Sure. This is something we've been working towards for a little while. We've been integrating different kinds of services. We integrated all of the support services, communications, human resources, and finances over the course of the last little while. For a lot of our regional operations we've been moving towards the integration of news. In French, I believe it was two years ago that they integrated fully. It was a logical step in terms of the path we've been coming along.
Concretely, it means a couple of things. First, I don't think the direction of English radio is going to change. I really think the direction of English radio has been very, very successful over the course of the last little while. One of the things I would say to people when I first came to the television side was if we could have a television service in English that was as clever, as successful, and that Canadians loved as much as the one we had in radio, I would be thrilled.
What it will allow us to do is a couple of things. On the point that Bob was making earlier on, the efflorescence of different kinds of platforms of one variety or another, whether Google-type platforms or Internet platforms or mobile platforms or whatever they happen to be, it'll make it easier for us to address all those kinds of platforms in a sensible way.
The other thing it will allow us to do is to in fact develop offers that are designed from the very beginning to run on all the different platforms. We've been experimenting with this for some time now in Vancouver. We asked ourselves: what does the news service of the 21st century look like, particularly local news service?
We said to ourselves that it has at the very least two really important characteristics. One is that it meets Canadians wherever they happen to be, on whatever sort of device they want to consume the news on. So we said it's obviously a multi-platform offer. It runs on radio, television, mobile devices, the Internet, etc., so that we can serve Canadians however they want to consume their news. So we would design it that way around.
The second thing we said to ourselves is--again, to use a metaphor--that we want to think less that what's involved in the news is a conventional broadcast model. It's no longer that I tell you the news; rather, it's a different thing, which is we engage in a conversation with Canadians as to what constitutes the news. It's an issue of stance.
What we would like to be able to do is offer a newscast that is much more networked and interactive, where Canadians can not only express their opinions as to what is important with respect to the news they cover, but they can also comment on the news as we present it and they can discuss among themselves how it is that the news is made. In the most radical form of it, they can actually upload to us content and, indeed, stories that become part and parcel of it, so that, one way to put it, no longer are we sending news in a broadcast model but rather a social network model.
I've been working on that in Vancouver. You can see, obviously, to be able to do it requires that you integrate all of your services, a common set of editorial priorities. As Robert was saying earlier on, journalists go out and collect the news not just for television and radio, but for the Internet and hand-held devices as well.