The CBC Taketh Away, the CRTC Giveth…

While I’ve been howl­ing and gnash­ing my teeth about the immi­nent demise of Clas­si­cal Music on CBC Radio 2 (and don’t tell me it’s not going away; 10AM-3PM week­days of Beethoven’s Fifth and Vivaldi’s ‘The Sea­sons’ is a deathbed), for once, there’s some­thing good to say about CBC Radio, although the CBC actu­al­ly has rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle to actu­al­ly take cred­it for: Appar­ent­ly, CBC Radio 1 has secured a license for an FM sta­tion in Van­cou­ver from the CRTC (the Cana­di­an Radio-télévision and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion). At some point in the near future, CBC Radio 1 will be avail­able at 88.1 FM in our area. Van­cou­ver is a bit out of date in this regard, as much of the coun­try already receives Radio One on both the AM and FM dial (the his­to­ry of CBC Radio One is detailed on Wikipedia).

Why is this worth not­ing? Well, in our con­do and car, we don’t get any AM sig­nal at all. We’re on a low­er floor, fac­ing north, and there isn’t a sin­gle AM sta­tion that we can pull in, it’s all FM. As for the car, I sus­pect there’s just not a very good AM anten­na in it.

So, while we lose music, we do gain CBC Radio 1, which is news, cur­rent events, and some very inter­est­ing and fun shows, like Quirks and Quarks, a sci­ence pro­gram, and Def­i­nite­ly Not the Opera, a pro­gram about pop cul­ture. There’s no Clas­si­cal Music (but then again, as of Sep­tem­ber, there won’t be any Clas­si­cal Music on radio except for that sliv­er at lunchtime on week­days), and a large help­ing of pop­u­lar music, Blues, and Coun­try (which I won’t be tun­ing in for, thanks) but at least I will get some­thing else to lis­ten to on the air­waves in terms of the spo­ken word with­out hav­ing to resort to NPR back in the US via Internet.

Still, if I had my choice, I’d glad­ly sac­ri­fice Radio One recep­tion if I could keep get­ting the music I love on the radio, but as I’ve sad­ly come to accept, that won’t be the case for very much longer. For­tu­nate­ly, Inter­net Radio is on the hori­zon, and I’ve already been mak­ing plans for ways to pipe BBC Radio 3 as well as clas­si­cal sta­tions else­where in the world (includ­ing back in Boston, NYC, Seat­tle, LA and Bal­ti­more) through the house when CBC 2 dies (for me, anyway).