CBC Radio 2's new schedule

[quantum]

It's a disgrace!!    CBC Radio 2 used to have excellent programming.  Sad day for Canadians. 

https://www.cbc.ca/radio2/thenew2/

[furtwaengler]

A pity...and Glenn Gould would not even be 80 yet, had he lived.

[rc]

I'm glad to see that Tom Allen is still in the mornings, he's a good host!  Fun, and always has some interesting tidbits to throw out there.

But I do miss Jurgen Gothe, and I'd prefer to wake up to classical music in the morning.

Well, things are bound to change at some point...  I'm not going to pass a judgement on the new programming yet, I'd like to hear it a couple times.

[Bob]

What changed?

[rc]

From 6-9 it used to be classical programming.  9-12 was requests, mostly classical.  12-3 was another primarily classical program.  3-6 was a fun mishmash of classical, jazz and some strange and interesting things.

So, they seemed to have cut the classical content by about 2/3.

I haven't been listening to much yet, but the early morning seems to be fairly eclectic.  Not too bad, but I still miss waking up to classical.  I missed the afternoon classical program (working), but driving home, the late afternoon program seemed to be fairly rock/pop-ish...  Which doesn't thrill my ears so much anymore.

[rc]

Over the weekend, a friend stated an idea about why the CBC radio changed, which didn't sound very plausible to me.  So I did a little reading around. 

It seems to have been mostly a financial problem, seems they've been tight since around 1990.  For some reason, while cultural spending increased 65%, funding for the CBC decreased 33% over the years.  Also, new technologies have fragmented the audience (ipods, XM radio),  with the additional result of specialization - people can now listen to exactly what they want at any time.  This explains the new internet channels (classical, jazz, singer/songwriter, canadian).

They have other sources of funding, and have come to rely on ad revenue (I've heard ads in the podcasts, I'm pretty sure it's onTV, are there ads on the radio now?), that means paying attenion to ratings, which means appealing to a broader audience.  Apparently there was a survey somewhere around 2006 to find out what Canadians want from the programming, and the 2006/07 programming year is when they began the first part of a major overhaul...

So overall it looks like it's mostly a funding issue, why they have to appeal to a broader audience than us classical enthusiasts (the minority), and also technological advances putting a strain on older broadcasting mediums (it seems they plan on phasing out broadcasting CBC TV, as it will become more economical to use other avenues).  Taking it all into consideration, I think they're doing alright.

A few other tidbits I learned:
- Nov 2007, the president/CEO of CBC changed hands.  The new guy, Lacroix, is a businessman experienced with large corporations.  He was once a sports commentator on CBC, and was appointed by the government.
- Canadians pay on average $33/year for the CBC.
- They did get a bit of a bandaid to help with the funding from the government, $60 mil for the next 2 years.  This was March 07, was that the time they went on strike and all we heard was an endless tape of classical music?

[rc]

Oh, here's where I was reading from:

https://www.cbc.radio-canada.ca/annualreports/2006-2007/pdf/AR0607_e.pdf
https://www.cbc.radio-canada.ca/docs/plan/2007/pdf/plan2007-e.pdf
https://www.cbc.radio-canada.ca/speeches/20071206.shtml
https://www.cbc.radio-canada.ca/speeches/20080408.shtml