On this Tuesday, April 1, at 10 in the morning many of us are going march on the CBC Offices downtown. Don’t know if it will do anything more than make us feel better, but at least we can say we did something. There is also more we can do, and it doesn’t require our physical presence. An email campaign has started (via Facebook). I’m going to publish the rest here, so that people who either don’t want to have to locate on Facebook or don’t want to join can participate as well. Here’s all of the information (and it has some eye-opening information about what the CBC has been up to lately):
Let’s give the CBC a lovely Monday morning
Here we go again, folks. It sure appears we’ve made our voices heard. Columnists in the major papers are taking note and taking sides. And the CBC execs themselves sense the threat to their schemes, taking out a full-page ad in the Saturday Globe in rebuttal to our criticism. We’re going to keep the pressure up.
Everybody: Write an email outlining your outrage over the changes happening to Radio Two. be as personal as you can. If you need inspiration, we’ve got a list of issues below, and many people have posted create feats of rhetorical splendour back at the Save Classical Music at the CBC site. Write your quick email tonight to Richard Stursberg and CC it to all the people we mention below plus any journalists you can think of. We expanding things this time to board members and members of parliament. Write you letter before the end of the day on Monday. Let’s make another huge statement, folks!
List of Issues and Email Addresses (Thanks to Margaret Logan for compiling all this!)
1. The CBC Young Composers Competition has not been held since March 9, 2003. It, as well as the CBC Young Performers Competition, have been suspended for the past four years. The Canada Council provided the funding for the $10,000.00 grand prize.
2. CBC erased the classical music budget for CBC Records in February 2008, precisely on the eve of their first Grammy win by Canadian violinist James Ehnes and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra under Bramwell Tovey on the CBC Records label. Many artists, such as Measha Brueggergosman, launched their careers on a CBC Records label recording.
3. The commissioning budget previously devoted to commissioning new works from composers is now spread out to cover jazz, pop musicians, and some unspecified amount of contemporary music.
4. CBC cancelled Two New Hours, a multiple-award winning program that was aired for two hours a week in the incredibly prime time slot of Sundays 10pm to midnight. This program was dedicated to the music of living Canadian composers. It was cancelled in March 2007 in its 29th year.
5. CBC cancelled The Arts Report. The late Val Ross, an arts columnist for The Globe and Mail, lamented the loss of this particular radio segment, saying that it kept her in touch with important cultural developments across the country.
6. CBC cancelled Music For A While, which aired classical music daily from 6pm to 8pm. It has been replaced by Tonic, a jazz program which also features hip-hop, soul and world music.
7. CBC cancelled In Performance the flagship Classical concerts program. It was replaced by Canada Live, which has an uneven and unpredictable offering of funk and R and B bands, jazz, Middle eastern fusion music, throatsinging…
8. The proposed cuts for the Fall of 2008 represents further reductions in classical music content, eliminating classical music 6am to 10am and 3pm to 6pm.
9. The new hosts are not musicologists and have little depth of knowledge to share with radio listeners. Howard Dyck, for example, who is no longer hosting Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, is an Order of Canada recipient, a conductor and the recipient of numerous honourary degrees for his contribution to music in Canada. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Dyck Larry Lake, former host of Two New Hours, is a Toronto composer, performer and broadcaster. He is Artistic Director of the Canadian Electronic Ensemble, the oldest active live electronic music group in the world, now in its 35th season. Other hosts whose, such as Tom Allen, Eric Friesen, Rick Phillips are also giants in the field of music broadcasting.
10. The axing of the CBC Radio Orchestra: North America’s 70 year old last remaining radio orchestra and platform for countless premieres of new Canadian compositions
11. Gone are Music & Company — Tom Allen’s morning show, Here’s to You — Catherine Belyea’s (Formerly Shelley Solmes’) all-request show, Studio Sparks — due to the venerable Eric Friesen’s “retirement”, and Disc Drive — Jurgen Gothe’s popular drive-home show after almost 30 years. These changes come on the heels of last years round of cuts to vital programs such as Danielle Charbonneau’s much-loved Music for Awhile; Larry Lake’s new composer showcase Two New Hours; Symphony Hall — Canada’s live orchestra recording showcase; The Singer and the Song — Catherine Belyea’s excellent Classical vocal program; Northern Lights — the overnight Classical program beloved by Night Owls everywhere; The reformatting of In Performance- a primarily classical live performance show into the much-reviled Canada Live — a uniformly non-classical and completely unfocused hodge-podge of World music, soft pop, and sort-of Jazz; and the controversial replacement of veteran Howard Dyck from Saturday Afternoon at the Opera after many years of great service.
12. The CBC axing the Radio Orchestra one day citing lack of resources, and the next day buying hugely expensive full-page ad in the Globe and Mail to convince us how wonderful everything is going to be in their Brave New World.————————–
Send your letter to Richard Stursberg, head of English services at CBC, condemning any of the issues above, or, preferably, one of your own. Demand his resignation for single-handedly destroying 70 years of a carefully evolved musical ecology at CBC Radio 2.
cc: All the following individuals:
- CBC President Hubert Lacroix [email protected]
- CBC board chairman Timothy Casgrain through his assistant Kathleen Martin [email protected]
- Board members Peter Herrndorf [email protected]
- and Trina McQueen [email protected]
- Stursberg’s Executive Assistant, Cathy Katrib-Reyes [email protected]CBC.CA
- Lacroix‘s Chief of Staff Francine Letourneau [email protected]
- Exec in charge of CBC Radio, Jennifer McGuire
- [email protected] or [email protected]
- Radio 2 Programming chief [email protected] or [email protected]
- Peter Steinmetz, Chair of the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame [email protected]
- Josee Verner, Minister of Heritage [email protected]
- Prime Minister Stephen Harper [email protected]
- Liberal Heritage critic Mauril Bélanger
- [email protected]
- NDP Heritage critic Charlie Angus [email protected]
- (optional) The major newspaper journalist of your choice — local is best!
To make it easier, here all all the email addresses for pasting into your email client:
to: [email protected]; [email protected]
cc: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected], [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected](Note: your email client may require commas rather than semi-colons)
So there you have it. I’m working on my email. If you have time (and this affects you as well), please send one of your own.
I am devastated by this news. Esp. the all the shows listed on #11 that are being totally erased from Radio 2. They were the reason I started listening to CBC FM in the first place.… Eric Friesen, Jurgen Gothe, Shelley Solmes, Danielle Charbonneau, Catherine Belyea all collectively gave me hope during a very difficult point in my life.
You are making a HUGE mistake and it had to be said. It’s so misguided, totally screwing up the things that made CBC Radio 2 so great for so long. What’s wrong with keeping Radio 2 as is and then adding all this new experimental stuff to Radio 3?
I am so depressed.
Nancy — Please, we all need to send a message like yours to the people who can hear, and perhaps change this. It’s not I who am making this HUGE mistake, it’s the CBC. Tell them.
With the destruction of Radio 2, I feel as if a piece of our intellectual and cultural life is being ripped from us by a few clueless bureaucrats, intent on fulfilling some vision of a bland and mindless country. I left the U.S. partly to escape what I thought was a deteriorating population getting dumber and dumber with each passing year.
This is not the same direction that Canada should follow.
sent off my e‑mails. If there’s any way I can slip away from work tomorrow, I will! How long will you guys be there?
Thanks Nancy. Hope you can get away. I’m taking off that day, and I’m not sure how long the march will be or where it starts. I was on a mailing list from the UBC Faculty member, pianist Sarah Davis Buechner. She sent it to about 125 people (I recognized a few music cognoscenti on the list from their email names). I’m hoping to find out more, but I did get 2 emails of people to contact: Anita Sleeman, who is [email protected] or [email protected] . Hope that helps. Now, I’m getting back to my letter…
Here is the letter I wrote about the CBC, to some of the email addresses provided by you. Thanks.
______________________________________
I am writing to let you know about my extreme disappointment and sorrow about the pending losses to Channel 2 radio classical music programmes that I have so enjoyed and have helped create my sense of being Canadian even. I cannot tell you how much of a disaster I think this is, with great repercussions. I enjoy all types of music, but commentators such as Rick Phillips, Jurgen Gothe, and so many, many others have been my mainstay. What on earth is happening to the leadership at CBC.
Also, in terms of television drama, the CBC used to have plenty of good drama that I could look forward to. We should have more, but the frequency has gone down dramatically. Our Canadians are so talented, and the CBC ought to be a showcase. Our household throughly enjoyed the Englishman’s Boy, both parts, and can only hope someone will have the common sense to strengthen the funding that goes towards good, compelling drama such as this. Rarely is a “movie” as good as a book, but this was an exception.
A play-in should be organized with musicians playing music outside the Vancouver Library building accross the street from the CBC building this Saturday (Tueday at 10:00 a.m. is not the best time to organize a rally). It will raise attention and maybe even funds to go at these executive clowns. I will be pleased to contribute $100 even if it will only serve to help shame the clowns who run the CBC.
Hello
Thanks ever so much for the email addresses listed. You might also want to include the CRTC in your list, if they are not investigating this change, they need to!!!
Their website has been timing out for the last few days, but I did find this address [email protected]
‘Bye for now
herbie
Everything said in the emails above is true, but for me : the cbc has given up on anything a musician or a music lover would want. Some people like Gothe’s program, but for me that’a annoying beyond belief, pop music stuck in between A movement from a work. Why can’t the cbc play a WHOLE work ????? Danielle Charbonneau was the last person I’ve heard to have the courage to play music out of the usual repertoire, and complete pieces. She should get the Order of Canada for that. Good people, I’ve paid for those music libraries as have you, let’s have someone play them for us. AND get the hell back to hiring orchestras — hopw do new works get played ?????
The appointment of Hubert Lacroix by Stephen Harper (aka Big Brother) in 2007 seems to have started the harried dismantling of our collective Canadian voice. The loss of our culture (through both CBC Radio and Television — including political commentary inherent in Air Farce, Tom Allen’s interesting little-known facts, etc.) is a measured step in politicizing and privatizing our previously public (democratic) culture. This is the New CBC — the Conservative Broadcasting Corporation. Writing the executives at CBC will probably do nothing, as Lacroix is in the PM’s pocket. Newspapers, opposition party members might be the best choice. That’s where I am directing what little voice I have left. This is not 1984. At least, not yet. Big Brother, we are watching you. Thank you so much for this website. Together, we just might be able to make a huge difference. That’s how democracy works, I am told.