Spotlight on CBC Radio 3

In the Fall of 2007 I took a class on the Canadian Broadcasting System. It was taught by Gregory Taylor, a McGill Doctoral candidate studying under Marc Raboy. The class was basically a defense of public broadcasting, and it certainly taught me a lot about the contemporary media landscape. Unfortunately, the internet is considered narrow-casting, despite the emergence of online television and extremely popular podcasts from the BBC, CBC and NPR. So we were not able to pursue some lines of thought as far as they could go. In any case, I loved the class.

For my research project, I took the opportunity to study one of my favourite things in the whole world, CBC Radio 3. The research was so much fun! I got to dig through the archives of insidethecbc.com and trawled the internet for posts on Brave New Waves (and its hosts Patti Schmidt and Brent Bambury) and Nightlines (David Wisdom). In 2006, Anu Sahota, an MA student at Simon Fraser, wrote a dissertation on CBC Radio 3 which was very instructive. Even government documents dealing with media are (appropriately) stylish and well written. Everyone should check out Our Cultural Sovereignty, an incredibly readable report by the House of Commons’ Heritage Commitee.

I even got to speak on the phone with Steve Pratt, CBC Radio 3’s Director! I emailed them with a few questions, and he volunteered to do a phone interview instead. He gave up a half hour or so, which I think was very accomodating.

Although I did little primary research, I thought I would post the finished paper in case anyone with a similar love of CBC Radio 3 would like to check it out. The paper criticises CBC Radio 3’s move away from broader cultural journalism embodied by the R3 Magazine, and the lack of musical representation commensurate to the demands of the the Broadcasting Act. Specifically, I’m talking about 3.d.iii:

[The Canadian broadcasting system should] serve the needs and interests, and reflect the circumstances and aspirations, of Canadian men, women and children, including equal rights, the linguistic duality and multicultural and multiracial nature of Canadian society and the special place of aboriginal peoples within that society

As Canada’s public broadcaster, I believe that the CBC must do its best to embody the demands of the Broadcasting Act. When I wrote the paper, Steve Pratt was speaking about the website redesign. This morning, almost two years later the new website has finally been released! CBC Radio 3 remains as awesome as ever. But by and large, they have not yet taken the steps I think are required to be a premier public broadcaster in the digital age.

Read my paper on CBC Radio 3 (PDF)