September 10, 2008

Lament for CBC Radio 2

I miss my radio station! I have been a loyal CBC listener for over 30 years. Since the launch of the new CBC, I have turned on Radio 2 almost every day, out of habit and out of optimism that I'll like what I hear. No luck so far! I know that there's still classical music programming, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. I find this particularly disappointing: I don't know about the rest of the CBC-2 audience, but I'm at work, and my kids are in school, between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. We used to always tune in to CBC-2 on our way in to and home from school, and I can't count the number of times we heard something we all enjoyed or learned from or took an interest in. No more. CBC-2 used to be the default setting on all of our radios. No more. The thing is, sure, there might sometimes be some good music or some interesting commentary on CBC under the new regime, but I'm not going to stay tuned in on the off-chance that something I like will come on. That seems to me the fundamental problem with this new music-mix idea: trying to offer a little something for everyone (what a Canadian idea that is!) means you don't offer much in particular for anyone. Sadly, in Halifax we don't have other classical music radio stations to turn to, so it will be my own playlists from now on.

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