Mercedes Gaztambide
Mercedes Gaztambide (external link) ‘22, is a host for CBC Street Cents (external link) . She has been with the program since its reboot in 2022.
Gaztambide started her hosting career (external link) as blogTO's first-ever TikTok host, helping the account gain over 300,000 followers and establish a brand identity.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you get your job?
I was still at TMU at the time, I was going into my fourth year. I got an email from a senior producer at the CBC, my current manager, and she said, “Hey, we're casting for this new CBC TikTok program.”
Street Cents wasn't mentioned until towards the end of the interview process and when it finally was I dove into the legacy of Street Cents within Canada, and Jonathan Torrens, who has made a name for himself after Street Cents.
When we started, there wasn't anything else like it at the CBC. There was no original show that was only based on social media. We didn't have a tie to a website. We didn't have a tie to a television program, and that was very unlike the CBC. We tested videos for about three months before we finally launched. It started to grow quickly. We were not trying to follow the original template of Street Cents. We were trying to do our own thing.
How have you grown as a creator/journalist since starting in your role?
The last three years have completely changed me.
I feel like I'm unrecognizable from who I was when I graduated, in a good way. I'm so much more confident in the content that I'm making.
A lot of that does come from being a front-facing media personality on social media. What's weird about social media compared to TV, is as the host, I get direct audience feedback every single time. With TV, people have to write in, they write an email and it's changed a bit now because social media can represent brands as well. But in terms of when the content is going, DTC, direct-to-consumer, right straight to their phone, people feel very entitled to say whatever they want.
I still want to learn from what the comments are saying when they have a valid point to make.
[But] I've had to overcome the anxiety of audience reaction, behaviour and words that are sometimes unkind. It's made me grow a thick skin.
What does a week/day in your job look like?
I'm known as a host, but technically I'm a social media editor.
I edit all of my videos. I package (external link) the content, and then I also am responsible for engaging with the audience, like commenting back with people, doing outreach, and thinking about the ways in which we can connect more with our audience.
I do have some hands on the production side of things, I come up with story ideas and I send them to my producer, but primarily my job is to host the content.
I would say at least four days a week, I'm out and I'm filming something, and then the other half of the job is primarily editing. It's kind of weird because I get all dolled up to do the video. I go out and shoot, and then I come back, I take it all off, I put sweatpants on, and then I go into gremlin editing mode. It's a unique job in that way because you get both sides of the production, which is in the light and then also in the dark.
What are some skills you use in your current job that you learned in j-school?
I think that j-school taught me the base level of a lot of things and introduced me to concepts that I think were important for the job I do now.
I also expanded those skills from my work experiences. I did Career Boost and I worked at the university in the undergraduate recruitment department for several years. That is actually where I honed my Premiere [Pro] skills, and that has helped me so, so much. I think that I wouldn't have even been considered for this job if I didn't have video editing experience.
And that's something that I wasn't anticipating going into this space. I was like, I'll be a writer or I'll be a host. But I think the reality is nowadays, you're a jack-of-all-trades, you have to do it all. You have to be able to write for broadcast and potentially do stand-up and then also take the video, edit the video and then add captions to the video.
I'm grateful that I learned everything within j-school, and I also got the chance to TA (teaching assistant), which I think was one of the best experiences. I was a TA for a broadcast course with Winston Sih. Getting to work with students from the other side of things and thinking about what I needed as a student. How does that change my perspective on how I want to give feedback and how I want to help them? Being open to failing sometimes in that space was a crucial learning moment for me.
Do you have a special moment from working on Street Cents so far?
We had created a board game (external link) that was inspired by Street Cents, and we were taking it to different libraries and then inviting teens to come and play the board game and introduce them to, obviously Street Cents, but also financial literacy, also content creation. We had the most lovely groups of teens that were a bit shy at first, but ultimately, had such a fun time.
We connected personally with so many teens. There was this one much younger teen, I think he was about 13, and he came in and he was like, “I'm so excited for this. I've had this in my calendar for months.” And we were like, oh that's so great. He stayed and played, and he came by himself too, just was super engaged the entire time.
Then we had this giveaway of hoodies, he didn't win one in the traditional way. So I went to my producer, and I was like, “I need him to go home with a hoodie. He truly deserves it, he deserves the MVP award.” So I gave it to him, and he goes, “Can I give you a hug?” And I was like, “Of course, you can give me a hug.” He hugged me and he hugged my two other co-hosts. We had bridged that connection between the online and the real-life connection. I know that it can be, especially for younger teens, intimidating to meet people who you watch on social media because they seem larger than life. I think bridging that gap several times over the past couple of weeks has been so rewarding and so nice to see the people who we're making content for. Sometimes, you can forget because it's behind a screen and you only see profile pictures. So it was just a pleasure to finally make that connection.
What is your favourite Street Cents video?
A: I'm proud of, honestly, I just want to say the $5 lunch series (external link) . It's a lot of videos and it has gone through quite a transition of what it was when I first started. I did like an everything bagel with butter, a bag of chips and a Sprite. I was like, this is fire.
Now I'm doing a Chipotle wrap (external link) , a tortilla filled with falafel and quinoa, tomato and cucumber, and then I have handmade popcorn on the side, it's just become so elaborate.
Truly a credit to working together on a team and the producers who are working with me. It always inspires me to want to do better and one-up myself every single time.
I'm just really proud of what it's become and the notion that we're tackling a topic that is quite light, it's a challenge, it's entertainment, it's fun, it's always improvised. But, at the same time, it is tackling this kind of larger issue of food insecurity, the price of food and how expensive things have got, especially in a big city like Toronto. You can still make a meal that is satisfying and filling on a budget and you don't need to go broke doing it. It’s a cool intersection that Street Cents crosses that I'm grateful that we tapped into.
What was your experience like working with CBC for the 2024 Olympics in Paris?
It honestly was the most random thing (external link) that ever happened. Essentially, we have an internal way [at CBC] of where you automatically get set up with meeting somebody, and it's called 10,000 coffees. So I had a 10,000 coffees with somebody who was from sports, and I didn't expect anything from the chat.Then at the end of the call, she was like, “There's something about you. I liked this chat, I want to connect you with somebody.”
She email connected me with the executive producer of, like, the Olympics TV programming. And I thought hello, why is this happening? Why did you want to connect me with this guy? But sure enough, we also had a fantastic connection. We just had a chat, we talked about the CBC, we talked about legacy media, we talked about sports, we talked about social media.
He's like, “Would you ever consider working on the Olympics project as a casual?” I was like, “Well, duh.”
It ended up being that they were looking for social content producers to be on the ground in Paris. They needed three people, they were looking for people from within the CBC and they needed people from all different backgrounds. So they pulled somebody who was an experienced field producer and they pulled somebody who was more used to the on set production. Then they pulled me because of the social media and trending aspect of it all, which was what I did at blogTO.
Truly to this very moment, I can't believe that it happened. It feels like such a fever dream (external link) , and like I felt so unworthy at the moment, but in retrospect, I do think that my skill set was perfect for that role, and I'm just really grateful that they were open to having people from outside of their team come in and offer expertise and experience. I'm a young creator and so for them to invest in me in that way, and then ultimately for me to prove myself and give them that return back was truly a remarkable experience.
Just interviewing athletes (external link) and being on the other side of things, directing talent, thinking about the production aspects in a way that I don't usually get to do as a host. The video editing was the same, but the behind-the-scenes (external link) stuff I can't think of a better moment to encapsulate what it feels like to be in the media industry in your 20s, and just being like, I'll do anything. And it ended up being such an enlightening moment.
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