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When CBC kicked off its first digital-only station in Hamilton on May 10, 2012, it featured a redesigned homepage that included a large, customizable map of the city with clickable “pins” to stories and widgets showing traffic updates, “the latest from Twitter,” and local blogs.
The major Hamilton stories during that first year included the passing and provincial state funeral of former Ontario lieutenant-governor Lincoln Alexander, Mc Master University’s run for the Vanier Cup, and a scandal at city hall known as “Peggygate.”
Eventually, the map was removed, and the site returned to a traditional news website format. However, the small team of journalists working out of CBC’s James Street North office never lost their entrepreneurial drive while covering stories important to an evolving community.
Today, there are countless Hamilton stories waiting to be told. Our team, led by executive producer Eva Salinas, is more active than ever.
This week is especially significant for CBC Hamilton and the community we serve there. (And it’s not just because many big names from Canada’s music scene will arrive in town for JUNOfest and the weekend JUNO Awards ceremonies-events where CBC serves as the main broadcast partner.)
Instead, it’s because we’ve announced an expansion of our local news service in Hamilton through a live audio morning show available on HD radio and other digital platforms, along with a new weekly podcast that will complement our existing digital news offerings. plans to bring on up to six new roles to support these added services launching later this year.
This investment in Hamilton is part of CBC’s new five-year strategic plan focusing on proximity-bringing the national public broadcaster closer to communities while also maintaining diverse trusted news sources that locals can count on.
We believe our new morning program will highlight and elevate the great work done by our journalists already based in the city alongside colleagues from local outlets like The , CHCH News, as well as community publications.
In January, we shared plans for hiring an additional 33 local journalists and setting up 11 new bureaus in areas where CBC has limited or no presence. This move will expand our footprint from 66 locations to 77. Many of these new positions will be located in Central and Western Canada.
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CBC’s Hamilton news station seen from street level. The team is set for growth later this year. (Eva Salinas/CBC)
But we haven’t overlooked the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), which has a booming population exceeding eight million people. Our planned expansion includes establishing an eight-person bureau in Peel dedicated to serving this region as part of our January announcement. We’ve also assigned two reporters in St. Catharines for Niagara coverage along with two more in Oshawa for Durham reporting.
The upcoming weekday morning show on HD radio will include community interviews along with news reports covering essential information such as local traffic updates and weather forecasts. It’ll be accessible via HD Radio receivers (99.1-2), through The app, via the CBC Listen app, or at cbc. ca/hamilton.
CBC Radio One listeners across the region will still have access to Toronto’s Metro Morning on traditional radio along with other digital platforms.
The podcast lineup at will also expand with a new weekly show titled This Is Hamilton. This initiative provides audiences another way to stay connected with their community events; This Is Hamilton brings our total number of local podcasts across Canada up to 16-pending soon-to-launch shows This Is Kelowna and This Is Quebec.
You can find out more about how ’s local service expansion fits into our proximity strategy by watching this video.
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