stuff...

http://www.bbc.co.uk

And it's not fear mongering like the American news channels. (and yes, we got plenty of them in Canada...)

Revolution OS

[_J_]

I caught a bit of this last night. My favourite quote came from Stallman: "Giving the Linus Torvalds Award to the Free Software Foundation is a bit like giving the Han Solo Award to the Rebel Alliance."

I had to track down this quote this morning after hearing it last night.

Re:Heartening?????

[gspr]

Why is it particularly heartening to see these things come from state run corporations?
Because it shows that the state has taken notice of free software. You're a bit quick to label someone as pro-communist, I think.

Are you sure you're not a little too emotionally invested in the idea of total capitalism?

CBC and Free / Open Source Software

[gmailflows]

The CBC (a Canadian Crown Corporation) is a large media organization with diverse interests and actors. Internally it is divided into three distinct branches: Television, Radio, and New Media. While there is no official "pro open source" policy at the CBC, there are large numbers of us who promote open source at every opportunity.

Zed is based in Vancouver and is somewhat independent from the core of CBC's new media efforts, and as a result have had the freedom to do what they've done re: build and release an open source app. Unfortunately a great deal of the cbc.ca content system is based upon microsoft .asp and the funds and will do not seem to be present to follow the model of zed in embracing free and open source software. With that said, cbc.ca does use apache/linux servers from akami...

The next step as others have noted would be for the CBC to join the BBC wrt codec development.

Re:CBC - state run? yeah right

[gstoddart]

CBC is not run by the Canadian government. It's FUNDED by the Canadian government.

Well, the CBC is a Crown Corporation. Which means they're owned by the government, report to the government, but expected to operate as a commercial enterprise. It is a bit of an arms length relationship. They fill a role that private industry can't/won't fill while still trying to serve the public interest. There's quite a few crown corporations in existence.

Personally I think we should cut all their funding since they run advertisements just like any other station.

Well, they're supposed to. Since they have to try and run as a profit generating (hopefully) corporation, they conduct regular commercial activities. You may not like the whole system of Crown corporations, but singling out the CBC for fulfilling their role is a little misplaced.

Cheers

Reminds me of Brave New Waves...

[hung_himself]

Back in the 80's the CBC FM would just put canned classical music on at late night - no hosts no nothing. Somehow, they completed deviated from their classical/jazz lineup and as an experiment Brave New Waves was born playing alternative music when it was alternative. A wide variety of stuff - Einsturzende Neubauen, Pogues, Butth0le surfers, Skinny Puppy, Jesus Mary Chain... It had a really cool hostess Augusta Le Pay who would munch on pizza while interviewing Laurie Andersen and a pyschic before playing an hour of the sound of fences howling in the wind. Remember this was at a time when alternative music got no air play and on a network known for it's news and playing Vivaldi's 4 seasons every 20 minutes.

Hopefully Zed will be the net version of this with just completely off-the-wall content. I'm not that optimistic - but we'll see. A lot of Brave New Waves success had to do with Augusta's and her producer's skill walking the thin line between quirky and interesting and stupid and dull...

And get over this "state run is crap" stuff (friggin' Enron fanboys...) - the CBC and BBC for that matter do occasionally provide programming that is a counterpoint to for example, Fox's "Who's your Daddy?"...

CBC experimenting with Ogg Vorbis streaming too

[sgarrity]

The CBC recently moved from Real formats to Windows Media formats for streaming audio.

After receiving complaints about the proprietary nature of their formats, they started experimenting with Ogg Vorbis streaming.

Re:We have states in Canada?

[MikeBabcock]

"I don't think that word means what you think it means."

A 'state' is an autonomous region of the world, if you will, with governance of some form. The USA is a grouping of independant states (more or less these days), whereas Canada is one state, France is a state, and Germany is a state, but the EU is not a state.

There are many meanings for the word, but "by the state" usually means "by government" in this context.

More

[locarecords.com]

This is really encouraging to see the the public service broadcasters 'getting' open source and trying to contribute to the community. If this could take off it could be a great boost to the entire copyleft/open-source ideas.

However I would warn that in the UK the content industry is sharpening its knives over The BBC Creative Archive. I attended a conference given at Westminster Media Forum where the representatives of the content industry where rabid about copyright and patent law and extremely hysterical about 'idea theft' as it was colourfully termed. When they heard about the Creative Archive plan... Phew! Some scary people were there... And they are not impressed with Creative Commons - who were shouted at, verbally attacked and generally given a very very frosty reception...

Strangest contribution (and it was a difficult choice considering the crazy assertions and unsubstantiated nonsense spoken) has to be the Arlene McCarthy MEP linking copyright, patent and 'idea' theft with 'Organised Crime', 'Paedophilia', 'Pornography', 'Terrorism' and 'Paramilitary Organisations'... She was truly loopy, and more worryingly serious!

John Naughton was fantastic castigating the dangers from 'slavish legislaters' (she didn't like that!) and gave a really excellent and balanced presentation calling for caution against listening to only the interests of the media corporations and content industry.

Most scary person (again a difficult choice) was Lavinia Carey, Director of FACT who told us that '65% of people didn't think it was a problem to share stuff' and that 'consumers have to be protected from themselves' and those who didn't were 'gonna get a shock'. To get a feeling for the balanced tone see the campaign to link copyright 'theft' and terrorism... Scary!

To the "WTF is ZeD" people:

[iantri]

ZeD is a "media convergence experiment", i.e. a website and TV show on the CBC at 11:25pm. It runs for 40 minutes, commercial-free, and shows short films, documentaries, independent music acts, mostly Canadian.

The content is (mostly) available on the rather nifty website; most of the show's content originates from it. Think DeviantART, except for all types of media, and with a TV show that showcases the best of it.

CBC-BBC parallels

[WebCowboy]

Please, don't bring up the BBC, then someone will bring up the fact that everone HAS to buy a TV license if they have a TV

Interestingly enough that is almost the same way CBC receives much of its funding. In Canada, if you want wo have *cable or legal satellite* television you MUST pay a fee to CBC. This fee is hidden in your cable or satellite bill. In return, we get the CBC--by law, all cable and satellite providers in Canada must provide CBC Newsworld, and one channel each of the CBC main network and Radio-Canada (French CBC). I *AM* glad that we don't have that silly license scheme here though.

Then someone with a complete lack of understanding of the way the BBC works, will call it a puppet of the government.

Cant speak for the BBC, but the CBC seems fairly independent of government, and is quite regularly on its case about corruption, etc (they also get a good skewering on "This Hour has 22 Minutes"). I DO have to say that they are far from neutral, and arguably very out-of-touch with Canadian's overall viewpoint editorially. Canada is markedly to the left of the US, but not outright socialist as often the CBC's editorial stance seems to be. Compared to th BBC programming I've seen I'd say the BBC is not nearly as ideologicallly bent as the CBC. And while they are not a puppet of the government, during election time they cover the Liberal and NDP (socialist) party much more favourably than others (Conservative, Greens, separatists, fringe parties).

As far as government puppets go, in Canada they are private media companies--Bell GlobeMedia is owned by a staunchly Liberal family with close ties to high-powered politicians. The "old and stale" Globe and Mail editorials are a good example of mutual backscratching.

Then finally someone will pour scorn on the actual quality of the programming

Much of what the CBC does is crap, and I'm sure the same is true of the BBC too, but it seems (at least here across the pond) we get to see the best of what the BBC has to offer, and even when production values are sometimes low, it is very good entertainment, which is often emulated here (hits like "All in the Family" are Americanised British imports). The CBC has carried such shows before too (Degrassi Junior High had a following around he world, Beachcombers was a bit hokey but still a perennial favourite, The Nature of Things is world-renowned and very long-running). However, finding the treasure amongst the crap that sometimes gets put front-and-centre is sometimes frustrating.

The CBC *is* too overlooked, and there is quality stuff on there, but it has incompetent management. Their biggest hits never seem to air on the same day and time from week to week. They are too often pre-empted for special presentations or sports events or whatever reason they can come up with to move things around. Furthermore they have no real direction. On one hand they try to meet some kind of official mandate and be like the BBC or PBS, and on the other hand they are driven to fill air time with American movie features and revenue-generating commercials and Canadian-produced content that emulate American formulae.

There has to be a corporate-wide shake-up at CBC to allow for more innovation. They can't be both the BBC and ABC. Furhtermore, private networks are starting to make some really good, truly Canadian programming that beats what the CBC has come up with for awhile (Check out Corner Gas...also CTV has picked up the latest sequel to the original Degrassi shows at CBC's expense).

I'm not totally against the CBC--as I said they have some good programming and it's nice to see initiatives like the open source one by ZED. However, if taxpayer money is going to fund it, the CBC should offer something different than "just another network" (which they too often try to be). Private enterprise can give me the same old stuff. The CBC will know they are successful when they air something a bit off the wall that becomes enough of a hit t

Re:Um...

[ivar]

ZeD is the Canadian Broadcasting COrporation's cross platform (wbe & tv) initiative.. see our what is zed page for more details.

Aside - one thing that isn't trumpeted but I think rocks is that our programming is commercial free. The TV show is aired at 11:25 PM because it often has content of an 'adult' nature. We don't want to compromise our artistic integrity (if something is hard to watch, but considered by us to be a valuable piece then our editors will put it on air..) for advertisers.. it also makes the show much more pleasant.

Semantic Clarification

[kietscia]

Just a small clarification though, the CBC is not 'state-run'....it's 'state-funded'. Subtle but important. A state-run media organization would act as the mouth-piece of the current regime where being state-funded only means you have to lick a few boots at budget time ;-)

Re:Semantic Clarification

[grozzie2]

The comments from the uninformed do not describe it well, they leave out the most important detail. CBC is mandated to provide broadcast service to the ENTIRE country. That includes all the sparsely populated areas in the high north, as well as the densly populated areas in the south, and everything in between.

The government funding of the CBC is intended to offset the cost of operating a broadcast infrastructure into areas where there is no possibility of commercial revenues to offset it's costs. This is viewed by the government as an investment in creating an informed and educated society with equal access to news and entertainment for all. In essence, the funding is intended to level the playing field, creating a broadcast infrstructure that has the same operating cost per viewer to deliver content to folks in the big cities, and folks living in tiny communities in the high north. It has nothing to do with 'national control' of the content, and has everything to do with 'equal access' to that content for all canadians.

As a crown corporation, cbc was created with a charter. If you go read the actual charter, you will discover, that 'the government' is specifically excluded from providing influence or guidance to the content, in particular the news portion of that content. The cbc is mandated to provide reporting from an objective viewpoint. This was graphically demonstrated when cbc reporters (not of the embedded kind) were expelled from Iraq after they refused to submit to censorship by the us military. It became an issue of principle, and the cbc properly decided that if you cannot report the news objectively, it's better not to report at all. this is quite visible even today, there is a strong lack of reports from iraq on cbc, due to the corporate policy that they will not carry reports from a news agency which have been passed thru a censor. That excludes the use of most american syndications producing content over there.

With that said, there is yet another branch of our federal government that asserts a form of control over all broadcasters, the CRTC. It was determined a long time ago, that the large economic block to the south of us could easily influence broadcast content within our country. It was also determined that content pervading from the south is anything but objective, and has a dramatic negative effect on the local economy, hence the creation of canadian content rules for broadcast licenses. Similar to the cbc charter, the canadian content rules are intended to be 'opinion/content neutral', but to ensure that an appropriate percentage of content is 'locally produced'. To get a broadcast license in this country, you gotta broadcast 'local content'. Doesn't matter what the content is, just as long as its there. Zed is an example of 'canadian content', that would not have happened without those rules in place. The assumption is, ensure the broadcast slots are availble for local content, and the market will determine what actually fills those slots.

Overall, this is an immensly difficult concept to explain to our brethern to the south. They just dont get it. They like to talk a lot about freedom and equality, using buzzwords like 'equal access' etc etc. But, they dont actually do much about it other than talk about it. Up here to the north, it's not something we talk about much, because we take it for granted, it's a given, a right due all citizens of our country. Instead of talking about it, we invest in it, and then get on with life. CBC led the world in using satellites to deliver television and radio into the remote areas of the high north. It wasn't a cheap undertaking, but an investment considered 'worthwhile' because it was an investment in equality for all of our citizens. That investment continues today, as government funds are used to offset the high cost of broadcast infrastructure into remote areas, so that all of our citizens can have access to the broadcast content.

For all you american consumers, look at the bright side. CBC d

Re:BBC has, CBC doesn't -- no commercials

[westcourt_monk]

Yes but the billion comes with plenty o'strings. CBC french version gets a significant chunk and it does a better job with what they have over the english side.

But ya CBC has commercials, which I think it silly. I wonder what the BBC budget is? Looks like over 2.5 billion pounds (6 billion CDN). BBC annual report is interesting.

This is pretty standard...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this isn't about CBC trying to steal your IP - clauses like this are pretty standard _any_ time a corporation accepts material from the public for possible publication. The reason being, if you send in your great idea, and it happens to be similar to something already in progress, the corporation is in a tough position - they must keep very careful records to ensure that they can prove in court that they came up with the idea independently. These clauses tend to be draconion to guard against someone spamming them with ideas that they might concievably be working on, with the intention of suing later.

Re:CBC vs PBS

[Anonymous Coward]

Every station does that with their national news. You should complain about CTV since they put theirs on at 23:00 and force local news back to 23:35. At least CBC doesn't air a show such as Canada AM -- which would be much better called Eastern Canada AM. The show has no appeal to western Canadians. The only station that really does have a news show that does is Global, but they are very pro-Conservative.

Besides, you can watch The National at during the evenings in the west and watch your local news later at 23:00 or wait until they cover it the next day. Regardless, it is impossible for Canada to have a national newscast when the country is split over five time zones without one end complaining if the show comes on at the same time in each time zone.