Content planning: Breaking news at CBC
As YouTube Producer at CBC News, I was responsible for developing our daily YouTube content plan and assigning reporter hits and packages from News Network to associate producers. My workflow:
Every morning I would look at our content calendars and outlooks to see what the highest priority events were of the day (ie. were there meetings between world leaders, breaking news from overnight). Then I would update our YouTube lineup and start assigning stories to our morning AP.
Touch base with our digital and politics teams to assess what livestreams we might have for that day. For example, if the prime minister was announcing a new measure we would take it live.
Provide feedback on uploads and ensure consistency in our standards.
Work with our regions to ensure the best local content from across the country was spotlit. For example, when the Toronto Blue Jays were in the World Series, we paired up with local Toronto so efforts would not be duplicated.
Case study - Canadian federal election:
For the Canadian election, I developed the content plan specifically for YouTube. This included a mixture of different types of content:
Livestreams: During the Canadian election we had two 12-hour livestreams running around the election (voting day, results). These livestreams were special programming developed by CBC News. Ahead of time, I submitted the livestream request and set up the tokens so the specials would be advertised in the weeks ahead. I also worked with YouTube to ensure these specials would be featured on a special election shelf for publishers.
Winners projected: I proactively developed copy ahead of time that we could use for several scenarios depending on who would win the election. When Mark Carney was announced the winner, I assigned a breaking news hit that we urgently uploaded to YouTube. As winners in different ridings were announced, I worked with our associate producer to upload news about the most followed ridings, ensuring we maintained impartiality and equitability in how we covered parties.
Deeper analysis: In the days that followed, we focused on taking different angles for YouTube so we wouldn’t be duplicative of content already published. Because YouTube’s algorithm can recommend content for several days, we wanted to ensure our coverage was diverse and moved forward. Angles in the coming days included:
