About Broadcast News

Broadcast News

Broadcast News (BN) is the broadcast wire service of The Canadian Press, Canada's national news agency. Created in 1954 as a subsidiary to deliver news copy written specifically for radio and television broadcasters, it replaced the earlier Press News service and grew into the country's dominant supplier of broadcast journalism to privately owned radio and television stations. In 1956 it established Canada's first national voice news wire service for broadcasters — BN Voice — and in 2007 the Broadcast News brand was folded into a single Canadian Press identity.

Overview

Broadcast News was conceived as the broadcast arm of The Canadian Press: a news service that would do for radio and television stations what CP had long done for newspapers — provide a continuous, professional wire of national and international news — but written and produced for the distinctive needs of broadcasters. That meant copy written to be read aloud, audio clips and actualities for newscasts, and later network newscast production for subscribing stations. The venture operated in cooperation with private broadcasters, supplying news reports to privately owned radio and television stations across Canada.

At its height, Broadcast News was an institution of Canadian broadcasting. When its first manager retired in 1971, the service was supplying 298 radio and television stations with a staff of 45 and a $2-million budget. It pioneered the national exchange of tape-recorded news reports between stations, built a parliamentary bureau in Ottawa, and by 2004 had become the sole national newswire service for commercial radio stations in Canada. The service's history is, in many ways, the history of how Canadian broadcast journalism professionalized in the second half of the twentieth century.

History

The Canadian Press created Broadcast News in 1954 with the arrival of radio and television as mass media. On January 1, 1954, BN replaced Press News, the earlier service through which CP and its predecessors had sold news copy to broadcasters. Charles Edwards, a veteran Canadian Press employee, was named the first manager and secretary of BN, and he would be the guiding hand behind the service through the 1950s and 1960s — the man primarily responsible, in the words of the History of Canadian Broadcasting, for the start of competitive private radio news services in the country.

In 1956, Broadcast News established an audio service to exchange by wire selected reports originating from participating stations across the country — an exchange of tape-recorded news that was called Tapex. In 1961, audio news reporting on a larger scale was undertaken under the name BN Voice: the first national voice news wire service for broadcasters in Canada, which served 34 radio stations with national and international news. The service continued to expand through the 1960s, and when Edwards retired in 1971, BN had grown to serve 298 radio and television stations in Canada, with 45 staff and a $2-million budget. In 1979, CP added network newscasts for subscribing stations.

Broadcast News operated in a competitive field for much of its life. Standard Broadcasting's Standard Broadcast News competed for subscribers through the 1980s and early 1990s, providing content to more than 100 stations by 1994 — but the stations could not pay fees high enough to sustain the service, and Standard was spending $1 million a year subsidizing it. In 1994 Standard terminated its subscribers and began servicing only its own owned-and-operated stations. By 2004, Standard's stations had rejoined Broadcast News, which became the sole national newswire service for commercial radio stations in Canada. In 2007, Broadcast News was rebranded under the single Canadian Press identity, a change made after CanWest Global left the co-operative, consolidating the agency's print and broadcast services under one name.

Broadcast News operated in a competitive field for much of its independent life. A third service, Newsradio, was created by the Canadian subsidiary of CBS using reports from CKEY in Toronto and items from CBS News; it was purchased by Maclean-Hunter and Quebec chain RadioMutuel and in 1981 joined with CKO, an all-news radio network, before closing in 1989 with the demise of CKO. CHUM Limited also established its own wire, the Canadian Contemporary News Service, which by the 1980s was servicing only CHUM-owned stations with a once-a-day broadcast. That left CP's Broadcast News and Standard Broadcast News to compete for subscribers — until Standard, unable to sustain the service on subscriber fees alone, withdrew in 1994 and BN emerged as the sole national service a decade later.

Content

Broadcast News supplied the raw material of Canadian broadcast journalism: text copy written specifically for broadcasters, audio reports and actualities, and network newscasts for subscribing stations. The Tapex system of 1956 — the exchange by wire of tape-recorded reports originating from participating stations — was an early form of the news-sharing cooperatives that would become standard in broadcast journalism, allowing a station in one market to air reports gathered in another. BN Voice extended that concept into a full national voice service. The service's Ottawa bureau covered Parliament, and its exchange arrangements with the Associated Press's audio service and ABC News gave Canadian stations access to international audio reporting alongside CP's own bureaus across Canada.

The copy was written for the ear rather than the eye — shorter sentences, conversational phrasing, pronunciation guidance — the distinctive craft of broadcast writing. For generations of Canadian radio and television newsrooms, particularly in smaller markets that could not afford their own national correspondents, Broadcast News was the backbone of the newscast: the source of national and world news, of Ottawa coverage, of the audio clips that gave a newscast its texture.

Coverage & Audience

Broadcast News served privately owned radio and television stations across Canada — a national footprint from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Its client base was the commercial broadcasting sector: at its 1971 peak, 298 stations; by the end of its independent existence, effectively every commercial radio station in the country. The service's audience was thus indirect but enormous: the millions of Canadians who heard CP/BN copy read on their local station's newscasts, often without ever knowing its source.

The service's bureaus and correspondents covered the national capital through its Ottawa parliamentary bureau, drew on Canadian Press bureaus across the country, and accessed international coverage through exchange arrangements with the Associated Press and ABC News. It was, in effect, the nervous system of Canadian commercial broadcast news.

Ownership

Broadcast News was a subsidiary of The Canadian Press, Canada's national news agency, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. The Canadian Press itself was founded in 1917 as a news co-operative owned by its member newspapers; in 2010 it was taken over by a new for-profit entity, Canadian Press Enterprises Inc., owned by Torstar, The Globe and Mail and Montreal's La Presse (as of January 2020). Broadcast News operated as the agency's broadcast division throughout its independent existence, and since the 2007 rebranding its functions have continued under the Canadian Press name.

Digital Presence

Broadcast News has no standalone public website; its services are delivered through The Canadian Press's professional wire and digital platforms at thecanadianpress.com. The Broadcast News brand, retired as a public identity in 2007, survives in the institutional memory of Canadian broadcasting and in the historical record — the History of Canadian Broadcasting's documentation of news services and station groups, and the Canadian Press's own corporate history. For researchers and journalists, the service's legacy is accessible through those sources; for working newsrooms, its successor functions continue as part of The Canadian Press's text, audio, photographic, video and graphics services to radio, television, websites and commercial clients.