No, it wasn’t a bad dream. The CBC and the National Post have indeed signed a content-sharing agreement.

The sworn ideological enemies have decided to help each other out in areas of weakness, with the Financial Post providing the CBC with business news, and the CBC providing the Post with sports news.

Though the deal is being mocked in the usual places (reaction from others has been essentially “WTF?“), it’s not so unusual for two media companies to share content. It’s the entire point behind wire service, after all. And the Post has been looking at new content sources, signing a deal with breakingviews.com recently as well.

But the fact that the CBC – a Crown corporation – is involved makes this unusual. And the fact that this might reduce the number of unique voices in both sports and business reporting is kind of sad.

Otherwise, it’s just a content-sharing deal between two news outlets. What makes it noteworthy is their previous animosity (and the fact that they’ll have to include a disclosure when reporting about each other now).