Steve Paikin was in Ottawa the other day when we had a chat. Working with students from Laurentian University in a mock parliament on the floor of the House, he had been playing the part of the governor general. Soon after delivering the speech from the throne, the long-running host of The Agenda was on his cellphone giving me the gospel of TVOntario’s bold new digital strategy.

“I’m delighted if people can watch us when they want to and how they want to,” says Paikin, who has been TVO’s resident on-air ideas star for almost a quarter-century.

But times have changed since 1992, when Paikin was lured away from the CBC, and even since 2006, when The Agenda was launched. Now the objective is to expand the show’s reach by making it easy for people to experience it on multiple platforms.

“We know a lot of people like what we do,” explains John Ferri, vice-president of current affairs and documentaries at TVO. “We also know people like to share smart content on social media. We want them to find us on the platform of their choosing, including Facebook and Twitter. So we have come up with a new format featuring segments that work as well in shorter takes online as they do as part of an hour-long broadcast.”

Here’s why. The Agenda is the provincial public broadcaster’s flagship current affairs show, looking at local and global issues from a distinctively Ontario perspective. It claims a weekly audience of 630,000 (or just over 125,000 a night). But that audience consists mostly of viewers 65 or older, and there’s little hope of increasing the number of people who watch it on their TV sets.

To bring the program up to date, The Agenda needed a smart, flashy new set, designed by Toronto’s Artform. The old set was archaic and shopworn, having survived a flood. A huge opportunity was provided by a $2.4-million legacy gift from the late Donald Pounder, the largest donation ever by an individual to TVO.

Paikin’s chief concern about the set was that he have proximity to studio guests. “It helps to establish rapport and chemistry if they’re right there and I can look into their eyes.”

Unlike most other networks, TVO is not in the business of selling eyeballs to advertisers. Of its $61.9-million annual budget, about $40 million comes from the Ontario government. Plus it has a solid fundraising support from viewers.

Still, to prove it’s as relevant as ever and Ontario taxpayers are getting value for money, there’s a constant goal of making an impact and attracting new audiences while hanging onto the existing one.

Research confirmed that young audiences like what TVO does and know who Paikin is but rarely watch the broadcast. So starting now, instead of being a seamless one-hour program, The Agenda becomes a magazine, typically with three 15-to-20 minute items. That way, people who rely on their mobile devices to discover what’s new and interesting can have a brief encounter with one segment. Plus there will be clips on Facebook and Twitter, which link back to the full version on TVO’s website.

However, when a topic is important and complex enough to warrant a full hour, The Agenda will meet the challenge, but the hour will consist of several segments that can be shared online and consumed either in whole or in part.

Diehards can still watch The Agenda on TV five nights a week at 8 p.m. (with a late-night repeat) or set their PVRs. You can also catch it on YouTube or iTunes.

As for Paikin, he says: “I’m not daunted by change because I know we have found a distinctive place on the landscape: seeing the province, the country and the world through an Ontario lens.”

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And he’s clearly not an orthodox believer in the traditional living-room TV set as the only true medium to spread the gospel of The Agenda.

“When it comes to choice of devices,” he quips, “I’m an agnostic.”