CBC Radio gets new executive director
From a CBC News Release:
CBC English Services has filled the important radio leadership chair in the country with its appointment today of renowned media executive Denise Donlon as executive director of radio, effective September 29, 2008.
Donlon, 52, a journalist, producer and former president of Sony Music Canada and vice president and general manager of CHUM Television’s MuchMusic and MuchMoreMusic, is one of the country’s best-known media executives and has focused much of her recent attention on various international environmental and humanitarian initiatives.
“Denise is without question one of the broadcasting industry’s most talented and dynamic organizational leaders,” says Richard Stursberg, executive vice president of CBC English Services. “She is both a proven administrator and team builder and a champion of creativity, artistic excellence and social responsibility. Her media experience and knowledge will complement and strengthen the mandate of CBC Radio, which is to engage all Canadians through its unique position as a non-commercial national public radio service.”
“In addition to her professional attributes, she has developed a prodigious network of relationships throughout the entertainment, government, business, humanitarian and environmental communities in Canada and around the world,” Stursberg said. “All of which is useful to her leadership of CBC Radio, given its enormous range of programming which includes news, current affairs, the arts and, of course, the best music on Canadian airwaves.”
“I’m delighted to join CBC, as I’ve always believed in a strong and vibrant public broadcaster,” Donlon says. “CBC Radio is on a tremendous roll right now, launching exciting new programming that is engaging and meaningful to diverse audiences, reflecting all Canadians. These are exciting times and I believe CBC Radio is well-positioned to enhance its reputation as the country’s best and most vital radio service.”
Throughout her career, Donlon has initiated projects that have brought together music, journalism, social issues and human rights advocacy. She has promoted media literacy among young people and in 1993 was awarded the first Peter Gzowski/ABC Canada Award for Literacy. That same year, her team won a Gemini Award for Best Special Event Coverage – Election Night 1993 for Vote with a Vengeance, which raised political awareness among new voters. In 2001, Donlon traveled to Sierra Leone, Thailand and the Thai-Burmese border as a field producer for the award-winning WarChild documentary Musicians in the War Zone.
In 2000, Donlon became president of Sony Music Canada, leading a team of more than 300 professionals with an annual $200 million budget and whose key initiatives included the establishment of electronic music distribution and the promotion and development of emerging Canadian talent and internationally established Canadian artists. Donlon left Sony Music in 2004 and has since lent her support and production abilities to a variety of high profile projects including Live 8, CBC’s Tsunami Concert of Hope, the inaugural Green Living conference main stage, the President Clinton Foundation Birthday Event, which raised over $21 million in one evening for poverty alleviation, people living with HIV/AIDS and to combat climate change. She was appointed to the CHUM board of directors in 2005.
Three times (1994, 1995, and 1997) Donlon was named Broadcast Executive of the Year at the Canadian Music Week Industry Awards. In 1997 she was the recipient of Toronto’s Women in Film & Television Outstanding Achievement Award. In 2001, Donlon received the Wired Women’s Woman of Vision Award and the Canadian Women in Communications Woman of the Year Award. She was inducted
into the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2002 and in 2005 was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada. She holds two honorary law degrees from the universities of Waterloo and Calgary.
Donlon is a Trustee of Lake Ontario Waterkeepers and most recently, was involved with the Lake Ontario Waterkeepers and Royal Bank Financial Group on its inaugural Waterkeepers event at the Toronto Film Festival, featuring Robert F. Kennedy Jr. She has also been involved with the Clinton Giustra
Sustainable Growth Initiative, which focuses on social and economic development efforts in the global resource development community.
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“CBC Radio is on a tremendous roll right now, launching exciting new programming that is engaging and meaningful to diverse audiences, reflecting all Canadians” says Donlon. Ah, buy the party line and you get a job!
So…. another Radio Head who’s never worked in radio.
Combined with the current influx of announcers who haven’t worked in radio either, you have to wonder how seriously the CBC takes its senior service these days.
I believe we’ve lost our Vice President too.
Will this be the absolute, final end of classical music on CBC radio?
I think it’s great how Inside the CBC is now a publishing platform for stultifying news releases.
Can you verify that the direct quotes were actually uttered as written?
All I can say is I hope something is done about this new foramt and FOR THE BETTER.
I HAVE NOT listened to CBC Radio 2 since Labour Day and refuse to do so untii things, which I doubt will happen.
I have seen nore negative than positive comments about the new format & that should say something.
I really do hope that MS Donlan reads the comments posted on the CBC Blog and other sites to see how unhappy we are
I sincerely wish Ms Donlon luck.
Given her background she’ll fit in with the MuchMusic and MoreMuchMusic lite fiasco that CBC Radio 2 has become.
I trust she’ll forgive me for being wary of yet another Toronto native at the helm of CBC Radio, given the exodus of quality programming from Vancouver in the last 6 months and the undeserved and foolish death of the CBC Radio Orchestra.
(You have a long way to go to convince me that had the Orchestra been in the self proclaimed centre-of-the-universe that it would still be funded and as heavily and annoyingly promoted as Radio 2 is being.)
I guess it’s too late to reverse the horrible decision to move Q to a morning slot rather than cancelling it altogether, which it so richly deserves to be. Or at least put on regionally in Toronto which appears to be it’s true audience being that the rest of the country never seems to figure much in the show.
Sad to say that on September 29th, you’ll have lost me as a listener from 10am to 3pm, except for BC Almanac. I don’t really care what you come up with to replace Q in the afternoon as it will undoubtedly target the same phantom demographic Radio 2 and Q are pitched at. Radio 2 went off my list on September 2nd.
I must repeat that I have little faith that yet another Torontonian in charge of CBC Radio can revive what was a national institution and is rapidly becoming a national irrelevance.
At least, I trust, she’ll have the sense to leave regional programming alone. That still seems to remember what the mandate of the CBC really is.
I hope I’m wrong. Given what has happened in the last 18 months it’s likely a vain hope. I really, really hope I’m wrong.
Maybe the Mother Corp does need someone from the private sector to give it and it’s awful programming decisions of late a good swift kick in the pants that it so richly deserves and needs.
Yeah … I can read this on Canada Newswire or Marketwire, thanks. If this “blog” simply because a cross-posting location for CBC media releases, why bother? Why bother reading, why both posting? Why bother even paying to keep the domain active? Seriously.
Ms. Donland is a smart, business-savy woman.
I give her two years before she quits the CBC in frustration.
Great to see… Donlon is an excellent leader and a great broadcaster. I can’t wait to continue to see the development of CBC Radio under her leadership.
I used to have two spots on the car radio dial, CBC Radio one and CBC Radio 2. In the morning there are a lot of interesting and reflective moments on Radio one. Noon time its a toss up, but from 3 to 6 it was Jurgen all the way. Now I have lost that evening slot. On Wednesday afternoon driving back from Halifax I was “treated” to some person’s idea of music, and the piece was about “looking through your garbage”. Now I ask you, who is in charge? Jurgen did have a few current songs sprinkled in the mix, but he was slective. Like the National News at 9.00 pm.
Goodbye CBC blog.
As bad as it was, it at least made the CBC seem more interesting for a while.
Toodles, Tod!