An Answer to One of my Protests

OK, I real­ize that I’m becom­ing a bit of a bro­ken record, and I promise that these post­ings about the CBC are reach­ing an end. After all, each of us have to ‘get a life’.

Nev­er­the­less, I couldn’t resist post­ing this, because it shows just how the blather the CBC spouts about mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and other BS is being used so that these peo­ple can get their way, a commercial-style radio net­work with next to no chal­leng­ing or intel­lec­tual content.

Here’s the back­ground: In addi­tion to my let­ter to the CBC, I left a sub­mis­sion at the ‘Con­tact Us’ form on the CBC Web site, and here’s what I got in today’s email :

Dear David Drucker,
Thank you for your email about upcom­ing changes to the week­day sched­ule of CBC Radio 2. We’re enthu­si­as­tic about the changes being planned. It’s good news for all Cana­dian per­form­ers and all Cana­dian lis­ten­ers. How­ever, we know some peo­ple have mis­con­cep­tions of why we are mak­ing these changes and how the new sched­ule will look.

The ques­tion fac­ing CBC is whether we use Radio 2 to reflect excel­lence in all Cana­dian music and musi­cians or just a part of the indus­try; and whether we serve a broad spec­trum of Cana­dian lis­ten­ers or just of a por­tion of the audience.

Allow us to pro­vide you with a lit­tle back­ground to the proposals.

First, we rec­og­nize the qual­ity and pub­lic value of “seri­ous” music. Clas­si­cal music will remain the most broadly rep­re­sented form on Radio 2 while we expand the spec­trum to include other forms of music for adult Cana­dian listeners.

Next, it may inter­est you to know that Cana­dian per­form­ers of all stripes release about 30,000 pieces of music every year. Less than 1 per cent of those receive reg­u­lar air­play on com­mer­cial radio sta­tions. The rich diver­sity of Cana­dian music and musi­cians is clearly not being heard on Cana­dian air­waves. Music gen­res for which Canada is famous through­out the world cur­rently have lit­tle expo­sure on CBC Radio’s music network.

Since CBC’s man­date charges us to “reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audi­ences, (and) actively con­tribute to the flow and exchange of cul­tural expres­sion” as well as “reflect the mul­ti­cul­tural and mul­tira­cial nature of Canada” the pub­lic broadcaster’s adult music net­work must be a home for these artists and this music.

Finally, we also believe there will still be some lis­ten­ers who desire noth­ing but clas­si­cal, or jazz, or adult singer-songwriters. So, this fall, CBC Radio will be launch­ing three 24-hour-a-day web radio ser­vices to serve each niche exclu­sively. Obvi­ously we would rather have a full FM net­work for each genre, but since that is not pos­si­ble, the online solu­tion is another option for Canadians.

Radio 2 is now and will be remain a music net­work for adult Cana­di­ans. Our val­ues of thought­ful­ness in pre­sen­ta­tion and excel­lence in per­for­mance remain intact. Our com­mit­ment to offer an alter­na­tive on the dial con­tin­ues. The kind of lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence will not change; the music high­lights will just come from a broader spectrum.

We’re pas­sion­ate about Cana­dian music. Radio 2 will be the only place to truly reflect the incred­i­ble breadth and depth of tal­ent that exists in this country.

Again, thank you for writ­ing. We look for­ward to your feed­back when the new shows are intro­duced in the fall.

Ray Rusk
Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Offi­cer
CBC Audi­ence Relations

I’m get­ting the stan­dard party line I’ve seen in other media: Clas­si­cal doesn’t rep­re­sent true Canada; We’re not cut­ting out Clas­si­cal music (or now an even bet­ter sub­tle insult: ‘Seri­ous’ music; gee, why don’t they call it ‘Long-hair music’ or ‘Egghead music’); we’re just mak­ing sure that every­one is rep­re­sented, so Clas­si­cal Music has to go to make room for the other Cana­dian artists. That bit about ’30,000 pieces of music’ is, I sus­pect, plucked from thin air.

Never mind that the myth­i­cal ‘audi­ence’ they are talk­ing about (instead of ‘por­tion of that audi­ence’) doesn’t exist. The peo­ple who lis­ten to Radio 2 by def­i­n­i­tion lis­ten to Clas­si­cal Music because if the CBC didn’t broad­cast that, they wouldn’t lis­ten to Radio 2. The alter­na­tive to Radio 2 is, let me see…Oh right: noth­ing.

Never mind that Cana­dian com­posers and Cana­dian Clas­si­cal Music are going to con­tinue to be phased out of the air­waves. The biggest bald-faced lie in the email is this one: Clas­si­cal music will remain the most broadly rep­re­sented form on Radio 2 …

Sorry, pop­u­lar light clas­sics from the hours of 10AM through 3PM, when no one but home-bound seniors will hear them is not ‘most broadly represented’.

To under­stand just how much the oppo­site of ‘most broadly rep­re­sented’ is, here are some facts not men­tioned in the let­ter:

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.

The CBC set the clas­si­cal music bud­get for CBC Records to 0 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. That’s right; the first Grammy win, and these guys get rid of the record­ing label. Many Clas­si­cal Music per­form­ers launched their careers on a CBC Records label recording.

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 clas­si­cal music.

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 29^th year.

CBC can­celled Music For A While, which aired clas­si­cal music daily from 6pm to 8pm.

CBC can­celled In Per­for­mance the flag­ship Clas­si­cal con­certs program.

The CBC dis­banded the CBC Radio Orches­tra: North America’s 70-year old last remain­ing radio orches­tra and plat­form for count­less pre­mieres of new Cana­dian com­po­si­tions cit­ing lack of resources. The next day, they ran a full-page ad in the Globe and Mail cost­ing an esti­mated $30,000 to con­vince us of the same party line that I was read in the let­ter. It’s worth not­ing that there was not a sin­gle clas­si­cal music (com­poser or per­former) listed in the ad. Instead, the rep­re­sen­ta­tion was pri­mar­ily from com­mer­cial record­ing labels and oth­ers involved in pop­u­lar music.

That bit about a ‘web’ sta­tion is utterly ridicu­lous as well.  Will I be able to lis­ten to the web sta­tion in the car or on the Sky­train? Will I have to rig up a com­puter in the bed­room so I can wake up to it in the morn­ing? Will kids in school who have never been exposed to Clas­si­cal Music dis­cover their Internet-based sta­tion?  Maybe in 5–10 years we’ll have per­va­sive Inter­net con­nec­tiv­ity so that stream­ing audio is avail­able at all times, includ­ing while trav­el­ing at decent qual­ity, and is next to free for all, but not today. Like mag­a­zines that stop print­ing paper edi­tions and only pub­lish on the web, putting most of the CBC’s Clas­si­cal Music solely on the Inter­net is pretty much get­ting rid of it from main­stream listeners.

It’s sick­en­ing to be read a party line that is disin­gen­u­ous at best. That bit about mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism is a smoke-screen.  Do you think they are going to be play­ing a lot of Pak­istani and Chi­nese music? ( And isn’t ironic that so many Chi­nese are huge fans of Clas­si­cal music and are build­ing con­cert halls like mad in China while the CBC takes it away from lis­ten­ers in Richmond?).

If the CBC says that peo­ple like me ‘just don’t get it’, that ‘The kind of lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence will not change; the music high­lights will just come from a broader spec­trum’ and should sim­ply lis­ten to web radio, what they really mean is that they are sim­ply inter­ested in mak­ing more money — just like they do on TV by air­ing ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ — by pre­tend­ing to be ‘mul­ti­cul­tural’, and then run­ning a com­mer­cial Easy Lis­ten­ing sta­tion. The pat­tern they’ve fol­lowed from the last 3 years plainly shows it.