Toronto AES Bulletin Nov/Dec 1996   Web Site of the Month

CBC Radio On The Internet

A Brief History

The "CBC Radio on Internet" trial began on December 15, 1993 when English Radio program material was installed at the Communications Research Centre (CRC) site in Ottawa making CBC the first major broadcaster in the world to put audio programs on Internet. The site was originally built by a research scientist from the CRC (Industry Canada) who happened to like CBC programming.

In the first month, the site averaged 1,692 hits per day. The accesses came from over 39 countries and in particular from Canadians living abroad who were interested in accessing Canadian programming.

Today

Based on the interest generated by the CRC/CBC experiment, and with an eye to increasing listenership, CBC Radio decided to bring production of the site in-house. The service has been operating on site since December 1994 as part of the Radio Production Centre. The site is currently connected to the Internet via a dedicated 1.5 MB per second connection and there are plans to increase bandwidth.

Initially soundfiles had to be downloaded completely in .au format before they could be heard. In May 1995 CBC Radio began using "RealAudio", software developed by Progressive Networks, which allowed users to stream audio to their desktops: the audio could be heard almost instantly.

On Sept 26 1996 CBC Radio became the first public broadcaster in the world to stream its live programming onto the Interet. Today, Internet users from around the world can hear the live programming from CBC Radio, CBC Stereo, SRC Radio, SRC Stereo, and Radio Canada International. In addition there are archives of the latest news and a number of popular radio programmes.

Growth

From the first 1692 hits for the entire month of Dec 1993 the site has grown exponentially.

• May 1995 - 8000 hits per day
• Jan 1996 - 15,000 hits per day
• Today - over 100,000 hits per day

Future Directions for the Site

• Develop a full on-demand radio programming service with Web access to CBC archives and a separately produced "best-of" site.  
• Multicasting (MBONE) to high speed networks (such as Rogers' Wave, ADSL) to help develop an Internet broadcast model and further the CBC's integration into New Media.  
• Further an Interactive Programming Model that has already started with a number of Phone-in Shows (Radio Noon, RealTime).

 

URL

http://www.radio.cbc.ca/

| This Issue's Front Page | Last Month's SoM | Next Month's SoM |

| Toronto AES Home | Current Bulletin | Future Meetings | Back Issues | Search |

This page was created Sun, 16 Feb, 1997 at 21:02.
Please contact TorontoAES@vex.net to report any problems.