Relaxing on a Hot Summer Day

Where cars go to relax on a hot summer day.
Cordova St., Vancouver, August 2005

A couple of things I came across the last few days that I wanted to pass along.

Good advice: avoid texting while driving.

YouTube: Trying to be to video what Flickr is to stills.

Blank Slate: My kind of keyboard

Antiques at Hastings

Antiques. Richards & Hastings, Vancouver, 16 August 2005.

CBC is not 404 - it just looks that way

We’re Not 404 - We’re Just Experiencing Labour Difficulties

The lock-out at CBC is sparking lots of discussion in our family and with acquaintances.

I don’t rely on CBC for my news, information or entertainment, so the lockout is really just on my periphery. But my business partner Emma Payne was supposed to be a guest on the local call-in show here in Vancouver today, so we’re a bit bummed about things being shut down.

I should be clear about my past experience at CBC: I worked at CBC on contract for over 20 years, and in the last few years was involved in labour negotiations, not as a labour specialist but as a content specialist. I chose not to renew my contract last year, and have since gone into partnership with Emma Payne at At Large Media in Vancouver BC

You’d think that in this day and age there would be better ways to settle things. You’d think that a company that is considered one of Canada’s top 100 employers could find a better way to deal with their employees.

I wonder how long they get to keep the title given that most of their staff
are locked out. Maybe it’s like world wrestling and they have to
defend their ‘top employers’ belt in a no-holds-barred grudge match.

I realize that labour agreements are complex, but when you get right down to it, these are among the most creative and interesting jobs around. Before Canada’s video game industry grew to the size it is today, jobs in radio and TV were THEY dream job for a lot of young creative Canadians. Even though I disagree with some of their direction, and regardless of what you think of the CBC in general, it has a long history of creating some awesome stuff.

The main issues, at least according to what both sides are saying publicly, are life-work balance and contracting out. 70 percent of CBC’s employees are vested staffers who essentially have a job for as long as they choose to stay there, or extreme bumping rights if they get laid-off, or as has been done in the past, extremely lucrative buy-out packages for early retirement. Any way you look at it, this is a tremendous luxury in this day and age, and you can understand why the union is fighting to hang on to it. But at what cost ?

Then there is “life-work balance”. There are no employees at CBC who work more than 37 1/4 hours a week without getting overtime or time off in lieu. Have a think on that. These aren’t heavy lifting hours pulling trash cans off the street or laying brick or even hauling mail from door door through sleet, snow, ice and canines. These are office hours, spent in pretty nice offices, with modern equipment, doing ultra cool work. They may be intellectually grueling hours, but still…

According to a study by the National Sleep Foundation, the average employed American works a 46-hour work week; 38% of the respondents in their study worked more than 50 hours per week. In Canada, work weeks have been trending steadily downward, and those CBC folks are clocking about 4 more hours a week than is the average in Canada. By comparison, the average doctor in BC works a 50 hour work week - that’s before teaching or being on-call. Workers in Norway and the Netherlands work the least number of hours (according to the OECD) and you can see how relaxed they are.

But you don’t have to go too far afield to find some comparisons that are more salient. Take the video game industry. Here are some highlights:

• 34.3% of developers expect to leave the industry within 5 years, and 51.2% within 10 years.
• Only 3.4% said that their coworkers averaged 10 or more years of experience.
• Crunch time is omnipresent, during which respondents work 65 to 80 hours a week (35.2%). The average crunch work week exceeds 80 hours (13%). Overtime is often uncompensated (46.8%).
• 44% of developers claim they could use more people or special skills on their projects.
• Spouses are likely to respond that “You work too much…” (61.5%); “You are always stressed out.” (43.5%); “You don’t make enough money.” (35.6%).
• Contrary to expectations, more people said that games were only one of many career options for them (34%) than said games were their only choice (32%).
This is taken from a study by the IDGA - you can get your own copy at
http://www.igda.org/qol/whitepaper.php

The point is, work-life/life-work balance is relative - it means one thing if you’re at the CBC and another if you’re at game company and another if you’re picking berries in the Fraser Valley.

The folks who are outside the CBC buildings across the country are highly skilled workers. They do world class work, win countless awards every year, and make pretty good stuff in any given day. By all accounts they are plugged-in and up-to-date with what’s going on in the world. After all, they work for a Canadian media giant, and they got to where they are because they’re the best at what they do. They’re high acheivers, at the top of their game, with loads of options. I’d hope that they could figure out how to manage their own work-life balance issues. And I realize that no-one’s talking about salaries in this dispute, and don’t get me wrong, I think they should get paid really well for the work they do, but if you’re interesting, you can see how those 37 1/4 hours get compensated - the salary scales are here.

Oh, then there’s that permanent staff issue. But I’m the last person who should be commenting on that. I’m such a goof that in my 20-plus years at CBC, the last thing I wanted was to become permanent staff. I far prefered being on contract (which by the way comes with a salary premium at CBC, so you actually take home more money if you’re on contract) so I could decide my own fate rather than have one assigned to me.

if you’re wondering about the labour dispute and want to read what both sides have to say, visit www.cmg.ca and www.cbcnegotiations.ca . And Tod Maffin is been keeping a running commentary on his blog.

Short Shots

• These guys drive me crazy. Now the RIAA is complaining (again) about blank CD’s and how burning CD’s is one of the reasons record sales suck. We’re already paying a levy on blank media, so I’m not sure why they’re on this again. I’m thinking maybe they’re missing something - maybe record sales wouldn’t suck so bad if the records they were making didn’t suck so bad.

• Living next to the US tends to give us Canadians a bit of an inferiority complex. But when it comes to high speed connectivity, we’re miles ahead of our pals in America. In fact, Canada has the highest high speed connectivity of any country in the G7. However, when it comes to cell and other mobile services, both our countries suck. Great article Op Ed piece in the NY times on this very topic.

• People are going to think I’m picking on the CBC, but really, I’m not. After all, I worked there for over 20 years; I just can’t help it. The headline reads “Man Dies After Marathon Video Game Session”. I was surprised to see a headline reading “Man Dies After Marathon Video Game Session” on the front page, up there with real big stories. More surprise when I clicked through, and discovered this banner ad right next to the story.

OnLine Poker for the Kids!

Finally ! Online poker for little kids. Thank you public broadcasting! (and thanks to Kevin for the tip)

The Radio Bubble Starts to Burst

The radio bubble pops.

It’s no surprise to anyone, except maybe the very people who should be most aware of it. I’m talking about the research released in Canada by Ipsos-Reid showing that Internet use has now surpassed time spent listening to the radio.

This isn’t some statistical aberration; it is a clear trend, particularly among 18-34 year olds. Couple that with Adam Curry getting 8.5 million dollars (US) to fund Podshow Inc. and, well, it’s got to make even the most conservative traditional broadcasters take notice.

For years I’ve been suggesting that broadcast radio has been in a bubble that’s about to burst. What we’re seeing is the start of what will be a massive change to broadcast radio.

Nowhere in the world will this be more pronounced than in Canada, where we have the highest broadband penetration of any country in the G7, and a financially healthy radio industry. It is the public broadcaster here that faces the toughest challenges, and the biggest opportunities.

Public broadcasting goals are a terrific match for Internet content distribution. A much better match in fact than any private broadcaster. Public broadcasting puts ideas ahead of popularity, and specificity ahead of broad public appeal. Public broadcasting isn’t a channel per se, but rather a rich and vibrant collection of different types of programs, housed by a set of values. And that’s one of the Internet’s (many) great strengths. It is a viable and vibrant medium to serve not one ‘broadcast’ channel, but literally millions of specific ones.

The majority of the public broadcaster’s programs attract small but dedicated audiences. They’re high value with limited broad appeal. Yet in Internet terms, they have healthy resources - staffed by professionals who are at the top of their craft. Let loose with their budget on the Internet, any of these radio programs could be micro-stars on a global scale. And that’s good for public broadcasting in Canada, or public broadcasting anywhere in the world.

The challenges though are immense. The models on the Internet shift and change constantly, something that is not in the public broadcaster’s comfort zone. Internet metrics are in their infancy and aren’t well understood by executives accustomed to seeing traditional media metrics. Despite having a distributed work force, public broadcasting in Canada is hierarchical and centralized. But the biggest challenge is one of definition; what is public broadcasting programming online supposed to be? Putting programs created for radio on the Internet isn’t the answer. Applying talent, rich content, imagination, public broadcast values, and an understanding of the medium, is.

The challenges seem to be winning. Recent changes to critically acclaimed and innovative web properties indicate a move away from the web in favour of more traditional programming. The problem of course is that all the indicators point to audiences selecting other ways of getting their news, entertainment, comedy, drama and music.

Given the choice between an MP3 player stuffed with hours of material that I want, and listening to a channel that sometimes plays what I want, there’s no contest. Given the choice between ‘tuning in’ and cruising the web, there’s not contest. Not any more.

BigSnit Media Watch: Hero, Zero.

HeroClayton, a university student on a sailboat with his family, stops to help some folks out fishing who’ve run into fishermen in trouble. Their boat has capsized and is floating upside down, and a kid is trapped underneath. Clayton dives in, and plucks the kid out from under. No big deal he says, anyone would have done it. Actually, most people wouldn’t, and it’s a big deal to swim up under a capsized boat in open water. This guy deserves a medal.

Zero. Saskatoon should just roll up the streets and call it a day. While passing through town on his customized bike, a physically disabled man from Quebec gets his bike stolen, along with, camping gear, etc. While supposedly helping him look for his stuff, a local resident takes him into an alley and steals his wallet. Nice.

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Five Pipes in Venuzuela

Five Pipes and a Coconut Palm.

c. 1987 at a gas stop, somewhere in Venezuela, en route to the teleferico in Merida from Caracas.

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