Year in Review
Programming Highlights
Chris Elliott, Dan Levy, Annie Murphy, Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara at the gala premiere red carpet for Schitt’s Creek, CBC Television
English Services
Delivering on Canadian programming
6 of top 10 Canadian entertainment programs in 2014-2015:(1)
- Dragons' Den
- Heartland
- Murdoch Mysteries
- Rick Mercer Report
- Schitt's Creek
- The Book of Negroes
Providing Canadian audiences with distinctive and compelling Canadian programming continued to be our driving focus this year, consistent with Strategy 2015.
CBC Television held 6 of the top 10 Canadian entertainment programs (excluding News, Sports and Specials) during the regular season, up one spot over last year's ranking. Several new shows premiering this year made a strong debut: The Book of Negroes with an audience of 1.9 million, Schitt's Creek at 1.6 million, Ascension at 1.1 million and X Company at 1.1 million.(1)
CBC Radio once again achieved record results, even exceeding last year's record high, with a CBC Radio One and CBC Radio 2 combined fall share of 18.1%. CBC Radio One alone achieved an all-time high fall share of 14.2% and CBC Radio 2 contributed to a successful result by garnering a 4.0% share, the highest in over 10 years and since programming changes to this service were introduced in 2008.
CBC Radio once again presented Canada Reads in March 2015. The four-day competition, hosted by Wab Kinew, saw Kim Thuy's novel Ru named as “the one book to break barriers,” with the support of celebrity advocate Cameron Bailey.
CBC News continued to provide high-quality and original journalism on all platforms, covering key national and international news events such as the Parliament Hill and Moncton shootings, the Ebola outbreak, and D-Day and World War I commemorations. Investigative reporting continued with pieces such as “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women” and coverage of the D-Day 70th Anniversary ceremonies on The National. In addition, Marketplace introduced more original stories suggested and told by audience members, while the fifth estate showcased longer-form programming by CBC News' investigative journalism team, with many of its hosts appearing on The National, local supper-hour news programs and local morning radio shows. Other CBC signature events in the year included Canada Day programming (Live from Parliament Hill and Canada Day in the Capital), the Canadian Screen Awards, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Canadian Country Music Awards and Canada Reads.
Growing our regional presence
By the end of the year, we had implemented most of the initiatives that were originally planned as part of Strategy 2015. Therefore, the next major service initiatives to be introduced will come with our next strategic plan, A space for us all, beginning in the fall of 2015.
In that context, 2014-2015 saw The Calgary Eyeopener morning show as the first of a new set of initiatives to be implemented of radio simultaneously broadcast on local CBC Television stations, with more morning shows to be telecast on CBC Television in the near future.
Performance in 2014-2015 for local radio morning shows continued to be favourable, with 24 of 26 morning shows ranking in the top three in their respective markets, and 14 of 26 morning shows ranking first.(2)
Looking specifically at radio morning shows recently launched to better reach Canadians in underserved areas, Daybreak Kamloops earned the number two spot in its market, with a 20.2% market share,(3) down one from last year but still up from the 14.6% share achieved two years ago. In Saskatchewan, the combined performance of the Saskatoon and Regina morning shows achieved the second-highest ranking in their market from 15.2% to 15.7% in one year.(4) Finally, The Morning Edition in Kitchener-Waterloo maintained the second rank in its market, while increasing its market share by 0.3 percentage points to 9.7%.(4)
Other local and regional programming highlights in 2014-2015 included the coverage of provincial elections in Ontario and Quebec, through a multiplatform approach that offered audiences information and analysis at their fingertips.
Regional production is a big part of our network programming, with shows ranking from The Book of Negroes, Heartland, This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Strange Empire on television, to The 180, The Next Chapter, C'est la Vie, Wiretap and The Debaters on radio, produced across the country.
Extending our digital reach
CBC.ca continues to see increases in the number of monthly unique visitors to its site, growing by 3 percentage points in 2014-2015 compared to the prior year (see the Operational Indicators section).
New versions of the CBC News and CBC Radio iOS Apps were released simultaneously with Apple's release of iOS 8. CBC News was the highest-ranking news app for iPad and second-highest for the iPhone during the week following the iOS 8 release. CBC News also launched a new app for Android 5.0 Lollipop, which within a month of release was the number one app in the “Top Free News and Magazine” category on Google Play in Canada.
CBC's social channels (@CBC) also continued to grow. Using a #notweetleftbehind approach to social engagement, the @CBC channels on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram saw more than 750,000 engagements (retweets, replies, likes, comments) throughout 2014-2015. Looking more closely at Twitter, tweets sent from @CBC (including @replies to followers) totalled more than 50,000 this year, whereas other North American broadcast networks averaged around 4,000.
Canada's Smartest Person's integrated, cross-platform experience was developed to bring new audiences to the conventional TV broadcast and create loyal viewers via a circle of engagement. Viewers were offered the experience of watching the TV show, playing along via the app and sharing their experience through social networks, all within an integrated show format. As a result, more than one million challenges were played and the app drew more than 180,000 downloads.
CBC ComedyCoup, an innovative, digital comedy accelerator/competition designed to provide programming development opportunities for original comedic productions across the country, was created by CBC, CineCoup Media and Just For Laughs Television. More than 250 projects were submitted to the competition, representing more than 21 hours of unique content, with audiences spending more than 9,000 hours watching videos on the website.
On CBCMusic.ca, fans voted and decided the winners for the CBC Music Awards, selecting them in 10 categories, including Artist of the Year: Céline Dion; Best Song of the Year: Arcade Fire – Reflektor; and Album of the Year: Serge Fiori – S/T. Moreover, the Searchlight 2014 competition (won by Lauren Mann and the Fairly Odd Folk of Brooks, Alberta) saw the CBC Music site increase page-view traffic by 18% over last year's Searchlight edition.
CBCMusic.ca and ICIMusique.ca partnered to produce Piano Hero, a competition for Canadian amateur classical pianists, with Calgary's Thomas Yu selected as the winner. This competition saw 250 submissions, generating more than 86,000 votes from the public and 703,000 video views.
With a new emphasis on digital, which will certainly continue under A space for us all, we have more opportunities to engage Canadians in the creation of their own content. For example, in March 2015, CBC Montreal held CBC/Radio-Canada's first-ever hackathon (#HackingCBCMt). The event brought together nearly 50 developers, designers and engaged media consumers who worked with CBC Montreal journalists, as well as members of the public via social media, to generate ideas for making an even more open, accessible public broadcaster.
