About an hour ago (at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time), a protest opposing the looming shut-down of the CBC Radio Orchestra began in Vancouver. About 100 people were there. Some photos are below. A similar event is being planned for Montreal on Friday.
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| Email this | Posted at 1:05 pm (01 Apr 2008) |
Despite the CBC’s feeble protests to the contrary, the core classical music broadcasts are being dumped or eviscerated. Great music and ideas programs were what gave the CBC some character and uniqueness. Where else could you hear our own artists, composers, performers and orchestras? Spending a few bucks on cheap remote pickups of regular orchestra programs is not the same as encouraging and commissioning and stimulating and keeping the arts foremost and at a high level. Remotes yes, terrific. But disbanding the orchestra (let alone chopping the studio broadcasts and recordings over the last few years) will result in a great drop in real creativity, while circulating the old war-horses even further. A real easy, comfy, middle-of-the-road radio network is an embarrassment especially when there are so many private broadcasters who do it much better.
Less classical programming has been inevitable for some time. It’s just not possible to justify funding a mostly-classical network with taxpayer dollars, given the current media climate (where there are lots of options) and the perpetual Radio 2 problem of an audience that ages away without attracting new listeners. I’m surprised the Radio Orchestra wasn’t cut sooner.
But that doesn’t mean that things are going well.
There’s a cycle to programming at the CBC in all of its services: there’s a see-sawing between “Popularity” and “Quality.” Popularity and Quality are not mutually exclusive. And something that’s very high quality with no listeners is as much a failure as a popular show with no redeeming features.
But where, in previous decades, the value of programming was measured by its perceived quality, things have since reversed: now the value of radio and television programming is measured with ratings numbers, and little else. And there has been an inescapable decline in quality.
I’ll repeat the popular management line, that there’s no point doing “Quality” programming if no one is watching. But what’s the point of doing “Popular” programming with little attention to whether your shows are any good? Isn’t that what the privates are for?
And ditto goes for “rebranding.” A great way to lose an audience is to keep tinkering with programming so it isn’t consistent (or even keep changing the name, like that Saturday evening show, “Realtime”/”Radiosonic”/”Radio 3″ etc)
Personally I applaud the gradual scaling back of classical. But I mourn the loss of the sort of quality, non-classical shows that the CBC chose to cancel in its quest to “rebrand” Radio 2 (I’m thinking particularly of Brave New Waves, which sat in a time slot that now goes wasted.)
Good. I’m glad people are getting out there and physically showing the CBC their displeasure. I hope the protest in Montreal is even larger and that there will be more across the country. It is a travesty what the CBC has done and it is yet another attack on classical art in this country. While the CBC claims to be trying to better represent Canadians and help expose Canadian talent, I would like to point out that most of the musicians of the Radio Orchestra, and the many other musicians who will be affected by these changes (composers, instrumentalists, choirs, arrangers, conductors, soloists etc.) are Canadian too.
There were more than 200 protesters! But thanks for the publicity…
[…] article at InsidetheCBC says 100 people were there when he was there about 15 minutes into the […]
Great that you covered this, Tod.
Good work.
I agree with Jocelyn; I’d say by the time we began marching, there were at least 200 people.
For me, the protest this morning was about maintaining an important Canadian tradition. If you observe cultural traditions in other countries, you don’t question whether they are worth the money they cost to maintain them. What they symbolize is far more important than what they cost. The CBC Radio Orchestra is a tradition that makes me proud to be Canadian. What’s more, it is a tradition that gives back to its community and has been doing so for the last 70 years; it is a real, audible and excellent symbol of Canadian-ness, and the value of this tradition should never be measured in dollars and cents.
I can’t get worked up over this. Radio networks used to have their own orchestras because there were so few quality recordings available and the orchestra gave them more control over their on-air content. If disbanding the CBCRO means that more money will be spent on supporting orchestras, chamber ensembles, quartets, quintets, youth orchestras and choirs in their manifold shapes and sizes across the country and paying composers to write works for those august institutions then I have no problem with this policy.
Why should this money go to the CBCRO instead of the VSO or the NSO or other classically oriented music group across the country? People should be questioning the CBC on the mechanism they plan to set up to replace the RO. I would rather hold CBCs feet to the fire and make sure that every penny they are taking from the RO goes to support the production of classical music across the country.
If CBC manages to avoid that responsibility then the RO will have been sacrificed in vain.
SaveCBCOrchestra.com was launched on April 1/08 and has collected over 3000 names on an online petition in the few days since.
Many signatories are voicing their outrage toward CBC Radio’s cancellation of Canada’s only Radio Orchestra (with no consultation from the Canadian public), and the issue seems larger than that. They want our culture preserved.
The signatories are finding out about the petition largely by word-of-mouth alone, forwarding emails to friends and family. There is a rising tide of support for the orchestra.
Please, please, visit the the site and sign the petition to save the orchestra. Forward this to family, and friends, write letters, and let the media know the petition is out there (I have, but so far have had no responses). If we keep the momentum going, we can have this decision reversed. If we are silent, we will be facing a “then there were none” scenario. And then…it will be too late.
Tom Saul
SaveCBCOrchestra.com
Mark blew into Vancouver, canned an orchestra that is part of our heritage, then has the audacity to tell the waiting media that this is an internal matter and the PUBLIC, has no right to know.
Since when is this his personal fiefdom to do with as he wants to without consent from the public/listmers.
He should remember that his paycheck may be marked CBC, but the funds are allocated by parliament, and come from the public purse.
That, is the taxes you and I pay that substains him and others that m ake these inane decisions.
We all need some culture in our lives, and that was given us by this orchestra. Our cxurrent culsture is of the streets, alleys, bars, dives and anyplace else that you can find poor artists..and for this we pay taxes. Heck, as it stands now, my radio goes off when Katie comes on, and in the fall it will go off tht much earlier.
lPat Lowe Calgary
According to Stats-Canada approximately 20% of Canadians regularly attend a classical concert; that’s 6,678,028 people. I would suggest that more classical music not less would serve the CBC better.
As I have recently retired, I had been looking forward to CBC classical afternoons. I’m sure I’m not the only repesentative of that RISING demographic! My definition of “CLASSICAL” is pretty broad, and I’ve been exposed to fabulous material over the years. I learned about “Silk Road”, part of the Vancouver World Music Collective for only one example. I started with the opera brodcasts on AM as a child, and am grateful that at least we have Bill Richarson (for now), even though FM still does not broadcast well to Gambier Island.
We’ve bought excellent cds produced by the CBC Radio Orchestra over the years, and wonder if our “wise” CBC leaders reall WANT us to tutn off the radio & turn to MP3s in our “old age”?
In an y case, if you live near Vancouver come to the RALLY for the CBC Radio Orchestra
at the:
Great Canadian Songbook 2 event
Chan Centre For The Performing Arts , Vancouver, BC
Sun, Apr 20
I am in my early thirties and many of my contemporaries absolutely love classical music! It is just that they can’t find much of it on the radio or television. In Vancouver, the changes are just terrible because unlike in Toronto, we don’t have alternative commercial classical radio. We also are going to be losing some great local shows such as Disc Drive which are nationally celebrated. The loss of our Vancouver Orchestra really is a kick in the teeth to Vancouver and once again, the Toronto based administration of CBC is showing how out of touch they really are with the country, especially the Western part. The good news is that at least one politician is finally taking notice. MP Bill Siksey from Burnaby BC, Culture Critic for the NDP, is actually publicly standing up for classical music on Radio 2 and for our orchestra. He is to be commended and I hope other politicians will follow his lead.
There is an excellent editorial in the Vancouver Province opposing the end of the CBC Orchestra. The Vancouver Province is the “populist” newspaper in Vancouver/BC and can hardly be accused of being an “elite” publication. As such, I think CBC management will be surprised that the classical music fans rising in protest are not some tiny, elite, wacky bunch of 70 year old curmugeons as they appear to assume.
Thank God the CBC has closed down that Vancouver orchestra. Boring prformances of music by dead European composers, with the players paid out of the sums of money negotited between the CBC and the American Federation of Muicians. That money will be - and shoulkd be - supporting Canadian musicians and composers who perform and create other kinds of music. And that means jazz, “popular” music that is not made available on commercial radio, folk and roots music, world music and all the wonderful music that can’t be fitted into neat pigeon-holes.
The classical music community will still get more than 30 hours of classical music on Radio 2 - they’ve had too much music for too long supported by too much money. Time to give everyone else a shot! And the classical music advocates (like that snob Russell Smith at the Globe & Mail) should just get over it.
MUSIC rules - and the more of it, and the more kinds of it, the better!
Richard Flohil
(rflohil@sympatico.ca)