Michelle Eliot appears totally at ease as she sits in front of a microphone in downtown Vancouver’s CBC Radio studio. She’s been preparing the pages of notes surrounding her since six that morning and, while various screens around her demand her attention, she manages to find time to poke fun at newsreader Robert Zimmerman across the table.
Five, four, three, two, one...Eliot's tone switches from playful to powerful as she introduces the newly revamped noon-hour show, BC Today.
Eliot began her tenure as the new show’s host on May 9, taking over for Gloria Macarenko who hosted the show when it was known as BC Almanac. Long time Early Edition host Rick Cluff’s retirement triggered a game of host tetris at Vancouver’s CBC, landing Eliot her first permanent role after filling in for various positions.
While the show has a new name, host and soundtrack, the structure remains largely the same save for the fact that the top news story of the day now gets an hour's worth of air time, rather than 30 minutes.
“The reason we have more time is for more people and different voices. I’d love to hear the people who aren’t often heard.”
And because of her experience as an immigrant to Canada — Eliot moved here from the Philippines at age 12— CBC’s programming director Shiral Tobin says she’s the perfect host to diversify the show’s audience.
“Having a host with a first-hand immigration experience naturally affects how she frames her questions and her follow ups,” Tobin says.
“When you broaden the diversity of the people covering stories, it broadens the coverage, the voices and the guest selection so people will be less shy about phoning up, knowing there’s going to be a space for them.”
The ease with which Eliot keeps one eye on the clock while monitoring the screens makes her empathetic listening skills all the more impressive.
“You have to do a lot of self directing,” Eliot says in a boardroom post show. “I’m always having to decide where to go to next. Do we go to a call or a guest? Do I turn this into a question for the expert?”
She orchestrates most questions on the fly since this allows her to collaborate with callers to steer the show’s direction.
“I like to hear people think through their opinions and think through what they’re saying.”
Occasionally she presses the button that allows her to talk off-air to her team in the control room while still listening to her callers and guests.
“He’s so good, eh?” she says of Brady Strachan, CBC’s mobile journalist calling in from Osoyoos.
“Can I ask one more question?” she double checks before letting Chris Duffy, executive director of Emergency Management B.C., go off air.
Watching Eliot host is like watching someone run a marathon while belting out a Whitney Houston song in perfect pitch, yet this was only her fifth day in the role.
“The response I’ve been getting has been ‘Oh, I’ve been hoping that you’d get your own show,’” says Eliot, who’s filled in on the airwaves for six years. “I hope that tells people that the CBC values what their audience thinks, what they enjoy, and that they trust them.”
One of the things that excites Eliot the most about the show is that it’s province-wide, giving voice to people whose daily experience of life in British Columbia is vastly different.
”This is the only place for everybody to hear from each other and sound off on the biggest story of the day,” Eliot says. She was excited by the topic of B.C.’s response to emergency weather situations evolve into a conversation around how the province should deal with climate change.
“This show is the platform for people to speak their minds and really converse. Not just speak on social media or Twitter but to really have a conversation and ask questions.”
