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General Category => General Radio Discussion => Topic started by: Fansome on November 23, 2011, 1948 UTC
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latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-culture-canada-20111120,0,6927339.story
latimes.com
Cultural Exchange: CBC Radio links Canadians from shore to shore
The service appeals to the widest possible audience, in English, French and aboriginal languages to boot, creating a common listening experience. And it's spreading to the U.S.
By Marcia Adair, Special to the Los Angeles Times
November 20, 2011
Reporting from Toronto —
It's 1928, and the Canadian government is in a panic. It's issued radio licenses to Canadian stations since 1922, but most Canadians are turning their dials to American programming. What to do? A royal commission on the future of broadcasting was convened, and eight years later, after a brief incarnation as a state-owned national broadcasting network, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. was born.
Its mandate: to reflect Canada to Canadians.
Today, the service covers 99% of Canada's 3.8 million square miles and creates audio content in the country's two official languages — English and French — as well as eight aboriginal languages across six time zones.
"Our challenge is how you provide service to people in all of those different communities and yet at the same time knit together a sort of common Canadian experience," said Chris Boyce, executive director of CBC Radio & Audio, from his Toronto office. "The life you live up north in Iqaluit is very different to the life you live in downtown Toronto or in a logging town in British Columbia."
How does a national broadcaster make content that appeals to all its listeners when, as the first CBC chairman, Leonard Brockington, quaintly put it in his inaugural broadcast, "The lady of the house in Halifax is often busy with her domestic tasks before the gentleman of the house in Vancouver has finally settled down for the night."
In a word, hockey. Or, more accurately, the wildly popular Toronto Maple Leafs announcer Foster Hewitt and his trademark, "He shoots, he scores!" The program that would eventually become "Hockey Night in Canada," another Hewitt turn of phrase, moved to television in 1952, and CBC Radio's focus shifted to news, music and cultural programming. Today Radio One does news and cultural programming, Radio 2 jazz, classical and folk music and digital-only Radio 3 takes care of Canadian indie, folk, pop, hip-hop, country and electronic music. There are also three French-language stations operated by the CBC's French division, Radio-Canada, that are similarly themed but are programmed independently.
The music broadcasts are the same all over the country, but Radio One mixes local and national content. As a public broadcaster, the CBC doesn't have to concern itself with the commercial viability of hyperlocal content such as the aboriginal language programs in the north. "Some of those languages are down to a few hundred speakers, but [the radio] is an absolutely vital source," Boyce said, "because it's an oral tradition and the programming that we provide is the only place that it exists."
Since 1974, there have been no commercials on CBC Radio. Rather than rely on pledge drives and charitable foundation donations as is the case with National Public Radio and PBS in the States, the CBC, a crown corporation, receives an annual parliamentary appropriation to cover its expenses. The $1.1-billion current grant (in Canadian dollars) — up from $800 million in 2000 — covers all CBC media, including radio, television and the Web, in English and French.
The amount and scope of the appropriation regularly exercises Conservative MPs and conservative news outlets, and calls for the CBC to be dismantled and privatized are as predictable as the seasons. The Canadian people, on the other hand, are having none of it. In a recent survey commissioned by the Canadian Press news agency, 69% of Canadians polled said they wanted the level of funding to stay the same or increase.
And the public funding is relatively modest. "I think CBC Radio does face a big challenge in that we have a very wide mandate but only two radio networks. Which does limit how you connect with audiences. So in that respect I am envious of the BBC or ABC in Australia who have more outlets for their content," Boyce said. "And one of our biggest challenges is that on a per capita basis, support for public broadcasting in Canada is among the lowest of any industrialized country in the world."
CBC Radio's commitment to being a broadcaster in the truest sense of the word goes against the conventional radio wisdom. "To me, it's fascinating in a world where most broadcasters are going to narrower and narrower niches that we are able to have a successful service that delivers really compelling content to the broadest possible audience," said Boyce.
This approach is not without pain. In 2008, the programming on the much-loved, nearly all-classical Radio 2 was broadened to include jazz, world and folk music as well. The changes were hugely unpopular with many of the more hard-core classical fans, who decamped to new pastures online. Despite this and the increasingly fragmented media world, CBC's listener share of the Canadian audience has gone from 5% in the 1960s, when there were few choices, to 12% today.
And in a delicious twist, it seems that the broadest possible audience includes the United States, with more than 100 American public radio stations broadcasting CBC Radio programs.
One of the most popular of these shows is "Q," an arts and culture show hosted by Jian Ghomeshi, formerly of the folk-rock group Moxy Früvous. When the show launched in the U.S. last year, there was concern on both sides. Said Ghomeshi, "It's perhaps an extension of our own Canadian inferiority complex that we at times assume that others wouldn't be interested in us and by extension, a misread by their own programmers that Americans wouldn't be interested in what's happening in other countries."
Radio is an intimate medium, and its listeners are loyal and highly engaged. "God forbid I pronounce the name of a Canadian town wrong," said Ghomeshi. "I hear about it immediately. Once I get over the initial weeping in the corner of my room in the fetal position, I take it as a compliment."
The reach of public radio and the real-time interaction between listeners and hosts via social media and email means people like Ghomeshi are uniquely positioned to view Canadian culture as a whole.
"There are very few obvious links that bring Canada together from coast to coast to coast, and I really do think CBC Radio fosters that unity," he said. "Listeners outside of our borders are experiencing the reality of what Canada is, rather than the stereotypes that exist about us. And by what Canada is, I mean a very diverse, largely urban, relatively sophisticated and quite progressive-thinking country of people."
calendar@latimes.com
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Did he clear that statement with the boys at the Possum Lodge?
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"Keep your stick on the ice!" ;)
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And that's another thing. They have this ritual called "Icing the Puck". They start each hockey game by actually putting frosting on the puck, to make it look "cuter". Those hockey players are just so precious.
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Ah the CBC ,or as I like to call it the Communist Broadcasting Corporation. Making sure for 75 years that you cannot escape the will of Big Brother. Shaping the thoughts of spineless people from coast to coast a proud Canadian tradition.
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And that's another thing. They have this ritual called "Icing the Puck". They start each hockey game by actually putting frosting on the puck, to make it look "cuter". Those hockey players are just so precious.
I dunno - any sport where felony assault results in a 2-minute bench penalty is pretty much OK in my book.
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At one time, CBC was the real answer to unite this vast country.
Alas, that time is over. Satellite radio, the internet and a plethora of LPFM licenses have made the necessity of CBC moot.
What ticks me right off is their primary goal is to bring Canada to Candians, especially in non-commercially viable areas (most of the country), like towns with <500 people..... but in Vancouver they have 6 freakin' channel slots on the FM dial alone!!!!
And don't even get me started on the incompetence of their programming brass or their website's lousy 9-5 journalism >:(
Peace!
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The golden years of the CBC were the '60's and '70's. Peter Gzowski and Barbara Frum delivered the sort of relaxed but thorough interviews that would make modern wonder kids green with envy. But it all changed. Their relentless support of the Liberal party through patronage scandal after patronage scandal borders on the treasonous. The only bright and shiney object in their line up is Wendy Mesley. Not only does she look yummy in a subtle, dominating kind of way, but she is a hard hitting journalist that can make corrupt politicians (except Liberals) cry. And she LIKES to make them cry...
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OH Yah ! Wendy is a cutie :P :P
I particularly love this story she did on HAARP in the late 90's
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkLTzesBxGE
FOX news bimbos have nothing on her. :o
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But CBC also folds like a house of cards. Remember Disclosure? It got too close to the truth. Paul Martin had a meeting and it was no more.
Even internet archives have been wiped of the stories.
Peace!
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Did he clear that statement with the boys at the Possum Lodge?
ah yes The RED GREEN SHOW funny stuff
every one should have a secret weapon DUCT TAPE
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But CBC also folds like a house of cards. Remember Disclosure? It got too close to the truth. Paul Martin had a meeting and it was no more.
Yeah, and guess what? Martin was a LIBERAL! (I just added that for our American friends. Canadians are well aware of the shamefull record.)
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Whenever I am in Canada, (every 3 or 4 years or so) I notice that the CBC is indeed a source of commonality among Canadians. What Canadians have in common is that virtually none of then listen to it!
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Did he clear that statement with the boys at the Possum Lodge?
ah yes The RED GREEN SHOW funny stuff
every one should have a secret weapon DUCT TAPE
"And remember men, we're all in this together!"
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Did he clear that statement with the boys at the Possum Lodge?
ah yes The RED GREEN SHOW funny stuff
every one should have a secret weapon DUCT TAPE
"And remember men, we're all in this together!"
if the WOMEN don't find you handsome let them find you handy ;) ;D
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Whenever I am in Canada, (every 3 or 4 years or so) I notice that the CBC is indeed a source of commonality among Canadians. What Canadians have in common is that virtually none of then listen to it!
True! :D
But CBC also folds like a house of cards. Remember Disclosure? It got too close to the truth. Paul Martin had a meeting and it was no more.
Yeah, and guess what? Martin was a LIBERAL! (I just added that for our American friends. Canadians are well aware of the shamefull record.)
All the more reason to ride the orange wave 8)
Peace!
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Satellite, Internet and LPFM radio certainly are great alternatives for the listeners, but that doesn't pay the artists whose music gets played on these stations. Since most FM radio stations have playlists of around 400 tracks, only the charting artists get played. The CBC is the only network that played a lot of non charting, and independent music that generated royalties for those artists. College Radio playlists no longer factor into the royalty game, and the money that college radio stations pay into the pool goes to Top 40 charting artists instead. If it wasn't for the CBC a lot of would neither be getting royalty checks or national exposure.
Just my 2 cents as an artist.
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If you're an artist, you ought to know you're wrong there ;)
Stations pay a blanket license fee that's supposed to be divvied up to artists.
Even in the retail store I worked, we payed $400/month to SOCAN for playing CD's and DVD's to display our merchandise.
Even DJ's for bar's and parties pay $1200/year.... even if they play only Inde music (criminal bastards the collecting societies are... we will destroy them eventually).
Stingray Music, who now owns the Galaxie transponder, pays a crapload (the DJ I know says it's ~$10,000/yr for his channel alone)
If YOU never got paid, your label/guild/society hosed you, not LPFM or Satellite.
Peace!
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Hate to tell you, but that is where you would be wrong. The royal pool that is derived from sources other than commercial terrestial radio, such as satellite, public performance (such as the store you worked in), foreign airplay, night clubs, dj performances ect. are divided up based on the commercial terrestial playlists. I'm self published, I manage myself, I know there is no one hosing me except SOCAN, thanks to budget cuts that went in effect years ago. So despite getting lots of airplay on alternative media like satellite radio and internet stations, as well as spending 8 weeks in the German Charts, that royalty money goes to the Shania's and the Celine's and the Bryan Adams' of the Canadian pop world, and not me. (Same goes for the blank CD tax). The only checks I get from SOCAN are from CBC airplay.
Just thought I'd clear that up for ya.
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Well, that just sucks ???
Society corruption at its finest >:(
Peace!