September 7, 2017
Here's what hundreds of people are saying
about the problems with CBC Radio One
Some of the 75 protest letters sent to CBC management: (Below are many of the more than 400 comments posted on social media, as well as on the CBC's own Fan page.)
From Diane McLeod:
I used to be an avid CBC Radio One listener. In my car, my home, online, I was happy to have the radio tuned only to CBC. I have now deleted the CBC Radio app from my phone and rarely ever turn my car radio on. I realize that much of the programming gets rehashed during the summer, but I’m not sure why. I’m so tired of reruns.
I used to love “As It Happens”. Now it is an hour of infotainment and music, which is not what I’m looking for. Some of your newer programming is downright snooze-inducing. “Sleepover” has to be the worst. “Out in the Open” is a close second. There is nothing of value to be learned. As far as human-interest stories go, they are a fail.
I used to recommend CBC Radio to anyone who would listen – no more. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I still listen at all. I suspect that you are losing listeners. Given the rambling and shallow nature of most current CBC Radio programming, in another three months, you will have lost me, as well.
From Eli Denham:
I just wanted to reach out and say that this expressed my frustration with the change in CBC programming as well. I love the CBC and think of it as a corner stone of our lovely country. I just thought you would like to hear from a listener.
From George Fogarasi:
Nick Fillmore is (not completely but mostly) right. The gosh of Suk Yin Lee and the rest of the story infotainment is like too much icing, too little cake. Good, a bit, but a one dimensional taste sensation if you'll pardon the failed foodie synaesthaesic analogy here....
What's her name, the Toronto clown, had an afternoon show, drove me nuts but it was a good show. And Bill Richardson-- some stories, but different kinds, not all, and... an eccentricity. I can't put my finger on it, but even the storie stuff of yesteryear was... more authentic, eccentric.... interesting. This confessional victimhood.... ugh. And I am a lefty educated in a crucible of progressive bla bla bla. This ain't no right wing rant.
In short, I love the CBC. But I think I loved the CBC, past tense. I do find myself listening less. I grew up on the CBC, and got more out of it than my three degrees. I am not getting so much out of it now, and Nick nails it.
And I love This American Life. But just not all the time. Good luck. I hope your budget's don't get demolished more. This kind of stuff is cheap, I get it.
From Bob Calhoun, Summerland, BC:
I hope the majority of CBC Radio summer programs will soon disappear – forever, never to be resurrected. CBC should not be giving people their 15 minutes of fame for talking about their personal problems.
If I wanted pap I'd sign up to Facebook. Please junk all this stuff and bring back radio worth listening to. In the meantime I'm listening to BBC.
Programs I'd toss in the junk bin: Love Me, Out in the Open, Sleepover, Seat at the Table, and a bunch of others that I did not take the time to learn their names.
From John Duddy:
Greetings from Calgary. Working as a Landman in Alberta, buying rights-of-way for oil, gas, and for irrigation development, I spent many hours driving over the province listening to CBC Radio. Barbara Frum, Alan Maitland, Don Harron, Judy LaMarche, Peter Gzowski, Max Ferguson etc. contributed to my education about Canada.
Fifteen years ago I stopped watching TV. I continued to trust CBC Radio. My trust in CBC Radio and in all mainstream media gradually diminished in recent years. For a while I donated to "Friends of Canadian Broadcasting" hoping for a return to the CBC I once enjoyed.
In September 2009 I listened to Sunday Edition. Michael Enright interviewed David Frum about the attacks of 9/11, 2001. David Frum had served in the G. W. Bush White House. David Frum told of his friend Barbara Olson using her cell phone to call her husband Ted. Barbara called from the aircraft that crashed into the Pentagon.
After listening to the Sunday Edition, I called CBC Vancouver and CBC Toronto asking for an explanation. Who is telling a false story, FBI or David Frum? Why would CBC use David Frum as an expert without researching this matter?
Unhappy with the form letter I got from CBC I wrote the CBC Ombudsman without satisfaction. Can CBC Radio return to being a real news organization?
From Michèle McManus, White Rock, BC
Please, please get back on track with Radio 1. The advantage of a public radio station is that it can offer what others can’t. It shouldn’t be trying to ape them. There are far too many weepy bloody stories and far too much superficial tripe.
Where is the in-depth analysis and commentary that we hope for from a public broadcaster? (Think NPR and BBC.) Ideas still does a wonderful job. Day 6 and The House are good. I enjoy Terry O’Reilly. And the Debaters. This Is That. Quirks.
But I find many of the documentaries and podcasts unlistenable. (If that is a word.) I am not sure how to phrase this question but: do doc/podcast makers have a stock footage of sounds, the way papers have stock photos?
I keep trying to understand why they all share a very similar soundscape that I find extremely annoying: strange, random, unmelodic electronic sounds and bits of “music”, as if the human voice is not enough, but we must be pounded with random noises.
Anyway, I find that I am turning the radio off more than on these days, which is a real change for me. Hope the fall brings something better. Don’t be afraid of sounding intelligent.
From Diana Green, a CBC Radio supporter.
If it is true that CBC radio is running these endless-talking-about-life-experience shows as a strategy to gain audience share, and NOT because there is no money for more intellectually stimulating programs, please re-think your strategy. I, too have stopped listening to programs on CBC Radio1 such as Love Me, Road Trip Radio, and Sleepover. They were fun maybe once. Out in the Open is occasionally interesting. I listened to Seat at the Table last week and that was enough for me.
For many years, I have very much enjoyed your more pithy programs such as Ideas, Tapestry, Quirks and Quarks, the book shows, and even Spark that discuss actual ideas and theories. Summer is always tedious with "encore" additions (re-runs), but I was hoping for something to sink my ear-teeth into this coming fall.
OK, I am old, but I have loved this type of content since my 20s and the shows I have mentioned are the ones that made me a permanent radio devotee. I used to listen to Radio 1 all day and into the evening. Now I am listening to a lot more of my own music collection. But I miss the good radio.
From a longtime CBC supporter, Jacob Rempel
On 22 August 2017, Nick Fillmore wrote an article critical of CBC programming. I'm certain it found its way to your email. I want you to know that I and others agree with Fillmore.
CBC Radio and Television is slipping into programming which may have some entertain a certain audience, but which is not exceptionally insightful culture, which it aught to be if produced for Canadians who turn to the CBC Radio and Television for a creative reatment of current news and cultural presentations.
I encourage you to respond creatively to there's criticisms (and mine) with µsuch better programming.
From Hilary McLeod, Mississauga:
I have been a lifelong consumer and proponent of CBC Radio. It generally stays on as the background of my life whenever I am at home or in the car. I love Metro Morning, q and Here And Now (though the latter are getting a little too "talking-over each other").
Unhappily and unbelievably, I find myself increasingly changing the station over to commercial music radio. On CBC there is too much a) repeated, b) sad-sack story-telling, and c) unfunny "comedy". I don't mind change (in fact rather like it) - whether host, format or content. But the drift towards coverage of the shallow and gossipy is beneath the CBC. A feature on hair removal? really?
I like Piya, who is an excellent interviewer. But please, give her something more meaty. (She did a great job on the issues arising from Black Lives Matter and White Privilege).
Sook-yin's Sleepover tries to be an advice-giving show, but it is voyeuristic, and do we really want advice given by a bunch of amateurs, the host included? This Is That and The Irrelevant Show - well, I have never been able to warm up to either. With so many excellent comedy shows on CBC Radio (the Debaters, Laugh Out Loud, Because News for example), these two are just a disappointment.
Please raise the bar - engage us intellectually and rigorously. Tackle IMPORTANT issues (even in the comedy). CBC is important to me, and to the whole country. Please don't sell it short in an effort to sell it.
From Eric Mills, Toronto:
In his article, Nick Fillmore argues that CBC Radio One is emphasizing the touchy-feely and "trivial entertainment" over good journalism in many of its new programs this summer. I couldn't agree more.
From Judy Waytiuk, Words, Ink:
As a one-time journalist with the CBC, later with private television, than as a veteran print journalist and freelancer, I beg you: please bring current affairs programming at Radio One back to its roots: intelligent incisive interviews on serious issues of the day, provocative documentaries about matters of genuine social significance (and no, methods for hair removal on personal body parts is not socially significant in any way).
The proliferation of the personalized, self-obsessed storytelling flooding the summer airwaves is nauseating. I no longer listen to CBC radio at all during the week. I embrace Saturday morning's The House and Day Six with desperate relief. I listen to the shortened summer version of Sunday Morning, praying for cogent intellectual discussion. I yearn for local radio programming that does not consist solely of weather and traffic reports, chatty, guffawing camaraderie about the hosts' personal lives, loud music, and a very occasional fluff interview or film review.
Local programming now utterly excludes anything remotely resembling current affairs... I have found myself stabbing the buttons on my car radio of late, changing to a local all-news station that, while its hosts are braying idiots, at least attempts to cover local issues. National programming is a nightmare of post-adolescent self-indulgence.
To repeat: I beg you. Give us back the radio that helped knit a nation together.
From Isabel Hinther
After suffering through the 'dumbing down' of CBC One over the years, I feel compelled to finally write in protest.
There was a time when I turned on CBC first thing in the morning and it was on until I went to bed. I was always assured of interesting, intelligent shows, morning, afternoon and evening. A very few of the calibre we had in the 60s and 70s are left. I get that you may be trying to reach a 'younger' audience, but why assume that they have a taste for this new type of programme? I may be in my 60s now, but I enjoyed CBC just as much in my 20s when I was listening to some incredibly good, intelligent programming with hosts who could be entertaining and funny and, at the same time, have a good command of the English language and a knowledge of our country's history and culture.
There are a few programmes left that I listen to, namely, The Current, The Sunday Edition, Ideas, The Next Chapter, Unreserved and sometimes, The 180 and even Day 6. However, I turn Q off the minute the 10 am news is over. Sleepover is a ridiculous premise for a show, as is Love Me. I find SKS is a real snore as an investigative reporting programme, and At The Table with it's chatty, 'here we are, BFFs together just shooting the breeze about pop culture' format is just irritating. I've enjoyed Piya Chattopadhyay as an interviewer fill-in on many shows, but Out in the Open has failed to impress. In particular, a whole show on body hair? What were the producers thinking? And don't get me started on the music choices on many of the new programmes!
When will you bring back the thought-provoking programmes you once aired? When will you realize that you're losing loyal listeners with these new shows? As a long-time listener, I feel abandoned, with fewer and fewer intelligent, interesting shows to listen to. I've always fought to keep the CBC but unfortunately, am feeling less inclined to fight for the new format. Please...rethink your shows and think about your (dwindling) audience.
From Shelley Coopersmith:
CBC Radio, both Radio One and Radio Two, used to be my favourite stations - I would have mostly 740AM and then its later (still current) presence on 99.1FM on all day and night - I still like some of the programmes and announcers/voices/hosts/personalities, but there is so much worse and worse in it, to my mind… I couldn’t agree more with this critique by Nick Fillmore. I would add that the show about the cold cases Someone Knows Something, is also one I find annoying and not to my tastes or liking at all. It’s like National Enquirer comes to public radio, ugh.
I don’t expect my voice to be paid heed to or make any difference, but for what it’s worth, that’s my opinion. I miss the pre-Paul Martin cutback era of great programming and wonderful in-depth investigative journalism and higher intellectual content on CBC… oh, and also more classical music like the old 94.1FM… yes, I hark back to the days of Bob Kerr’s show Off the Record and even stodgy Gilmore’s Albums… I miss the old Sunday Morning and even the more recent 3 hour version of Sunday Edition… I still like Ideas and As It Happens… Matt Galloway and Jill Deacon are good and pretty good, respectively, and host good shows but even there, whoever chooses the music that gets airplay, it’s now so bad I almost always have to shut it. Oh, and enough of Randy Bachman’s stupid show already…
Okay… I’d better stop this rant now… still a listener but increasingly more frustrated and less avidly.
From Arlene Jackson:
I am terribly disappointed in most of the programming I hear on Radio One. Usually, I have the radio on all day – every day but more often now I turn it off for the bliss of silence. We used to have great programming such as Dispatches, but now more often than not I just hear stories. Boring uninteresting stories. I want news, news and commentary. I want to know what is going on in the world outside Canada.
That said, I love my morning and afternoon shows. But please – get rid of that horrible Sleep-Over and Someone Knows Something. A decade ago there was Afghanada – brilliant, clever story telling, if there must be story telling. At least I got a glimpse of what it must have been like over there. It dealt with PTSD, suicides – you know interesting stuff. I would love to hear more documentaries – storytelling that requires a lot of research.
I also get so bored with CBC doing so many repeats. It started with budget cuts many years ago – but now it is really out of hand. You do have some great programming – Cross Country Checkup, The 180, Sunday Edition, the Debaters, BC Almanac to name a few. I want to be prodded, to be made to think – not just to react to sad people telling their sad stories.
Give us some meat instead of whey. I do care about the CBC.
.
From Ken Collier, Mission, BC:
Undoubtedly you have seen or heard of the blog by Nick Fillmore about CBC radio and its current decline. I read the whole thing, plus comments, and can't say I disagree with any of them (except maybe one*).
I, too, was raised on CBC radio and came to accept it as the standard for good radio, similar to the BBC in Britain or some of the other national broadcasters in English when I could get them on my short-wave radio. Though NPR and PBS are cited in the blog comments, I think CBC formed, for them, many of their standards also.
*Here's the one exception. I don't think one should steer away from programming aimed at younger people. Interests and sensibilities of younger people, including very young children, is as varied a spectrum and adults and seniors. They don't need to be pandered to, nor treated to dumbed-down content.
So here's my request - give us a CBC where programmers are professionals and artists, to be treated with respectfully and recognized as the source of material of which CBC can be proud. They've done it in the past, and would still do it if allowed and resourced properly.
Don't allow interviewers to start questions with the words "how" or "how much". What is the interviewee supposed to say when asked "how much"? Is it 42.73%? Really, it's such a feckless and banal approach to interviewing it should be outlawed (if only we could.)
Don't wallow in feelings. If I want that I can get gobs - yes, gobs - of it on TV and on radio of the privateers. That's what a lot of songs are about when they're not about violence and greed.
Please, CBC, put radio back to work at what it's good at (gripping, intelligent, challenging, responsive programming) and store the ratings for weekend reading if you need something to do.
If I may remind you of something - the previous government had MPs dedicated to ruining and disbanding the CBC, with a cheap sell-off to the privateers Excuse me if I say I detect their handiwork in operation right now. Don't let their goals become yours.
From Tara Sinclair:
I am a devoted CBC One listener and have been all my adult years. All my radios are tuned to CBC One. There are many programmes I will not miss. But, please, please get rid of “Sleepover”, “Out in the Open”, “Love Me”, “This is That”. When any of these shows come on, I switch to a Vancouver all-talk station, which has hundreds of commercials and not your top journalists, but at least they are discussing current affairs.
Please, I am embarrassed for my CBC with such shows as “Sleepover”, “Out in the Open”, and “Love Me”.
From Dorothy Archer, Toronto
I am absolutely fed up with all the maudlin accounts of a person’s life – the content and the delivery. I turn it off and I’m turning CBC off more and more. Likewise Piya who I quite like but now she is into a new program and it is just too much – on one she was talking with others about public toilets. There are some good programs, mainly in the morning (NOT Q) and the evening. Everything else will turn our brains to mush.
From Philip Beckmann:
I read the article on CBC Radio One and I could not agree more. I used to listen to Radio One all the time, but not so anymore. As soon as yet another "personal storytelling" program comes on, I immediately tune to something else.
It is fine to hear from time to time about someone in distress, but there is a huge imbalance in favour of this kind of programming relative to programming involving critical analysis. It is okay to empathize with someone in distress (especially if you can get them to cry which you seem to be very good at), but it does not address the underlying problem. You just sit there with a "my goodness, that's terrible" feeling. I want to hear programming that would help everyone to understand why the distress came about in the first place, and what could be done to remedy the problem.
I would like to see much more "intellectual" and critical analysis programming. Why is there so little programming on, for example, (1) international trade (what do most Canadians know about NAFTA?), (2) economics (contrary to popular opinion, most main-stream economists agree on many issues), (3) political policies on just about anything (it should be non-partisan), (4) energy (there are many questions here), and climate change (what, if anything, are we going to do about this?). And then there are the STEM areas (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). In this last area, I know that there is Quirks and Quarks and Spark, and these programs are excellent, but there should be much more like this. And yes, it is more difficult to get your head around this stuff, but it is essential that we (all of us) do just that.
From Tusia Kozub:
I just read Nick Fillmore's analysis of the current programming on Radio 1. I emphatically agree with him. I'm a lifelong listener of CBC radio, and am dismayed by so many "personal story" programmes. Please read his article. He refers to several shows whose content is very weak. His analysis is astute and clear. This kind of programming is not what we should be getting from our public broadcaster. We need political analysis, programming about current issues like climate change and immigration, in-depth Canadian and international stories and interviews The young, intelligent people that you are trying to attract will be interested in these subjects. CBC radio is dumbing down; loyal listeners will leave. Please, CBC, don't become anti-intellect. We need you more than ever.
From Dr. Doug Mann:
School of Humanities, Brescia University College
Faculty of Information and Media Studies, UWO
And here I was thinking I was the only one who noticed this! I’ve listened to CBC One for most of my adult life. This summer, I’ve been switching to Radio Two’s classical music in disgust to escape the new style of programming that now dominates the prime channel. This can nicely be summarized as:
Victim narratives + identity politics + wallowing in individual feelings = good radio
It’s not. It’s boring and grating, unless you happen to be part of that micro-group that shares the victim narrative in question.
Some of the new shows you mention, such as Sleepover, are mind-numbingly painful. This one sounds like it was made by a morally righteous 16-year-old. I’ll take Vivaldi over the “new” Sook-Yin any day. There are still some good shows such as Spark and As it Happens, but the CBC’s cognoscenti are sadly mistaken if they think their nouvelle vague programming is going to bring in 18-year-olds hooked to their smart phones in en masse. So it’s the worst of two worlds: you don’t get the kids, and you alienate at least half of your regular audience by dumbing-down your shows for your audience.
There are so many problems with this new wave stuff that I don’t know where to start. First, it’s not politically innocent. It wallows in liberal identity politics, but as soon a real left-wing caller shows up, the hosts try to shoo him or her away as quickly as possible. So CBC spends several hours a week on trans-gender issues (representing, according to surveys, 0.3-0.6% of the population – and even they might be bored by some of the CBC shows!), while ignoring class, poverty, the power of large corporations, McDonaldization, globalization, i.e. pretty well all the burning economic issues of the day.
Further on identity politics: I have nothing against native people, but it’s getting pretty tiresome to blame every single native problem on residential schools. They’re gone and never coming back. Yes, the feds could do more for native people – but CBC shows mention residential schools more often than they do capitalism, the economic system that 100% of Canadians live within. It would be like me blaming all my problems on the Battle of Culloden (look it up on Wikipedia).
The new CBC is pro-corporate and pro-big tech, hiding this behind the shadows of liberal identity politics. Ontario Today, which appears on weekdays at noon, is particularly bad at this – I’ve heard about a dozen times the hosts present some trivial topic, then someone with a critical or incisive comment call in, after which the host quickly gets them off the air to move onto yet another victim of some tragedy like the loss of air miles. Example: they did a show on “how does the Sunshine List make you feel?” Well, I don’t care how others “feel” about this – the real question is whether the salaries it lists are just and deserved by those who get them. A caller calls in to point this out, and the host (I think it was Rita Celli) gets flustered and gets rid of him. Yet if you do a show about the Sunshine List, isn’t raising the issue of economic equality logically implied by the topic? In other words, the hosts have been told by their producers to avoid substantive debates. The result is bland pabulum, or sneaky and offensive politics of blame that targets groups without having the courage to name them.
The emphasis on individual “feelings” is disturbing, anti-democratic, and anti-enlightenment. If it were a matter of gauging immediate responses to a disaster, fine; but it often seems to be about “feelings” of one or a few people who most listeners can’t reasonably connect to.
A lot of the incisive political, economic and cultural analysis is fading away. Are Enright and Brown gone? These are real losses.
Another case in point is the decline and fall of Q. It used to be a must-listen, multi-faceted morning show, whatever you thought of Jian Gomeshi. But under Tom Power, it’s little better than a MTV music chat show. For one thing, Power, a nice guy, seems to know very little about things outside his narrow musical interests. I really don’t care what most musicians have to say about how tough it was to make their latest album. I do care about national and global politics, technological changes, and even sports culture – why in the world did they get rid of the excellent sports culture panel, a highlight of Q up to about a year ago?
Radio comedy is in decline, though still there. I take it radio drama is gone. In its place we get second-rate versions of Ellen.
Tied to this is the fact that some of CBC’s presenters can’t pronounce common English words. That’s probably because they spend half their days on social media and watching the trash TV they’re trying to copy. CBC should hire Michael Enright as a dialect coach.
In short, CBC One has lost its way. Back to the Vivaldi.
Name withheld
From my perspective of 34.4 years as a news reporter for the CBC, until I volunteered to join those forced out at the end of June 2014, it looks like the wilful neglect of funding under former governments has left only unskilled j-school grads filling the airwaves with amateurish and often cringe-worthy whining.
Vast space seems to be given over to the personal dilemmas of alternative sexuality. Is this designed to turn loyal listeners away? It sure sounds like that. Perhaps managers are just following orders to make the cow's milk so vile that nobody cares when they turn the cow into hamburger.
From Connie Hubbs, Vancouver:
I miss the real journalism. I think personal stories are OK in moderation. A little goes a long way though.
From Penny Tomlin, Victoria, BC:
I am a huge fan of the CBC. I listen to CBC Radio One exclusively, practically 24/7, and have done so for 40 years or more. I agree 100 per cent with everything Nick Fillmore says in his blog post, below. I have been so disappointed with the programming this summer — most especially with Out in the Open, Sleepover, Seat at the Table, and Love Me. I admit I have not heard Road Trip Radio, or if I have, I've tuned it out. The podcast Someone Knows Something is OK, but its title is a misnomer. It implies someone is lying or withholding evidence, but that’s not necessarily so. Accidents happen and people can disappear as a result. It’s quite possible then that no one knows anything.
To quote Mr. Fillmore: "Excellent programming can be inexpensive to produce. A top notch broadcaster interviewing interesting people can result in great radio.” Please keep this in mind when planning future programming for Radio One. I have no idea where I will find a home if I’m forced to abandon the CBC, but if the programming on Radio One doesn’t improve substantially you will likely lose this loyal listener.
From Eleanor Lynch:
As a long time listener I have left CBC Radio. I agree 100% with Nick Fillmore- CBC is off track with programming, and what was attractive about CBC is no longer present. There is definitely a place for storytelling, I loved Stuart McLean, but it can't be the majority of what is offered. For more thoughts see the link below.
I hope you bring back real journalism - something that is not being offered anywhere in Canada except Vice news and smaller programming on YouTube. The docs and radio programming that came out of CBC 5-10 years ago were life changing- now I can't tell you the last interesting thing you're programs brought to me. Even The Current focuses on small activist issues - trans rights/ indigenous/Trump sums up content on The Current these days.
I am heartbroken - I used to love the CBC. I voted against Harper solely b/c he would dismantle it. Now I fear it has been dismantled from the inside out. I hope you can bring it back.
From one sad fellow Canadian. Before you dismiss this as the ramblings of an out of touch generation I'm not 70, I'm 38.
From Phil Menger, Vancouver
I used to listen to CBC radio non-stop for its insightful news reporting and investigative journalism. I even produced some of that programming as a freelancer for CBC Radio. In the era of podcasting, I followed my favourite shows such as Sunday Edition, Writers and Co. etc. But CBC Radio seems it wants to become top 40 radio or a different version of The View with all its reporting about the human condition.
From Karin Dobson, Halifax.
I could not agree more with the article written by Nick Fillmore. I have been a life-long CBC listener, fighting through some pretty bad programming years but recently I have had to give up. With the exception of Q, As it Happens, The House and Sunday Morning I have not been listening. I have even stopped listening to the Current because it isn’t.
I am not sure if these pod cast shows are just cheap or if there is a deliberate effort on the part of CBC to shame us every day with the drum beat of victim hood.
I don’t expect mermaids and ponies but it is just depressing radio. Is there some reason we cannot celebrate excellence or why laughter and hope cannot replace negativity now and then? I am also hyper critical of reporters who report “some people”, surely there is a more accurate measurement that could be used, 25% of people interviewed disagreed, recent polls show 56% agree etc. ”Some people” reminds me of my son coming home and saying ”well Billy says its safe”.
I am not surprised CBC is losing listeners and I despair to hear what new programming will be like.
From Judy Harper:
I am a lifelong fan. In 1976 I moved to NFLD for a year and CBC was the only radio station I could get. I became addicted, and every day of my life since, when I have been home, CBC radio has been on.
No more, sad to say. Now, I turn it off; I stop whatever I am doing and I turn it off.
Because though I still love many of the programs I have been listening to for years, I am disgusted that while the world is facing crises like climate change, regime change, TPP, KKK and NeoNazi terrorism, corporate oligarchy, possibly WWlll, provincial and federal government endless scandals, GMO labelling, etc. etc. etc., CBC sees fit to insult its listeners with tripe like Sleepover. You have lost your relevance.
Are you appealing to a younger audience? Give them some credit then - I was in my twenties when CBC became part of my life, I think they can handle the NEWS.
I hate to turn you off. I have been fighting that because I don’t want to be part of the demise of public radio in Canada. But - I just can’t stomach another tragic personal story or another sleepover when I so desperately want to hear journalistic analysis and relevant debate.
Please save the CBC.
From Philip Beckmann:
I read the article on CBC Radio One and I could not agree more. I used to listen to Radio One all the time, but not so anymore. As soon as yet another "personal storytelling" program comes on, I immediately tune to something else.
It is fine to hear from time to time about someone in distress, but there is a huge imbalance in favour of this kind of programming relative to programming involving critical analysis. It is okay to empathize with someone in distress (especially if you can get them to cry which you seem to be very good at), but it does not address the underlying problem. You just sit there with a "my goodness, that's terrible" feeling. I want to hear programming that would help everyone to understand why the distress came about in the first place, and what could be done to remedy the problem.
I would like to see much more "intellectual" and critical analysis programming. Why is there so little programming on, for example, (1) international trade (what do most Canadians know about NAFTA?), (2) economics (contrary to popular opinion, most main-stream economists agree on many issues), (3) political policies on just about anything (it should be non-partisan), (4) energy (there are many questions here), and climate change (what, if anything, are we going to do about this?). And then there are the STEM areas (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). In this last area, I know that there is Quirks and Quarks and Spark, and these programs are excellent, but there should be much more like this. And yes, it is more difficult to get your head around this stuff, but it is essential that we (all of us) do just that.
From Lynda Mallett:
I have just read the article. It said everything I have been thinking these last few months. I am an avid radio listener - I carry a small portable radio with me all the time around the house.
Being English I transferred my BBC Radio 4 listening to CBC Radio 1 when I came to reside permanently in Canada.
Yes! I do turn the radio off more frequently - as recently so many of the programmes are no longer of interest to me. The 'human interest' programmes like Out in the Open and Sleepover - are tedious and I feel patronised and bored. Some of the others escape me as I immediately turn them off so don't even get to know the name of the show. I long for more challenging intellectual content.
BBC Radio 4 once tried for a more youthful audience by doing much the same as CBC Radio 1 is doing now - it didn't work! They realised that the programming for drama, comedy, documentaries, intellectual content needed to be of an exceptionally high level. They eventually realised the age demographic actually didn't matter - the listeners, 'whoever they were', who tuned in did.
Please take note of Nick Fillmore's statement below - it says everything I am feeling.
"CBC Radio’s wandering off into a journalistic sub-culture must be curtailed. At most, radio’s schedule should include a couple of the storytelling programs. When new programs for the fall and winter period are announced, CBC Radio must be back on track". I heartily concur!
From Jody Berland, Toronto
The emphasis on personal stories about mundane personal topics, fed by the narrative of overcoming personal challenges or finding personal truths, is a definitive Americanization and commercialization of our radio landscape. In American culture, the individual ceaselessly attempts to.be the manager of his or her own destiny, and his fortune or lack thereof is judged by their success and achievements. This message is rammed down peoples' throats in school, in church, on reality television, in political propaganda, and even within families. Allied with this ideology of "possessive individualism" as Canadian political theorist CB. McPherson called it, is the compulsion to constantly sell oneself, combined with a certain perverse pleasure taken from viewing or hearing the stories of people who have failed, people in pain, anyone who can show that they have suffered, so long as it doesn't reflect badly on any social institutions.
Using personal blogs to fill radio time is an example of what Boulter and Grusin call "remediation," the use of one medium to transpose content from another. The attempt to fill air time with blogs does not make radio more compelling however. It doesn't enhance our mutual understanding very much. A little. Just a little. For some. But then, there are lots of blogs, and only one public broadcaster.
The current extreme financial and social disparities, overwhelming debt loads, pressing environmental challenges and endless wars are teaching young people that this belief structure is unhelpful and manipulative. As programmers of the only English language public broadcaster in the possibly really best country in the world, you can surely do better. Participating in the world has never been more important. Citizenship, whether national or global, has never been more urgently needed, and you can see thousands taking up that call everywhere you look.
As listeners, then, we should be hearing amazing stories, documentaries interviews, features and reflections about things going on in the world. No only that, we should be deriving pleasure and being moved by hearing those stories and their great voices, music, and direction. Radio should be profound, exciting, compelling, revealing -- like yesterday's interview with family survivors of young murdered Indigenous women -- giving a chance for people whose voices have not been heard to speak their truth out loud in public because it matters to everyone.
Listening to the CBC should involve not wanting to miss a minute, rather than being like when you are sitting in the doctor's office reading the Readers Digest to fill the time and satisfy some idle slightly perverse curiosity.
Canada has produced some of the most brilliant observers and journalists in the world: true innovators as public intellectuals, sound recording technicians, songwriters, dramatic authors and artists, compelling feature writing. Why would you not stand proudly on this heritage? Please, you can do better. Stand up for them and stand up for us. Our future depends on it.
From Thora Broughton:
I agree with every word of the article. In the past few months I have almost completely stopped listening to Radio 1. Please bring back current affairs programming with qualified broadcasters able to frame relevant questions to informed, expert guests. We do not need a public broadcaster with a focus on storytelling.
From Ross Mackay,
Data Extract and Research Officer, IP Data Dissemination,
Canadian Intellectual Property Office
Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada / Government of Canada
CBC has been the soundtrack of my daily life for decades. But I’m getting really sick of it these days – with the obvious exceptions of Ideas, The Current, As it Happens, the Sunday edition, Quirks and Quarks, Tapestry etc.
The rest of it takes me over and over into extremely repetitive explorations of the lives of mostly rather unremarkable people. I agree COMPLETELY with everything Mr. Nick Fillmore states in his recent article.
I am completely saturated with all the victim stories and as it goes on and on and on, it actually is having the rather strange effect of pissing me off and making me not even care about them anymore because they are ruining what used to be a reliable source of truly interesting programming. Enough already.
CBC seems to be reaching for the lowest common denominator out there – low brow stuff for low brow people. However it risks losing the proudest part of its heritage – providing content that stimulates interest and actually elevates public consciousness.
Not to mention the fact that I get to listen to the stories that are boring and irritating me three or four times as they get recycled over and over.
Please win me back with less melodrama and more real reporting about the real world.
From Sandra Parker
I suppose I can put up with the segments you mentioned but the repetitive programs are unreal and the producers chop segments from other shows. They are just too lazy to research. I know that if I hear anything about pregnancy and having children with them crying over the radio I will be leaving. My problem is that I listen 25/7. I don't want to listen to anything I have heard before. Whatever happen to Q as long as they have written a book we hear from them. What is Tom doing is he ever there for one solid week. I don't mind the other host but what is going on!
From Alan Jowett
Please replace the seemingly endless navel gazing of the self-indulgent story tellers with some intellectually substantial and challengingly relevant content. CBC is becoming a source of drivel and I turn it off after turning it on with a dwindling hope that things may have moved it from a scene of pathetic victim hood to a place of uplifting education for worldly listeners.
From Ellen Wall
Through Facebook I have been made aware of a posting from Nick Fillmore who posted an essay critical of the trends on CBC radio. I could not agree more with his comments and wanted to let you know how disappointing it is to experience the general dumbing down of CBC.
Mr Fillmore's quote sums it up for me: " Too many (programs) dwell on the sad stories of people who have had a difficult life. People ramble on about their feelings. There’s lots of talk about “human connections”, and advice for people with problems."
It seems you are trying to appeal to older Canadians by having endless discussions on assisted-dying and in-depth discussions of disease and health issues. Believe me that is not what I want to listen to, nor do any of my friends who have all expressed deep disappointment in what has happened to our radio station.
As a long-time CBC listener and avid supporter, I want to have far more critique of current affairs and a chance to learn about what is going on in the world. More programs like 'Dispatches" the "old" Q, the "Sunday Edition", "Ideas" and the 180 would be great.
Yes it is important to hear the LGBTQ voice and First Nations but not so much that all other perspectives are sidelined. Aim for some balance.
From Robert J. Hollis
I am a CBC Radio Life Long Listener. The list of program favs would take an hour to mention. So in short order: Sunday Edition, The Current, Cross Country Checkup, Ideas, Morningside, Q, Ontario Today, Metro Morning, Quirks & Quarks and Spark.
Times change and to gain audience. You have to appeal to Millennials but do you need hosts with Valley Girl diction? Even Anna Maria Tremonti and Gil Deacon slide into that zone.
Recent content appears to concentrate on soft stories rather than stories that bond Canadians coast to coast. Sunday Edition with Michael Enright is the ideal program to give voice to the call. Cross Country Checkup would amplify awareness a few weeks later.
From Karen Sawatzky:
As a long-time and frequent CBC Radio listener, I would like to provide you with some feedback on the programming I have been hearing over the last several months, though I think the trend I’ll refer to here stems back quite a bit further than that and has been in progress for a long time.
To save time and repetition, I’ll just say that I agree with much of the critique outlined in Nick Fillmore’s blog post, in that I am very tired and don’t feel enriched by the amount of what I would call “personal essay” or “personal experience” programming CBC Radio plays - and I have definitely decreased my listening in response.
If I am working at home, I now turn off CBC Radio after The Current finishes. I might turn it on again at noon to hear BC Almanac, but that depends on how my day is progressing and whether I’ve seen any promos for items of interest on Twitter. If not, I don’t turn CBC on again till 3pm, when my local afternoon current affairs and news show comes on. The reason I stop listening is that I find the intervening programming to be filled with an unending and uninteresting stream of personal stories, soft human interest items and anecdote, which I find incredibly boring and of very little significance or value. It’s like huge bands of airtime have been turned into extended streeters.
What I would appreciate more is investigative journalism, current affairs and news. I understand that policy and news stories can be illustrated through personal experience and anecdote, but I don’t see or hear these connections and themes being made in your programming, instead it’s just 1st person stories one after another. I would like to stress that I view this format issue as distinct from covering issues that youth are interested in, or that people of colour are interested in - to me it’s not the issue and in fact I believe that marginalized or vulnerable groups would be far better served by CBC if it provided more actual news and analysis and investigation about issues affecting them, rather than just endless personal stories.
It really seems like you are only talking about what is happening or what has happened and not the whys or hows of those things - that would be provided by more investigation and analysis, rather than just relating individual perspectives. Probably though, my main complaint about this type of programming (such as the shows listed in the blog post) is that they are just monumentally boring and inane.
I have been thinking and feeling this way about CBC’s radio programming for some time now, but it was not until I saw the blog post I linked to that I realized others felt the same way.
Again, however, my issue is not with you covering stories of “victimhood” - I think it’s your duty to cover injustices and their consequences and who’s affected by them - but please, dig much deeper and into more empirical and factual territory than only focusing on the individual viewpoints and feelings…..You are not doing much good by focusing on feelings so much….spending so much airtime on asking people how they feel about whatever issue is a waste - it is not new information to me, and surely not to most people, that people feel sad, angry, or whatever when terrible things happen to them, or when they reflect on historic and current oppressions…..what I want to know and what I want my public broadcaster to delve into is why those things happened in the first place and what is standing in the way of correcting them now and doing better in the future. And when I say this I mean the specifics - the people, the policies, the names, the addresses etc….not just the amorphous aspects - attitudes and feelings and such.
Please do re-evaluate the direction you’ve been going and consider the criticisms in the blog post and which I’m sure you must be receiving from others. There are many who have listened and supported CBC Radio for a long time and who would love to continue supporting you, but you are making it very hard to defend you when so much of your programming is so….schlocky.
I don’t think it’s an age thing either. I am 49, and I’m sure you would like to attract younger listeners - but these debates were going on when I was in my 20s and 30s as well and as then, I never thought CBC should change its fundamental mission and quality standards just to attract younger audiences, or improperly conflate youth with a desire for superficiality or soft human interest programming. All ages and demographics are better served by intellectually rigorous and critical programming.
As it stands now, you are really becoming unlistenable to me, except for the narrow bands of time when I know I can tune in and hear news and current-affairs-based programming.
From Tim Travis
The article says it all. I have been a CBC listener for 30+ years, till recently. Please bring back something worth listening to. I can't stand the garbage being put out by you folks nowadays.
From Judy Goforth
I have listened to CBC almost exclusively for 30 years, relying on it to connect me to people and communities across Canada, and to challenge me with different points of view as well as with information on innovative advances in many sectors of our culture and society.
Balanced and thoughtful reporting on local, national and international news was a hallmark of the CBC. Rarely did the interviewer ask a subject "How do you feel?" after some devastating trauma in their life. The quality of music, drama, debate and humour was dependably enjoyable and enlightening.
Recently the programming seems to be deteriorating inexorably towards a mash up of top forty hits and Dr Phil. Please give us back the CBC which was such a meaningful part of our Canadian identity.
From Marsha Kennedy:
What ever happened to the CBC I loved? I have been an avid listening of CBC my whole life. I listened to it all day as I worked in my studio. It provided me with rich, thought provoking and educational programs that I looked forward to every day. It provided food for thought and for later discussions with friends and colleagues.
Programs such as The Current, As It Happens, The Sunday Edition and Ideas, are doing a good job, but far too many of your new programs are impossible to listen to. They are just noise to me, lacking in any real content that can engage me. There are so many podcasts out there that are similar and just as uninteresting...Why would CBC want to lower the bar so much as to push away their listeners at a time when it should be proving its worth to Canadians as an important source of information that informs and unties this country? We are living in a time where educated citizens are at an all-time high, we want and need programs that are educational, interesting and engaging.
We are living in a time when many challenging issues confront us both nationally and internationally. CBC was and still can be a place where Canadians can come together to learn about and share important concerns. It was discouraging over the past years to have so many repeats of good programs...I thought it was because of cut backs. But there is money going into new and weak programs. As a listener who has recently...'tuned out'...I have to wonder if there is a plan to get rid of CBC through forcing its listeners to turn away. If this is not the intention, then CBC needs to get back on track. CBC is really important to me, for this country, for our democracy, for way of life, and has been the hub for all Canadians...it has to be, or it just isn't CBC.
From Josh Christopher:
I have been a loyal CBC listener for quite a few years. Lately, I have become so enamoured with quality journalism that I have enrolled at the University of Victoria, and I will begin my first journalism course in September. I began turning to CBC radio more and more after cutting off my cable about five years ago when I noticed that the only thing that I was watching anymore was CBC, and even that had become a collection of sports, culture and other non-substantive issues. As a veteran of the war on terror, I am intimately concerned with the crucial issues facing our country and planet, climate change not the least of them. Recently, I have noticed the same trend of trivial programming on CBC Radio that caused me to turn off the TV station.
I greatly appreciate what you do at CBC and love the content on Ideas, The Sunday Edition and The Current, but these are the exception, not the norm. Even some of these shows are becoming mundane, like the recent Ideas episode "The Wire: The birth of the synthesizer and new ways of thinking about sound." This topic seemed inane given the growing danger of Donald Trump and American white supremacy.
In a recent article for Canadaland, Nick Fillmore wrote, "It’s practically criminal that CBC Radio does not have a program on the climate-change crisis." So true. More often than not, the now annual forest fire disasters that are starting to create an increasing number of climate refugees in Canada are not placed in context by connecting them with our carbon emissions. When Fort McMurray of all places was evacuated, I heard not a peep from CBC about that city's complicity in the climate crisis that exacerbated the fires that forced it's own evacuation. Would it be insensitive to do so? Perhaps, but it would be insensitive to Bangladesh, the Maldives, Miami, New York, Saudi Arabia and many other regions that will soon require permanent evacuation not to make this connection for the benefit of voters and listeners. That should have been a lesson to us all, and it was one the CBC did not teach. Fillmore was incisive when he wrote that "CBC Radio’s wandering off into triviality must be curtailed."
Fillmore rightly criticized the proliferation of personal stories on CBC Radio. I do appreciate the utility of some of these reports, like the recent report on the transgender woman who had spent a life behind bars. It was an important public service to humanize criminal offenders. There are reasons people offend, and this area could be explored further by interviewing a criminologist about innovative restorative justice measures in corrections. However, the personal stories are cluttering your airwaves, and taking up space for substantive information and critical thinkers.
I would like to hear the CBC challenge my government. There are certainly areas where they come up short. There are still well over 100 First Nations communities that lack clean drinking water in Canada, and our government has made little effort to rectify this. The Walkerton crisis spurred corrective action on drinking water supplies across Canada. Why doesn't CBC call Justin Trudeau on his spurious assertion that "We don’t have to choose between the environment & the economy"? This is nonsense, and we all know it.
I would like to hear CBC radio challenge my perceptions, and feed my curiosity. I want CBC to challenge me. I want to say wow! more often, and not turn to independent media, like DemocracyNow!, Rabble.ca, and The Tyee.ca, who don't shy away from criticizing our government, as I have been doing. Journalism is the first line of defence in protecting a vibrant democracy. I support a well-funded CBC, and I hope you will direct more of your resources towards substantive, critical reporting.
From Lisbie Rae:
I agree with every single thing that the article says. Please change course and give us back programmes with substance and social relevance.
I am pretty broadminded, and can put up with a certain amount of personal storytelling that focuses on trivial issues that get elevated to huge personal moral dilemmas. But programme after programme features people who cast themselves as victims or blab on and on about thoughts so insignificant that they would occupy my mind for a second or two before I made a decision and moved on.
Where are the programmes that deal with big issues of the day? What happened to Dispatches?
Many programmes do keep me intensely listening or provide enough entertaining, engaging segments that I can tolerate the stuff that doesn’t appeal to me. The following programmes are worth listening to:
The Current, As It Happens, The House, Eleanor Wachtel (please, can we have more of her?), Bob MacDonald’s Quirks and Quarks, and Under the Influence.
There are others, but I will save time and tell you what I and my friends are switching off in droves: Sleep Over, The cold case programme, Seat at the Table, Out in the Open, The Ali Hasan comedy show — comedy? Give me a break.
The sad thing is, I used to have CBC radio on as the background and foreground of my life, and would plan my driving or cooking so that I could catch the shows I really liked. Now I turn it off so often I end up missing the programmes I do like.
Give me back interesting, provocative, challenging, entertaining radio!
From Brian Kennedy
Not much to say except I have gone from a person who always listens to CBC radio to a person who never listens to CBC radio. I am sick and tired of hearing people talk about how terribly unfair their life is. I don't know who your target audience is but my immigrant minority wife and mixed race millennial kids were the first to tune out. I tried to hang in but have felt like bashing my brains in every time I tried. You have driven me into the loving arms of the people who want to defund CBC. I can honestly say, with this crap available, good riddance.
Fifty per cent of Canadians between 25 and 65 have a degree of some sort, please, please do not treat us like grade eight kids gossiping about who said what about who. I don't want to hear it and I don't care.
From Patty Deline, Aged 69, Ottawa
I agree wholeheartedly with the piece written by Nick Fillmore. For some time now, I have been switching my radio from its home at 91.5 fm (CBC Ottawa) to103.3, Radio 2, or to a CD, because I am tired of all the 'storytelling' on Radio 1. And the inane comedy and the American movie and TV stars I've never heard of on Q (though I like Tom Powers when he has a good author or Canadian person on, but I listen so seldom now, I often miss the good stuff).
I was raised on CBC, have listened all my life, dearly miss Rewind which had the good old stuff. But I like new stuff, too, in particular, the Indigenous programming, which is excellent and very much needed. But most of the rest, i hate. What to do?
Do you care at all about us life-long CBC listeners – with half a brain, and I include in this group my children, aged 41 and 46, who feel very much the same. We love Sheila Rodgers and Eleanor Wachtel and Spark and Tapestry and Cross-country check Up (Duncan McEwan was an inspired choice for host) and Sunday Edition, though I wish it were still 3 hours. I really don't like the noon hour Sunday show, a travesty after Stuart McLean. We really need a good family variety show in this spot, PLEASE. This was a family tradition for us that we really miss. I won't go on, though I could.
Please put some good thought into new programming for the fall. We need food for the mind and the soul, not chit-chat and silly stories. We've had enough of this. A little would be okay, I guess, but not the plethora the airwaves are full of now.
Sorry this is so long, but this has been building up in me for some time. It has also been the subject of discussion many places I go, from book clubs to friendly dinners and soccer games.
From Arun Mukherjee
Professor Emeritus, Stong College, York University, Toronto
I write to you to express my deep dissatisfaction with the state of CBC Radio. Its constant focus on touchy feely personal stories and pathetic attempts at freshman humour are becoming unbearable. If this is what CBC thinks young people like, you are living in a bubble. Young people across the world are protesting, organizing, doing innovative things.
Even "Fresh Air" that I used to like in the past is becoming unlistenable with the new host constantly asking "Tell me, what are you doing," and then reporting that "Caroline is off to the village fair" etc. gets on my nerves. And then the host has to announce her name every ten minutes!
The only programs I care somewhat for are "Metro Morning," "The Current," and "The Sunday Edition." "CBC Ideas" is listenable some times, but is too, too Eurocentric and Christian. For example, they were given a proposal to do a show on Tagore on his 150 birthday, but they found that too narrow. "AS It Happens" does a good job of investigative journalism but their attempt at humour is pathetic.
And, of course, there is seldom any response when I write to complain about something. As a retired professor of English, if this is how little my opinion counts for the CBC, I wonder how CBC treats those less educated or less articulate.
From Brian Fisher, Ripon, Quebec.
I have noticed strange things happening with CBC Radio English Programming recently. It's as if it's turning into a self-help channel. There's this major focus developing towards the solving of personal problems, health and psychological issues without any connection to community or national identity. Such programming could be from anywhere. The only giveaway of its origins might be a few pronunciation or vocabulary usages particular to some Canadians.
It also seems somewhat paternalistic, almost like the CBC is setting itself up as a counselling service. The message seems to be: Don't concern yourself with your neighbours or the larger community when you can just look after yourself. It's programming without a context. I don't understand how that has anything to do with the CBC's mandate.
I personally want to know what my neighbours across our country are dealing with. And also how my neighbours in Asia, Africa and Europe and the Americas are experiencing things. What are their insights, victories and struggles? What are they celebrating?
If the CBC has any job, it is to show things to its audience through the eyes of others so we all can understand each other in all domains be it politics, science, environmental challenges, ethical concerns, cultural differences but especially our places and regional identities so that we can continue to know each other in those contexts. How else will we build unity? Generic items about individual issues won't help get us out of our personal silos and echo chambers even if they are comforting and increase a certain kind of audience.
From Ellen van der Hoeven
I’m writing to express my disappointment in the downward slide that CBC programming has taken in recent months. I realize that not every program can have the depth of a show like Ideas or The Current, but it’s vital that CBC standards are maintained.
We may be in the age of clickbait, but when I am listening to my beloved national radio station, I don’t expect to hear nonsense such as the trivial program called Sleepover, or the supremely unfunny This Is That. Please pull up your socks. You are not winning over a young audience with this junk and you are in danger of losing your older stalwarts. After all, we also can shift our attention to podcasts, such as the New York Times weekly podcast, if our appetite for real news and information is no longer being met.
From Capt Colin Smith M.Sc., Inuvik, NT
Returning recently from seven years in the UK, where the media landscape has deteriorated tragically into trash TV, I was relieved to find that the CBC was very much as l had left it, as in the days when l had interested Robert Carty into doing a Sunday Morning piece on seafarers rights, and Fifth Escape likewise. It was like old home week. Most of the names and programmers were still familiar to me.
Now l read of this descent into a different kind of trash broadcasting involving lurid emotionalism and soap-opera preoccupation with personal testimony. The CBC is rightly famed for quality of it's current affairs documentaries and magazine programmers. None can do it better. If the alarm expressed by Nick Fillmore is justified, then I believe this will damage the CBC and drive away listeners.
While living in Canada for 37 years l never once listened to a commercial station. The CBC was on my radio all of my waking hours, on my car radio, at home, and now on my iPad. The thought of it deteriorating into the kind of programmes feared by Mr Fillmore fills me with horror. So much dead air would force me to switch away to the growing podcast market, probably never to return.
So please don't tamper with the format. In an age of greater political control of the media the CBC's courageous magazine features are more necessary than ever. With the Canadian govt hand in hand with Trump/NATO an independent, analytical voice is more urgently needed.
From Michael Dorland, PhD
Professor, School of Journalism & Communication
Carleton University, and Editor, Canadian Journal of Communication.
For some time now I've felt that CBC Radio One has been slipping. The first sign for me was with Cross Country Checkup. The summer before the strange decision to hire D. McHugh as host saw some wonderful energetic women trying out for the position. Most would have made far better hosts--McHugh, I feel, has really dumbed the show down. He is rude to his guests, puts them on hold to take uninteresting calls; and the quality of the calls themselves has seriously dropped as well. You get my drift. Not a happy listener.
Sunday early eve programming is also woeful, ever since Bernie St. Laurent was dropped. Black Arts was not bad once it got its feet. But recently there was that dreadful comedy show out of Edmonton, and now the just awful embarrassing everything-you-never-wanted- to-know-about-Canada thing.
Do you folks actually want to retain listeners? One really wonders....
From David Schreiber, Toronto
Nick Fillmore has said it well. While there are still islands of excellence—Day Six, As It Happens, Metro Morning, Quirks and Quarks—most of the broadcast day is a waste and an annoyance. The shows featuring "personal stories" make me shrug. Why should I care about any of it? They are the kind of stories people naturally share with their friends, knowing that their listeners care about how their life is going. I don't know them, and I don't care about their stories.
CBC used to mean something to me. Budget cuts used to enrage me. Now, when I see all the money being wasted on stupidity, I'm not sure I would mind so much if another Harper came along and gutted the CBC.
From Shannon Griffiths
I realized in reading a letter sent to you by a friend of mine that I too had stopped listening to CBC radio programming approximately a year or two ago. I had become so bored and frustrated hearing so many personal stories about mundane personal topics being broadcast as supposedly interesting “news” content.
I’ve always avoided shows like Dr. Phil, so it has been very disheartening to witness (with my more than 50 years of loyal listening!) CBC radio resorting to basing it’s “news” programming on this type of “personal blog” content. What caused this shift in focus at the CBC?
I am writing today to urge you to use the privileges and powers that you have in your roles as programmers and arbitrators of subject matter content, to upgrade the CBC Radio programming towards more educational and inspiring material that reflects news and innovation going on in the world — in areas of arts, sciences, history and politics, to name a few. And to please curtail the reality-tv-style of personal story content that is now pervading too much of your program content.
Listeners can get this type of content elsewhere if they want or need, as it is ubiquitous on a plethora of US and Canadian radio and tv programs. I hope you can find your way to reforming and upgrading CBC Radio content and continue its legacy of informed, educational, cutting-edge, creative and inspiring content.
Comments posted on Nick’s blog:
Keith:
I last enjoyed listening to CBC back when Peter Gzowski was on air. Then I'd listen during commutes to find out what the traffic was doing, a bit of local news, and international news. DNTO sometimes was fun, on the rare times I heard it. Then my phone started showing me traffic, andI got tired of the same old format. I haven't listened to CBC in particular, or any radio in general, at all, in about 4 years. I'm not sure I could articulate what I'd have to heard to be lured back.
From Michael Brooks, Victoria, B.C.:
Nick - thanks for the article I just read on Canadaland's website. I've been waiting for someone to say just what you said. I will be writing to the people you suggested and I'll forward a copy. I will also be writing to Jesse and suggesting you as a guest for a Canadaland podcast. I've been bugging them for a while to do a piece on what's been happening to Radio One.
Gyor22 :
Honestly, I listen mostly to internet radio, if it wasn't for Murdoch Mysteries, and the comedy show by the guy who plays George Crabtree, I wouldn't really deal with the CBC. When I want analysis, depth, and so on, I usually go to YouTube, the funny thing is YouTube has more Canadian content right now then the CBC. Sometimes I don't know why they bother with the CBC when they could replace it with their own YouTube/Netflix entity that focuses on content creators, not bureaucrats.
Dave Duprey:
They have introduced commercials to CBC Radio One on the internet feeds. As the CBC faithful have been pointing out for decades, the introduction of advertising will change the programming. This has now happened, and as predicted, the emphasis is on getting more ears, rather than making better content.
Anonymous:
Nice article, and I agree with your argument. It seems as if CBC (especially CBC radio) has lost its way and is merely drifting. I don't want to get partisan, but it also seems as if they lob softballs at right-wingers who wish to see the CBC destroyed. Very curious. I like the CBC best when it takes chances on public policy matters. Don't see much of that of late. Thanks for the email addresses.
Ben Burd:
Frankly if any interviewer starts with the question "How did you feel about...insert situation here" then I'm off to the next pushbutton. Even AIH succumbs to this laxy way of questioning.
Comedy on the CBC radio is atrocious and unfunny, how episodes of the Debators must we endure before something funny is uttered? And don't start me off on the fact that the radio only programmes 12 hours of live stuff, as a person who works nights I have to be selective in daytime selections knowing it is going to be repeated 12 hours later.
Colour Of Light:
I agree completely with your "how do you feel" statement. And on AIH. Too many times I hear them ask, well, anyone, what they 'feel is going to happen' instead of waiting for it to happen and then reporting on it.
dshaw11024:
Yes, I am surprised at home many times I'll tune in to CBC and hear the same program rebroadcast. Some of the "storytelling" shows definitely push me towards changing the station - like Sleepover and discussing hair removal...
Alan Freeman:
I seldom listen to CBC Radio anymore. Too much trivial content. They should take some lessons from NPR and BBC on how to provide listeners with intelligent, well-produced radio.
Anonymous:
Hey Nick, I like that you are committed to upholding standards of journalism. God knows there are few people who do these days. But this blog comes across as a rant against programs by young people and people of colour. Especially with all the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. There is a lot that is wrong with CBC radio and TV journalism. For one thing, most of it is newswire stuff. A bureau chief in London can't possibly know what is going on on-the-ground in Madrid or Moscow. So let's drop the pretense. There is no coverage of culture anymore, it is all about entertainment. Metro Morning's Karen Gordon is particularly annoying. I can't recall when she last reviewed a Canadian film. And, we don't need 'Pop Culture Experts' on CBC. EVER!! I hope someone reads your blog and is listening.
Richard Paul:
I used to have CBCOne on my Internet radio presets, then I started to feel it became trite and superficial. I Now listen almost exclusively to NPR, PRI (Public Radio INternational - which does rebroadcast some CBC content)and BBC. Don't even get me started on CBC RADIO TWO. I stopped listening years ago!
Unknown:
Bring back the theatre of the mind "Radio Drama" and please - cut way down on personal storytelling -
Anonymous:
I'm incredibly disappointed the 180 has been discontinued. Incredible program.
Shane A Leslie:
I turn CBC1 on first thing in the morning for the news. When I get to work I start that days audio book and when the clock chimes the half hour I turn in CBC1 for the news then go back to my audio book because so many of the shows are now so trivial. I actually wish that someone would start a radio station network that would explicitly reject pop-culture, sports, and entertainment content and provide 24 hours a day of people with doctorates in various sciences and humanities providing unbiased as possible analysis of that days world events as they relate to their specialisation.
Joanne Light:
I so agree with you. If I hear one more band promoting themselves on Q,...drone on, drone on...the banal ego blathering needs to be banned. Also disappointed the 180 has been cancelled. And please, no more "How did you feel...?" questioning.
Wesley McGregor:
Yeah, I've been saying this to myself for years. Intelligent discourse is extremely rare these days.
Anonymous:
I thought it was just me! I keep the radio tuned to CBC, but lunge to turn it off when someone starts to cry. And that is every day. I like The House, and Day 6 and quite a bit of The Current. CBC has to get its 'mission statement' clear: It must stop trying to appeal to a really young market. Not going to happen. Those of us who have stuck with it have done so hoping for some real journalism and analysis, because, as you said above, it is lacking in most media. What one of the commenters said about NPR and BBC: Yeah. That.
Anonymous:
Pretty well all these criticisms are spot on. CBC was always on in our house and all my kids grew up to become listeners. But no longer. One comment I would add is please ditch all the horrible music inserted in most morning programs between segments and these are very short segments. Especially before 8AM.
Suzanne & Terry:
Oh goodness! What to say: I have just listened to the You Tube New Programmes Pitch; Ms Merklinger and the English language are not on a par with, for example Paul Kennedy. And Arif Noorani, of 'Q" fame, in the Ghomeshi era.
I am sure you are able to access more quickly than I, the interview with Richard Stursberg in which he defends the commercialization of the CBC.
I'm with you; The Current, The Sunday Edition, AIH, and IDEAS are tops; Spark is very good, *Norah is an 'old' IDEAS person*, and Mary Hynes/Tapestry is wonderful; Quirks and Quarks also; I think these are great programmes because they each give one, something to think about.
CorneredCat:
You might also want to mention that CBC Radio newscasts often sound like they are being written and presented by a bunch of fifth-graders.
Ken Piercy:
All through the 1970s and 80s I listened to CBC Radio day and night. It was an intelligent and highly informative news and documentary network that seldom disappointed. For years now it seems to be little but re-runs, pop-talk shows, comedy shows and, yes, endless personal tragedy stories. This may be what "the marketplace" suggests the public wants, but it certainly is not what the CBC was set up for.
sawchuk:
I wish radio one was news and information like the TV news network. I listen for news and current affairs and find myself turning off radio after 1 pm. Other former devotees say the same.
Doug Mann - Part I
And here I was thinking I was the only one who noticed this! I’ve listened to CBC One for most of my adult life. This summer, I’ve been switching to Radio Two’s classical music in disgust to escape the new style of programming that now dominates the prime channel. This can nicely be summarized as:
Victim narratives + identity politics + wallowing in individual feelings = good radio. It’s not. It’s boring and grating, unless you happen to be part of that micro-group that shares the victim narrative in question.
Some of the new shows you mention, such as Sleepover, are mind-numbingly painful. This one sounds like it was made by a morally righteous 16-year-old. I’ll take Vivaldi over the “new” Sook-Yin any day. There are still some good shows such as Spark and As it Happens, but the CBC’s cognoscenti are sadly mistaken if they think their nouvelle vague programming is going to bring in 18-year-olds hooked to their smart phones in en masse. So it’s the worst of two worlds: you don’t get the kids, and you alienate at least half of your regular audience by dumbing-down your shows for your audience.
There are so many problems with this new wave stuff that I don’t know where to start. First, it’s not politically innocent. It wallows in liberal identity politics, but as soon a real left-wing caller shows up, the hosts try to shoo him or her away as quickly as possible. So CBC spends several hours a week on trans-gender issues (representing, according to surveys, 0.3-0.6% of the population – and even they might be bored by some of the CBC shows!), while ignoring class, poverty, the power of large corporations, McDonaldization, globalization, i.e. pretty well all the burning economic issues of the day.
Further on identity politics: I have nothing against native people, but it’s getting pretty tiresome to blame every single native problem on residential schools. They’re gone and never coming back. Yes, the feds could do more for native people – but CBC shows mention residential schools more often than they do capitalism, the economic system that 100% of Canadians live within.
Doug Mann - Part II
The new CBC is pro-corporate and pro-big tech, hiding this behind the shadows of liberal identity politics. Ontario Today, which appears on weekdays at noon, is particularly bad at this – I’ve heard about a dozen times the hosts present some trivial topic, then someone with a critical or incisive comment call in, after which the host quickly gets them off the air to move onto yet another victim of some tragedy like the loss of air miles.
Example: they did a show on “how does the Sunshine List make you feel?” Well, I don’t care how others “feel” about this – the real question is whether the salaries it lists are just and deserved by those who get them. A caller calls in to point this out, and the host (I think it was Rita Celli) gets flustered and gets rid of him. Yet if you do a show about the Sunshine List, isn’t raising the issue of economic equality logically implied by the topic? In other words, the hosts have been told by their producers to avoid substantive debates. The result is bland pabulum, or sneaky and offensive politics of blame that targets groups without having the courage to name them.
The emphasis on individual “feelings” is disturbing, anti-democratic, and anti-enlightenment. If it were a matter of gauging immediate responses to a disaster, fine; but it often seems to be about “feelings” of one or a few people who most listeners can’t reasonably connect to.
A lot of the political, economic and cultural analysis is fading away. Another case in point is the decline and fall of Q. It used to be a must-listen, multi-faceted morning show, whatever you thought of Jian Gomeshi. But under Tom Power, it’s little better than a MTV music chat show. For one thing, Power, a nice guy, seems to know very little about things outside his narrow musical interests. I really don’t care what most musicians have to say about how tough it was to make their latest album. I do care about national and global politics, technological changes, and even sports culture – why in the world did they get rid of the excellent sports culture panel, a highlight of Q up to about a year ago.
Radio comedy is in decline, though still there. I take it radio drama is gone. As others have noted, Internet podcasts have taken over from CBC One when it comes to humour, political commentary, or critical analysis of popular culture. Two of my favourites are “Imaginary Worlds” and “Canceled Too Soon”: why can’t CBC do shows like this? The latter has only two presenters and a microscopic budget!
Tied to this is the fact that some of CBC’s presenters can’t pronounce common English words. That’s probably because they spend half their days on social media and watching the trash TV they’re trying to copy. CBC should hire Michael Enright as a dialect coach.
Geoffrey Donaldson:
Both my parents and one of my grandparents---even I---worked for CBC, radio and TV. Most of my life MoCo Radio was the only station any of us ever listened to. It changed, naturally, over these several decades, but I forgave the odd repeat, or a novice personality performing a bit below standard for a few shows.
Then the cuts really started biting, repeats became more frequent and frequently repeated, and talent slipped a notch. Nevertheless, the CBC impressed by fulfilling its mandate inspite of funding difficulties.
Something snapped for me when Gomeshi got sacked because, regardless the seriousness of allegations against him, CBC went out of its way, it seemed, to send him up before he went to court, featuring non-stop shows on sexual assault and incessant reports and interviews with witnesses, pre-trial, loaded with innuendo and opinion. I was appalled, not least because an offender might have easily evaded justice on the ground that his character had been so thoroughly smeared he'd never get a fair hearing. Further, witnesses against him may have been encouraged to unwittingly spoil their own evidence by the CBC's cavalier treatment of the defendant for months before the court case---to pile on, in other words, and probably to communicate with each other and coordinate statements which, once revealed by Gomeshi's lawyer, destroyed his accusers' credibility. We may also never know the full story or CBC's likely complicity in allowing bad behaviour in its workplace just to appease its star radio host.
Journalistic integrity was flushed at that point, I suppose in an attempt to cover CBC's ass.
Maybe I'm too old to accept that the wave of absurdism that has infested our politics lately has also spread to journalistic integrity at the nation's public broadcaster---the blatancy of it is absurd: it's so obvious.
Increasingly mediocre talent and non-stop repeats are one thing, but... Maybe I should have given up on CBC back then. Maybe then I wouldn't have had to witness these major ethical transgressions.
Yet I still listen---quite selectively now---but I'll forevermore take anything on CBC news with a grain of salt---which makes the fading MoCo much like every other radio station in that department. What a shame. Can it be redeemed----or is it too late?
Anonymous:
CBC is a shell of its former self. Shows like The Current have jumped the proverbial shark having relegated themselves to a platform for victim and identity politics. It is a shame because CBC Radio used to be diverse and interesting.
Josh Brandon:
The criteria for CBC should be: "How is it in the public interest? What is the public good being supported?" Arguably, with good public affairs programing, I benefit as a citizen even if I don't listen to a particular program. It helps our democracy to have more informed citizens.
There is also an economic argument in CBC providing development funding to help build a Canadian film industry - training technical and creative staff. Unfortunately, the focus is too much on providing content that the maximum number of people will listen to. If that is your sole criteria, why not let the private sector handle it? Why should it be subsidized?
Stephen Harper's belief was there was no such thing as a public good, only private market interests. CBC has let itself go so far down that rabbit hole that it has undermined the reason for its existence.
Jaleen Grove:
The majority of CBC One is still well done, but can the Top40 music already. A few too many "personal stories" perhaps... certainly Sook Yin Lee's new show is underwhelming (DNTO was already mostly a bore) and a disservice to her background and potential. I'd like to see CBC stand even more for longform journalism and intellectual content. Thank goodness for Ideas, Spark, Anna-Maria Tremonti, The House.... A climate change show is an awesome idea.
Harold Shuster:
While I share some of your concern for the type of programming on Radio 1, it is hard to argue with "success". Radio 1 is the number one radio station in Manitoba. I feel that it is people over 40/50 who lament the "folksy" tone that CBC radio has adopted. And yes many of my friends no longer listen but clearly this new tone is attracting more listeners than it is losing. In order to justify its existence the CBC needs to show numbers and it would appear to be doing that, and as such we who love and care about and understand the political necessity of having a public broadcaster, may need to plug our noses every once in a while because if somebody is listening to Sleep Over or Road Trip, they might have to wade through The Current or As It Happens to get to it and come to appreciate that part of CBC that you, and I, do as well.
Anonymous:
I, too, used to be a regular listener of CBC 1 but over the years I've largely moved away. My biggest complaint about content is the obscene amount of pandering to the aboriginal cause we are forced to endure. It would be less annoying if once in a while they would present both sides of the issues, but they never do. Real journalism suffers in the name of political correctness gone mad. I also switch stations any time I hear YET ANOTHER trans person telling his/her life story. Enough already!
Dave Duprey:
They have introduced commercials to CBC Radio One on the internet feeds. As the CBC faithful have been pointing out for decades, the introduction of advertising will change the programming. This has now happened, and as predicted, the emphasis is on getting more ears, rather than making better content.
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Comments on Facebook Pages:
Sharon Labchuk
Right on. A few shows are excellent but I mostly dread turning on CBC Radio. Every once in a while I try it out, only to be disappointed.
Top of Form
Roger Benham ·
I try to listen to Choral Concert but that is all. I got fed up with the eternal news and the decreasing attempt to play classical and , even worse, folk music. As a result I hardly ever turn on a radio.
Laurence Stevenson
Totally disagree. CBC Radio has always had it's fair share of weak programming (Sturgeon's Law) but, used well, personal stories give the best way into just about every issue. Heck, how many Lake Ontario shoreline residents would currently like to tell you about climate change?
You are barking up the wrong tree with this one.
Nick Fillmore
Laurence Stevenson - Hmmm . . . I wonder if this is partly because of your involvement with the CBC Fan Club? These programs only discuss personal issues -- none deal with the important issues of our time.
Sionna Breasal
Summer is the worst for this. Instead of any decent investigative journalism on issues that are important politically, we get to listen to last summer's programming on personal issues.
Regis Cornale
I side with Fillmore on this one. Aside from the Radio One favourites he cited, more often than not, I've found myself saying "who cares?"
Kathleen O'Hara
I've been thinking the same thing for a while now! Even a few years ago, I could listen to the CBC most of the day. Now, it's Ontario Morning and sometimes The Current in the morning and As It Happens later on. There are others, including The Sunday Edition, that still seem relevant, but too few. The House interviews party and corporate leaders almost exclusively, so gets turned off. Sadly, CBC is no longer a major part of my life. Thank you for speaking out!
Michael Bowen
That's my experience too....I listen to it less and less and less. I suspect my listening is about a third of what it was 5 years ago.
Stephen Garlick
Programs like This Country in the Morning and Morning Side used to create Canada-wide conversations with Canadians. Now that time slot has been hacked up. The CBC is ditching the audience it had in favour of an audience it will never attract.
Richard Smiley
Let's just say that I have just about given up on listening... and I grew up with CBC. Too much Angst. Way too much.
Martyn Kendrick
Used to love it. Now I listen and feel who cares. They have lost all connection with audience.
Sionna Breasal
Time to start a cooperative radio show, or an online news radio show. Kootenay Co-op Radio is a small town example. CBC is too co opted by political power. Let's start one which is about our own concerns.
Richard Smiley
And what really hurts is having to listen to the Conservative appointed head of the CBC telling me that because ratings have climbed (they now play pop music) the CBC has never been better.
Steve Wildesmith
As much as I find some shows annoying, I find many many shows really good, including "Seat at the Table" which vacillates between awkwardly juvenile to incredibly thoughtful and entertaining. Perhaps they are simply finding their legs?
There are still many decent listening opps on CBC, from the usual list to Spark, Tapestry, Ideas, This American Life, and on and on... I think the attempt to be like "Vice" is clearly prevalent and unnecessary. Hopefully it's a phase and will pass.
I find the repeats a good thing, kinda like TV re-runs, for those of us who work and have to grab a piece of CBC here and there I am grateful to hear a rebroadcast of something I otherwise would not have listened to.
Brenda Durdle I hear the same things driving to work, from work and often after work or the following day. Agree to disagree, I guess.
Steve Langlois
I listen to CBC all morning, but often abandon it after lunch. I agree that much has become fluffy, although there is much new aboriginal content that has a very personal perspective that needs to be told, and some of the other shows have moments when a personal story illustrates a wider perspective on an issue, that I assume appeals to younger listeners.
But yes it is being slowly reformed to death. I really dislike so much evening and weekend repetition. And I hate absolutely hate "Someone knows Something" which seems to me the absolute worst mimicking of sensationalist exploitation of personal tragedy.
Leila Marshy
Good article that speaks to a sometimes annoying trend at CBC. But to use a Stuart Mclean 1979 documentary as an example of what CBC "used to be like" is a little lame when you consider that McLean made his name and career on subsequently -- wait for it -- telling stories.
I came of age listening to Gzowski, Vicky Gabereau, Clyde Gilmour and more from the 70s and 80s, all storytellers extraordinaire. CBC radio's strength has always been on its ability to tell a great story.
Michael Copeman
I can't turn the radio off quick enough when I hear the theme music for, This Is That.
Eric Keenleyside
I love This is That.
Qarl Johnson
A celebration of stupidity. Occasionally This is That does something funny, but not frequently enough to waste time on their misanthropic babble.
April Poppe
You all sound like a bunch of grumpy old farts.
Eden Haythornthwaite
I am a devotee of CBC and probably always will be but those programs you highlighted are dreadful self-indulgent crap. A bit characteristic of that class of dumbass narcissists who think their every thought is worthy of broadcast. Someone should barrel in and tell them all they are tedious twits who need to shut the fuck up - these tales are ridiculous and the wah wah quotient is way over the top. Just play some good tunes and maybe a stand-up comic if you can't arrange anything better than that drivel.
Cynthia Joan Morrison
It’s practically criminal that the CBC Radio does not have a program on the climate change crisis.
Geoffrey May
CBC used to have a program called Maritime Noon, a one hour regional show on resource issues , followed by a one hour phone-in. Its now a one hour phone in, and the 5 producers who used to do resource segments are either gone or have different jobs. CBC is no longer capable of producing 5 hours of regional resource news a week anymore. Fyi , my sister, Elizabeth May, emailed me the link to this blog.
Rory Gylander
Wow. If I wasn't so lazy this is the rant I that would have written! 20 somethings telling all their deep dark secrets; reminds me of after school specials when I was a kid. Listening to the broadcaster now is like watching a toddler flushing a toilet.
Steve Ross
Maybe the right wingers are right about scrapping the CBC
Brenda Durdle
It is being dismantled systematically. Less and less to defend and fewer people to defend it.
James McLaren
Agree, a lot of the personal POV programming is just plain boring. I find I'm listening to BBC World Service more nowadays (online and satellite radio) where I can listen and actually learn something, like for example there's a place called "Africa".
Patricia McQuaid
I agree, too much personal stories.
Joanne Light
Yes, too many personal stories. Wish they’d give Daniel Richter a show. He was shortlisted for the Q host but didn't get it. Such an erudite, cultured experienced interviewer.
Jennie Tschoban
The problem is not CBC, it's the world! Too much hype on things that don't matter. Ratings, however they are measured rule the airwaves. It's no longer the "news" it's whatever crap captures an audience - and unfortunately, "an audience" is for sensational reporting of human pain. 24-hour news covers repetitive events ad nauseum. Whatever happened to the 11 o'clock news?????
Lynda Mallett
Until I read this I thought it was only me getting fed up!
Keeble McFarlane
CBC radio was a big part of my education when I first came to Canada 47 years ago. We now seem to have migrated away from programs that inform the listener to stuff that merely tittilates and feeds popular memes. There are still a few worthwhile programs left, but they exist in a wilderness of weeds. Alas, this isn't limited to the CBC -- just sweep across the dial and hear the raucous drivel many stations spout all day. It's not just the Corpse which has changed -- the world has, and not always for the better.
Don Hill
Sadly - and I write as a former CBC radio host - the radio managers are completely informed by analytics, identity politics, and neglected to read Trust Me, I'm Lying https://www.kirkusreviews.com/.../ryan.../trust-me-lying/
Katherine Hoy
I agree. But as a former producer/reporter it's not hard to figure out why this is happening: Real journalism is expensive. It requires research, investigation, and fact checking. It's quicker, cheaper, and easier to call someone up to talk about personal experiences. Management no longer cares about journalism. Secondly, management no longer cares about boomers who grew up on fact-based journalism. It's all about targeting millennials, who seem to enjoy this type of programming.
Nick Fillmore
@Katherine Hoy First of all, CBC is wasting valuable resources on those dozen shows I wrote about. They employ 30 full-time, part-time and contract people! There are some of the resources needed to do better journalism. While investigative journalism is out of the question for Radio One, it costs very little to have a top notch interviewer talk with interesting Canadians in studio. There are many other programming things that can be done for not a lot of money. The problem is that CBC Radio management is anti-intellectual, and has the idea of building up ratings so it will eventually get permission to sell ads on Radio One. That would be the end of CBC Radio as far as I'm concerned.
Trish Johnson
We spent two weeks in Newfoundland and many places, all we could get on the radio was CBC. It was so depressing. Sad story after sad story. There used to be humour on CBC and sometimes they used to play music.
Doug Nesbitt
Thank you Nick Fillmore for writing what I have been thinking. I have been amazed at how badly the summer programming has been. I just can't listen to it anymore, it is just so so bad. It is all navel-gazing narcissistic nonsense, with no connection to world, the struggles, the discoveries, the big questions (damn I miss Rick McInnes and Dispatches!). I'm all for storytelling but this is people telling their stories for themselves as some cathartic act, not to illuminate something about the world we live in.
Judy Harper
I 100% agree. I am one of the life-long CBC radio fans who has recently turned it off in disgust, wondering WTF Sleepover has to do with anything when the world is going to hell in a climate change denying hand basket, or world war seems imminent.
Jim Worobec
I agree completely. I'm tired of the personal "bitching" about minor and meaningless issues.
Michael. Ryan
CBC - where they talk about music and play songs to explain stuff.
Stephen Garlick
CBC Radio One is increasingly Toronto-centric.
Michael Bednarski
CBC Radio has always been Toronto-centric. Listen to the topics on "Cross Country Check-up." The topics concern what is important in Toronto. Eg. School shooting? It's now a national epidemic on "CCC."
Rob Bright
I'm also from Toronto, and I can't stand the drivel the CBC airs these days. Not relevant or interesting to me at all.
Michael Bednarski
I used to listen to CBC Radio One at any time of the day. Now, it's selective like early in the morning or at 6pm.
Michael Copeman
Bang on! Thank you for expressing what many of us have been thinking.
Deborah Sonego
Well said - hope they are listening.
Stephen Kerr
The CBC's programming is duller than eggshell beige paint drying on a perfectly smooth wall bathed in soft light... because it's essentially a self-indulgent, self satisfied, liberal perspective, which ultimately cannot challenge the present, miserable conditions faced by working people in this country and others.
Elizabeth McLoughlin
The current commitment to airing these feeling-based monologues sure makes a journalism career easy-peasy...no hard work and research required!
Tracy Burns
That's what I think, too. It must be relatively inexpensive to program also.
Elizabeth McLoughlin
Glad to see I'm not the only thinking Canadian who clicks off after The Current! It is just ghastly programming all day long. Yesterday I didn't turn it off, and came back to hear the host yammering on about getting on a bus on her tired way home from work...I listened to her ramble on about the rest of her encounter, and finally clicked it off as it was just such a boring, nothing, vacuous, downright egregiously lazy piece of garbage, highly paid on my tax dollars, that I felt truly outraged.
The business crowd now constituting management at CBC ensures we will work to get it cut off the public teat, for sure.
Sionna Breasal
CBC needs to have more real regional programming of local issues, and when they allow that, they will get all the colour and stimulating stories they can handle. They need to let people be real, and stop presenting everything from either navel gazing or the neo-liberal economics of selfishness perspective.
Laura Mulrooney
I always want to learn something new when I'm listening. All I'm learning these days are the words to country songs on the next most tolerable radio station.
Stephanie Sydiaha
YES!!!
Mark Cardiff
Talk about hitting the nail on the head ! Well said!
Greg Duval
Remember who is in charge of the board of Directors with the CBC and the ultimate goal of the previous government :-(
Stephanie Sydiaha Yes, Trudeau promised to restore independence to the board, I heard him say it directly to me in Saskatoon in June of 2015. Waiting.
Nick Fillmore
Actually the Board changes are happening. The ca,l for a new president was issued this month.
David Thomas Sr.
At least the personal stories are likely much more accurate than the news, or The Current. I getting my news on world affairs from foreign sources like TeleSur and Global Research (Cdn.).
Steve Wildesmith
I like most of what I choose (operative word) to listen to, I like Q unlike the writer who turns it off after The Current, I dislike most of the local stuff, as an artist i can attest that at least here in Ottawa it is clique based patter (in my opinion), I love shows like Ideas, and Spark, and Tapestry, and TWAS, and As It Happens (way more than the current, yawn) and then there's the one's I love like "The World" (1am) and Day 6 and Under the Influence, and Quirks and Quarks, and A Propos, and The Sunday Edition, (a treasure for at least one of the hours each week) and Writers and Company, and This American Life, and Secrets of the 5th estate, and even Randy's Vinyl Tap, in-spite of his personal plugs lol. I can't name another single broadcaster on radio that has this much content that suits me,... and I am over 50. Not bad from where I sit.
Linda Tweddell
And, despite it's flaws, there is no other radio broadcaster that is at least as good as the CBC. I love it despite the repeats. I don't know what I'd do with much of my day and all of my driving time without CBC Radio!
Diane Joyce Hall
Can't stand "reality" TV so why would I listen to "reality" radio?
Brian Giles
Don't forget folks, that Prime Ministers Chrétien, and particularly Harper have drastically reduced the CBC budget year after year because they can't stand an independent thinking woman's station.
Mr. Trudeau has paid minimal lip service with a token budget catch-up. But we are subjected to program repeats and low priced navel gazing because it takes real money to mount quality programming and fund investigative research, and the Mother Corp has been starved. Throw her a bone!! She's worth it!
Nick Fillmore
The problem in this situation is not the budget. Radio One is using about 30 full-time producers and hosts to do these programs. These resources could be used to produce some useful programming.
Steve Devine
It feels like it's a constant parade of social groups that have been done wrong by society or the government. By all means have some of this but does it have to be the main diet?
Elizabeth Sellwood
I have started to listen to radio stations with advertising. Who'd have thought that of me? I prefer the ads to the endless non-stories. At least, the ads don't last an entire hour. I still listen to the Current, and road reports in the p.m.. The station is more drivel that serious content. And, no, I don't care about everyone's feelings. I have enough on my plate dealing with my own. Give me some substantive news.
Ingrid Alesich
Agreed. I do the same. Lots of meaningless jabber.
Bernadette Stringer
I used to LOVE CBC.
Elizabeth McLoughlin
The Current, Saturday and Sunday mornings, and weekly evening programming is still hanging on.... Q has done excellent interviews, even if the music does nothing for me. It's the weekdays daytime that's morphed into Soapdom. Hopefully the Corp will find some real journos available under the skin of the current daytime therapeutic-tell-me-your pain producers.
Pauline Byrne
I also dislike all the consistent repeats.
Nick Fillmore
If CBC management was not so anti-intellectual it could easily produce three or four low-budget programs instead of some of this personal-issues stuff. It costs very little to put a highly-skilled interviewer in a studio with an interesting person. But management doesn't want this.
Isabel Bliss
For myself, I listen to Radio-Canada as the music and programming is superior and has been for decades, and I get to improve my French !
Peter Barss
Yes, I agree completely. Much of CBC programming seems to be a radio synthesis of Dr. Phil and Dear Abbey. I attribute this to budget cuts. The stories you refer to and the ones the blog names are easy and cheap to do. Being easy and cheap is a rarely good thing.
Eline Brock
Wholeheartedly agree.
Don Kossick
You can balance your listening with community radio. Don Kossick, CFCR 90.5 Saskatoon - Making the Links Radio.
Hajime Harold
There are programs that I feel are informative and thought provoking as other listeners have mentioned. And I do enjoy some afternoon programming with Indigenous content. I am not too critical of C.B.C. realizing the budget cuts and having to cater to a wide range of listeners. I will however say that our morning host in Kelowna, Chris Walker, is an excellent interviewer, who is not afraid to ask tough questions. In fact, all the crew her are great. And yes, there are programs that I turn off. I try to see the challenges C.B.C. face with limited funding and realizing the different listening tastes, I think C.B.C. with its short comings, still delivers a valuable service, eh, Canada. Thanks for listening to my ramblings.
Harvey Wyers
I always found myself not listening to the CBC as much and never really thought much of it until I read Nick’s blog. I now realize that the reason I stopped was because of the very uninteresting programming which I guess sub consciously just turned off and changed channels.
Caroline Yeend
I stopped listening to cbc radio after they cut all the good shows nothing left but a couple of good token shows left
Mary Margaret Kachurowski
A bit harsh but I tend to not like the same shows as Fillmore dislikes! I'd like to see more story telling in the vein of Stuart McLean and a return to a "daily" soap. And fewer reruns!!!! How many ways can you repackage the Current?????
Left-Wing Canada
I can't get enough of ideas, i love Cross Country Checkup even when Rex hosted it (he was good for that show), Quirks and Quarks should be bigger than it is, The Debaters and The Irrelevant Show are hilarious, Spark is alright but Nora Young is wasted there, I prefered the Jesse Brown show Search Engine, it was amazing for its short run (Jesse having gone on to make the equally fantastic Canadaland), The Next Chapter is ok but mostly because of Shelagh Rogers, she is a legend, I would love to be interviewed by her, Art of Persuasion and Under the Influence are all fantastic and inciteful, not sure about Terrys new show Venturing Out, I don't care what rich people think about life, Vinyl Cafe was so great, miss Stuart Mclean :(, White Coat Black Art has some really good episodes, As for shows that need to be mercifully killed, I hate DNTO, Saturday Night Blues needs to go and Vinyl Tap needs to be erased from the air, I hate the host, I don't care about his stupid stories or his boring wife and the old-time music is boring and overplayed, god please CBC get rid of that show! it's awful! horrible! Sleepover looks to be a good setup for Suk Yun Lee, The Current is good but *shrug* and new shows On Drugs and Podcast Playlist look to be really great.
KJ Moore
The most alarming of the changes on CBC Radio during the last years was the decision by it's conservative appointed board members to outright cancel "Dispatches". This long running show was one of the most important shows that the CBC had as it followed up on once "important" stories that were still happening but no longer in the media spotlight. This program often put into focus some rather unflattering things about our media and governmental policies that us citizen types really need to know about, like the abysmal human rights record of Canadian mining companies operating in South America. I do not expect the CBC to do anything to address this "personal stories are to replace stories of corporate malfeasance" because the same Conservative appointees are still in charge of "our" public broadcaster. If there is one thing the corporate world and their appointees can agree on, it is the need to prevent the public from holding them to account for their actions.
Posts on CANADALAND:
barinnoma:
The last handful of times As It Happens has been on in the car I have had to change the station almost immediately. It's been pure fluff of the most overtly useless nature. Used to like that show, but I just cannot find any interest in superficial garbage pieces. So yeah, it's not just the new programs.
Greenslope:
I live close enough to the border that I also get NPR on my car radio. I start with CBC and almost immediately change the station to NPR after the CBC turns out to be drivel almost immediately.
There seems to be a CBC bubble wherein all presenters have the same background, interests, tone and style. The subjects are almost entirely identity politics/human interest/can lit and even these aren't done terribly well. Can they not find someone who can host and intelligently discuss or have an opinion on politics? Media? Crime? Business? Music? Or someone who even has an opinion, on anything? I'd gladly listen to CBC if it sounded like Canadaland as Jesse Brown is someone with an opinion and he seeks out interesting subjects. I don't even agree with him all that often, but it is quality radio telling unique and interesting stories, often in great depth.
I have no inside knowledge, but it seems like every host at CBC probably has an English degree with a masters in journalism. They all speak in the exact same way. The male hosts almost all sound feminine, is it an actual rule? How about some actual diversity aside from skin colour? ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
Eileen Norman
I'm just listening to "Quirks and Quarks". Now where else could anybody hear such interesting and educational information on your radio dial? I love CBC for reasons like this. Jewels might go out of fashion, but they are never thrown out.
Sachin Hingoo
Quoting from Nick Fillmore: "But many other recent series are not the kind of shows that should be so prominent on the CBC, dwelling on sad stories of difficult lives, people rambling about their feelings, and talk of “human connections.” Wait, what? Even allowing that such shows are "prominent" on CBC, a faulty assertion, what's the problem with this sort of programming, exactly?
Nick Fillmore
Sachin Hingoo Hi -- I thought the piece explained this. I think it would be fine if, say, 20 per cent of the programming on Radio One concerned personal issue problems and entertainment. The problem is that the programs I write about all avoid dealing with issues in a serious way.
Sachin Hingoo
Can personal issues not be an entry point into larger social issues? That's something I believe CBC Radio does better than most. And I think that "the important issues of our time" is pretty subjective. For those suffering, say, mental or emotional issues, those subjects are far more important than politics. Its a thought provoking piece though, thanks for your response.
Dean Gordon
It can, but the amount of feature and special interest programming seems to have a much greater focus than news and current affairs. It's really noticeable.
Kate Robertson
A lot of male journalists in particular seem to dislike confessional/personal storytelling, and that criticism is usually lodged at female identifying storytellers. Just an observation. Also I agree the CBC should have a climate change focused show, but clearly the subject is challenging to make sexy for an audience. Otherwise more mainstream outlets would be doing it and doing it well.
Max Kenneth
I have basically stopped listening to cbc 1 in favour of podcasts, many of which are produced by volunteers. For instance, Science for the People, out of public radio in Edmonton, is usually much better than Quirks n Quarks. CBC cannot manage to find good people to produce content despite how many go without work in this country.
Chris Hunter
I hadn't really thought about it before, but he does have a point. The only one of these shows that seems to relate to a larger sociopolitical issue is "On Drugs." CBC Summer programming being a bit on the fluffier side is hardly anything new though. We'll see what fall brings.
Max Kenneth
I think there is a LOT more wrong than personal narratives. I mean even when they try to emulate TAL they cannot do it well and it turns out boring.
Dave Duprey
Perhaps it's not a coincidence that CBC Radio One's obsession with ratings coincides with the introduction of advertisements (when listened to on the Internet). There is a reason the CBC faithful listeners over the past decades have fought so hard to prevent it from happening. And, here we are, and there it goes...
Graeme Warder Anderson
You just threw some shade on some fantastic shows and then sang praises for Someone Knows Something which is the biggest waste of time I've ever listened to.
Brett Favaro
I agree with the specific criticism regarding lack of a climate change show. Climate change is shaping nearly every public policy decision indirectly or directly and it is insane how little it is covered. And I don’t mean just a local or one off thing. I mean regular weekly coverage of all the ways our country will be shaped by this crisis - whether we deny its existence or whether we take action to solve it.
Jessica Hallam
Great observation. I always skip the soft programming and didn't realize how bad it had become before reading this.
Eduardo Visconte
Where is Peter Gzowski I've been looking everywhere....
Nick Fillmore
You're joking, right?
Jack Snow
getting so bad, they run replays of "rewind".
Bill Polonsky
Less personal stories about cancer....
Yvone Milan
True. CBC needs some revamping.
Lisa Howard
I find the personal story telling as 'women centered' thing quite demeaning to women. Same with the youth-oriented stuff. Why must everything be made more mushy and apolitical for youth? I think these are ideas that appeal to certain business minded people. This is a change of style that they're selling to us *as though* it were a strategy designed to appeal to youth. To me the CBC seems like it's being overrun by MBAs. Their biggest idea is to save money by cutting investigative journalism and all the stuff that goes into what others would call grown-up radio (researchers, proofreaders, production staff). So now they center shows around a 'celebrity,' make it gossipy, get a bunch of people in a room and confess. I think these people have not read the mandate.
Top of Form
I like this line in the article: The mantra at CBC Radio is, ‘Tell us your story.’ The first problem is that if this is all you're doing, you lose out on the investigative journalism stuff. You know, the important stuff that actually serves the country. The second problem is the implementation. They're asking the same stories over and over and over again (at least according to my own listening experiences). It seems like to be heard on CBC these days (regardless of the program), you have to be some combination of:
Indigenous, Woman, LGBT (seems to be a special focus on the "T" these days, too), (non-indigenous) POC, Refugee/Newcomer, Disabled. Bonus points if the person is Torontonian.
All of that is fine, but it gets boring if that's all you're putting out there. I'm tired of hearing the same thing over and over. I've tuned out of CBC Radio 1 entirely except at the top of the hour for the news. Once that's done, it's back to audiobooks or music played from my devices.
Even then, it bleeds over into the news, too. I have the CBC news app, and right now one of the stories on the "top stories" page is about choosing "X" as a gender on a passport, another is about public works putting out a "transgender workplace guide" (?), and there's a whole "CBC Indigenous" out there (so basically a "third solitude" being built alongside English and French).
BimAtman
I don't think the argument they are making is that storytelling has to necessarily take away from investigative stuff, but rather that the half-assed way they do their storytelling is not actually engaging. you can do good storytelling AND newsy investigative stuff. It's just the CBC does both of them terribly. Really, really terribly.
MasFabulsoDelMundo
"Story telling" is the current mantra, fad, required thesis in several creative expression fields, like photography and I guess radio. I think it's typical, uncreative response to the mass communication media world. Everyone has a voice and needs to be heard, but uncreative people lecturing to uncreative people engenders, institutionalizes, uncreativity.
"Tell your story" is really mid-level advice, guidance, critique. Creators with fundamental, life sustaining creative drive don't tell stories, we create something new. When you have the drive, conversely, it's hard to control abandoning what you're doing for yet another new idea: evidence, many programs teach artists, creators, how to focus. Fundamental weakness with "Tell your story" is that everybody's story is unique. Weirdly it's only here and similar fora that "story telling" approaches unique via unedited expression (cumbox, Kevin, jollyranchers, etc...) whereas controlled fora drowns in every-story sameness.
I only know CBC music radio, it's a muddle of irrelevant sameness from morning wakeup to latenite programming. They have an obvious, short commercial playlist. The only uniqueness comes from guest hosts filling in for vacationing hosts, they go off playlist script with interesting music industry minutiae.
PizzaCat9000
CBC died when they took Dispatches with Rick MacInnes-Rae off the air. Because who cares about what's going on outside of Canada, right.
Trashman
Dispatches was so well done. Some of the most engaging radio I've ever listened to. It is missed.
East902
I would love to see Dispatches return...
Professional_Fartier
I hate to say it, but heart wrenching stories of tragedies endured will usually get me to change the channel. Seems like story after story is, "Listen to this tale of evil (white) people and how bad they were", and I'm a white person who never did any of this stuff, I tune out.
Also, tales of poverty and war and privation and oppression are all the SAME. You could have each individual residential school survivor tell their story on CBC (and sometimes it seems like this is what they're aiming at) and we won't learn anything from it, I'm afraid.
Used to be I had CBC on all day every day, never listened to anything else. Nowadays, The Current Of Misery usually gets me off CBC 1, I can't listen to AMT patiently drawing all that pain out of person after person and dripping it into my ear every day. Consequently I listen to a lot of church music IDGAF about on CBC 2 just to get away from the relentless immiserating of Radio One.
Mordant_Misanthrope
Preach! Good God, The Current and Anna Marie Tremonte have been absolutely unlistenable for the last several years. Not only is it always social justice segments, AMT isn't even trying to hide her bias or agenda anymore. When the "expert counterpoint" to an opinion from The Huffington Post is a BuzzFeed blogger, you know the show has jumped the shark.
yyz_guy
Agreed. I used to listen to The Current a lot more 8-9 years ago. It has gone way downhill in the past couple years. It used to be to CBC Radio what The National was to CBC Television.
Anonymous
This puts it better than I did...it's just the constant barrage of victim this and oppressed that, and how we should all just feel bad about it.
PurpleFireFlower
I listen to the radio to get analysis of important events. Instead I get a lot of complaining.
Chris Dancey
This article nails my experience with CBC radio. I used to turn it on in the morning and listen all day. Now I prefer silence to drivel. Happy to see I'm not alone.
Brenda Jane
Sadly, the best shows on CBC these days are by BBC and Deutsche Welle.
Michelle Renner
Be more like the BBC.
jeemer_
Completely agree, in my opinion the radio used to be the best thing the CBC did, but these days it's nothing but sob story after sob story about how hard everyone's life is. It's not interesting and it's definitely not entertaining.
BimAtman
Which aspects of CBC radio did you used to enjoy?
jeemer_
I guess I sort of misspoke, radio is still probably the best aspect of the CBC given the sorry state of the other parts, especially television. And the parts I like - local content, current affairs, and news - those are still there, they're just being pushed aside more and more in favour of these sob stories.
422WestenderSSM
As a truck driver in Northern Ontario I listen to a lot of radio. I was just thinking the other day about all the recent drivel they've been putting out. I wasn't sure if CBC changed or if I did? This article put into words what I was thinking. Nobody has mentioned Cross Country Check Up. I like hearing from Canadians coast to coast. Their views and comments. My local morning and afternoon shows are also well done. I hope they rethink their programming.
Top of Form
I like Cross Country Check-up as well, depending on what the topic is. Not as much a fan of the rest of Sunday afternoons anymore.
impaler_v
I really miss vinyl cafe but at least I can still get the debaters. Other than the gardening show with the voice that sounds like satan there is very little else worth listening to.
They seem to be aiming for the under 25 metrosexual fanbase these days. Which is kind of funny because who under 25 listens to talk radio?
Counterpoint:
I hate Cross Country Check-up. I turn off my radio whenever it's on air, it's people rambling a lot.
422WestenderSSM
Fair enough. And I agree. I just want to hear average Canadians giving their average opinion on average subjects. In a Country so big that is so expensive to travel in, I like the dialogue. I miss Richardson's Roundup for the same reasons.
Trashman
A Seat at the Table has to be the worst show I have heard yet. It is such a low quality show for the national broadcaster.
East902
Never listened to it.. What’s it like?
Trashman-
Well it is a talk show about current issues from a minority immigrant female perspective. But it doesn't have any depth, at all. The only episode I listened to they were talking about the white supremacist/Nazi rally in the states. They basically just repeated back and forth that it made them feel scared, and worried about the children. How they both have friends and family in the states and they are very concerned for their safety. This went on for 10 minutes.
ohfukyabud
CBC Radio 2 has become my go to, all varieties of music very little talking and no ads. It's
maplebaconmoose
Thank god someone is finally saying it. I'm one of those people who used to have the CBC on in the background most of the day, but now it is just so annoying. What's even worse, however, is that even the investigative/political/current-events interviews are just so insipid. It almost sounds as if the journalists aren't informed about the issues or the persons they are interviewing. They just want to tell stories.
I mostly use my cell phone now to listen to the radio: NPR for documentaries and investigative stories and RTE1 (Ireland) for no holds barred and well informed interviews with politicians. I only listen in to the CBC for the morning weather, national news and occasionally Ideas.
Holypapalsmear
Pheeew, it is not just me. I sadly have given up on the station. I used to love it, now I end up turning to commercial radio as the ads are less painful than the boring victim stories by people of zero interest.
FakeTrending
CBC radio has stacked the deck with far leftists. Sometimes I tune in to hear what far left nonsense they're peddling, and it is always Trump bashing, queer stuff, black stuff and aboriginal stuff. With the latter, the CBC desperately wants residential schools to be Canada's version of the Holocaust.
Also, all of the "men" on the radio have that gay-but-not-gay voice that is the product of low testosterone. I doubt there is even one CBC employee who would vote for the CPC.
HotbladesHarry
Cbc radio is a guaranteed downer. I don't mind listening to a few programs about how viscously unequal our society is, but nowadays it's feels like every show is dedicated to bringing down and criticising Canada.
trillhungyboy
I used to listen to it every morning for years, but when it got to the point where I'd be bummed out by everything I heard from it, I just called it quits.
Notoverlyclevername
Only way to listen to cbc now is there podcast app that way i can skip 90% of the terrible shows. My go to podcasts are cross country checkup, power and politics, the house, ontario today, quirks and quarks and as it happens.
Reacher-Said-Nothing
Quirks and Quarks is great, The Irrelevant Show and The Debaters are two solid comedy options, and Under the Influence is the greatest radio show I've ever heard. Cross Country Checkup is a vital part of our nation. The House is where some of the most important political discussions have happened, some people aren't even hearing the things our government is saying because they don't listen to The House.
Their news reporting is perfect, I couldn't ask for more. But my god, Writers and Company is so boring... I once fell asleep to CBC radio and Writers and Company came on, and it bored me awake.
SilkenButcher
It would be cool to see a format for some other common occupations/hobbies like cooking, exercise, or simple automotive maintenance, or housekeeping etc.
CBC needs to do more to promote a healthy and competent society. People need to understand that problems are identifiable and often solvable.
BarackTrudeau
My god is Sleepover one of the most insipid things I've ever listed to.
johnstanton
... trying to appeal to a younger demographic in order to stay relevant and keep the numbers up, (while losing those who are interested in more substantive content).
There are lots of inherent assumptions about the "younger demographic" here, but I suppose they must have some metrics to substantiate it.
sdbest
I can easily agree that these personal stories should be told. As for me, I'm not interested in hearing them. Consequently, CBC is simply no longer our 'go to' radio station. With Sirius and internet radio, NPR and BBC World Service are our preferred radio services.
SteamboatKevin
The CBC should be used to celebrate and parade Canadian entrepreneurs and capitalist success stories. We need a nation that competes and wins, not one sopping wet in a urine soaked blanket of "emotional intelligence".
NBCanuck
They could be using resources to have regional reporters do things like short interviews/profiles of Canadians starting & operating businesses. This is solid idea and I would definitely listen.
Anonymous
The closest I've heard to this were a horrendously dull interview with, and I hope I'm remembering right, an "Indigenous woman who makes and sells homemade candles."
run_turtle_faster
I have to agree. CBC radio is not what it was. I used to have it on all the time. Now, it is just...weak. I don't want to listen to the 24 hour victim show.
rickstrumbleton
I drove across the province on Canada Day, and for about a quarter of the four hour drive, I had CBC Radio One on. I shut it off after every single guest gave a seemingly pre-screened, well-coached answer to "What do you think of some Indigenous people deciding not to celebrate Canada 150" that seemed to offer their guests a chance to kneel and toe the party line, making platitudes about how Canada is sexist, racist, heteronormative, or some other buzzword of the day.
Every so often I check back, and it's all victimhood pornography. The network took a staggering and sharp left turn somewhere in the last few years. It simply does not carry any relevance to my life anymore.
Anonymous
Nick Fillmore is indeed right about some of CBC radio's content being absolute crap. I'd be fine with talking to people about their problems if they were at least people worth talking to or problems worth worrying about. I've tuned into absolute drama queens talking about the angst and pain of doing absolutely nothing while the host hmms along like she's in a coma from the boredom (very possible).
However, CBC had crap on it before.
Why are people tuning out now? It's never been easier to play a podcast or audiobook focused on something you're actually interested in. The sheer quantity of fascinating audio content out there is just staggering. CBC Radio should probably just can their under-performing shows and buy the rights to play good podcasts. Being exposed to random, quality podcasts would actually be a delight!
84900t8
They actually have a show that dips into interesting podcasts.
refillit
CBC Radio - the fact that it doesn't have ads is enough to get me hooked to it.
Beaker
Here's What's Wrong With CBC Radio: cuts to funding. FIFY.
Beaker
The title isn't saying Nick Fillmore is what's wrong with CBC Radio - he's the author of the opinion piece.
Right. However: 1, he doesn't use either the word funding or cut once in his article; 2, he directs the reader to email cbc and to cc him which.., well I shouldn't have to tell you but, odds are his email address is just a junk box monitored by a script for two purposes: 1, measure message penetration; 2, collect and sell your address to spammers. imho, the author is part of the problem or, at best, an ignorant participant and side note of the cbc's real problems author. Hence I crossed his name out.
NBCanuck
True and honestly, I've found infinitely more interesting content produced by YouTubers. CBC is on its way out in a matter of years. I doubt it will die completely, but I can see it massively scaled down again.
Reacher-Said-Nothing
I listen to it every day, as I've posted elsewhere in this thread, I'm a huge fan of Under the Influence, I love Quirks and Quarks, The Irrelevant Show, The Debaters, and I think shows like The House or Cross Country Checkup are not only enjoyable, but important to this nation.
Travis Poland
This summer I have found myself reaching for the dial and turning the radio off more than ever before. I detest the personal focus and lack of meat that comes with the newer programs. While I recognize "stories are about people" to quote my second year reporting teacher, these personal stories are rarely connected to a larger issue.
If CBC wants to reach a younger audience, this isn't the way to do it. Too many young people are unaware of the FM dial anyways. I would argue quality journalistic programming is what would revive the CBC Radio One programming timetable. People want quality journalism and that shouldn't be sacrificed for programs like Sleep Over.
Michael Brooks, Victoria, B.C.
I'm not so sure it has to do with a lack of smarts. I think these folks have the brains but are clouded in their thinking by other issues. There seems to be a desire for social engineering among millenials, so that's part of it. Also, they've been educated to believe in themselves, self-esteem etc, plus social media pressure, being told you're a brand, not a person all leads them to want to tell not only their own, but the personal stories of others.
I also think, although it's difficult to come out and say, there are too many women involved in the programming decisions. That's a guess but I couldn't help but note all three of your contacts where female. I'm not a chauvinist by any stretch but I do wonder about diversity at the senior producer level. Anyway, I hope you keep writing about this. Radio is relatively cheap. My suggestion is for TV to get out of drama & comedy and some of that money go back into radio. We should also get our formerly-excellent international service back up.
Sara-Anne Peterson
I have listened to CBC radio in the evenings for 60 years and what has been happening to it has been driving me crazy. I have lived in remote areas all these years and it has informed me and entertained me. Stopped listening to Cross Country Check Up when Rex took over. Once won a t-shirt from Radio Prague in the middle of the night but no longer get those World Radio Network Broadcasts. Don’t want to hear everyone’s little story. Have written to the minister, twittered the minister, face booked the minister.
From a senior CBC Radio employee:
Well done. Those of us who still toil in the senior service are exasperated by the trivial pilots that get approved. The 'digital first' strategy -as far as radio goes- became 'digital only'. It's off the rails.
Rick Zerr
Spot on. These words echo thoughts I formed some weeks ago after listening to one more shallow personal expose. I am a dedicated listener of the programs you applauded and turn it off during these constant testimonials. If I wanted this, I would waste my time cruising Facebook. CBC needs to stop being Canada's chief navel gazer and start looking beyond our borders.
Michele McManus
Having just watched the CBC Radio you tube thing, and having read the ‘pitch guide’, I am folding my tent and silently going away… It is obvious that I no longer form any part of the demographic that CBC is aiming at.
Peter Ganter.
I totally agree….I’ve started turning off CBC often. I am fairly certain that I have shut it off more in the last 6-8 months than in the 10 years before.
Dave Thomas
Twenty five years of budget cuts, conservative appointments and 180 degree change in Cdn foreign policy are the major culprates in this dumbing down of programming. Programs Fillmore is cheering like, The Current, As It Happens, The Sunday Edition, I consider the main culprates. These programs never veer from nor question Canadian foreign policy.
It was particularly noticeable the morning Fidel Castro’s death was announced last November. CBC along with ALL other media outlets went negative on his legacy, as though a certain mechanism directed such reporting. The same can be said of news around Syria’s Asaad government and the Constituent Assembly elections in Venezuela July 30th.
Worse, the propaganda is presented so boldly improbably only the naive could be taken in. When did CBC report on Venezuela’s 1.7 million affordable housing built? The drastic reduction in poverty? The drastic reduction in infant morality? When was the last time a repressive government gave their people anything???
CBC as it operates today is an organ that deigns Cdn’s the right to know. Being government owned, to be sure, the powers that play the people’s elected representatives like puppets, and powerful foreign allies, will not allow their interests to be challenged.
The boring personal stories are at least quite neutral therefore less harmful to the consumer. The consumers only alternative if balance in the news is unavailable is search for balance in news sources consumed.
Personally I’ve turned to foreign news outlets like Telesur and the Cdn Global Research for news and analysis.
Ian Weniger, Vancouver
Your article about CBC Summer programming is not up to that standard. CBC Radio is indeed more important than ever. Your puzzlement about its programming shortcomings, however, is disingenuous.
You would know management has been exploiting lower-cost podcasts and hasn't returned Radio News to managerial autonomy from the senior TV staff. PM Beefcake seems to have kicked in just enough cash to cover the beta version of the new CBC.ca site. We would therefore expect more 'meh' pods greenlighted by senior non-radio managers.
I'll agree with you on SYL's continuation of sleepwalking known as Sleepover? and the daylight robbery known as Road Trip Radio. For the rest, you're grousing about dubious promo scripts. I'm not sure you listened to any of these shows. Most of them possess far more redeeming qualities, including critical thought and analysis, than anyone could hope to reveal from blurbs. And your friend who dislikes "victimhood" is tuning out the successes that Canadians squeeze out of their common, unique and sometimes historic struggles.
Name withheld
From my perspective of 34.4 years as a news reporter for the CBC, until I volunteered to join those forced out at the end of June 2014, it looks like the wilful neglect of funding under former governments has left only unskilled j-school grads filling the airwaves with amateurish and often cringe-worthy whining.
Vast space seems to be given over to the personal dilemmas of alternative sexuality. Is this designed to turn loyal listeners away? It sure sounds like that. Perhaps managers are just following orders to make the cow's milk so vile that nobody cares when they turn the cow into hamburger.
Comments from the CBC Fan Club Facebook page:
Linda Belanger
Totally agree. I've stopped listening. It seems it is always personal story telling and very fake and scripted to boot. What's worse is that CBC is supposed to tell Canadian stories and often the personal stories are trivial anecdotes from the USA! I can't wait until they get a new board. What a waste of money the CBC has become. It's got to get fixed or at some point it will lose its supporters.
Ann-Marie Hunter
Repeat programming is very annoying! Let's put funding back into our public broadcasting system and help it to return to its greatness!
Violet Coburn I no longer listen. I can tolerate some of the programming, but the regular interruptions to tell me about Trump drive me batty.
Leslie Anthony
I couldn't agree more. I could give a shit about this kind of personal-interest story. I miss innovative shows like "Wiretap." We need way more science, history, philosophy and the good music shows they used to have. CBC has been playing a lot of shit pop music lately.
Scott Birke
My thoughts exactly.
Roxanne Stubbs
Totally agree!!
Zach White
Ever since the passing of McLean and Vinyl Cafe going off air CBC has lost some of its spunk.
Eva Murray
Story telling is an art; the themes are universal. Too much personal revelation is therapy.
Terrie Rolph
I love them too, but I think a bit more balance would be nice.
Susan Beaton
Well, I wish there was a host with a bit more mental curiosity. Anna Maria is great, but that's a news program for the most part. I would like to see a host do a show like Gzowski did.... Canada wide, and curious about who people are and what they're ...See More
Pieta VanDyke
Compared to last year, when the Q was all about hip hop, I like it better this year, thanks to having an experienced host .(and different producers?)
Christine Lemieux
The Current is one of the best CBC programs. Anna Maria is excellent!
Christine Clark
Finally! This is the conversation we should be having about Radio One. It's really gone down hill. Nothing worse, when there's so many incredibly charged events happening in the world today, to have to listen to sad stories ad nauseum.
Rod Jacob One more "gender fluid" profile, interview or "comedian" and the dial turns for good. Waaaaay too much identity politics on air on CBC.
Robert Twigg
I used to appreciate CBC because of the thoughtful, well researched programs. Currently I appreciate the Saturday morning programs and Michael Enright's program. Too many of the others remind me of reality and suggest a bit too much narcissism on the part of the interviewed
Natalie Bowes
Saturday morning CBC is our favourite too!
Shawn Byezako
I'll admit I long for more deep historical or scientific/philosophy shows like the type that Michael Enright generally hosts... quirks and quarks is a highlight as well, but then we do have to sit through a lot of fluff pieces. Some of it is mildly interesting, but the humor stuff is generally banal and pointless... other than "this is that", of course.
Sean Lahey
I agree in large, but find Quirks has skid a lot over the years. Lots of establishment fluff as you say, and less hard hitting. Remember the old theme music and Jay Ingram??
Deena Netzke
Where are the younger versions of Peter Gzowski, Lister Sinclair, Max Ferguson, Stan Carew, Stuart McLean... Where are the intelligent, knowledgeable, erudite broadcasters with eclectic tastes, beautifully trained voices, a passion for the country and a dedication to the profession? That doesn't seem like a lot to ask. There are very good examples to follow!
Mark Hill
Every one you mentioned is/was a white old man. Our country has a much wider perspective than just that of the white old man.
Deena Netzke Mark Hill no arguments there, and it says everything about the culture they came from, but it was what they did with their privileges I miss. I don't care who replaces them - but I want that person to be able to connect with every Canadian.
Kevin Goss My biggest complaint with CBC radio is how Toronto - centric it remains (and I live in Toronto ). While listening during a visit to visit family in NB and NS , I found it so irrelevant to what was going on elsewhere in the country. Whether it was Q or another program, it just seemed to be all Queen West all the time.
Margo Lamont
Agree with Nick. Used to have it on constantly.. Now rarely in daytime. Ideas and Enright, Sat Night Blues, and Vinyl Tap.... about all I listen to now. CBC Radio has abandoned its base chasing the fickle golden demographic.
Claire Johnson The personal stories are cheaper to produce than something that requires research, careful, expert thought, and artistry. I'd rather have additional content from the BBC or other public broadcasters if it's too expensive to produce high quality programs.
Michael Emmet
Yes. The pendulum has swung too far. Personal stories have a role to play as part of the fabric of radio journalism, but not nearly to the degree that CBC Radio One producers think.
An example was the demise of DNTO, which had sadly become largely a forum for Sook-Yin Lee and her personal entourage to tell us all about their lives and interests. And then showing that they didn't remotely understand why that show failed, they came up with her new vehicle, Sleepover, which is the epitome of everything I hate about the dark side of my favourite broadcaster.
Being a lifelong Radio One devotee (literally since childhood, almost five decades now), it pains me to see what it has become, particularly since the Harper cuts and appointments (of people whose only role on the Board was to kill the CBC). If it weren't for the flagship shows like AIH, The Current, Ideas, Under The Influence, Tapestry, etc., I would abandon ship.
Even the traditionally exceptional The World At Six now has far too much of its half-hour taken up with personal interest stories. A new direction is needed.
Douglas Pritchard
I just moved back from Scotland after 14 years, CBC Radio is way too chatty, syrupy and myopic. I used to listen to it religiously but now find it cringeworthy. I would suggest that they look at Radio Scotland - far more professional and vital.
Roger Brant
Agree with Nick regarding the rise of personal story telling - even if the content was good, it's disproportionate. And it's often NOT very good, coming across more as some excitable rookies getting the shot at telling their amateurishly concocted story without tying it into any broader context. Kinda like the Ann Landers column of yesteryear's newspapers.
Da Bartolf
Depends on who is telling the story. If it's Randy Bachman, yes. Everyone else is a maybe to a no. Problem is they have too little budget to fill up too much airtime, so what is the cheapest thing to pay for? The host's time and nothing else. Sigh.
Nick Fillmore
Nope, budget was not the problem this summer. Those new programs employed 30 full-time and part-time producers and hosts, plus travel.
Deena Netzke
I am really fed up with the number of broadcasters who want to air their own personal journey with the exclusion of a broader background or an exploration of how their chosen topic affects anyone else but themselves. The pieces tend to have a segment where they call up their mom or dad and ask for their thoughts on... when they came out/their chosen career/how they handled mental illness/cultural differences - and/or whatever personal journey they have survived or are embarking upon. To me it seems very self-indulgent, and I find it very tiresome.
Patrick Mahoney
I hate to have to agree.
I used to love CBC when I first arrived in Canada, in 95. It is all repeats and reruns now, know nothing presenters and inane shows , such as 'The debaters '. Though it it is not supposed to be said openly, I pine for Gian Ghomeshi in the mornings...????
Dan Soukeroff
I quit listening to CBC over a year ago, except for Micheal Enright. The rest of the programming is so so boring! From having CBC on all he time to a couple hours on Sundays big change for me.
Art Tindill
I only listen now to "the Debaters" and anytime I can find Randy Bachman. I have listened to CBC Radio since CFPR Prince Rupert, going back to the 50's, now, for most of the discussed reasons, I have let it go. Sorry to say, it is no longer interesting
Jason Michael Crewe
Basically anything other than "news" programming loses my listening. I used to listen to CBC religiously in the car, but the lack of anything interesting these days keeps me away. It's always some personal experience story, with narration; which is fine every so often. Not multiple times daily, as regular programming on the station that people turn to for news.
Tracey Wigle
I have to say that I agree. Listening to Out in the Open and Sleepover I feel like asking "Why are you telling me this?". It is the bringing of the Personal, into the public eye in a way that resembles what is, in my opinion, the downfall of television: "reality" programming.
Scott Harradine
CBC radio has lost it demographic. Q has WAY too much rap and hip hop. We want more political discussion but NOT more of that 'Power Panel' partisan screaming on TV. Peter had it right ;-)
Zac Brown
I agree with this article , I don't listen to CBC radio much on air at home anymore , just podcast the shows I like . Too much of the rest I hear while driving in my car feels like eavesdropping on someone's therapy session.
Frederick Lawrence Bushor
I used to listen to CBC radio all day.Even programs that didn't mean much to me kept my attention. Now, after a FEW ugly experiences with CBC Halifax I might listen an hour or two a day. Elite government employees catering to a clique.
Michael MacLeod
If they would stop looking for a younger demographic and go back to quality radio, then more folks, younger folks included, would listen. I and all my friends began listening to CBC the moment we outgrew commercial radio and realized there was an alternative. They did NOT court us!! We courted them!!
Sharon Clements
Unfortunately, agree with much of this. It's sounding more and more like college radio. Too many rebroadcasts of substandard programs. More investigative journalism and world news needed. The Debaters funny; This is That is inconsistent. Many interviewers are adhering to a formulaic style that is amateurish and annoying. Sad that we can no longer set the dial to CBC Radio, and leave it there.
Adam Sherwood
On Drugs is an interesting addition. Tom Power is doing great with Q, which most of us thought was beyond salvaging. As It Happens has always been light and enjoyable, Vinyl Tap is amazing. Out In The Open is a bit much for my taste, and there are some others that seem overly dramatic and depressing, especially for prime time day radio, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater though.
Rob Fakeley
YES!!! So dull and way to specific & even indulgent. So many shows I change away from now. Enough whiny people and platforms for their problems. That Out In The Open episodes about periods and the like was enough for me. I am 49 yr old gay man and I feel marginalized lol. I just don't care about these topics & shows - too specific for me. I would rather have silence.
Virginia MacIsaac
The personal storytelling that I have a problem with is when listening to a story and then it turns out the person being interviewed is a journalist as well. I just don't appreciate a story put together by journalists on both ends.
Amor DeCosmos
Why are sooo many CBC radio stories about the personal struggles of indigenous people? First Nations people represent about 3.5% of the population of Canada. Besides the fact that none of the First Nations people I know listen to CBC, can we limit programming about First Nations people to
Bob Klanac
There is some ground to make up for. But the programming could be more challenging. I find much of it to be very similar to the sort of first-person confessional but does little to provoke or invite discussion or thought. I feel sorry for the people via their personal stories but I want to hear more about the way forward when it comes to our indigenous peoples.
Valerie Cotton
I do agree with this author. Of late, I have been stunned by the quality of most of the new programs and the proliferation of trivial, even annoying shows. I want a majority of programs that explore current issues mixed with cultural and art.
Cathy Bruneau Danyluk
I couldn't agree more. I listen less and less to CBC. I listened to a great interview on 680 the other day explaining the carbon tax, pros and cons. At the time I thought this would have been the type of story I would have listened to on CBC.
Jenny Lou
I only listen to local morning and afternoon programming now, and occasionally the current and ideas...the rest just doesn't interest me...I agree- too much chat like private radio and t.v.
Jean Lamontagne
I completely agree - sap story after sap story - the CBC is irrelevant and boring - it's continually about this and that victim I wish it were more like NPR where a view of the world is presented intelligently with regard for an intelligent audience instead of some Toronto nitwits. By the way saying it's Canada's radio is weird, it's completely Toronto centred.
Vivian Hindbo
As a lifelong CBC fanatic, it's hard for me to believe that I often either tune out, or worse, turn off CBC. For me the worst is Q when Tom is hosting. How much hip-hop and rap can a 50-something bear? Now I know how my mother felt when CBC cut back on the classical music programming.
Jennifer Robertson
Summer programming on radio one has always been pretty bad - I usually switch to podcasts for the summer months. They seem to fill summer with inexperienced doc makers and new "feelings" shows, while the experienced staff go on holidays.
Nick Fillmore
Nope, it doesn't have to be that way. And most people listen to the radio in summer just about the same way they listen in winter.
Curt Tweedle
I agree. Some personal storytelling is okay. Especially if part of a larger show. The longer the format, the more the storyteller has to be a master of that art. Too many of these are done by people that don't know how to hold a listener's attention.
It feels like another type of reality TV. Let's get an amateur to entertain us for an hour, but with sadness or guilt. Also, the victimhood stories become too much. Sometimes, it's okay for us to feel good and happy. Oh, look here comes depression hour again from the person who thinks that they are really deep because sad stuff happened. Give us news, information, knowledge, arts, and look into lives of people that we don't usually meet.
Gail Yakemchuk
Must agree with the writer .. 'Seat at the Table" is mind numbing, sleep inducing chatter. Turned it off. The other shows are barely tolerable. Good interviews that draws a good story from the guest is what I listen for.
James F Deaton
Not to say there is too much life story telling, as there is way too much liberal-soft touch on CBC. The constant barrage of poor underrepresented minority stories day after day is depressing. I can't listen to that every day.
Matt Milner
It's really the endless repeats and reruns, even more now in the summer. Like the recycled best of, condensed shows, that cycle over and over in a 24hr period. I have heard stories at least 5-6 times. I am bored with it all. It's not fresh, same repeats in the same day is mindlessly numbing
Nick Fillmore
It doesn't have to be that way. Even putting a very talented interviewer in a studio with highly intelligent and interesting people can produce good radio. The problem is that this batch of CBC managers are anti-intellectual.
Meg Dean
If as CBC claims these personal stories are what younger people want to hear, are they actually bringing in younger listeners? I haven't read anything that backs that assertion. (Please correct me if I am wrong.) If they are not drawing in younger listeners, then CBC is irritating and losing older listeners for nothing.
Marc Dacey
Yes. Stories that haven't been told before are being told, but not in the context of offering or even soliciting solutions. So the general impression is scab-picking and soapboxing, because it's approaching the point of parody. There are some exceptions, but there's a lot of random, emotional chatter.
Kemp Edmonds
It's important to make it personal and make a personal connection but's it not all about you. It's about the audience. Don't let that get away. And that's what's started to happen. That's started to get away from SOME at the CBC.
Diana Harrison
Yes, it has gone downhill, so boring and mundane now, I am no longer a faithful listener. They are using these cheap to produce "fill"stories for their main content now.... so sad.
Lynda van Leeuwen
Great stories in the past, but seriously, "On Drugs"?? Who is this aimed at? Do they think it is a "how-to" or that people 'on drugs' are listening to CBC Radio 1?? I really don't see the point of it! And I find Pya's show about 'motherhood' very self-serving and self-pitying!
Thich Nu Tinh Quang
Used to listen to CBC 1 all day, from getting up to it to going to sleep. Now, I listen to it maybe a couple of hours a week. Most of it is now boring drivel, and hugely dumbed down from what it was. The personal storytelling was interesting enough to get me to visit places I would not ordinarily have visited.
Arun Mukherjee
Exactly how I feel listening to the CBC these days. Narratives of women who could not carry their baby to term, the woman whose husband died of cancer or hear failure, the woman who can't say no, the woman who likes the Brazilian and not the bush and on and on and on. I am sick and tired of the CBC.
And yes, let us not forget the millennials who can't buy a house. Who cares about food banks or the homeless.
Rod Jacob
I am trying to explain to myself why m NPR manages to be so engaging, while much of CBC's content is so lame, boring and downright irritating. In general, CBC's locally-generated content padded with endless weather and "promo" style interviews with half-hearted (or next to no) advance research, and no questions scripted in advance. Meh.
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Marian Bruce
Agree completely. I've stopped listening to CBC radio, except for the weather report, dearly beloved Michael Enright and Ideas. The rest seems to be endless, meaningless babbling.
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Mark Hill
Time to move on Boomers, things change, CBC is evolving and Millenials are moving in and Gen X moving into more C-Suite positions. We have been in the shadow of the boomers forever and now there is finally some light at the end of the tunnel as the dinosaurs march into the past.
J Ross Mustard
My problem with today's CBC is the constant whining. Whether the Holocaust, poor me politicians, Residential Schools, or Toronto kvetching, it has become irrelevant to most Canadians. This from someone who grew up with it on during all waking hours.
Tom Yeoman
Some of the stories could do with a little `closer' editing; but `stories' of (mostly) Canadians - I thought almost everyone agreed - is what `makes' this country. Generally IMO, the `hosts/interviewers' do a pretty good job of drawing out the shy or (somewhat) incoherent and cutting short bores and one-tracked minds.
Brian Fitzroy Wallace
Still my go to station, but with podcasts of Freakanomics and Ted talks loaded on my phone, I can quickly abandon, trash radio like "Someone knows something".
Carl Kaehler
I listen to BBC radio mostly now. CBC English radio started going downhill with Denise Donlon (former Much Music producer) and had become steadily worse. They ruined AIH. The Current seems as obsessed with Trump as CNN. The only thing worth my time is Ideas (occasionally), and it seems every other time I chance by CBC (usually when driving) it's an Aboriginal show or transgender show. That's fine, I suppose, I just happen to be neither.
Dave Chan
I have to agree that so much of CBC Radio has turned into personal podcasting. There is already a venue for that, it's called podcasting. On the other hand it pisses me off that they ignore my cultural industry. Well, they ignore geek culture in general. It's mostly millennial programming IMO. They have programs dedicated to pop culture, books, music, but they ignore video games and geek culture which is huge in Canada. I've pointed this out in email and social media, but never get responses.
Ana Asmussen
I've been saying this for a long time. What happened to interesting newsworthy and current (or historical aspect) stories and news magazine style, and more science style shows. Information, interesting, intriguing. I don't find anything on the radio to be intriguing anymore. It's boring crap.
Note from Nick: I have another 150 comments, but I think we have the picture by now.
And we haven't even touched CBC News television channel.
ReplyDeleteBravo to you Nick, and all those who sent letters to CBC management and posted comments. I was a broadcast journalist with CBC Radio and Television for more than 25 years, until my retirement. Through much of that time, especially from the late 1990's onward, I grew increasingly frustrated at the propensity of CBC management to dumb down content (whether in News or Current Affairs programming), as well as the various forms of abuse directed at many CBC employees and the outrageous inequities of the division of labour within the workforce. That combined with the continuing practice of hiring less-than-qualified editors and on-air personnel was a major reason that I left my CBC employment sooner than I would have preferred.
ReplyDeleteI personally no longer listen to CBC Radio simply because it's not good for my health to be angry and upset, which has been my frequent reaction to what I hear. I am quite pessimistic that anything will improve at the CBC, because in my experience too many managers and executives simply don't care, or are too incompetent to change anything for the better even if they were so inclined. However, my hat is off to you and your supporters who are trying to get through what amounts to a brick wall.
Hi Nick, I support the CBC but somewhere along the line they recently became predominantly voyeuristic trash in their effort to promote social revolution. Here's a link to one of the worst examples of a publicly funded media institution reaching to new lows. Would they ever feature an interview asking men about their favourite group sex experiences? Just wondering.http://www.cbc.ca/life/wellness/how-to-plan-the-perfect-orgy-amber-rose-and-revenge-porn-with-the-women-of-guys-we-f-cked-1.4213116
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