The first was with Chris Boyce, the Executive Director of CBC Radio and Audio.

I asked, “Can you name a composition by the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer?”

“Not off the top of my head,” he replied.

How’s about Claude Vivier? No, he couldn’t name anything by Vivier, either. However he took the opportunity to explain that everything from classical to hip-hop was available on the new CBC Music service.

Then I spotted Kirstine Stewart, Executive Vice-President of English Services, and asked her the same questions. Like Boyce, she had no answers – but she proudly pointed out that she studied music in high school all the way through grade 13.

These people hold senior positions at the CBC – and they apparently know little about two of Canada’s most prominent classical composers.

It’s been my observation that people tend to care about the things they know about, and know about the things they care about. This idea leads straight back to CBC Music – where both knowing and caring appear to be in short supply, as far as classical music is concerned.

The ten “stations” on CBC Music devoted to classical music give the impression of a comprehensive and earnest initiative on the part of the CBC. To be sure, there’s plenty on offer: listeners may select from such categories as “Baroque,” “Orchestral” and “Operatic.” Curiously, there’s a station wholly devoted to Glenn Gould – and, ironically, another devoted to recordings released by CBC Records, the award-winning label that the Corporation killed off a few years ago.

However, the constantly changing musical selections on CBC Music seem to be randomly generated. (If they’re not, they might as well be.) No consistent provision has been made to keep multi-movement works intact. And there’s no commentary on the music as it’s streaming: no spoken introduction, no scrolling text or button to click for some information on the music. Movement titles are not always given, and sometimes composers are not named. While there are a few extra bells and whistles on the site, there’s nothing approaching the educational or curatorial efforts that once made the CBC such a fine presenter of classical music.

Furthermore, the streaming feature has an annoying way of dropping the listener into the middle of whatever piece is selected. There’s no way to go back to the beginning! In the “Baroque” category, I was thrust into the midst of some portion of Handel’s oratorio Solomon. Similarly, over in the “Orchestral” section, I heard a bleeding chunk of Vincent D’Indy’s Symphony on French Mountain Airs. Do the people at the CBC really not know that classical listeners want to hear pieces in their entirety?

And it would be nice to find some kind of pull-down menu on the site that displayed the artists and repertoire available – but no such menu exists. (There’s a search function, but unless you know what you’re looking for, and are lucky enough to find it, it’s not of much use.)

The classical content on CBC Music seems to be a half-baked way of addressing the mess the Corporation made when it slashed Radio 2’s classical programming three years ago. And evidently somebody’s facile solution to this problem is to dump a ton of classical recordings on a website and rotate them on autopilot. This new service looks to be a window-dressing designed to give the impression that the CBC cares about classical-music listeners, rather than an honest attempt to really do something useful for them.

But don’t take my word for it. You’ll find CBC Music here.

The CBC is getting rid of its physical music collections in Vancouver and other sites across the country, a treasure trove of over 100,000 artifacts amassed over decades. Valuable, rare and historic recordings on vinyl and tape will be destroyed or dispersed, lost to all of us forever.

The stated plan is to digitalize some recordings, but the timeline for disposal in one fashion or another does not allow anywhere near an adequate appraisal of the provenance or cultural worth of each artifact. Many of these recordings were rare to begin with and are impossible to acquire in any format today. Thousands were donated by erudite collectors and hosts. Album covers and liner notes will disappear.
(For more information, see: http://cbcradiotwoandme.blogspot.com/2012/01/coming-to-garage-sale-near-you-cbcs.html and http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/planning+record/6135746/story.html.)

The quality of future radio and television broadcasts will be impoverished by this loss of both informational and music resources. Moreover, digitalized music does not accurately represent nor compare in quality to that etched in vinyl, which is why many musicians have resumed putting out vinyl releases.

The CBC, as our national broadcaster and historical purveyor of radio since its advent in this country, has an obligation to act as the protective custodian of these physical recordings.

Please sign a petition calling on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to stop its dismantling of this historic and invaluable collection and to resume its role as curator of this cultural heritage, for future generations.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/save-cbc-music-archives/

Read more:
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/reasons+mute+latest+Conservative+attack/6106986/story.html#ixzz1lqWDG7hq

Heritage Minister James Moore releases the earthshaking discovery that of the people who toil at the CBC, 730 earn $100,000 a year or more!

Can you believe it? Eighty-seven per cent of CBC employees do not – let me repeat, DO NOT – fall into the top five per cent of income earners in Canada.

Mind you, 100 per cent of our employees in Parliament, that would be all 412 members sitting in the House of Commons and the Senate, do – let me repeat DO – fall into the top two per cent of income earners.

Moore pulls down $233,247 a year as a cabinet minister, which includes producing reports like this one in response to disingenuous requests for information from the trained seals (a former prime minister’s term, not mine) in the backbenches.

In this case, from Brent Rathgeber, a second-term Conservative MP from EdmontonSt. Albert, who, by the way, pulls down a minimum of $157,731-a-year. All 307 MPs earn this basic amount and often more in perks, add-ons, expense allowances, dining in the taxpayer-subsidized parliamentary restaurant from which taxpayers are excluded, and so on.

Rathgeber, by virtue of having been elected to his second term as MP, will qualify at age 55 – a scant eight years from now – for a parliamentary pension variously described as “goldplated,” “platinum-plated,” “a Cadillac,” and, somewhat less enthusiastically, as “a ripoff on a massive scale.”

According to the math of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, for every dollar Rathgeber, Moore and the rest of the MPs pay into their pensions, taxpayers like me, thee and the poor saps toiling in the CBC will chip in close to $23.

After the next election in 2015, six per cent of the sitting MPs will be entitled to pensions – yep, pensions – of $100,000 a year if they quit or lose their seat. This they can top up by sitting on corporate boards, taking teaching posts at universities, joining law practices, et cetera.

The MP’s pension fund is required by law – guess who passed the law – to return a minimum of 10.4 per cent interest.

I am looking, as I write this, at the year-end statement from one of Canada’s pre-eminent and most profitable banks regarding the return for 2011 on my paltry RRSP. It reports that my retirement fund earned a return of 0.67 per cent. Yes, that’s a zero and a decimal point in front of the 67. Hey, at least I have an RRSP – only about 25 per cent of tax filers last year could afford to contribute.

All you financial wizards out there preparing to jeer that I should have invested in gold, real estate, diamonds, Canadian equity funds, futures in hog jowls, money markets or just stuffed it in a sock – please desist. At my age, I am acutely risk averse and accept the consequences.

But that’s not the point. The point is that our MPs don’t have to be risk averse. They, by law, get guaranteed returns more than 15 times what some of us “conservative” investors now get for pension investments from the banking system.

All of which sheds an entirely different light upon this cynical Conservative strategy for deflecting attention from its attack upon pensions for the most vulnerable, at least for those pensioners who can’t get elected to Parliament, by staging a dudgeon over CBC salaries.

Yet while 730 CBC employees earn $100,000 or more, about 750 of the professors at the University of Ottawa, a considerably smaller enterprise than the CBC, earn more than $100,000. Perhaps the heritage minister plans an investigation there next.

Conservative MPs love to froth about public funding for the public’s broadcaster, which amounts to $1.1 billion a year. For that, CBC provides news and entertainment service accessible by most Canadians, many in regions ignored by private broadcasters.

Polls suggest most of us think the likes of Rex Murphy, Rick Mercer, Hockey Night in Canada and The National are pretty good value.

On the other hand, Conservatives budgeted $1 billion to host a vanity project – the G8 and G20 summits – involving countries whose recent economic performance suggests, to quote W.A.C. Bennett, they “couldn’t run a peanut stand.”

About $50 million of that was siphoned off to fund “legacy” projects like gazebos in the riding of Tony Clement, the minister who now heads up the Treasury Board and who declines to report how many staff in the Prime Minister’s Office earn more than $100,000 a year and who they are.

‘Nuf said.

shume [at] islandnet [dot] com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Read more:
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/reasons+mute+latest+Conservative+attack/6106986/story.html#ixzz1lqW474ms

The CBC is under intense pressure. Good public media is good for our democracy and culture, and we all have a say in its future. So today, we are launching a new campaign to “Reimagine the CBC,” and make Canadian media better for all of us.

EXCERPT:

OTTAWA – The Conservative government’s long-standing promise to keep the CBC’s federal funding stable appears to be in tune with public opinion.

A Harris-Decima survey conducted for The Canadian Press suggests 46 per cent of Canadians would like the CBC’s funding to stay at the current level and 23 per cent would like it to be increased.

On the flip side, twenty-two per cent say funding should be cut, while 12 per cent say it should be eliminated altogether.

…

The survey found that Canadians who wanted the funding decreased or cut completely were more likely to be Conservative supporters, men, those over the age of 50 and respondents living in Alberta.

Those who were for increased funding were most likely to be from Atlantic Canada, New Democrats, and those with household incomes exceeding $100,000 annually.

READ MORE

Re: Conservatives considering deep cuts to CBC, Oct. 11.

Federal Heritage Minister James Moore may justify a five-to 10-percent cut in the CBC’s budget as its fair share in reducing his government’s $4-billion deficit.

If so, then why is his government proposing to spend $30 billion on stealth fighter jets, $35 billion on naval vessels, and $30 billion on super-prisons?

None of the latter are justified, but the CBC is the crown jewel of Canadian culture and an effective promoter of the Canadian arts and entertainment industry.

Derek Wilson Port Moody
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

SOURCE: http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/cuts+misguided+given+billions+spent+jets+prisons/5543141/story.html

EXCERPT:

A string of Conservative surveys is putting CBC funding under the microscope as the Harper government debates how big a hit Canada’s public broadcaster will take as part of government-wide restraint plans.

Conservative Senator Irving Gerstein, who chairs the Conservative Party’s fundraising division, recently sent a letter to supporters that included a 10-question “National Critical Issues Survey” seeking input to help the government set its priorities for the fall and into 2012.

One question asks whether the more than $1-billion Ottawa spends on the CBC is “good value” or “bad value.”

Meanwhile, two Conservative MPs, Rob Anders and Ed Holder, are taking it a step further, asking their constituents in surveys whether the government should keep funding the CBC.

READ MORE

http://www.colineatock.com/1/post/2011/09/post-title-click-and-type-to-edit1.html

CBC Radio 2: Three Years Later09/05/2011 6 Comments Audience: small to smaller. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In this, some people will find plenty to celebrate: after all, the CBC has done a lot since it went on the air as a radio service in 1936, providing Canadians with news, sports and entertainment – and generally doing it well.One thing they used to do well was classical music. Of course, they don’t any more – not since they gutted classical programming on CBC Radio 2.It was almost exactly three years ago today that the CBC completed the dismantling of its largely classical schedule. Despite the vocal protests of classical-music fans across the country – which should have told CBC executives how dear the network’s programming was to its listeners – they chopped what used to be a full day of classical music down to a shadow of its former self. (While they were at it, they also shut down the CBC’s record label, and jettisoned the CBC Vancouver Orchestra.)One of the reasons the CBC gave for this change was the low ratings that Radio 2 consistently received. Averaged nationally, the network failed to attract much more than a 3 percent audience share. In other words, considering all the radio stations that 100 anglophone Canadians might be tuned to at any given time, CBC Radio 2 could be expected to have about three people listening in.CBC execs decided they needed to attract a new, younger audience, and, to this end, filled the Radio 2 schedule with a variety of popular music shows. (“Singer-songwriters” are much indulged.) So, three years after the revolution, how is Radio 2 doing? The organization that collects audience statistics for radio is BBM Canada (formerly known as the Bureau of Broadcast Measurements). On their website, I found some interesting stats, broken down by various Canadian cities. If we compare statistics for the spring of 2007, when programming was still largely classical, with numbers for spring 2011, here’s what we find for Radio 2. (The following statistics are for the only five Canadian cities for which BBM Canada provides a detailed analysis in both 2007 and 2011.) Toronto: down from 1.8 percent to 1.3 percent Montreal: down from 3.5 percent to 2.5 percent Calgary: down from 2.2 percent to 2.0 percent Edmonton: down from 5.3 percent to 2.3 percent Vancouver: down from 6.5 percent to 3.5 percent Based on these statistics, it doesn’t seem that Radio 2 has increased, or even maintained, its former share of listeners anywhere. So much for building new audiences – although the CBC certainly did a fine job of alienating its old audience! I’d wish the CBC a happy birthday – but I don’t think classical music lovers in Canada have a lot to celebrate, where Radio 2 is concerned, these days. © Colin Eatock 2011

July 8, 2011

OTTAWA — The CRTC has postponed licence renewal hearings for the CBC until next June – a delay that will allow the state broadcaster to plead its case for more money from Heritage Minister James Moore and Canadian taxpayers.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) sought the extension because it doesn’t know how much CBC’s operating budget will be going forward, even though it nets about $1.1 billion a year from Moore’s department, and has had stable funding for years.

The government network has an operating budget of about $1.7 billion a year.

CBC hasn’t had a licence renewal in 12 years, and argues it needs a fistful of new dollars to keep Coronation Street, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune and other shows on the dial.

Private broadcasters, including Sun News Network, rely on advertising revenues and are at a disadvantage when it comes to budget forecasts because they can’t count on guaranteed taxpayer handouts.

The CRTC said in a statement it believes “it would be inappropriate to impose licence conditions given this uncertainty” of not knowing how much money will be set aside for the CBC in the next budget.

The CBC chalked up the delay to the CRTC.

“This was not requested by CBC/Radio-Canada,” CBC president Hubert T. Lacroix said in a statement.

“Nonetheless, we look forward to the opportunity to make our case for the future “¦ next year.”

Another reason the CRTC is allowing the state broadcaster to operate on an ancient licence involves requests made by intervenors who want to know how much the CBC spends on independent productions in different regions of the country.

The Canadian Media Production Association represents independent producers and said it was disappointed with the stalling by the CRTC.

“More to the point, CBC doesn’t need the delay,” said Tom Cox, the group’s chairman. “It has the resources to compile and provide the requested data within the original time frame.”

Denis Carmel, a CRTC spokesman, said moving the hearings to next June won’t have a bearing on when CBC’s renewed licence is implemented in September 2012.

Source: http://www.torontosun.com/2011/07/08/cbc-gets-timeout-to-plead-for-more-cash