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US citizen moved to Canada because of CBC Radio, feels betrayed
By admin1 | August 16, 2008
I’ll confess that the experience of listening to CBC Radio while driving across Canada a few times in the mid-90s inspired me to move to Canada and become a Canadian citizen. Back then, CBC Radio presented the cutting edge of a range of cultures including Inuit. I still find it difficult to verbalize the revelatory combination of challenging music with the supreme intelligence of the natural landscape— all day every day for weeks on end.
Mr. Richard Stursberg
Executive Vice President
CBC English Services
PO Box 500, Station A
Toronto, Ontario
M5W 1E6
August 11, 2008
Dear Mr. Stursberg,
Thank you for your response. At first glance, your logic appears impenetrable, and achingly familiar to me from my years in the states. Nonetheless I found myself inspired to write you again, as I am puzzled by your arguments.
In rural areas where television channels are few and fuzzy, where high-speed internet may not exist, where cable or satellite are a significant expense, and where other cultural distractions don’t exist, the strong signal of CBC Radio becomes essential to the local culture. Yet the CBC “extensive Arts & Culture Study” focused on six Canadian cities?
Why has the board of directors concluded that the CBC programming must be redesigned to “primarily reach an audience within the 24 to 35 years age group”?
According to Statistics Canada, the population of Canada is rapidly aging; the 2006 Census shows the median age is now 39.5. Although we live in an increasingly urban country, 1/5 of us live in deep rural isolation, where the population is aging at a faster clip than in the cities (with the exception of the far north).
The economic and cultural importance of rural areas must be emphasized and clarified. Over the decades, the challenging nature of the music formerly presented by the CBC has created a truly unusual situation (yet one taken for granted by Canadians) in establishing a common intellectual foundation between our urban and rural populations. This has enabled a higher degree of cultural and economic exchange between urban and rural populations, which has made Canada culturally and economically stronger than our neighbor to the south. City folks are far more comfortable about keeping a place in the country, or becoming involved in rural communities on at least a part time basis, and rural folks are less intimidated by urban culture. It would be difficult to prove that Canadian life offers a greater cultural exchange between rural and urban areas than America, yet in my experience I know this to be true.
How does the CBC management actually know how many people listen to CBC 2 on a regular basis, and how old they are and where they live?
Everyone I know from Vancouver to Victoria to Salt Spring to the Queen Charlottes listens to CBC religiously. None of us would hover over our computers to download “serious” music. Downloading requires up to date computer equipment, internet subscription, and there can be additional charges for bandwidth—all of which are expensive for those on limited incomes.
Downloading is not only not free—it’s not private. There’s a lot to be said for the mystery of what songs I listened to when, and how they influenced my thought, spirit, and actions.
On this more personal note, I’ll confess that the experience of listening to CBC Radio while driving across Canada a few times in the mid-90s inspired me to move to Canada and become a Canadian citizen. Back then, CBC Radio presented the cutting edge of a range of cultures including Inuit. I still find it difficult to verbalize the revelatory combination of challenging music with the supreme intelligence of the natural landscape— all day every day for weeks on end. I doubt I would have made such a life-altering decision in order to have free access to “very listenable material” with the option of downloading “serious music.” However, the new policies of the CBC will have the perhaps desirable effect of discouraging cultural workers like me from immigrating to Canada.
If the age group of 24-35 is deemed to be the most culturally significant group in Canada, the future leaders of our country, why has the CBC determined that they should be intellectually nourished by “very listenable material” (“extended pop concerts, jazz and folk festival material”)?
How could the CBC assume that pop concerts translate to the medium of radio?
Pop music concerts attract crowds for myriad reasons beyond the music. On a silent dark night in the woods alone, or in a stuffy and lonely city apartment, pop concert music tends to fall far short of what it might sound like in the midst of a cheering dancing crowd.
CBC Radio 2, in pandering to what it perceives to be the young public taste, will fall by the wayside, as it already has with regard to news and public discussion. Should CBC Radio fall by the wayside, you will find yourself living in—the equivalent of the states. For the CBC is the only significant cultural element that consistently distinguishes Canadian culture from rampant, subservient, and ignorant commercialism. Why break our hearts to offer the public what no Canadian in their right mind would demand from the CBC: easy listening catering to the 24 to 35 demographic?
Please do share this letter with your colleagues at CBC and with the 40 anonymous “cultural leaders” who have sold us all down this particular river. It may help to encourage a perspective that others find difficult to articulate. I’ll be sharing this letter with a few people myself.
My very best regards,
Tina Dickey
Topics: Dispatches from CBC Listeners, Letters |
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August 20th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
[…] a hysterical letter from a woman who claimed she moved to Canada and became a Canadian citizen because CBC weren’t so preoccupied with programming “very listenable material.” Who knew public radio was capable of cultivating its own equivalent to Susan […]