The CBC and the National Post are feeding each other. A new cross-platform content-sharing deal, jointly announced late yesterday, has the public broadcaster trading sports feeds for financial stories from the Canwest-owned newspaper.
CBC says it will run stories and podcasts from the Financial Post in its online money section, while the National Post will lift Ceeb sports stories, to be run on its website and ‘periodically’ in its print edition. The FP, which is extending the same feed it has been providing to newspapers in its metro markets, now to CBC.ca.
CBC has similar deals in place with Google and The Canadian Press, while the Post trades content with ‘a lot of sources,’ says National Post VP digital Jonathan Harris, citing BreakingViews.com, with which it signed a deal last month that made the New York- and London-based news source available exclusively in Canada through the Financial Post.
While the left-leaning Ceeb and the conservative Post – owned by arch-competitor Canwest – make odd bedfellows, CBC lacks close ties with a major newspaper, unlike CTVgm and Canwest (although reports in The Globe and Mail indicate a National Post CEO Paul Godfrey-led buyout of CanWest papers may be afoot). The National Post, in turn, has not fared well in the Maritimes, a traditional CBC stronghold.
Harris tells MiC the deal is a win-win. ‘The CBC is a fantastic source for sports news. They’re a true leader, and we thought it would complement what we already have on our site at Nationalpost.com/sports. It just made sense: the CBC was looking to enhance its business coverage and the FP is known for its great business brand. It’s a brand that’s 102 years old, it’s what we specialize in. And we already provide a newsfeed to a lot of our member papers online.’
Advertising opps resulting from the new partnership, says Harris, are far reaching. ‘There’s more inventory on [National Post] specifically targeted against CBC material, so it lends all kinds of packaging opportunities.’ With FP‘s core print product, its online counterpart, its feeds’ reach and delivery of branded content to biz sites and papers across all Canwest metro markets and now the opportunity to extend that reach to the CBC.ca audience, Harris says advertisers get ‘a lot of breadth and lot of depth against a very desirable business audience.’ There’s also an opportunity to place ads specifically against FP content on CBC.ca, including a custom spot beneath the FP widget on the homepage, as well as the FP podcast accessible from CBC.ca/money.
With files from Playback Daily
