CBC Has a Free Headline Service...but no RSS Feed

October 27, 2003 - 9:54pm — bmann

Of course they have a headline service. Of course they don't have RSS feeds:

Following your request, it is impossible to send you any RSS feed due to our strict policy. We understand your point, but we do not send it to particulars. We hope this will answer your questions.

I went ahead and emailed the service and asked for an RSS feed. If enough people email, they might start to implement.

Update: CBC now has a basic headline-only RSS feed.

This is what I sent. Feel free to copy this and send to them as well. Add your blog entry to it:

Hi:

I'm interested in your free headline service. Do you have them available as an RSS feed?

You might be interested in these two blog stories:
	http://scriptingnews.userland.com/2003/10/27#When:9:41:06AM
	http://www.reinvented.net/article/1600
	http://www.bmannconsulting.com/node/view/638

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December 9, 2004 - 1:11pm — Anonymous (not verified)

CBC.ca now offers an RSS feed

CBC.ca now offers an RSS feed:

http://cbc.ca/rss/feed.html

November 12, 2004 - 9:53pm — scruss (not verified)

I've posted a crude Perl/CGI

I've posted a crude Perl/CGI solution here: cdf2rss - converts CBC KlipFarm CDF to crude RSS. It doesn't always work with all the channels.

Please note that I'm not providing feeds here.

September 14, 2004 - 9:21am — Anonymous (not verified)

The proprietary KlipFarm data

The proprietary KlipFarm data for CBC.ca is here:

http://www.cbc.ca/cdf/servlet/getCDF?lineup=Toronto

Substitute "Toronto" for:
Montreal
Ottawa
Vancouver
Edmonton
Calgary
Saskatchewan
St. John's
Nova Scotia
Winnipeg
Northern Canada
New Brunswick
P.E.I.
Top Stories
Canada
World
Business
Science

and you get all the latest news. I only wish I was good enough at scripting to turn these into rss.

September 2, 2004 - 3:09pm — Anonymous

Creating an RSS feed from CBC's news site is pretty easy actually. Just follow the trail of their javascript ticker to this file: http://www.cbc.ca/includes/tickerdata.js and write a script in whatever your favourite open source scripting language is to convert it to RSS. They already provide the information, all you are doing is converting the format.

July 21, 2004 - 5:56pm — Anonymous

CBC RSS feed

Someone else has built a CBC RSS feed, see below

http://members.rogers.com/sarahleo/rsspage.htm

October 31, 2003 - 5:06pm — Anonymous

what I want:

is my browser (safari) to recognize the MIME type and pass the link off to my RSS reader (Net News Wire lite, or whatever it is called) and then have that automagically subscribe to the feed.
instead I have to copy paste, type. too much hassle. the number one reason I tend to not use RSS readers.

aside: most feeds tend to be poorly implmented so I get a lot of "no description" entries. Drupal puts out great feeds; Greg's site (muddylaces.ca) even renders the images!!

E/.

October 30, 2003 - 8:08pm — GSoo

the BBC provides a....

good model.
Although I found their feeds a bit too concise for their own good.
Another thing is, I find myself using RSS less and less rather than more and more. Don't know exactly why.

October 31, 2003 - 2:33pm — smithdm3

I know why I've nearly stopped

... using RSS... because it doesn't integrate well with my browser... I tried a bunch of RSS Aggregators but they all seemed to be built in Java or .NET and just seemed to hog resources on my system. I've also tried a browser plug in for IE, but it was poorly implemented, and finally I'm using one for Firebird - but it also isn't tremendously well implemented. I think if there was a good sidebar plugin for my browser (and not LookOut! - I didn't like using the one plugin I tried for it at all) I'd use it more... Oh, and one other thing - I've tried using RSS for news sites like Wired, the Register, etc... but I find I always have way too many headlines to click on...

Anyway.. those are my known particular reasons for my use waning...

October 31, 2003 - 7:11pm — bmann

Interesting

So, I started by using NetNewsWire (Mac-only), then switched to using this site itself to doing the aggregation, then I switched back to NetNewsWire.

It does a good job of allowing me to group feeds, lets me read a ton of news every day, and opens links in separate tabs in Safari. Pretty nice, really.

October 28, 2003 - 9:26am — bmann

I've replied

I pointed out the NewsIsFree feed of CBC's news page. Plus I just subscribed to the CBC Digest for ottawa-am-headlines. And promptly pointed it at MailBucket to generate an RSS feed. See the simple, HTML version here.

October 28, 2003 - 8:31am — bmann

Pretty much the same response

Following your request, it is impossible to send you any RSS feed due to our strict policy. We understand your point, but CBC does not allow external use of our RSS or XML files. This is a very strict policy to ensure full control by the corporation over the editorial content and branding. I have the regret to notify you that this service is not available for public use.

October 30, 2003 - 2:19pm — Lloyd D Budd