Barb Williams: I'll be CBC-ing you

Send us Fan MailBarbara Williams first media job was as a receptionist at the all-news radio station CKO. She quickly rose up the ranks, eventually becoming President of Shaw Media, COO of CORUS and for the past seven years Executive Vice President of CBC. This month she retires, with former Paramount content licensing head Douglas Smith named CBC’s new EVP.In this conversation, recorded in December at the CBC Broadcast Centre in Toronto, Barb talks about the rewards and challenges of bringing a business approach to a culture institution. Did she know going in her CBC job would be as much about politics as programming? “I thought I was prepared for how different it would be,” she says. "It was a big adjustment." Previous jobs were all bottom line driven. Williams found championing “public worth” values a very different leadership challenge.Hear Barb on big issues such as the impact in Canada of multi-billion dollar takeovers of Big Media companies south of the border; the pressures of satisfying audiences now hooked on endless on-demand content; and the need, especially now, to open doors to more Canadian storytelling. Also: should the public network ditch advertising? (Spoiler alert: that would be no, sez Barb)