The Death of CBC Radio 2

I had written a bit about my shock and sadness about the awful changes planned for CBC2, including getting rid of most of its classical music programming, including one of the best parts of getting up in the morning (Music and Company with Tom Allen). I could rant and rave all I want, but Russell Smith, of the Globe and Mail (whose article was reposted by the site ‘Friends of Canadian Broadcasting‘) says it better than I ever could. The Globe and Mail doesn’t allow people to read the entire article any more without being a subscriber. Since I don’t know how long his article will remain on the other site, I’m going to do take the somewhat unorthodox action and repost it here in total as well, as I think it should be read by many (although the people who I wish would read it the most are the current clueless management of the CBC):

No classical? Then kill Radio 2 and get it over with by Russell Smith
March 13, 2008

I am almost too depressed about the planned “overhaul” of CBC’s Radio 2 to even write about it. What’s the point? We’ve all seen the writing on the wall for some time now, and resistance is futile: The CBC no longer feels there is any point to devoting an entire radio station to the more musically and intellectually complex style of music colloquially, though entirely inappropriately, known as “classical” (more on that tendentious terminology in a moment), because, according to its mysterious studies, no one is interested in that any more.

So, come September, there will only be “classical” music (God, I hate that term!) at midday on weekdays; the rest of the air time will be taken up with light pop and jazz. Yes, that’s right, explicitly light: In an interview with The Globe and Mail last week, the executive director of radio explained that the station will be playing even more Joni Mitchell and Diana Krall. The executives have also proudly expressed their interest in playing more middle-of-the-road pop such as Feist and Serena Ryder. Yes, they are proud, proud to be brave purveyors of Serena Ryder and Diana Krall, the very best culture our country has to offer.

In other words, Radio 2 will become essentially an easy-listening station. It will play, aside from four hours a day when everybody is at work, the kind of verse-chorus-verse popular music that is likely to win awards at industry-created ceremonies - the Junos, the Grammys, the Smushies, the Great Mall Music Prize.

Sometimes there will be jazz; I’m guessing it will continue to be the Holiday Inn lounge jazz they already so adore. It’s also pretty safe to say there will be no underground pop music, nothing noisy or electronic - unless they keep Laurie Brown’s The Signal (surely they must, they must at least keep The Signal?) - and of course that will be only late at night so it doesn’t disturb the imagined audience, an audience of the mousiest, nicest, middlest of middle Canadians.

Notice how the CBC has already won half the public-relations battle through its choice of language. It is wise, if it wants to dismiss exciting and abstract music that doesn’t have a 4/4 beat, to call such music “classical.” That word instantly relegates it to the past. “Classical” connotes that which is established, respected, stuffy - another word for “old favourites.”

“Classical” is wholly inadequate in describing an intellectual tradition that has always thrived on innovation, on radical new interpretations, on defiance of previous traditions, indeed, of iconoclasm. When Arthur Honegger sat down to write Pacific 231, when Olivier Messiaen began The Quartet for the End of Time, when Edgard Varèse ordered his orchestra to play along to tape recordings from sawmills, do you think they wanted to write something “classical?”

But even this conversation is pointless; it isn’t even happening. It belongs to another world. I feel, when talking about these things, like a visitor to an isolated country where everybody believes the Earth is flat and the moon is made of cheese: No one is going to listen to me because every single one of my premises, my fundamental assumptions, is different from theirs.

I assume, for example, that the point of having a government-funded radio station is not to garner the largest possible audience; if that were the goal, and that goal were attained, such a station would be commercially viable and no longer in need of government support. I also assume that art and intellectual inquiry can sometimes be challenging and demanding of intense concentration, and that they are naturally not always going to attract lucrative audiences, and that this does not make them any less valuable, which is why governments in enlightened countries support them and provide access to them.

I guess I assume, too, something even more fundamental and even more fundamentally unpopular, which is that not all art is of equal value. Art that does not tend to follow strict generic conventions (such as, for example, the verse-chorus-verse structure of 90 per cent of pop music) is deserving of extra attention. Art unbound by formula tends to indicate the area where the best, the most original talents are working.

And this is not, I assure you, about the past; it is about the future. Art unbound by formula - music that does not have to accompany words, for example - is the art that will be remembered by cultural historians and will come to define our era.

A country with no public forum for such art, with nowhere for the less privileged to gain access to it and to intelligent analysis of it, is an unsophisticated one.

And furthermore, a radio station that is indistinguishable from commercial stations - other than by its fanatical niceness - will have no reason to receive government support. Why not just shut it down already?

© Globe and Mail

Wow.

I think he really nails it in those last few paragraphs. I take a little solace in that Russell Smith is not the only person who is saying that CBC Radio 2 should be put out of its misery, having lost one of the main reasons for its existence. Apparently, the fastest growing group on Facebook is Save Classical Music on the CBC, with over 5,000 members this week. I’m contemplating some letters to my MP and other officials, but it’s going to be an uphill battle to save CBC 2, and I also have to keep in mind that I may have to simply adapt.

Filed in Canada, Music | March 17, 2008 10:55 pm

81 Comments

The Death of CBC Radio 2 — March 17, 2008 @ 11:38 pm

[...] Continue Reading [...]
Jan Karlsbjerg — March 18, 2008 @ 12:18 pm

The guy can write. Very articulate to be sure. But it’s also the most arrogant and snobby string of arguments I’ve heard in a long time.

But even this conversation is pointless; it isn’t even happening. It belongs to another world. I feel, when talking about these things, like a visitor to an isolated country where everybody believes the Earth is flat and the moon is made of cheese: No one is going to listen to me because every single one of my premises, my fundamental assumptions, is different from theirs.

Nicely done, equating his personal tastes (”premises and fundamental assumptions” he calls them because that sounds better than “taste” or “stuff that I like”) with some imagined person’s superior facts and knowledge compared to the surrounding hicks (the imagined person is the only one who knows that the Earth isn’t flat and that the moon isn’t made of cheese).

The examples of the flat Earth and the cheese moon are instant winners as they’re not only accepted facts, but standard jokes, and everybody knows that you have to be not only stupid but outright willfully ignorant to have these beliefs. ,That’s how wrong you are if you dare to disagree with Russell Smith about the future of CBC Radio 2.

Another fallacy:

Sometimes there will be jazz; I’m guessing it will continue to be the Holiday Inn lounge jazz they already so adore.

Here he’s making the unstated assumption that the radio station currently only plays what it adores, that its current musical repertoire isn’t influenced by surveys (or guesses) of what the listeners want to hear. Currently, even though Radio 2 doesn’t completely share Russell Smith’s tastes, at least it shares his worldview: It’s snobby and uncompromising and plays only what it “adores”. But soon (oh, the horror) it will start playing what’s “popular”. How rude and completely unacceptable!

The article is also a good illustration of a point I made recently on my blog: If you do too much research and fact-checking before you start writing an opinion piece or an explorative article, you risk not having anything to write about (Ignorance is content). To the extent that he is willing to say that the CBC has some arguments for what they’re planning to do, they did some “mysterious studies” according to which “no one” is interested in classical. The “no one” is either an oversimplification or simply a lazy lie. Either he hasn’t looked into it, actually read what the CBC management said, checked how many studies there were, what they said, etc.

(Worse still, he may actually have looked into the surveys and found that he didn’t like what they showed. They may have showed, for example, that “4.7% of the Canadian radio listening audience say they want state-funded classical music”. Better to leave such an inconvenient, unconvincing fact out.)

For the curious, here’s some background on me, Canadian radio wise:

I’ve never listened to Radio 2 for more than thirty seconds at a time.
I don’t listen to much live radio at all, and when I do it’s never music radio.
I listen to many, many podcasts, many of which are radio shows from Australia, Denmark, USA, Canada, and all of which are non-music shows
Insofar as I have an opinion about CBC Radio availability, it bugs me that Radio 1 only has AM coverage of Vancouver (none of my radio sources reliably pick up the transmitter on the Island in a quality I can stand listening to) whereas Radio 2 FM comes through loud and clear.
David Drucker — March 18, 2008 @ 1:08 pm

Hi Jan -

I can see how you might feel the argument is snobby. I’m always careful when I talk about my love of Classical music (and I have to agree with Smith there that ‘Classical’ is a terrible name that makes all of us who love it sound like we are old fossils who just want old chestnuts by dead composers, thank you). However, I do have to admit that I have the exact same feeling trying to talk about ‘Art’ music versus other music to others. I often feel like I live on another planet; I have none of the same points of reference. When I complain that I don’t understand why nearly all pop music must be ’songs’ (music that has a vocal part - that distinction is not made by most people), or why it all has to be so strictly ‘tonal’, people don’t even understand what I’m saying.

There is nothing I would love more here than to be riding with the herd. I would be thrilled if when I said I’d gone to a ‘Concert’, the image in the other person’s mind (and a host of assumptions about the music and the evening) would be James Ehnes and the Vancouver Symphony, not Feist or John Mayer. It would be great to be able to debate the merits of a new Concerto or String Quartet (or Percussion Ensemble piece, if that will do), but usually there are few people to do this with.

I will forgive the writer for his allusions to ‘mysterious’ studies, which does sound an awful lot like axe-grinding, because of those last few paragraphs. This really is about the culture at large. I want to continue to live in a culture that is complex and non-homogenized and values complex ideas. I want to be able to listen on the terrestrial airwaves to challenging music, that is not disposable, as so much pop music is designed to be, since it always comes in 3 to 5 minute portions, perfectly timed for commercial interruptions. Sure, I like the odd miniature, but does everything have to be with a beat, a vocal part, and simple harmonies? (By simple, I mean harmonies that one can analyze and put chord symbols below them on a first hearing, if you’ve gone to music school).

Imagine how frustrating it must be to beg to have 1 single channel — there are no classical music stations in Vancouver, save CBC2 at present, when everyone else has hundreds of stations catering to all of their tastes — Rock, Pop, Oldies, Country, Hip-Hop, etc. Are we really so small a constituency as to be on par with, say, lovers of bagpipe music, or Polkas? Heck, I’ll even pay for the stations (and not just on my taxes); I did it before for NPR, and I guess I might have to again for Satellite radio, but that’s beside the point. What about the kid who has yet to discover this? Is Classical Music going to be the province of the wealthy, or is it a treasure that all get to hear?

I guess what I’m saying is, please don’t consider lovers of Classical music (or ‘Art Music’ or ‘Complex Music’ if either of those terms fits better) to be snobs. Most of us really do feel like we do have a set of fundamental assumptions that are different from everybody else’s, that we are shouting into the wind. In my case, it’s not that way by choice; it’s how I was raised.

BTW, I do agree with you that CBC1 should be on FM here. We get no AM coverage whatsoever in our low floor in a high-rise, and I would love the occasional intelligent talk as well. In fact, the old CBC2 had more than a minute of news on it, which was just fine with me as well; I don’t want all music all the time, but want my radio to be smart and interesting, not just some sonic wallpaper (as well as being loud and clear as well).
Jan Karlsbjerg — March 18, 2008 @ 6:03 pm

Ah, I didn’t express myself clearly enough. I don’t think everyone who likes classical music is a snob.

But this guy strikes me as a snob. He’s looking down his nose at everybody else and their bad — or just plain wrong — musical taste. And if Radio 2 stops catering to his tastes, then they might as well just close the station.

Leaving that aside, the whole discussion of paying for radio stations is interesting too.

Remember that on all of the commercial radio stations, the listeners already “pay for” their music: They listen to ads. Meanwhile these same listeners have also been paying for the classical music on Radio 2: They pay their taxes just like you do.

It sounds like satellite radio is the way to go for folks who have special tastes: Lots of specialized stations with exactly the mix you want.

By the way, there are not 100 stations on the FM dial in Vancouver, let alone hundreds for each of the genres Rock, Pop, Oldies, Country, Hip-Hop.
David Drucker — March 18, 2008 @ 9:49 pm

I guess we people from Planet Classical could go to Satellite Radio (although both XM and Sirius each have only 1 classical channel apiece, so it’s hardly much of a gain), but that is, again, missing the point.

The CBC was/is a public service, paid for by tax dollars. I found out not too long ago that the amount of money set aside for the CBC has not changed in a long, long time; certainly not long enough to account for inflation. I do believe, however, that it is still part of what is to hold Canada together, through a mission to enlighten, inform, educate as well as entertain.

If one of the values we as a society share is that exposing children and others to music that is not simplistic, that is different, unfamiliar and experimental at times, as well as a cultural legacy from the history of the country, it shouldn’t be something we have to pay for through commercials, contributions or subscription fees. The CBC doesn’t have the same limitations that commercial radio stations have. Instead of striking out new ground and challenging us, I see this new move to ‘Easy Listening’ as essentially abandoning that mission. Despite Smith’s unfortunate equating of people who don’t agree with him as being bad or wrong, I do agree with him in this key point:

Art unbound by formula - music that does not have to accompany words, for example - is the art that will be remembered by cultural historians and will come to define our era.

A country with no public forum for such art, with nowhere for the less privileged to gain access to it and to intelligent analysis of it, is an unsophisticated one.

If we make all of our institutions something only the rich can afford (and I include Classical Radio programming as one of those institutions, since CBC Radio 2 has been broadcasting this kind of music for over 60 years), then I think Canada loses something as a nation.

Maybe I’m just hoping for a world where it’s not quite so peculiar to be a lover of this particular art form. It is good stuff, you know, and will blow your mind if you let it.
Ashley Hilliard — March 18, 2008 @ 11:08 pm

I agree with David Drucker.

Until now, CBC Radio 2 has been one of Canada’s great cultural institutions. Sure, only a minority is interested at any time, but those who were curious had a place to turn on the dial. Young people interested in music often discover “classical” music as they mature. Classical music might be defined as music that forms part of the cultural heritage of man, and thus starts with the folk music of the world and expands from there. What now? CBC Radio 2’s mandate until now was to expose listeners to the musical heritage of the world. Now it will be just another easy-listening station. All this in the name of “diversity”?

CBC listeners are livid over the changes. To quote an advertisement: “Those who like it, like it a lot.” Just go to the CBC website to read with what passion listeners have protested the decision: http://www.insidethecbc.com/r2sept.
To no avail. Jennifer McGuire, Head of Radio, defends the switch again in today’s Globe. She doesn’t care a fig for public opinion.

Only public denunciation of these changes by the cultural community across Canada can reverse this disaster.
Nancy Zimmerman: a canadian money coach (not a financial planner!) » Blog Archive » Freebie (or nearly) Wednesday: free REM online, an amazing music festival in Pemberton, and the XFiles set sale — March 18, 2008 @ 11:17 pm

[...] Lest anyone think I walk around in sackcloth and ashes after Monday’s post - I assure you, I am not averse to good things in life, and esp. not averse to some rock n’ roll! (but even these won’t compensate for the impending death of cbc radio 2) [...]
nancy (aka money coach) — March 18, 2008 @ 11:26 pm

I remain distraught — and I can barely tell Faure from Palestrina, so can imagine how you’d be feeling. As I said in my comment on your other post, if it weren’t for cbc radio 2 being forced into my environment, I don’t know that I’d have much appreciation for “classical” music. And I’m so grateful for it. Thanks for keeping us alerted to this. I’ll do what I can to let others know. Would it be just too awful to say “you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone?” I certainly think we’re getting a parking lot. It sucks.
Bill Lee — March 19, 2008 @ 2:04 am

The text is readily available, on the alternative mobile Globe site, Friends of CBC etc.

But unless you write to the contact numbers at CBC, your voice will not be counted.
However they try not to listen to their listeners.

http://ago.mobile.globeandmail.com/generated/archive/RTGAM/html/20080313/wrussell13.html

http://www.friends.ca/News/Friends_News/archives/articles03130801.asp

See also officlal CBC response and a half-dozen letter sin Tuesday’s Globe and Mail of 18 March.

Many blogs quote the article too.
David Drucker — March 19, 2008 @ 8:23 am

Nancy, you are exactly the kind of person who the CBC will hurt the most - the ones without large classical music collections to fall back on. I hope, for your sake as well as mine, that they reconsider (although I remain prepared for the nearly inevitable). Thanks for the URLs, Bill. I’ve already sent a message to the CBC using their ‘contact us’ form, but I suspect that is going into the same black hole as the rest of the messages about this.

Perhaps there needs to be something bigger. A public protest? Perhaps a ‘decomposing’ composer with crowd at the CBC offices downtown (I wish we could do it in Toronto)?
Ashley Hilliard — March 20, 2008 @ 8:46 pm

Write to:

http://www.cbc.ca/contact/

Send copies to:

Jennifer McGuire is the Executive Director of CBC Radio. She reports to Richard Stursberg, Executive VP of English Services, who reports to Hubert Lacroix, CBC President and CEO. You could write to each of them; the first two have operating emails:

jennifer.mcquire@cbc.ca
richard.stursberg@cbc.ca

Lacroix can be reliably reached only at

P.O. Box 3220
Station C
Ottawa
K1Y 1E4

Then tell anyone you know who likes it that Canada has a national public radio station that plays “interesting” music to write as well.
Ashley Hilliard — March 20, 2008 @ 10:23 pm

Correction:

Jennifer McGuire’s email:

jennifer.mcguire@cbc.ca
David Drucker — March 21, 2008 @ 6:49 pm

Thanks for the email addresses, Ashley. Apparently Jennifer McGuire is one of the biggest obstacles here. I’m not sure what I could say that will sway her, since she is obviously deaf to opinions outside of her own focus groups.
Ashley — March 21, 2008 @ 10:05 pm

That’s what I’ve heard as well, David. She’s a journalist.The irony is that she has been promoted to head of news and is only in charge of English radio until they find a replacement. Wish she’d just go and leave R2 alone:
http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/story.html?id=324431

The only hope I see is a continued grass roots revolt, plus national cultural leaders speaking out. How to get to Bramwell Tovey, of the VSO?
Stephen Rees — March 23, 2008 @ 4:05 pm

CBC Stereo (as it was called back then and CBC Radio 2 more recently) has been my almost constant companion since I landed here in October 1988. I will confess to brief flings with others. CJRT used to be good - there was even a commercial “classical” station in TO once too. But you could find Radio 2 most places - and they had been increasing its reach. But the search for a large audience is what has been killing it slowly. And anyway the best shows never were entirely classical.And the good thing about worthwhile radio is that it can sometimes surprise you. Which is something that logging on to a classical stream like AVRO (het beste van die beste) cannot do. But that is what I have been doing more and more lately.

I have eclectic tastes - but I think what I like is “good music” and it does not fit neatly into any one genre - most of whose names are meaningless to me. “Alternative” for instance - to what? I hate opera but like Carmen. And G&S. I can live without church music but like big organs - but also steam organs and Hammond organs. I often feel the need for Mahler, or Grieg, or The Temperance Seven.

I suppose that is why I see so many people with ipods

I will miss it - in fact I miss a lot of it already - but thanks to technology I think I will find a way to survive. But somehow I doubt public broadcasting in Canada will. For if the CBC cannot do Radio 2 no-one can. For the best - absolute best - thing about Radio 2 was the absence of commercials. And the reason I turn it off now is the constant repetition of their own promos. Yeah I am blog man too.

So long Tom. It was nice listening to you Jurgen. I miss your gurgle Shelagh.
Patricia Clarke — March 24, 2008 @ 10:40 am

Please bring back “Classical” music to Radio 2,As well as all the well loved favourites there is much more “classical” music still untouched and heard less often and if the CBC has its way ….. never ! If it is played less often ,or never, how will any new listeners even have the opportunity to be educated by its beauty.There are plenty of other stations , channels, providing pop,rock,light,country western music the choice there is endless. CBC2 is the , was the, only station which provided classical music all day long to people in rural Ontario and other rural areas of Canada. Please , please do not take this wonderful music from us.
Nancy Zimmerman: a canadian money coach (not a financial planner!) » Blog Archive » Free concert: thoroughly modern Mozart — March 26, 2008 @ 10:36 pm

[...] the cbc is failing to deliver , RIP, thankfully Pacific Baroque Orchestra will provide — and free, this [...]
Morley Chalmers — March 28, 2008 @ 11:48 am

I too am saddened by this retrograde decision. I won’t be listening. Signals the end of CBC Radio. CBC will become indistinguishable from commercial broadcasting.

Since the announcement was simply the bottom line of the changes, I’d be interested in hearing/seeing the CBC’s own arguments in favour of dumping the current Radio 2 schedule and virtually killing classical music.
Ivan Bateman — March 31, 2008 @ 8:14 am

I have sent the following to Richard Stursberg and Jennifer Mcquire:

I am alarmed about the seemingly inflexible attitude that you are adopting with respect to the public outcry about the plans for Radio 2

I was fortunate to be exposed to “classical” music by BBC radio 70 years ago. The pop era was in full swing (no pun intended) at that time and classical was not “popular” music.

I was also lived in a large city where we endured heavy bombing. A boarder who lived with us was a member of the BBC Symphony orchestra and he practiced his viola at a time when fear was the prevalent sentiment. After the war I was able to go to live concerts on a few occasions. These were my first experiences of Hi-Fi performances and I was captivated. However, radio was the prime source since records were beyond our means.

Over 50 years ago I came to this country. Commercial radio was a wasteland of repetitive pop and commercials in a small city. Only the CBC occasionally carried classical offerings and concerts were something for Torontonians only. I depended on CJBC but even this changed when the French language format was adopted.

Radio 2 became my station of choice, especially when its reach was extended by repeater stations outside Toronto. It stayed on my car dial while travelling in southern Ontario. Now most of what I have enjoyed is yielding to Muzak style offerings.

Why cannot you put yourselves in the place that I occupied all those years ago? Through fortunate circumstances I was exposed to an art form that became part of my education. The love of that form has withstood the pressure of popular taste with its fickle fashions and lack of substance. How can you reach those young people through the barrage of noise (literally) that comprises so much modern music?

I can compensate to some extent through modern technology. Internet streaming, Ipods, CDs all provide the sound but the sense of community is missing.

Think again please.
joeposts — April 6, 2008 @ 12:40 am

I was disappointed to hear this news. That radio station was about the only legitimate way people in smaller cities could listen to unconventional music. The only music stores around here that have a classical music section have a TINY classical music section and generally only carry the popular, long-dead artists and composers. Internet radio is great and all until you try dragging an ethernet cable and a laptop computer behind you when you go jogging.

So I’m left with few options - a satellite radio bill, a legally downloaded DRM-infected file that may not work at all, waiting weeks and weeks for a CD delivery, or a quick and easy (and probably illegal) internet search & download. When the music industry all but stops distributing certain styles of music, I don’t exactly feel guilty about ’stealing’ by filesharing or downloading it off USENET. Too bad for the musicians and composers though.

I hope more unconventional musicians follow the lead of artists like Trent Reznor, who recently made his latest instrumental NIN album available for download on his own website for a small fee.
David Drucker — April 6, 2008 @ 5:26 am

Now there’s a different angle: More variety on the airwaves for unconventional music discourages illegal filesharing.

I guess that is true (if one has no alternative), although it would probably be less likely for someone to download a file if they had never been exposed to that kind of music (or had any kind of context/program notes/DJ) so that they knew what to look for, much less download.

In any case, less choice is always a bad thing.

As for posting music online, I suspect that most orchestras and/or soloists would do so except for the fact that they generally don’t know much about that sort of marketing, and are even more conservative about giving anything away than the those musicians who make far more from concerts and other avenues available to those in the popular music realm. One could argue that a classical soloist would gain far more from the marketing from the release of recordings of their performances than they could ever get from CD sales (or sales on the iTunes store). Also, note that for classical music, the ‘product’ that they are selling is not necessarily the recording. Many record just as a way of documenting a live performance (since contracts with record labels for classical artists are few and far between, except for Naxos, where the performer gets next to nothing but better distribution).
Lowell Guebert — April 6, 2008 @ 9:24 pm

I am shocked beyone belief! I have been a CBC listener for years - why I even remember hearing Bob Kerr! The CBC was always a haven for those who could not stand the pounding noise that is most of the rest of radio . But in their “wisdom” they took classical music off of the evening programming, and gave us “Tonic” They must know how bad it is, judging by the number of “commercials” that they air trying to convince us to tune in. You can get that kind of programming anywhere. CBC does not have to compete with commercial radio.
And they even want to kill Jurgen Goth with his eclectic mix of musical styles?
And the CBC radio orchestra in Vancouver is dying too? How sad! Look at NPR in the U.S. and you will find that there are people who want to listen to the great masters.
What the CBC really needs is some “Sound Advice” But they have killed that program too! A sad day for Canada!
Janette Griffiths — April 9, 2008 @ 10:43 am

As a British journalist who spends a lot of time in Vancouver, I am devastated by the changes to the Radio 2 schedule. Tom Allen and the much-missed Shelley Solmes were like friends to me. They taught me most of what I know and now love about classical music. I have a suggestion: Can we not ask the big guns of classical music to help? When the Royal Opera House was going through some very difficult times, a petition was sent to The Times, headed by Sir Colin Davis and signed by all the world’s great conductors - lamenting the cavalier treatment of the ROH company during its closer for renovation. True Covent Garden is a platform for these conductors but so is Radio 2. And not just conductors. We could start with Pinchas Zuckerman, Kent Nagano, Andrew Davis, Bramwell Tovey, Ben Heppner, Gerald Finley (currently getting rave reviews here in London) and get them to bring in their friends and colleagues. And then, it would be interesting to know just what the credentials of Jennifer McGuire are. They must be very impressive given that she has been allowed carte blanche to tamper with the quality of life of millions of Canadians across the country. I think we need to know just what her qualifications are!
Joe Posts » Culture is for those who can afford it. — April 10, 2008 @ 10:18 pm

[...] No classical? Then kill Radio 2 and get it over with [...]
Janette Griffiths — April 12, 2008 @ 3:24 pm

A postscript to my earlier comment and also in response to Mr Karlsberg: I don’t mind at all if he considers me and all the other defenders of Radio 2 arrogant and snobby. We’re in some excellent company. Here is a quote from an exchange between composer James McMillan and Daniel Barenboim during Barenboim’s Reith (BBC version of Massey) lectures last year. It might also help Russell Smith come to terms with using that troublesome term “classical music”.

From the transcript of 2006 BBC Reith lectures. Daniel Barenboim - Hearing - the neglected sense:

JAMES McMILLAN: Hello my name is James McMillan, I’m another composer. Recently the English musicologist Julian Johnson produced a fascinating book called Who Needs Classical Music? He implies that serious music has suffered in the face of the apparent triumph of the visual and the verbal, but also of what he would see as the banal and even the populist. And therefore my question is this -

“What is it about serious music that baffles and indeed in some cases offends the advocates of an ever increasingly ubiquitous, narrow, some might say debased popular culture? Is it its very ability to rise from the mundane? Is it the suggestion that there may be such a thing as a secret inner life which cannot be reduced to a rigorously enforced commonality, that there may be no such thing indeed as a closed universe?”

DANIEL BARENBOIM:
Wow!

As you can see, Barenboim was left speechless. I’ll repaste the question in the middle of that quote: “What is it about serious music that baffles and indeed in some cases offends the advocates of an ever increasingly ubiquitous, narrow, some might say debased popular culture?”

I think that answers that MacMillan provides go a long way to explaining the malaise that is abroad in our ‘debased popular culture’.
David Drucker — April 12, 2008 @ 4:24 pm

Thanks for that addition, Janette.

Until recently, I attributed my love of Classical Music with the fact that I grew up with it. My parents were both classical performers, and the house was nearly always full of people taking voice or piano lessons, as well as chamber music rehearsals. It was not unusual for me to know a piece backwards and forwards by the time I attended the concert that eventually took place.

That said, I also wonder if aside from this comfort through familiarity, it did expose me to patterns and structures (at least, in sound) that are far more complex than most children and adolescents get a chance to hear. When I talked to friends about music (and for me, this was a fairly rare occurrence, as with the exception of fellow piano students or a few others, doing so only alienated me from them), I was surprised to hear that most of the time, they were most interested in the words to the song, not the melody, the harmonies or rhythm (although for some, you’d sometimes hear someone say, ‘I like the beat.’). Still, if it is the words that are what’s important, I can understand why much of popular music (and particularly Rap and Hip-hop) are mainly concerned with the poetry and/or cleverness of the lyrics, and this is why there are so few purely instrumental works.

Also, there is rarely a song much longer than a few minutes, and it is nearly always the same tempo and volume throughout - something that harkens back to the Baroque era (where this practice was adhering to a term in rhetoric, ‘The Doctrine of Affections’ - which suggested that one idea/tempo/mood should be used for each movement of a work, to avoid the impression of chaos or disorder).

I had dismissed this as merely a commercial requirement, because the songs fit into an easily digestible bite-sized chunk, which in turn, could be put together into an album more easily then say, a 20-minute multi-tempo work with quiet bits, loud bits, and everything in between. Mahler’s “I want a symphony to take in the whole world” would never fit a form such as this.

The result is then, everything is a Song Cycle, with no real need for relationships such as keys or major vs. minor, not much triple rhythm (too hard to dance to), and an emphasis on the poetry, rather than much of a melody or harmonic idea. This, to me, is just too thin a gruel. Call me an arrogant snob, but I’m just too hungry for complexity to settle for just poetry, especially poetry that is usually not much more than a single thought for each work.
Margaret Gunning — May 22, 2008 @ 10:11 am

I think the wholesale gutting of Radio 2 (with a sop to the old folks who still listen)is entirely driven by age demographics. Most people who love classical music are middle-aged or older, old coots by the industry’s reckoning. They’re just not cool enough, and they’re on the way out anyway, so why not just chop this bloody nonsense of wasting time on them and what they want?

The CBC site insists that they’re “listening” (what crap!), responding to “concerns” with careful explanations of how this step will improve Radio 2, broaden its mandate, draw new listeners with its fresh new content, etc.

Why not just grab a shovel.

No matter that Radio 2 is a grand dame of culture, the only one left in the country. The execs at MotherCorp see her as a dowager, a querulous old dame who really should keep her mouth shut. Or maybe she’s an old horse who should be put out to pasture?

Hmm, put out to pasture. I have a better idea.

BLAM!
David Drucker — May 22, 2008 @ 12:36 pm

Margaret -
I’m not sure that the demographic of classical music listeners is quite as grey-haired as you suggest. True, I did see quite a few older people at the protests, but I also saw a lot of young people. And if demographics are the key to programming choices (which seems to be what the form letters I get are saying), then the increasing Chinese demographic would suggest that they should program more, not less classical music. They are building concert halls like mad in China, because the population can’t get enough of this stuff.
What’s more, throughout the world, the age of classical music listening is going down on average, not up. In Venezuela, classical music has become the way that poor children escape their situations and has completely revolutionized the education and culture of that country.

To say that classical music is just for old people isn’t borne out by the facts.

I had a portion of this conversation just the other evening with Todd Maffin, who claimed that it seemed obvious that people wouldn’t want to have their tax dollars spent on a minority of people, and that classical music listeners were all ‘dying’. I think this is the same misconception that you are labouring under, and even if it were true, it wouldn’t make sense to insure that there are no new listeners; just like it would make no sense to close the art museums and ballet companies because their appreciators are predominantly older people.

The arts know no age, and government sponsorship to make sure that they don’t become an elitist activity only of the rich is a right that Canadians should demand, just like health care, public parks, libraries and mass transit. Classical music - and again, I think part of the problem is that the term is loaded with all sorts of cobwebs - or Art Music should be available to all without having to have a high income or status. Just ask those kids in Caracas.
Margaret Gunning — May 23, 2008 @ 9:39 am

Perhaps the elderly demographic is a misperception. But I don’t think Canada stacks up to the rest of the world in honouring the arts. It’s all Don Cherry and Timbits.

How much funding do orchestras receive in Canada? When I moved to Vancouver in the late ’80s, the Vancouver Symphony had gone broke and was disbanding. So much for “world-class”. It staggered to its feet again, but barely. Even now, it is dumbing down its content and running absurd ads saying operas are like reality TV, soaps, etc., to make it more “accessible”.

Classical music is “for snobs”; people “don’t understand it”, or it’s “too serious”, or “too boring”. Even if none of this is true,a large segment of the population believes it. And perhaps the bigwigs at CBC are playing on that myth.
Esther — June 3, 2008 @ 7:49 am

“music appreciation” courses are not popular. When kids complain, their parents run to school and say “teach something else”. I, for one, absolutely needed that first push.
Another reason: learning to play a musical instrument doesn’t increase your status, and that’s what our simultaneously advanced and backward north american continent is all about.
Mike — July 6, 2008 @ 9:43 am

Killing the CBC is quite deliberate, it is being dumbed down to the point where its a propaganda machine for Neo Cons. The heavy hands are all over it. Musak is your future. Have a look at some of the Brasscheck TV videos to get a glimpse of your future.
Joan — July 14, 2008 @ 11:32 pm

I may be part of the “grey haired brigade” now, but I started listening to CBC radio as a teenager in Regina. I did not come from a musical background, but have gained a deep love of music as well as extensive knowledge of both composers and performers, thanks to the educated, intelligent broadcasts I listened to for so many years.Yes, there is new technology and we can all load up our I-Pods,but how many young people without musical backgrounds will have the opportunity to learn about music they are not familiar with? I have always considered CBC Radio 2 to be a national treasure that we can be proud of, and I simply cannot believe there aren’t enough listeners! Nor can I believe that all those listeners are “old”. Didn’t we all start out as young people? Surely, if we became CBC fans at a young age there must be others! And why should we all be forced to listen to the same kinds of programing as all the other stations? If it can’t remain worthwhile, intelligent and interesting, then we don’t need a government funded station. Canadians need CBC Radio 2 to continue providing decent music, as well as interesting information about that music. I am murmuring LOUDLY!!!!
David Drucker — July 15, 2008 @ 12:19 am

Joan,

I agree with not all listeners to Classical Music not being old. I also agree (and have written in other postings), that this kind of art, which is not ‘disposable’, that like Shakespeare, Rodin, Dante and El Greco, some music from the past is never just for the old (or for the young, for that matter). It does, however, require attention from when you are young, because it can help you grow up knowing that there are big ideas out there worth having in your head throughout your life, not just the tail end of it.

When some young Canadians will be denied the opportunity of falling in love with Beethoven’s String Quartets or Bach’s Suites for solo instruments while everything is still new for them, and they feel things so intensely, is a tragedy that those now running the CBC are oblivious to. But it’s hard to speak for the future. I have to remember that Bach was nearly unknown for a hundred years after his death, when Mendelssohn and a bunch of other enthusiasts rediscovered him. Perhaps we in Canada are going to go through a similar cultural ice age.

I can recommend one thing for you, though (and I couldn’t let it go without comment): It’s spelled ‘iPod’. One word, small i, capital p. No hyphen. Spelling it any other way will surely brand you as ancient and irrelevant. Just a word to the wise.
Alison — July 16, 2008 @ 3:43 pm

The death of the CBC radio 2 marks a death in me as well. Adulation of the mediocre, homogenized, uninteresting aspects of pop culture, which require no thought or participation, is once again in the forefront. If demanding the retention of something that is fine and valuable makes me elitist then so be it. However, I will NEVER LISTEN TO CBC RADIO AGAIN!
The All-New CBC Radio 2 Is For You - The Torontoist | Stand On Guard For CBC — August 20, 2008 @ 8:28 pm

[...] the right amount of tiny food objects paid for by our tax dollars, we took in the controversial and already well-publicized changes hitting the network’s daytime programming as of September 2. For those not keeping [...]
Barbara Acheson Cooper — August 29, 2008 @ 1:01 pm

As a Canadian and tax payer, I feel invested in CBC Radio 2 and am angry that the wonderful world of expert hosts and music that I have listened to for years is being repalced by mediocrity and in a profoundly insensitive manner. Yesterday I heard Eric Freisen welcome his replacement … an inarticulate and self admited naive anouncer. Nice Going, CBC.
sandra — August 29, 2008 @ 3:06 pm

I only discovered Radio2 a few years ago when I stopped listening to Radio-Canada FM which was replaced by Espace Musique…aurevoir musique classique…and now I am forced to mourn once again since Radio2 will be copying Espace Musique:MEDIOCRITY!

Everything which made Radio-Canada FM & Radio2 unique is being ignored…a sad reflection of our level of awareness.Hello elevator music…mindless and never thought-provoking.

Radio2 will be sadly missed, especially chère Catherine Bellyea.
Steve Horne — August 29, 2008 @ 9:28 pm

What an odd little blog this is. Pretty clear situation to me…there aren’t enough classical ears to support an entire radio operation, probably never were but they had enough pull back in the day to direct the government funding to create the station (the history of this is greatly intertwined with the arrival of FM radio). The numbers had dwindled to the point that no one in government or CBC management could come up with any justification to keep it alive. I don’t know that they have succeeded in creating a great alternative - they haven’t been around long enough to judge.
It’s rather funny that a few people here, including the Toronto Globe columnist, suggest that because the station no longer panders to their niche interest it should be terminated. Funny because they are really exercising the same impulse as the people who initiated the format change.
David Drucker — August 29, 2008 @ 10:01 pm

Steve, I’m going to assume that you’re not just being a troll (someone who chimes in to get people upset at what they say just to enjoy the negative energy).

A niche, eh? Well, that may be so. I guess there are some arts that have a small following. Does that mean that they should be hard to discover? I’m hoping that the state of Art Music’s dwindling following (and I guess that means that the millions throughout the world are relatively small in number compared to the general population) will be made somewhat more bearable to those of us who love it by the rise of Internet radio. In the meantime, the loss of the last radio network in Canada that plays music that I want to listen to is something I’m dealing with. I’ve moved on, but that isn’t what really upsets me; What I’m most sad about is that there won’t be some kid, maybe in the middle of nowhere, who discovers it by chance. Some of these spectacular examples of how human beings can be extraordinary and have their works live for centuries will once again lie dormant; who knows how long.

This isn’t pandering to the interest of a few old farts (and by the way, if 47 is old fart status, then I guess I’m one of those). I know, by the luck of the family that I was born into, the appreciation of music that is not much more than a few verses and choruses with a little chugging beat, disposable and utterly forgettable, but the chances of some other kid getting to find this treasure grows smaller each day.

It’s precisely the opposite of elitism that I want; I want everybody to have this stuff for free, rather than having to pay tickets at some concert hall. And as to whether or not the pennies per year that this amounts to on your tax bill, I guess you won’t have to protest any more about it going to music for niches like mine.
Steve Horne — August 30, 2008 @ 10:31 am

No David, just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t suggest they are a troll.
In any event, I’m surprised by your outlook on music and I have to say I find the situation to be quite the opposite. I’m pretty close to your age and I think that there has never been more opportinity for “some kid, maybe in the middle of nowhere” to discover any imaginable variety of music. I happened to live in an area as a child that didn’t have access to CBC Stereo or much else on the FM dial. Now my kids are discovering all sorts of music via the internet, satellite and a much wider variety of FM stations available to them and of course all the stuff they trade back and forth with their friends . Do you really think that your music is endangered in this greatly expanded environment?
Also, I’ve never bought into the argument that this should be continued because it costs a mere pennies per taxpayer. If that were our guide then we would provide a radio network or any other government supported service for any niche group that demanded it.
David Drucker — August 30, 2008 @ 11:13 am

Steve, you had to pay for the Internet for your home, so you are better off than many. If you get satellite as as well, you are much better off. FM radio is all but free.

As for wider variety of FM stations, I live in a metropolitan area and have not found that the case at all; there is a commercial ‘formula’ that most stations follow. Yes, there are a few college stations (at very low power) but they also don’t program much in the way of the Classical/Art Music.

Yes, Art Music on the radio is endangered - and I’d say, as of Sept. 2nd, all but extinct in Vancouver. And as for ‘every niche group’ demanding a government supported service, do you really think that wanting to have Art (in the broader sense) in our public life is something that should never be promoted by government? Even the US, which I left years ago, they had some recognition (albeit pretty poor) of government-supported arts, for the good of the community. If it’s the free market to support every art form, then some will simply be drowned out by the din of commercialism, and that’s not always a good thing. That’s the way it works and has always worked since the beginning of Mass Media.

By the way, I doubt that your kids are discovering lots of Classical Music on the FM dial and Internet, but I’m willing to be proven wrong if they are.
Jan Karlsbjerg — August 31, 2008 @ 3:48 pm

David:

By the way, I doubt that your kids are discovering lots of Classical Music on the FM dial and Internet, but I’m willing to be proven wrong if they are.

If they take in enough music from enough different (and different enough) sources, then I’m sure they come across the classical / complex / challenging music too, and then they can vote with their feet and wallets. They can participate in discussions boards, “vote up” their favorite genres and articles on online services, they can buy the music immediately through online stores, etc.

And if classical music comes out a winner in any of those forums, then by all means let’s hear about it.

I listened to a lot of classical music growing up, because I hung out at Denmark’s Radio’s P1 where all the political, news, debate, radio montage, etc. was happening. There was a lot of classical music there, and I always felt I was being force-fed it. It was part of a package deal. You couldn’t hang out on the one radio channel that had “the good stuff” without also paying a little classical music tax, without sitting through the classical music propaganda.

I’m sure they played it because they thought it was appreciated by many of the audience, but at least for this particular audience member (me), the introductions always sounded like this:

Oh, so you want to listen to the good news analysis show, that’s coming up, eh? Well first we’ll make you listen to this violin music for ten minutes. The show you’re interested in isn’t available anywhere else, you have to stay on this channel, and really you have only one choice: Give in, change your taste, become like us and like it… or keep suffering. And now: The violins.

The media landscape doesn’t allow for force-feeding and package-dealing anymore; there are too many alternatives, and people turn away if they’re being presented with package deals like this. If the same programs were being offered to me now, I’d subscribe to a podcast of the news-analysis program and never hear a bit of the unwanted filler music.

Viewer and listener surveys now get closer to the point: How many are ACTUALLY interested in classical music (as opposed to “how many sit through the classical music because they like a particular channel and never, ever change the dial”). And in that clearer light of day, classical music didn’t pull in enough people for the CBC to spend so much time and money on it.
Loyal Listener to the CBC - Jerry Lipinski — September 1, 2008 @ 5:52 am

Listeners in Windsor, ONT and Leamington have an alternative - they can listen to a Detroit-area station, WRCJ 90.9FM. They have pretty diverse classical programming, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (who now have Leonard Slatkin at the helm so that in and of itself is a good reason to switch) the downside is they end classical at 7PM each day and switch to jazz, but that shouldn’t faze the CBC listener too much, since Danielle Charbonneau’s 7PM program got axed how long ago???
Steve Horne — September 1, 2008 @ 10:01 am

Hey David, my kids will discover Classical Music, or they won’t. Very democratic process…the music must be strong enough to find a place in some kids heart now or a hundred years from now or it will just fade away.
I do believe that the CBC managers have the right to change directions when they see that they are not serving enough of their audience.
I read today that most PBS stations are dropping Mr. Rogers as of Sept. 2nd. There is similar anger and disappointment from a hard core group of Mr. Rogers supporters but the fact is that kids in 2008 aren’t interested in the show.
David Drucker — September 1, 2008 @ 4:24 pm

I think your kids will never discover that kind of music. It will be drowned out in a sea of commercialism. There are some arts that should be nurtured. That’s why we have public buildings dedicated to that, and ballet and opera companies, theatre troupes, and art galleries and museums. The vast majority of those institutions get some government support. Why this particular part of human experience, that of music, should somehow be up for grabs by the free market is ridiculous. It’s not a ‘democratic’ process of whether pop music is ‘better’ than art music. That’s an absurd calculation, and you as an intelligent person should know better.

I think the question here is the word ’serve’. Does the CBC serve an audience better by giving them what commercial stations already do? I look to my tax dollars to fund all sorts of things that I don’t necessarily partake in myself: public parks and libraries in places I’ve never been, museums of art that I may or may not visit. That’s how I define the word. ‘Serving’ by taking an opinion poll (or in this case, cooking one up) and giving exactly what the majority wants results in no growth or exploration for a citizenry. Society will never be challenged when offered what the most people ask for.

As for Mr. Rogers, I’m not sure I’d put him in the same league as Brahms, but it’s not surprising that someone who older people grew up with is no longer ‘relevant’ to kids. I’d say that there is a big difference between what he does and music that has been loved and performed for 300 years.
Steve Horne — September 1, 2008 @ 8:31 pm

David, I think you are twisting my words a bit here. I didn’t say anything about pop music being ‘better’ than art music. The democratic process I was referring to is that of humans making a choice, an individual choice, of what they value most and will save and nurture for future generations. If you say that my kids will “never” discover classical music then so be it. They obviously decided that it has no value to them. The only reason it has lasted through several hundred years is that some people decided that it is worth it. And I’m good with that. I’m actually supportive of your right to try to keep the CBC as it was, I just don’t back your horse.

As for the legendary Mr. Rogers, I never cottoned to him myself, but I drew the analogy not because he is the equal of Brahms, but because its a very similar situation - a public broadcaster being pressured by the old guard to stay with the traditional.

One more thing, I challenge you to listen to Radio 2 when it relaunches tomorrow and note the content and then give me the co-ordinates of ONE commercial station that comes even close to it. I’m not convinced that it is going to be great radio, but my impression of what is being launched in no way souds like “what commercial stations already do”.

Thanks for the discussion David.
Jane — September 2, 2008 @ 10:20 am

I am deeply disappointed in your change of programing. Please bring back the classical programs I looked forward to hearing. What has happened to our lovely learned, entertaining hosts of the past programing??????
James McDonall — September 2, 2008 @ 1:02 pm

I am disgusted at the changes at the CBC. Being consigned to the Muzack dungeon in order to enjoy the musical expression of human spirit that is a birthright of every living being makes me feel like a second-class citizen.

It seems that some have forgotten, or are simply not aware that the music we call classical is the root and seed of every kind of music currently in existence in the cognitive world. Without the marvellous experiments of Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Strauss or any of the great composers of our collective cultural past, none of today’s so-called great musicians would even exist.

Loving classical music is not elitist, but because it sometimes requires some effort it is looked on as such. This is a shame, but it’s part of our society today - the prevailing attitude that anything worth having should just be given to us without any effort on our part.

I feel for the youth of today who will never get a chance to experience the simple joy and wonder of the complex approach, and I grieve for the future of a Canada with nothing but muzack, techno-grooves, hip-hop and other mindless schlock to embrace in the name of Canadian content.

As a Canadian taxpayer I say: Shame on the CBC for consigning music lovers all across this great land to the cultural dungeon in the name of ratings.
PETER MILNE — September 2, 2008 @ 3:20 pm

THE NEW CRC RADIO 2 IS LIKE NEEDING A 6 PACK BEFORE BREAKFAST. THEY “WERE” THE SOURCE FOR CLASSICAL. NOW APPEAR TO BE THE SOURCE FOR CLASSICAL RAP, WHICH IS AN OXYMORON. MY TAX DOLLARS AT WORK??????/
Derek Borne — September 3, 2008 @ 2:31 am

I thought that turning on radio 2 was going to be the equivilant of attending a funeral, but I was wrong. I do miss the soothing voices and beautiful music, but the DJ’s must retire and life must go on. It is up to the listeners to continue their passion’s. If you are sooo into the classical scene then you should be promoting it and educating the unlearned. Look at the Punk/Hardcore scences. They have to push their music. It is not mainstream. Those who want classical will get it. The world is not into the side line business. The world shifts and changes and everything that is in the world follows. Times change, DJ’s get old, but Governments will always be crazy
Christopher — September 3, 2008 @ 6:08 am

I need somewhere to vent! The new radio 2 is the most awful elitist unlistenable nonsense - presumably the playlist has been dreamt up by the same Milton Friedman addled brain that coined that small black cloud “everywhere music takes you” when this all began. I put up with the loss of Danielle Charbonneau and the Saturday shows, I like the guy in Montreal whose renovations are never finished - I even began to like the live music in the evening. I was happy with the move of the new music slot to earlier than midnight . The recent changes though are uniformly awful. And the enormous problem is that there is nowhere else to go! The Toronto classic station is plagued with advertisements, a rather grating chatty style and lacks the eclecticism. Public radio and TV were founded by a generation which understood public service and all of the social reasons why it should exist. Now the neo-con lunatics have taken over and are turning the country into their asylum. This was an agressively political move and needs to be responded to politically. An election may be a useful time to do this kind of thing!
Christopher
David T. BRown — September 3, 2008 @ 6:35 am

Message to CBC Radio 2 senior managers, 02 September 2008:

Ms. McGuire -

I am compelled, pointless though it may be, to share the profound sense of sadness and loss that I feel about the abysmally ill-conceived programming changes at Radio 2. You have been part of a team that has systematically dismantled one of the highest quality, most enduring, and best-loved collection of radio programming in the world, and replaced it with a mass of flavour-of-the-month mediocrity. You and your colleagues may have proceeded with the best of intentions, driven by some misguided notions that demographic ratings are the key to quality and integrity. But the end result is a travesty - a shameful evisceration of the best of Canadian radio programming in favour of a pointless pastiche of atomized populist elements, none of which has enough of a constituency to generate an audience on its own, and so disparate and poorly integrated that it will never attract an audience with the patience to endure the rest of the mediocrity for the few bits they might actually be interested in listening to.

I cling to the faint hope that dismal ratings, audience outrage, and perhaps even political intervention will eventually correct the foolish trajectory that Radio 2 is currently following, but I am not optimistic… the multitude of simultaneous cuts and blows that have been delivered to Radio 2 are probably fatal. Were you not paying attention over the past many months to the torrent of thoughtful and compelling commentary opposed to these changes? Does the overwhelming majority of negative internet posts on the CBC site and elsewhere not register on the collective conscience of CBC radio policymakers? The fact that these changes are greeted on your blogs and comment boards not with joy and enthusiasm, or even with tepid support, but rather with outrage or with responses similar to mourning the death of a loved one, should send a message to you and your colleagues. Where is the outpouring of support from the demographic that this new programming is supposed to attract? How can these compelling and prescient indicators be so resoundingly ignored?

You know not the magnitude of the disservice you have done to the Canadian public.

With profound sadness and bewilderment,

David Brown
David T. Brown — September 3, 2008 @ 6:38 am

To: “CBC New Radio2″ Subject: Re: Fwd: Profound sadness Cc: jennifer_mcguire@cbc.ca, ht.lacroix@cbc.ca, richard_stursberg@cbc.ca, mark_steinmetz@cbc.ca

Dear Ms. Mitton,

Thank you for the courtesy of a reply, even a boilerplate one.

I take no exception to the premise that Radio 2 should reflect Canada to Canadians, nor do I confine my listening to the narrow confines of so-called ‘classical’ music. However, the enormously disruptive, non-consultative, poorly-justified changes in scheduling and format of Radio 2 are a major disservice not only to the loyal listenership that Radio 2 had acquired over its previous history, but also an abandonment of the values and integrity that differentiated this service from every other broadcast service in the country: the thoughtful presentation of enduring music at times when most Canadians (including working people, commuters, and students) can access, enjoy, and learn from it.

Though I welcome the presence of online music, proposing that we switch our allegiance to Internet sources is no solution at all. First, Internet sources are absolutely useless to all but the most well-heeled commuters who can afford the punitive costs of such mobile services. You neglect the needs of that substantial proportion of your audience that listens on the radio while commuting to work or school.

Second, back-to-back musical selections form internet sources, presented without commentary, interpretation, context or explanation, does little to achieve the role that Radio Two fulfilled so admirably for decades: educating a willing audience about the best music of many genres, at times when listenership is highest and alternative modes of programming delivery to mobile listeners are fewest.

Third, though access to popular genres and transient musical fads is widely available through commercial broadcasting nationwide, access to quality commercial free programming featuring the most enduring and meaningful musical traditions at peak times is not, closing off the one truly unique avenue for musical education and edification that was available to everyone in our vast nation.

Fourth, the disparate, disconnected, and limited-appeal pastiche of programming that has been substituted for proven, popular, excellent shows such as Disc Drive and Music and Company will never garner a cohesive audience - the genres and performers are far too disparate, far too unproven, and - frankly - not of sufficient overall quality to ever measure up to the time-tested and enduring excellence of the ‘classical’ repertoire, the established jazz lexicon, and the eclectic array of time-tested standards and innovative new material that was so effectively presented by Tom Allen and Jurgen Gothe.

Despite my regard for the standard ‘classical’ and enduring popular repertoires, I am not a stuffy traditionalist. I have given Radio 2 a chance by tuning in since the changes occurred, and will continue to keep an open mind and open ears. But to date, the new programming is frankly awful, and the pathetic spectacle of Tom Allen preparing thoughtful and witty introductions to banal four-chord, third-rate, puerile material - regardless of its national origin - is excruciating. Worse still is the train wreck that has replaced Disc Drive.

I think I am representative of much of the loyal Radio 2 audience that has been completely alienated by these misguided changes, and unless there is a radical change in the material that is now being presented, particularly in the morning and evening drive-to slots, my radio will be permanently tuned to NPR or Jazz 91, egregious commercial interruptions and fundraising notwithstanding. This disturbs me viscerally, as a proud Canadian who championed the excellence of CBC Radio 2 at every opportunity and who trumpeted the unique and wonderful phenomenon of excellent, accessible, nationally-broadcasted radio of the highest calibre.

CBC has made a grave and profound error. Please acknowledge it. I sincerely hope that there is enough integrity and wisdom in other sectors of the corporation to recognize and fix this unwarranted, unnecessary, and misguided policy blunder before its consummate failure is used to justify further cuts to our vital (and once superb) national radio service.

I look forward to your reply, automated or otherwise, with the enduring but probably vain hope that it might reflect a review of the present trajectory and a reversion to more enduring and substantive programming objectives.

Sincerely,

David Brown
David T. Brown — September 3, 2008 @ 6:41 am

To: “CBC New Radio2″ Subject: Re: Fwd: Profound sadness Cc: jennifer_mcguire@cbc.ca, ht.lacroix@cbc.ca, richard_stursberg@cbc.ca, mark_steinmetz@cbc.ca

Dear Ms. Mitton,

Thank you for the courtesy of a reply, even a boilerplate one.

I take no exception to the premise that Radio 2 should reflect Canada to Canadians, nor do I confine my listening to the narrow confines of so-called ‘classical’ music. However, the enormously disruptive, non-consultative, poorly-justified changes in scheduling and format of Radio 2 are a major disservice not only to the loyal listenership that Radio 2 had acquired over its previous history, but also an abandonment of the values and integrity that differentiated this service from every other broadcast service in the country: the thoughtful presentation of enduring music at times when most Canadians (including working people, commuters, and students) can access, enjoy, and learn from it.

Though I welcome the presence of online music, proposing that we switch our allegiance to Internet sources is no solution at all. First, Internet sources are absolutely useless to all but the most well-heeled commuters who can afford the punitive costs of such mobile services. You neglect the needs of that substantial proportion of your audience that listens on the radio while commuting to work or school.

Second, back-to-back musical selections form internet sources, presented without commentary, interpretation, context or explanation, does little to achieve the role that Radio Two fulfilled so admirably for decades: educating a willing audience about the best music of many genres, at times when listenership is highest and alternative modes of programming delivery to mobile listeners are fewest.

Third, though access to popular genres and transient musical fads is widely available through commercial broadcasting nationwide, access to quality commercial free programming featuring the most enduring and meaningful musical traditions at peak times is not, closing off the one truly unique avenue for musical education and edification that was available to everyone in our vast nation.

Fourth, the disparate, disconnected, and limited-appeal pastiche of programming that has been substituted for proven, popular, excellent shows such as Disc Drive and Music and Company will never garner a cohesive audience - the genres and performers are far too disparate, far too unproven, and - frankly - not of sufficient overall quality to ever measure up to the time-tested and enduring excellence of the ‘classical’ repertoire, the established jazz lexicon, and the eclectic array of time-tested standards and innovative new material that was so effectively presented by Tom Allen and Jurgen Gothe.

Despite my regard for the standard ‘classical’ and enduring popular repertoires, I am not a stuffy traditionalist. I have given Radio 2 a chance by tuning in since the changes occurred, and will continue to keep an open mind and open ears. But to date, the new programming is frankly awful, and the pathetic spectacle of Tom Allen preparing thoughtful and witty introductions to banal four-chord, third-rate, puerile material - regardless of its national origin - is excruciating. Worse still is the train wreck that has replaced Disc Drive.

I think I am representative of much of the loyal Radio 2 audience that has been completely alienated by these misguided changes, and unless there is a radical change in the material that is now being presented, particularly in the morning and evening drive-to slots, my radio will be permanently tuned to NPR or Jazz 91, egregious commercial interruptions and fundraising notwithstanding. This disturbs me viscerally, as a proud Canadian who championed the excellence of CBC Radio 2 at every opportunity and who trumpeted the unique and wonderful phenomenon of excellent, accessible, nationally-broadcasted radio of the highest calibre.

CBC has made a grave and profound error. Please acknowledge it. I sincerely hope that there is enough integrity and wisdom in other sectors of the corporation to recognize and fix this unwarranted, unnecessary, and misguided policy blunder before its consummate failure is used to justify further cuts to our vital (and once superb) national radio service.

I look forward to your reply, automated or otherwise, with the enduring but probably vain hope that it might reflect a review of teh present trajectory and a reversion to more enduring and substantive programming objectives.

Sincerely,

David Brown
Ray Catellier — September 3, 2008 @ 10:46 am

David Brown, I share your sentiments. I am greatly saddened by these changes by CBC Radio II. As a “young” 34 year old listener, I do not fit the demographic that CBC brass thinks it’s speaking to with their changes. I miss Tom Allen, Eric Friesen, Jurgen Gothe and Danielle Charbonneau’s programs immensely.
David Drucker — September 3, 2008 @ 11:00 am

David, you put it better than I could.

At the moment I’ve moved on and am currently listening to KUSC via the internet. When I’m traveling, I’ll have to resort to podcasts and my own collection.

The Online Classical Channel that the CBC has been promoting completely misses the point of the education and edification issue you point out so well. In fact, it is so incredibly depressing that I can’t bear to put it on (hence my move to other streaming stations outside of Canada). The Classical ’stream’ from the CBC is like all mankind has been destroyed by some nuclear holocaust, and out of the bunkers some computer is mindlessly queuing up Beethoven, followed by Rossini, followed by Vivaldi, with no human logic, voice or explanation other than the text of the piece on the screen.

I too miss Tom Allen, and my days are just a bit less joyful at their beginning without his music, ‘This day in…’, ‘Cage Match’, contemplation of the latest medical or scientific discoveries, chats with the Web Goddess, Arts Report or any of the other bits of the world he brought to me each weekday morning. I didn’t only lose the music, I lost a companion.
James McDonall — September 4, 2008 @ 10:59 am

Since this is a matter of my tax dollars, I’ve Emailed to my Member of Parliament, to the Minister of Culture, and to the Prime Minister to look into this travesty. There must be some acknowledgment of the classical world, and to the education it engenders, or in twenty years our cultural heritage will amount to nothing more than the 4-beat, 3-tone teenybopper “stuff” that’s coming out now.

I encourage everyone here opposed to the changes to do as I have - write to your Member of Parliament, to the Minister of Culture, and to the Prime Minister with your concerns. Perhaps we can mobilize and get the CBC bigwigs fired for this.
pauline fedeski — September 4, 2008 @ 12:53 pm

potential immigrants should be informed that CBC Canada doesn’t DO the classics of any sort anymore…if they want intelligent speech,drama and music, they should go somewhere else.
Jenna — September 4, 2008 @ 9:03 pm

I grew up in the Canadian arctic. My earliest memories are of squeaky snow, northern lights, and CBC radio. Absent TV, a radio station is a hub of culture that hones listeners into the persons they will become. CBC turned me into a Canadian. And, while my youth was radio 1, my adulthood (thus far) has been sound-tracked by radio 2 (with the occasional espace musique interlude). The loss of ‘classical’ music is palpable and I mourn it as I would the loss of any other integral part of my identity.
I endorse James McDonall’s democratic urgings, and enjoin him (or others) to post and circulate forums for reaching Minister of Culture et.al.
Vicki Wood — September 7, 2008 @ 4:42 pm

I feel a tremendous loss every morning as I drive to work, and again on the drive home. Perhaps there are other classical stations in larger centres, but not here in Halifax. So After 30 years of starting my day with the CBC, it will have to be an ipod or buy satellite radio. I find it very hard to understand how the CBC could stive to be and sound just like every other radio station.
Tim — September 9, 2008 @ 1:09 pm

Although I have not listened regularly to CBC2 in the recent months, when tuning into the station the other day while lounging around the house, I was surprised to hear a station that sounded more like a small college radio station than the high quality station I once new. The program hosts sounded very much like amateur college students with programming so eclectic and diversified that I can’t see it appealing to anyone. That’s a shame. But often good things come from change. It just might not be at CBC.
Scott Henthorn — September 9, 2008 @ 10:05 pm

I have been adjusting to the changes at Radio 2, and came to this blog searching for some info on the new shows. For what it’s worth I will weigh in on this debate (argument).

It is true that I liked knowing the CBC was playing classical music at almost any time of the day even when I was not listening. The problem when I listened was that I did not enjoy it that much. Accurately, I did not like most of what was played. Much of what was and is still played on the classical programming is in fact Classical music; some slightly pre-classical, and perhaps more post-classical or romantic. The twentieth century music tended to be the safe stuff. I remember Sheila Rogers giving a longish introduction to a Schoenberg piece a few years ago. She was talking in general about his innovations and I waited eagerly for what she might play as Schoenberg almost never gets played on the CBC. I was disappointed when she played one of his Cabaret songs. I like these well enough but they are his Pop music really. If music education is the CBC’s duty, then it has been falling down on this duty for years. It has played a largely safe repertoire and only rarely has it pushed us out of our comfort.

Perhaps Romantic would be a better name for the class of music we are bemoaning the loss of on CBC R2. This is the period of music that, at least if my memory serves, has had the most play. Romantic also suits the general mood of all such music. It is a loving communication of elite to elite. (To say that classical music is not elitist is a failure in demographic observation.) In many ways Romantic music is better than other kinds of music. More timeandsweatandblood has gone into this music than you average pop diddy. Years of training are required to read and play music of the romantic kind. Such time and encouragement toward learning are largely a luxury of the elite class. The music is also romantic because it often harkens us back to a bygone time. True classical music was written to flatter profoundly conceited power elite. For this reason I find it difficult to get into. The dirty faced proletariat that resides in me won’t let me listen as if this music had no context; as if it were pure music for its own sake.

What some of you here have failed to realize is that the music the new format is in fact elite pop. There are many artists on Drive that do not get much play anywhere else. Some may say that is just as well, but a good deal of the music offered is well crafted thoughtful and 75% Canadian. Even 15 years ago it would have been difficult to pull off that kind of Can con in the folk-pop-rock-hiphop-what have you genres.
David Drucker — September 10, 2008 @ 11:07 pm

Scott -
I can’t comment much on what CBC R2 plays now, because I no longer have it on. I heard a fair amount of Romantic era music (from, say Beethoven through Richard Strauss and early ’safe’ Schoenberg), but also some really fine Baroque and yes, ‘Classical’ (i.e. Mozart and Haydn) on CBC R2.

The fact that the music that I like is all called ‘Classical’ music is, as I’ve said, a misnomer, akin to calling all creatures that don’t live in the sea ‘mammals’ or all non-deserts, ‘Salads’.

I made an interesting discovery this past weekend, when I was putting together most of what I had in my iTunes library to copy to another hard drive for some relatives who requested a copy (and it was all Digital Rights Management free stuff, so they could play it). My current collection of ‘Classical’ music is about 14,500 pieces of music, and according to iTunes, if I played it through, non-stop, 24 hours a day, it would take 60 days before I reached the end and had to repeat something. However, I believe that my library is a fraction of the classical music that is out there. When I get told that I’m too ‘narrow’ for not listening to pop/rock/folk/hiphop-what have you, I just don’t know what to say, but I know that my taste isn’t narrow. I just like stuff that’s more complicated, and that happens to include a lot of music. They’ve just never heard of it. Now, even fewer will have.
Arlene Cross — September 12, 2008 @ 12:28 pm

I am applalled that restoring CBC Radio 2 to its former glory is not even an election issue. No, I am not being frivilous! For the sake of Canadian culture and our heritage, we need to stop Harper from forming his own radio station like some tinpot dictator.
Arlene Cross — September 12, 2008 @ 12:29 pm

No I hadn’t already said that. Are all these sites funded by the Conservative Party of Canada?
Judith Curtis — September 13, 2008 @ 4:39 pm

David Brown has said it so well, and nothing I could add would be more cogent or more heartfelt. Early morning programming on Radio 2 is ‘truly awful’, and what happens after 3 p.m. is ‘a train wreck’; thank you, David, for summing it up. It used to be possible to pick out CBC from the two commercial stations on either side of it. Now, except for a very few hours in the schedule, it’s impossible to tell the difference, and in our house we’ve given up trying, given up listening. The ‘classical’ programming from 10 to 3 is pleasant, but generally pap.
What still confronts me every day is the fact that something really essential has gone out of my life. It feels like a bereavement, and the anger and sense of loss are profound.
Dave Galloway — September 15, 2008 @ 8:35 pm

Dear Mr. Drucker,

I think it would be interesting to frame this debate in terms of CBC 2 being an “audio museum”. We have museums across the country to preserve and promote great cultural works - to inform, educate and entertain. The GREAT thing about radio is that the audio format cheaply allows the equivalent for sound aka music. CBC 2 should see it’s role to put great works of music ( art ) ons display in a manner that informs, educates and entertain. Oh gee, that’s what it was doing. Imagine what would happen if we opened our museums to have MOST of the displays ‘pop’ / popular art? We would LOSE the entire value of the museums.

Dave Galloway
David Drucker — September 15, 2008 @ 10:34 pm

Thanks for the comment, Mr. Galloway.

I suppose we could equate what CBC 2 was with some of the other, ‘Physical’ examples of the Arts in our lives, but I guess I’m resistant against the idea of just showcasing great works of the past. There are new works of Classical Music being written today, and some very fine works are by living Canadian Composers (I’ve met some of them here in Vancouver). A ‘Museum’ of old music might play right into the hands of those who say that this stuff is old, out-of-date and no longer relevant to Society today.

Of course, those of us who know some of the repertory also know that it’s exactly the opposite; there are passages from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring that are just as brutal and startling as explosions on the television from suicide bombers in Kandahar and Baghdad. The first movement of Vaughn Williams’ Fourth Symphony carries just as much anguish in reaction to modern conflict today as it did in the midst of World War II. Even the less obvious examples (I’m thinking perhaps of the late piano sonatas of Beethoven)of works written in other centuries that are ‘timeless’ and still just as fresh in terms of insights for life today in that they deal with life, death, the passage of time, memory and the journeys that life brings.

I guess what I’m saying is that yes, it is a Museum, but one in which the number of exhibits is constantly growing, and yes, offers a respite from the crass commercialism and simplistic messaging and construction of modern Pop music.
David Drucker — September 18, 2008 @ 1:37 pm

For Dorothy Watts:

I too am in a state of bereavement over CBC Radio 2. I invited Catherine, Eric, Jurgen, Peter and Howard into my home week after week. I had tea with them and they entertained me, enlightened me and uplifted me. I feel as if a good friend had left for good and slammed the door behind her. It’s not just about playing music. It’s about creating intimacy, about intelligent commentary and about broadening scope. More than anything, I miss Eric Friesen who provided a delightful mix of classic classical and classic pop in a way that fed the heart and the head.

It saddens me to realize that the over 50 demographic is considered entirely expendable.
Shirlee Mays — September 18, 2008 @ 9:04 pm

I am so disgusted at the abandonment of truly good music and my old “friends” Jurgen and Shelley and others that I, too, am not listening to this station any more. How do the powers that be dare to unilaterally change a format which has been a part of this country for so many years. I am a professional violinist who moved here from the U.S. enough years ago to remember Bob Kerr and when I traveled on tours I listened to this station all over Canada and also whenever I was in the northern U.S. Shame on all who are responsible for this devolution of my favorite music station.
roger d white — September 19, 2008 @ 5:55 am

Typical canadian logic: take a one of a kind ‘GREAT’ station, that had evolved over 25 years into a brilliant one and turn it into one that is so much like a thousand others. Do they learn nothing from history? you can’t ram stuff (Canadian content) down people’s throat and get them to like it,quite the reverse happens,it’s just not good enough. There are enough of us on this side of the speaker to deserve a decent ‘classical’ station like pre studio sparks radio 2. This move ranks with the scrapping of the Arrow. Grow up! Roger White
Ray Clancy — September 23, 2008 @ 4:43 am

Radio 2
I personally have never listened to that program,so Im not missing anything.However,I have been getting my classical music fix for over 20 years from WCPE.They have been broadcasting this type of music for over 30 years.I’m surprised that nobody has picked up on this station and written about it because theres lots of people out there who would love to have a good reliable classical music station to listen to.WCPE 89.7 FM is located in Wake Forest,North Carolina and is available 24/7 commercial free,totally listener supported.I first got it on C-band satellite on the Galaxy 5 satellite.
They have discontinued this feed and is now on AMC 1 at 103.0 W KU band.This is even better and can be received with a cheap FTA satellite receiver and an 18″ dish,but even better, its streaming free on the internet.I get it both ways and Im listening to it as I type.
Check it out at” theclassicalstation.org ” , they will be glad to help you and maybe you can become a member.Its the best.
Tony Martinez — September 30, 2008 @ 9:19 am

I have tried the new CBC Radio 2 and I just can’t listen to it, much as I enjoyed Tom Allen’s subtle humour before. I feel as if the soul of the country is being destroyed. Before we could turn to CBC 2 on our drive to and from work, and feel soothed. I invariably drove slower and was happier.
Classical means that it has stood the test of time. Many fads come and go and only a few remain, whether or not they were thought to be popular at the time. It is wrong to have removed classical music from the lives of Canadians. In my area of SW Ontario there are now no classical stations on the radio.
I am despondent, frustrated, disappointed and feel powerless to do anything about it. This is so un-Canadian yet the people who took this decision clearly have their own agenda and care not.

I am now listening to ABC Classic FM from Australia. Are we so poor in spirit that we will need to turn to other nations for our cultural sustenance?
David Drucker — September 30, 2008 @ 11:55 am

I absolutely agree, Tony. The loss of terrestrial classical radio in our area is a big gaping hole in our cultural life. Isn’t it interesting that now Harper is in the news about cutting Arts funding and saying that Arts funding isn’t for ‘Ordinary’ citizens? In a similar trend to climate change, one could say that CBC2 was perhaps the first extinction in the coming Climactic Disaster for the Arts in Canada.
Ray Clancy — October 6, 2008 @ 5:02 pm

IN my note re WCPE I should have noted that this station would not be available on a car radio here in Ontario,But streaming free on the internet when you are out of the car is a good way to go.I would expect that for $100.00 or less a good small dish satellite hookup in your back yard would be great.Works for me and has for at least 20 years
Margo Hearne — October 16, 2008 @ 4:43 pm

I’m terribly disappointed with the new II. I worked for years to get it here in this remote corner of Canada only to have all that energy disappear. It’s not enjoyable, and while some classical is thrown in in midday, my listening hours were always morning and afternoon, now its rap and pop. I feel bitter about supporting and requesting access to it for so many years. Would it have been too much for CBC to perhaps…ask the listeners if we wanted a change?…So impolite.
Tracey — October 17, 2008 @ 11:25 am

I, too, am in mourning over the loss of the music I loved to hear. Like many others who have commented here, not a day goes by that I don’t notice or think about that loss. Something essential is gone, and it has had a surprisingly profound effect on my quality of life. I think of Sept 2nd as ‘the day the music died’. Like countless others, I am unable to listen at work, so it is early morning and late afternoon when I can listen to the radio and the music on CBC is now so much….garbage. It seems to consist of not very compelling or interesting folk, country twang (please, don’t we have more than enough of that elsewhere?) obscure, odd and not very good, or plain old bad covers. Who puts together a playlist like that? I hate it! I am still in shock that the CBC could actually do what they did, in light of all the negative feedback, and the alienation of their very loyal fan base.
Judy Jackson — October 26, 2008 @ 10:06 pm

I am like all the above, devastated with the ‘loss’ of CBC2 for me because of the new programming. In other words ‘dumbing down’. I feel so helpless with no one to turn to who can or will wish to have it restored.

I was checking to find someone to inform Seattle King FM that I was turning back to that station in desperation but I will paste what I found about it also. Similar to what we are dealing with. HOW SAD!

adv

Monday, August 30, 2004 - Page updated at 09:29 A.M.

Radio
KING-FM strikes a sour note for some

By Melinda Bargreen
Seattle Times music critic
Host George Shangrow was fired in December.

KING-FM changes prompt big response

Classical-music audiences are not always enamored of change.

But when recent changes at Classic KING-FM (98.1), one of the nation’s top classical stations, provoke more than 70 angry e-mails to the newspaper, you can be fairly sure that change has sparked unusual outrage.

The nonrenewal of radio host George Shangrow’s contract last December was the first manifestation of new directions at the station, where 16-year veteran Shangrow’s “Live, By George” show had long been a popular forum for bringing live local performances to the listening audience.

Last month, the station announced the departure of another longtime host, Tom Dahlstrom, who had been at KING-FM for more than 17 years. The move was described as a “resignation” by KING’s press release but characterized as a firing by Shangrow; Dahlstrom declined to comment, citing the terms of his departure. His exit created a wave of displeasure in e-mails and letters, most of whose subtext was: “What is going on at KING-FM?”

Host Tom Dahlstrom left KING-FM last month.
“First you fire George Shangrow, a quality evening host with an infectious love and solid knowledge of classical music … ” wrote listener Chris Blanchett in an e-mail to KING management, with a copy to The Seattle Times. “Now you fire Tom Dahlstrom, the most genially engaging radio personality on Seattle airwaves. And this is part of a strategy to expand your audience? Is step one of this master-plan to piss-off your existing audience? Because that is exactly what you are doing.”

Blanchett has co-founded what he calls “a grass-roots organization called SAVE KING-FM,” (e-mail savekingfm@yahoo.com) with the goal of getting Dahlstrom and Shangrow reinstated at the station. About 100 KING-FM fans have joined the organization thus far, Blanchett says.

So what, indeed, is going on?

Program director Bob Goldfarb, who took over from longtime predecessor Peter Newman upon Newman’s retirement last summer, says the changes amount to only “a few differences … part of a conscious effort to keep the station as vital and indispensable as it has always been.”

A 30-year veteran of classical-music radio who has held posts at many stations, Goldfarb was hired by Newman in May 2002 as a consultant for KING-FM. What is less well-known is that Goldfarb originally hired Newman. In the summer of 1977, Goldfarb was at KING-FM for a short period as interim program director, and at that time he hired Newman for the permanent post.

Goldfarb says the main shift at KING-FM has been a broadening of programming that includes more variety. He won’t comment on the decision to terminate Dahlstrom’s or Shangrow’s employment at the station and says of the resulting e-mails and letters, “It’s great to know that KING-FM is so important to so many people.

“I’m always sad when people are unhappy with change,” Goldfarb continues. “We don’t want to lose old friends. That is always a cause for concern.”

But Goldfarb says there is less public unhappiness, not more, about what KING-FM is doing. He points to an annual research study, conducted for the past three years by the research firm of FMR Associates in Tucson, Ariz. The firm annually phones Seattle-area residents, screening them to discover whether respondents are part of KING’s “actual or potential” audience. Last year, 48 percent of respondents reported feeling “more satisfied” with KING-FM than the previous year. In 2004, that figure rose to 62 percent. (The survey was conducted in July, after Shangrow’s departure but before Dahlstrom’s.)

“Anecdotal information can be suggestive,” says Goldfarb of those who have contacted the station, and The Times, to complain. “But it’s good to get a fix on statistical responses.”

The station’s ratings, however, do not register a jump in approval. The most recent Arbitron ratings period yielded a 2.6 percent share of the total radio listeners older than 12, down slightly from last year’s 2.9 (the 2002 figure for the same period was 2.7). Average time spent listening was up in 2004: 8 hours, 15 minutes per week, up from 2003’s 6 hours, 30 minutes per week.

Additionally, the station has been a pioneer in Internet streaming, the process by which listeners around the world can hear live programming over their computers by visiting the Web site (www.king.org). KING-FM now has between 50,000 and 60,000 connections to its Windows Media Player Webstream every week, and another 30,000 connections to its RealPlayer stream. The typical length of listening is 60-80 minutes on the Windows stream, and more than 90 minutes on Real Audio, according to the station’s Bryan Lowe.

“Our music has evolved in a direction that is clearly pleasing to listeners,” Goldfarb says.

“I think we play more great music now, not music that just sounds pleasant. There is more early music, more choral music, more themed music — for example, all the Beethoven piano sonatas. We’re also augmenting the programming with information features; Brad Eaton has an arts news story every morning. We’ve added the BBC News a year ago, and people like it.

“What about the hosts? We have a terrific team. I have confidence in everyone who’s here now. No more departures are planned.”

Shangrow said Dahlstrom was fired because he made a few last-minute changes to programming in order to commemorate historical events. Does Goldfarb really insist on strict control over everything that is aired?

“It’s pretty standard in radio,” replies Goldfarb, “for hosts to concentrate on presenting music. The music director chooses all the music. The host consults with the music director if a change is wanted. Music is better chosen if the flow is carefully considered; spontaneity can result in choices that are not as well thought through. We are looking for certain balances in variety and contrast.”

George Shangrow, not surprisingly, doesn’t agree.

“I think that [Goldfarb's] research is ridiculous,” wrote Shangrow in a recent e-mail.

“The main thing he went after me for was a ‘polka band’ on a live Oktoberfest show from KPC [Kirkland Performance Center]. It was a seven-minute segment and the station received seven phone calls saying how much they liked the music and the segment.

“I remember talking with Goldfarb about the fact that in business, people really only phone when they are unhappy, and that getting seven listener calls that were very happy about a segment that lasted only seven minutes was surely an indication that people were listening, interested and involved. He informed me that that was incorrect, and that only the ‘controlled data’ of Arbitron and professionally conducted surveys could be counted on to tell what the public was thinking.”

The station has begun issuing press releases about upcoming content, as it did with the Aug. 23-27 focus on “Educating Tomorrow’s Audiences,” airing 7 p.m. conversations with such music-education figures as Marcus Tsutakawa (Garfield High School Orchestra and Seattle Youth Symphony Junior Symphony), Perry Lorenzo (Seattle Opera education director), Doug Fullington (Tudor Choir conductor, Pacific Northwest Ballet historian), Patricia Costa-Kim (Seattle Symphony education director) and Gregory Vancil (Seattle Bach Choir conductor).

Peter Donnelly, a KING-FM board member and president of ArtsFund (one of three recipient organizations of KING-FM’s proceeds), declined to comment on personnel changes at the station or on KING-FM’s new direction. Donnelly observed, “Organizations need to be periodically rethought and redefined.” In 1992, KING-FM owners Priscilla Bullitt Collins and Harriet Bullitt decided to put KING-FM under the control of a newly created company, Classic Radio, which is the present licensee of KING-FM. In turn, the Bullitt sisters donated their shares in that for-profit company to Beethoven, a nonprofit corporation. Beethoven distributes the station’s income to the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Opera and ArtsFund.
David Drucker — October 26, 2008 @ 10:15 pm

Judy -

Thanks for the update. Sad to see that good Classical Music programming as well as hosts are becoming an endangered species on both sides of the Canada/US border, at least on this coast. My brother frequently had KING-FM on when we visit him in Seattle (we can’t bring it in here, except of course through the Internet).
Ron Teljeur — October 31, 2008 @ 10:53 am

I learned to appreciate “classical” music while channel surfing about 18 years ago. I hit the CBC during a Yurgen (sp?) Gothe program and felt instantly refreshed and relaxed.
I listen to A LOT of different music and my 300 disc cd player on random play gets very interesting (metallica to vivaldi to soggy bottom boys).
Radio 2 was my guaranteed stress relief after some of life’s trying moments. So to find that there is now just another soft schlock radio station out there really pissed me off!
Margo Hearne — November 12, 2008 @ 9:37 pm

‘CBC Radio 2 - everywhere music takes you’ is such a meaningless piece of drivel that if I hear it one more time, I shall throw my radio out the window. Rap or light pop doesn’t take me anywhere except to the ‘off’ switch on CBC radio 2. Still depressed about the changes. Is it all over? Isn’t there anything more we can do?

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Loud Murmurs

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.” — Mahatma Gandhi

The Death of CBC Radio 2

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