Unbalanced look at the digital space

I am writing in response to your article of May 26 titled ‘Breeding a society of Zapruders’ by Tamsen Tillson. The article didn’t seem very balanced.

The fact is that CBC.ca continues to be the number one news/media website used by Canadians. CBC.ca‘s average monthly unique visitors of 4.2 million and 67 million page views (2+ comScore all locations) for 2007 was up 8.9% compared to average monthly unique visitors for 2006. This is impressive growth considering 2006 had both an Olympics and an election.

In addition, the redesigned CBCSports.ca, with improved live video and on-demand streaming, showed impressive growth from 750,000 average monthly unique visitors to 1.1 million. In addition, CBC Sports has streamed the complete FIFA Under 20, all Hockey Night in Canada and playoff games, figure skating championships, Toronto FC and World Alpine events, as well as pre- and post-game shows produced exclusively for online.

A wholly new CBC Entertainment site was launched in September 2007, growing to 440,000 monthly unique visitors in its first six months, with a total of two million streams served through Media Player in the first quarter post-launch (October to December 2007). In December, with 11 hit Canadian shows, we launched more programming in the Apple TV Canada launch than any other broadcaster.

Did we mention that since May 2007 audiences have downloaded over 19 million CBC podcasts, including The Hour, which alone has had over two million podcasts downloaded? Currently, in iTunes Top Podcast listings for Canada, CBC has six of the top 20 podcasts, and 23 of the top 100. The closest podcast from a Canadian broadcaster is the Global National video podcast at #23. In the same period, CBC Radio 3 has had over 4.4 million podcasts downloaded.

Last and not least, revenues from CBC.ca rose year over year 18%.

You get the picture. CBC not taking the lead in digital programming? I think not. You did the CBC and a great team a disservice. !!

Steve Billinger,

Executive director, digital programming
and business development,
CBC