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Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Reflecting Canada to Canadians

Tonight, I am handing my blog over to the CBC's national election team.

HI! Welcome back to our continuing coverage of the national election. We are your number-one source for analysis.

But not yet! There won't be any results yet! Nosiree!

Instead, let's look at Twitter!

Ah, I see here that someone has twittered, uh, tweeted, uh, twitted about the election! "ZOMG the Tories are goin DOWN." And here's another one: "Cant wait for the Libs to be out." Real talk from real people. You know, WE'RE on Twitter, too!

It's still too early for us to actually tell you anything, so let's head over to our panel of thoughtful analysts. That's what you come here for.

BORING GUY #1: I predict a Conservative minority.

BORING GUY #2: I predict a Conservative minority.

BORING GUY #3: I predict a Conservative minority.

Wow, those were refreshing perspectives. We still can't give you any results, so let's check out our Facebook page!

Ah, someone has posted on our wall! "Thanks CBC for covering this election so well." Boy, we really appreciate your support. You can go to our Facebook page and become a fan of CBC. You've heard about Facebook, right? Remember, we're there! We are NOT out of touch!

And now let's get back to the twits! Reading these disjointed sentences is real journalism for the 21st century. "Dont count the greens out yet its May Day!" "Screw the election I'm getting a beer." "How come nobody on Twitter supports the NDP?"

Hey, why are you changing the channel?

6 comments:

jen said...

lol yeah my husband and I both did a double take when they brought up the twitter crap. The best part was closer to the end when they thought it would be super neat to take all the twittering and make a graph out of it, super scientific like lol.

Anonymous said...

LOL.....my house mate insisted on watching the coverage of CTV out of Newfoundland. I hoped to switch over to CBC after he called it a night but I never bothered. Now, I'm glad my house mate had control of the remote last night.

Kate Nova said...

LOL as well.
Having three stations on at once, we decided quickly to turn the sound off CBC. The hour before polls started reporting back was one big in-house ad, and the hour after was, um, well, everyone said it.

Mongoose said...

I watched the numbers online rather than on TV - I hate listening to people talking. It was pretty dry stuff online too, and at the end of the night they spliced quotes from all the different news stories they did that night and made one big story about Everything. It was... underwhelming. Just like the election itself.

Jackie S. Quire said...

Now now now ms. snow-covered-hills.

While I can appreciate a good crack at the Mothercorp...

It's unfair to mock the CBC for consulting tools us AVERAGE PEOPLE use on a regular basis. While I HATE when CBC uses them as main/sole sources, I think it's fair and accurate to sample what the online twits and facebookers have to say.

After all, what's the difference between doing that and consulting blogs, of which we all seem to hold in such high esteem?

I know it's outrageous how they do it at times, but there has to be SOME merit... right?

I'm not leading a useless existence, right?

:)

Megan said...

I don't take issue with the use of the Internet as a research tool. What bothers me is the obvious desperation in the way they present their findings. Our national broadcaster should be above that.

It's like placing a microphone on a street corner and pretending that (1) whatever it records is newsworthy and (2) the network is extremely cool for having a microphone.

I think if CBC wasn't frantic to show us that they know how to use Facebook, they wouldn't look so pathetic. (Another reader contacted me to say that the election technology guru was using her SMART Board incorrectly.)

Facebook and Twitter are useful, but not this way. This is just blatant LOOK AT US WE HAVE FACEBOOK ACCOUNTS.

CBC hasn't figured out how to integrate its Web 2.0 work with the rest of its service. It's too bad, because they've figured out how to promote their TV network on radio. For some reason, when they try to do this with the Internet, they always seem out of touch.

Now that I think about it, this might be worth a post.