Is it just me, or have the the fine folks in the CBC Bureau of Name Allocation* stopped adding a little, er, “inspiration” into their morning coffees?
We’ll soon have CBC Canadian Songwriters and CBC Canadian Composers as names of web radio streams and Radio Two Morning and Radio Two Drive for the…. well, you know.
Fair enough, the rationale is hard to argue with. Simple, descriptive names make it easier for the audience to remember. Besides convenience, that can pay off for us during the ratings weeks. Unlike television, where viewership is measured by a monitoring device attached to TVs, radio listenership in Canada is measured by surveys asking participants to remember what station they listened to and when. This is why private radio stations will tell you the name of their station every three seconds: (”You’re tuned to 92FM where 92FM time is just past noon. 92FM Weather in a moment, but first to Anna with 92FM Traffic.”)
And true, CBC Radio Two Morning will indeed be easier to remember than something “clever” like The Forenoon Acoustics, but seriously, do we have to be so… so… bland?
- Could the late ground-breaking Brave New Waves have been as adored by fans as it was with a name like CBC Eclectic Overnight?
- Would science geeks rally as devotedly around Quirks and Quarks as they would around CBC Science On The Radio?
- Could Definitely Not the Opera and its predecessor Brand X have captured the hearts of Canadians as CBC Pop Culture Saturday?
- Would ratings improve if we changed The Vinyl Cafe to Stuart McLean Reads Loudly From a Book?
Given time, this infection of blandness might even spread to the junior service with shows titled CBC News: Sunday, Steven and Chris, and The CFL on CBC?
Oh. Right.
Your thoughts and further “improvements” to show names welcome, in the comments.
* Incidentally, there is no longer a CBC Bureau of Name Allocation. Budget cutbacks, you know.
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Poor Stuart McLean - you’re so obviously not a fan of his ‘reading loudly from a book’ style of radio. To each his own.
Personally, when the mood strikes, I rather like the feeling of having him talk from the stage at me from some small bar in rural Canada
… even if he does sound American.
For me, while it is nice, not *all* radio needs to be intimate and in the ear.
Question of taste, as I say.
Stuart McLean reads loudly from a book…. Roffle!
How about “Have I ever told you about the time I wrote ‘taking care of business’? with Randy Bachman”
On the flipside, I wonder whether some show names are too oblique. Like what does soda water have to do with jazz? I love tonic FTR.
ABC Australia’s science show is called “The Science Show”.
Although, as CBC overnight listeners will know, much of the ABC’s programming is as dull as their program names.
CBC Radio 2 aleady has way too many ads pushing it’s shows, eeeghh!!
Thankfully as of Tuesday, I WON’t be listening, Hopefull CBC Classical on the internet will be more civilized
I can’t believe someone else remembers Brand X!
“What does soda water have to do with jazz”? Well, “Tonic” is also a musical term meaning the keynote of a piece. It’s a sort of pun.
“Stuart McLean Reads Loudly From a Book?” That’s a good one! And pretty accurate.
Here we are at August 29th and I have not heard any mention of the new CBC Classical Service on the web. It’s supposed to start next week ! How can I access it ?
Why no publicity for it.? C’mon ! Let’s hear about it !
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The predecessor to these shows had the blandest name of all: “The Radio Show with Jack Farr” and it “captured the hearts of Canadians” as well as their funny bones & imaginations and generated audience numbers rarely seen today.
@rick: I think you may have missed http://www.insidethecbc.com/webstreams ?
We are still waiting! Here it is Sunday morning and these new services are supposed tostart on Tuesday. CBC Radio is telling us NOTHING! Not a word on Radio 2 ! Now you would really think that four new services would merit some sort of publicity. Even if it’s just how we can access the stuff . Now I read that these shows may not even be hosted. If that is case - Forget It ! What the hell is going on ?
This post made me laugh out loud-a rare thing with CBC radio these days.
As far as I’m concerned, I don’t care if the programs are given interesting or dull titles; even number codes would be fine if the content of the program was worth listening to.
How about the title “Some Really Good Classical Music” for the CBC 2 morning show?
It makes as much sense as moving Q into SLC’s slot and replacing a truly pan Canadian program with something so Toronto centric that any notion of anything beyond Yonge Street can’t possibly be important, hosted by someone who reallly belongs on top 40 commercial radio and who shares the belief that if it doesn’t happen in Toronto it doesn’t exist. (semi serious rant over– very serious about Q’s relentless and increasingly irrelevant Toronto centricity)
Which, come to think of it, CBC Radio is starting to resemble. Complete with songs in super heavy rotation. 1-2-3-4 by Fiest comes very quickly to mind where I can recall hearing the original, covers, remixes and endless praise over 20 times daily between 6am and 10pm. It was a good song till it got played to death.
In all seriousness, in what seems to be an apparent attempt to attract a younger audience to CBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 what’s happening is a transparent pandering to that audience who will, and do, see it coming from miles off and switch off as quickly as they can.
Far from behaving like a PUBLIC broadcaster the CBC tends to play its cards so close to its vest that program announcements are placed on a site very few people know about, this one, safely out of sight and out of range of those who just might say “what the heck do you think you’re doing?”
As someone has said, call programs what you want. I’m not sure anyone cares with the continuing rapid decline of Radio 1 and the total mess Radio 2 has become.
There is less and less that defines CBC radio and television programming as Canadian. (Come on now, Jeopardy?????) Even less that displays much Canadian.
Given the number of times I hear CBC announcers trip over Canadian place names, and yes I know BC is full of those but whats so hard about Kamloops (KAM-loops) , Sechelt (sea-SCHELT dammit!), to mention two I’ve heard horribly mispronounced in the last month or local knowledge like no one born in Metro Vancouver ever calls Avenues “Ave” or things like that. Goodness we get faux accented pronunciations of foreign place names to get them right but the Mother Corp can’t get Canadian place names correct. It’s embarrassing to note that Seattle TV and Radio get BC place names right while the CBC can’t.
So really, it’s becoming a matter of who cares?
The CBC doesn’t give us much reason to care anymore except for local regional programming which is still done so well it knocks the socks off its private competition and the lame national CBC Radio programming without breaking much of a sweat.
Can we get something straight? Jian and Q belong on sometime between midnight and 5am and not in the morning and as local CBL programming in Toronto. Not as morning programming nationally.
Actually, how about “Some Really Good Classical Music” on CBC Radio 2 period and not pale imitations of what local commercial FM radio does far better than the CBC ever can hope to do, which is what Radio 2 has become? (In fact, NPR does it far better too.)
Oh..and restore funding to the CBC Radio Orchestra — NOW!
(Gotta whip my favourite almost dead but still breathing horse here.
)
Please CBC, remember that it’s your mandate to reflect Canada to Canadians not to be a mini BBC with micro funding compared to the Beeb or out NPR NPR because, again, you don’t have the money to do that. You are a public broadcaster, not a private broadcaster no matter how much it seems you’d rather be the latter.
Whoops…
A paragraph above should have read:
There is less and less that defines CBC radio and television programming as Canadian. (Come on now, Jeopardy?????) Even less that displays much quality Canadian programming.