CBC Radio has announced two new music shows for CBC Radio Two.

Debuting May 31, from 5 to 6 p.m., is a new show from Calgary called In Tune. Hosted by classically trained musician Katherine Duncan, the program will focus on trends in classical music. Currently, Duncan is the Calgary host of Canada Live, and before that hosted Symphony Hall for 10 years.

Tom Power, a newcomer to CBC, will host Deep Roots. Based in Newfoundland, Power will offer listeners music in the roots/folk genres with a special emphasis on Canadian musicians. Deep Roots replaces I Hear Music in the 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. timeslot.Robert Harris, who had hosted I Hear Music since September 2000, will now produce documentaries for Radio 2. “Inside the Music is the likely spot for Robert’s new work,” explained CBC Radio’s director of programming, Chris Boyce. “But given his enormous talent, we have no doubt that Robert will be heard throughout the Radio 2 schedule.”

On this date in 1965, Cross Country Checkup debuted with a debate on a national, publicly funded health care system. Years later, we have the national health care system and a radio program that continues to entertain and provoke. (Although I really do miss the standard two-question opener to each caller from years back: “Cross Country Checkup, where are you calling from? What do you think about ________”)

Star Choice has decided to drop yet another channel in its lineup in addition to CBC Saskatchewan — it has now dropped RDI, the CBC French news channel, in all Anglophone markets.

The CBC launched another formal complaint with the CRTC this week. RDI is on a very small list of channels that all providers are required to carry with their basic package, and the CBC argues that Star Choice is now in violation of its broadcast licence.

Earlier this week, five local news channels, including CBC Saskatchewan, were replaced by specialty channels like MuchMusic and Teletoon Retro by Star Choice.

Perhaps they got rid of RDI because they needed room for the Golf Channel?

Their loss, our gain…

The Bureau of Broadcast Measurement’s spring ratings are out - and ratings are up for the Montreal newscast by 28%; 22% of those are new viewers.

This article speculates that some of those viewers may have jumped ship with Frank Cavallaro, an award-winning Weather Specialist who just joined the CBC earlier this year when the CTV news team did not renew his contract. Cavallero was voted the World’s Top Weather Presenter at the International Weather Festival held in Paris in 2002, and has been forecasting since the late 1980’s.

Incidentally, if you’ve always wanted to be a weather forecaster on the CBC and live in Calgary, that very job just got posted on the CBC jobs site this morning.

The Irrelevant Show is set to debut on CBC Radio One on June 26. This Edmonton-based show will showcase local talent and offer listeners Pythonesque sketch comedy that shows that Alberta is about more than oil sands and cowboys.

The show has commissioned 120 sketches, which calls for a lot of funny from Edmonton’s hottest comics and sketch comedy writers. It will air Thursdays at 7:30pm.

The CRTC has approved CBC/Radio-Canada’s application operate nested FM transmitters in Windsor. The CRTC received several favourable interventions regarding the application, and that it rejected oppositions filed by Neeti Ray and CTVgm. The CBC has two years to get the transmitters in order. (Hat tip to Gary.)

Easy come, easy go.

After all of the happy stories in the last little while about the CBC website being unblocked in China, a CBC employee was not amused to learn that the Radio-Canada site has now been blocked in China again.

Cedric Sam, an Internet Analyst for Radio-Canada, posted an article about this on his own blog in French. Here is a translated summary of the article:

“For six months, the website of Radio-Canada was blocked to internet users in Continental China. A week after Hubert Lacroix sent a letter to the Chinese Ambassador regarding this situation, the Chinese were allowed to view Radio-Canada.ca and CBC.ca.

“While on a trip in the Chinese province of Guangdong, I noticed that while in Shenzhen Radio-Canada.ca was not accessible. A “server not responding” message appeared when I tried to access both the portal site and the news site, while CBC.ca was accessible.

“Two friends in Beijing confirmed with me the next morning that the Radio-Canada website was not available there either.”

The former captain of Canada’s soccer team, Jason DeVos, will be joining CBC Television as a soccer analyst, beginning in a couple of weeks when Toronto FC plays Columbus.

DeVos retired from international soccer in 2004, and since has been playing professionally with Ipswich in the English Championship League.

DeVos is moving back to London, ON. He is 34.

Last week, Peter Mansbridge celebrated being in the main chair at CBC Television News for twenty years. To celebrate this anniversary, the producers snuck in a video of Mansbridge’s first broadcast twenty years ago in the following broadcast.

Video will pause for a bit at start. Surprise happens after Coyne’s comments.

Web videos have tons of potential practical applications. Video blogs are becoming increasingly popular due to the ease of shooting and production. This recent video blog by Al Thompkins, as reposted by Dan Misener on his blog, shows how to make short videos on the cheap using a “Flip” camera, some simple editing software, and your own ingenuity. It isn’t as hard as you would think.

The Flip camera is a video camera with a “flip-out” USB port that allows you to plug it directly into your computer without a cable. It is available inexpensively, at a price point of around $200 as opposed to the expected $1200 for a digital video camera in the past.

This brings the realm of the video blog into everyone’s reach. Mr. Thompkins runs through the technology and software needed to work with a Mac; it is easily adaptable to a PC simply by just changing the software package to something like Podesk which is tailor-made to produce video blogs and video podcasts.

CBC shows have been taking advantage of this video format and have been posting their own short web videos; check out the following links to get the feel.

Spark - How To Make A Radio Show
The host of “Spark” and co-staff produced this how-to video.
http://www.danmisener.com/archives/334

R3TV (Radio 3 TV)
http://blip.tv/file/258335/
This contains some fun stuff, a music video, and interesting commentary in the manner of an internet video rather than a sleekly produced TV Show.

ZeD:
http://zed.cbc.ca/go?c=ZedCandidHomepage
While cancelled, the videos on this page try to keep the feel of an amateur internet video and give you the general idea of what is possible.

There’s a poll on over at CBC Radio 3 that gives you a chance to donate your input on the future of the format of the online radio station. Make sure you sign in before completing the poll, or you’ll have to start all over. Shout out to publicbroadcasting.ca for the heads up.

Go here for opinionated goodness:
http://radio3.cbc.ca/polls/?pollId=15

What’s on Winnipeg recently published an excellent article about CBC Radio’s new director of programming, Chris Boyce.

In it, Chris talks about the challenges he’s facing in the new job, particularly the hurdle of the format change of Radio 2.

Chris Boyce started out with Definitely Not the Opera, the Saturday afternoon pop culture show on CBC Radio One. He then had an idea to create The Content Factory [disclosure: I work in the Content Factory group], a group of writers and producers who generate cross-format content for all of the CBC. This caught the attention of CBC headquarters, and Chris was then given the job of manager of program development for the CBC.