Narrowcasting

Let’s go back to talking about CBCR3.

I’m gonna quote Kate Taylor of the Globe first, from an online Q&A: “I have never understood where CBC Radio got a mandate to run a classical music service; it just seems such a narrow band of programming to me – I just don’t think they know how to go about it, and don’t always have the right talent or the right mentality.”

Essentially I was asking who gave CBC a mandate to run an all-indie-rock music service as a claimed alternative to its existing services.

I’ll put it to you another way: I don’t see who gave CBC permission to run an all-rock-snob service. Because that’s what indie rock and indie rockers are. Please do in fact read The Rock Snob’s Dictionary. I have. (And Film and Food.) I used to be a rock snob. I’m not anymore.

I only brought up dance music as an alternative to the alternative because it is something I more or less understand. You could have your own preferred genres. There’s also the fact that CBC Radio 2 has those four new online streams to placate granddads who want all Mahler or all Lightfoot all the time. By my count that’s five precedents for CBC-run online radio stations.

Of course we don’t have the money for any more of them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t a good idea. The existing stations would be preserved, so irate R3 snobs’ shabby, scrawny little duchy could remain untouched. (No, you drop dead!) I just want something more.

Or we could be really radical and cut R3’s rock-snob programming in half and give over the other half to something else.

This could go quite wrong. The BBC blew it, according to squibs I’ve read in Private Eye, with services like the Asian Network, 1Xtra, 6 Music, BBC 7, and 5 Live Sports Extra. They were mostly complaining about ratings, though.

In the meantime, while it doesn’t have a CanCon mandate or anything else the Corpse would be saddled with, I say again that Tiësto’s Club Lifé is a nice solid middle-class dance podcast you could listen to.

51 Comments

  • Fake Ouimet says:

    Wait, did I sell out but managed not to notice?

  • Anonymous says:

    “The partnership wasn’t developed because some kool dood in Fort Dork wanted American truck drivers to listen to Broken Social Scene.”

    I might be on a limb here, but it might be a sweeping generalization to assume that all truckers want is Freebird, and Convoy on repeat.

    Besides which Canning looks more like a trucker these days than BJ and his Bear do.

    tb3

  • Anonymous says:

    “tB3 is the indie Joe Clark”
    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

    I’ll admit I am idiot with ill formed sentences and inane chatter that runs circles around planet nowhere. Will he?

    tb3
    Where the b is lowercase

  • VANOC slave says:

    It wasn’t addressed by Steve Pratt because he had zero to do with it.

    Ask Robert Ouimet. I’m sure he’d loooove to talk about it.

  • Anonymous says:

    While this was never addressed by Steve Pratt, for some reason, R3 was hinged to satellite radio which the CBC invested in as the CanCon provider to appease the CRTC.

    Sirius was going to be their new license to print money just like Wheel of Fortune might have been.

    The partnership wasn’t developed because some kool dood in Fort Dork wanted American truck drivers to listen to Broken Social Scene.

  • Anonymous says:

    tB3 is the indie Joe Clark

  • Anonymous says:

    cue twelve words…

    Economic Viability: Tell me which departments of the government are economically viable?

    tb3

  • Anonymous says:

    Viable in the marketplace of ideas, of course. Why else does Radio One crow about ratings? Why does Radio 2 pay to wrap streetcars? Radio 3 isn’t cutting it save for inspiring sophomoric defenders. (Cue 1,000 more words from TB3000!)

  • Anonymous says:

    dear vanoc.
    i agree. let them run the database.
    but please stop pretending to be a radio station.

  • VANOC slave says:

    OMG, if you guys think R3 is just a “playlist”, “podcast” and an online station, you should maybe tell management to stop pumping $1,000,000+ a year into it. Because you can put those sorts of things together with 2 or 3 staff.

  • Anonymous says:

    I see your bold AND italic and raise you plain!

    Here is the thing. Why do you need more streams? You don’t “get” or more importantly give any effort to Radio3. You my friend have so quickly dismissed it as an all or nothing “indie”* platform with your air quotes extensive research. So you can’t even spend the time to get one figured out and yet you need us to make, more other stations?

    Have you hear of iPods? What you describe, a station playing only the music that you like, with no music snob banter in between is called a “playlist”. Get an iPod and load it up. There. You have your own personal radio station, knobtard. (said lovingly)

    As well, for only being 7 years my elder, your characterizations of me and my skinny jean wearing, PBR drinking, fixie riding brethren couldn’t be any more spot on! Almost as astute as your ability research and answer directly questions raised from your porcelain pulpit from which I can only assume your research comes from.

    Also your witty responses take far too long to come back. I am sure they’re funny in your mind when you take a day to come up with them, but they mostly fall flat. Like your conjecture.

    Now, please tell me about how your job at the Ceeb is so important that you just don’t have time to be online all day, like a nerd like me does. And then make another jab referencing any one of the indie stereotpyes you can conjure up.

    Its okay, I got time to wait.


    Starting to lose that loving feeling…

    TedB3

    * I still invite you to define “indie” as it relates to your across the board dismissal of Radio3

  • Anonymous says:

    oh no, not just “indie rock” but 100% Cancon indie rock. Thus guaranteeing much middling-quality programming.

  • Fake Ouimet says:

    I see your bold and raise you italic!

    If I understand the recent history correctly, Radio 2 listeners lost their shit when contagion was introduced into their cherished elite radio network in the form of music other than classical. They still had classical music to listen to, and they were actually handed a whole new online stream of nothing but classical; nonetheless, they acted like their firstborn sons had been sacrificed.

    Here, CBCR3, a cherished elite online radio network, has evolved from a mostly-indie-rock service into an all-indie-rock service. Promoters claim it only makes sense for indie rock to have been handed CBC’s first non-broadcast radio channel: Obviously indie rock is just super; other genres are never indie or all-Canadian; and, if programmed, other genres would end up sounding just like commercial Top 40 radio. These proponents acted as though their two-fours of Pabst were about to be sacrificed ‒œ even though the only proposal being advanced is to leave R3 alone and increase the number of dedicated non-broadcast radio channels.

    I see your gingery A.C. Newman and raise you Tiësto!

  • Anonymous says:

    The fact that people keep referring to Radio 3 as an “online station” shows what a big failure the Sirius channel has been. Because no one seems to be listening.

  • Anonymous says:

    Anon., 11:38pm
    Donnez-moi le numbres, s’il vous plait.

    Economic viability is shown with one thing: numbers.
    Please enlighten me, and the rest with the details.

    Furthermore, is it the mandate of CBC as a whole to be economically viable?

    TB3zzzzzzzzzzzzz

  • Paul Sham says:

    I think you might just be using the budget shortfall as an excuse to lend legitimacy to your dislike of Radio 3. Saying that the CBC doesn’t have the money to make Radio 3 without showing how much Radio 3 actually costs is not good enough. But, from what I know, the cost of running an online radio station is significantly less than an AM/FM radio station.

    On the level of mandate, I agree that Radio 3 could benefit from more diverse programming. Even though I like the music they play, I think shows highlighting independent dance, rap or hip hop in Canada would be beneficial.

  • Anonymous says:

    TB3zzzzzzzzzzzzzz… none of this getting to the more recent point of R3’s lack of actual viability in any marketplace, even the public radio one.

  • Fake Ouimet says:

    TedB3, go back and reread both posts. There was never a “lottery,” though indie rock (an indivisible phrase like “ice cream”) indeed “won.”

    Now: Since there have been four subsequent winners, why don’t we have even more? Answer: Money. But in principle the idea is sound.

  • Fake Ouimet says:

    I do my research and I’m only 44.

    Now, what would you like to write for the Tea Makers? Anything?

  • Anonymous says:

    Fake Ouimet is ill-informed.

    And older than Pangea.

    Get the fuck out of the way.

  • Anonymous says:

    You can call me Irene for all I care, it matters not…

    The point has been made, one whole Rado3 whining post ago, your music genre won the lottery in so far as any night club that does not feature live bands, about 80% of the current radio stations on the FM dial in Toronto alone, and pretty much anywhere else you choose to consume media is dedicated to the musical shit sandwich that is “dance” or “electornic”.

    Moreover, that you call the thousands of songs on New Music Canada or the regular play list indie and dismiss it quickly as “ice cream” as was anonymously posted on furhter fortifies your complete ignorance in this discussion you, yourself started or your unwillingness to delve deeper than your own myopic synopsis.

    You want dance, you electronic, they have it. They have a ton more than that… I just heard Ruby Jean and The Thoughtful Bees bookmarked with Elliot Brood, King Cobb Steelie and Parlovr… Open up your ears or close your mouth. I am fine with either option.

    The only thing misplaced here, is your ability to make a valid, and constructive argument with anything other than piss n’ vitriol.


    All my love,
    TedB3

  • Anonymous says:

    What an hilariously poorly reasoned argument. To all the posters here I say, “don’t feed the troll!” Is it possible to be a troll on your own blog? I guess it is.

  • Fake Ouimet says:

    Justin, core CBC supporters are old and barely computer-literate. They have no interest in “the Facebook.”

    Core R3 supporters absolutely have to be computer-literate just to listen to the service. This demographic and Facebook’s overlap almost completely.

    Your numbers would be reversed if, for example, you distributed postage-paid postcards in defence of the respective services. Or (by a smaller margin) if you set up toll-free phone numbers.

  • Fake Ouimet says:

    TB3 (may I call you Ted?), you and your scrawny indie-rocker friends will keep their dedicated station. I merely object to the fact that an all-indie-rock service was the sole online alternative to broadcast radio from our national governing broadcaster.

    With the four new placate-the-granddads streams from Radio 2, however, this kind of genre exclusivity is clearly now a thing of the past. You’re arguing, with increasing unpleasantness, against something I never argued for. You’ll keep your Radio 3; we just need Radios 8 through 10 (as they would now need to be numbered) and beyond.

    And no, I don’t particularly fancy indie rockers. But if R3 had actually been an all-dance or -electronic station, indie rockers would be in an identical position to complain about it.

    Again, your triumphalism is misplaced. The fact that your cherished musical subgenre somehow won the lottery and got its own station says nothing about its merits to stand alone.

  • Anonymous says:

    Still little here about how Radio 3 is paid for, and why, and why it would be implied that they’re ready to sell it.

    Sirius Canada has CRTC-mandated money for award shows. None to develop talent or ideas where they can get an audience on the interweb.

    Given how that funding model is even deader than this blog, why don’t you wonder about that?

  • robert rabinovitch says:

    omg

    Anonymous posters criticizing other anonymous posters for posting anonymously.

    Cranky posters complaining that there’s too many cranky posts.

    This blog is deader than dust.

  • Anonymous says:

    keep coming up with the same tired commentary
    Fitting then, that my commentary matches the content of the Tea Baggers {sic., yet again] blog

    I don’t think you get Teamakers!
    That makes two of us, then.

    Telling people they don’t “get” something is the most tired argument of all.
    And bitching about something on a blog, after spending less time than they do typing in their blog about it, is as tired as it comes. Do a Google search for Blog Complaint and tell me if you get any hits. Then, read some of those blogs and tell me how well formulated their opinions are. Take special note of the research, and observation that “bloggers” make.

    Like it or not, the commentary generated by this and the other Radio3 post expose just how little you know about it, and its audience, in that it quickly dissipates into bitching into the original blogger admitting that he hates the audience and the musicians more than the actual thing he lampoons as the scapegoat.

    Tea Makers I get. It’s two people trying to present their feelings as though they are more valid, and less fallible than the rest of the world. On a free podium no less, claiming anonymity to protect their livelhood.

    I call bullshit. You’re protecting your anonymity because no one in their right mind would pay for this dribble, much less can you find an audience larger than the 10 fanboys (myself included) than come to speak in defense of whatever it is you attack.

    What you are doing here, is called the “internet“. Take a look around there’s a zillion people out there who don’t have time to do things like air quotes research or air quotes critical analysis or air quotes proper oberservation be cause it air quotes takes too much time or is air quotes hard or… air quotes counteracts what you think.

    The copy and past generation of Google essays may exist, but it doesn’t mean you have to prescribe to that mentality just because it’s there.

    BTW. 23 comments! (including mine) – that’s a very slow day on one of the Radio3 blog posts that companion a show.


    All my love,
    tb3

  • Justin Beach says:

    “I don’t think you get Teamakers”

    I used to. It used to be interesting and thought provoking, now it seems to be all about ill informed, pointless crankiness.

  • Anonymous says:

    Telling people they don’t “get” something is the most tired argument of all.

    “No, you’re stupid!"

    Wheel & Jeopardy, $20 million+ for 3 years. This is the result of playing the commercial game, and expect the same upcoming in radio.

    R3 also is drifting into a popularity contest, because numbers are important in the current regime. It changes what you create when people you report to judge your salary because of it.

  • Anonymous says:

    tb3, for someone who champions r3 as some bastion of eclecticism, you sure seem to keep coming up with the same tired commentary.

    I don’t think you get Teamakers!

  • Justin Beach says:

    “In particular I’m thinking of:
    Painfully self-conscious attempts to be “cool”

    Nope, you don’t get it. You didn’t get the original concept behind much and don’t know why or when it failed and you don’t get R3 (there actually IS context and information and few enough attempts at being cool that they can be easily overlooked.)

  • Anonymous says:

    1. Wheel and Jeopardy are there to make money
    If they wanted to make money there are plenty of things they could pander to. But, I am guessing making money isn’t part of the mission statement.

    2. Like most people here posting anonymously, I do it to preserve my position at the CBC. Many of the blog postings here are anonymous. Ouimet is anonymous. Get used to it.
    I call bullcrap. Or I am doing it anonymous to protect my position at the Ceeb too. I fail to see how anyone could have a position of any worth within the Ceeb, and not “get it” when, when it comes to a branch of the Corporation. You’re clinging to save your position? Really? If you’re so insightful, step up and be who you are, and champion this wind of change you’re blowing.

    3.Painfully self-conscious attempts to be “cool”
    I’ll thank you to elaborate on this one, beyond and incomplete point-form sentence. Don’t assume that because you feel out of touch or lost with the younger set that they’re all acting cool just to make you feel not. This isn’t about you specifically. Radio3 doesn’t broadcast to make Anonymous 6:05am feel out of it. So, can you please tell just how precisely they attempt to be cool.

    4. Presenting actual information and context for the music is considered a mistake, it’s better to seem likeable (cf. Radio 2’s current campaign against seeming “know-y”)
    According to who? Context is what makes Radio3’s web radio component a million times more popular than running playlist mode. I’d counter your point that their context and commentary is what makes them popular.

    5.Jumping on the “latest thing” in music, but by the time they know what the latest thing is, your mom has already heard about it
    Ha!
    Ha!
    Ha!
    Out of touch lately?

    Okay so their content is far from the latest fad. If you want to point that rapier at something, point it at the Junos who call a band The Stills who’ve been played on Radio3 for quite some time, a “new act”. The only point you’ve made here, is how obvious it is that you’ve spent no (as in NONE) time getting to know Radio3 in terms of hosts, shows, content, audience and community. But thankfully you’re here to pontificate.

    5.Any music outside of their pre-conceived model is sidelined or ignored entirely.
    Ah! I get it! You have a band. You have music. And it didn’t make it into rotation on Radio3. Sorry to hear that… Maybe make something relevant?

    What gets me the most about the Fake Omlette[sic on purpose] and people like you commenting is you’ve spent so long talking out of your ass, you don’t even realize that your vocal chords have detached themselves from your brain and joined forces solely with your glutes.

    If you choose to look at something so critically, give the constructive route a little time ‒œ get to know precisely what it is you are talking about. Spend some time with it learning both the nuances and the norms. And then be prepared to tackle those preconceived notions you have with actual facts and observations that come from the knowledge you’ve gained.

    Otherwise, as I have said time and time again, if you don’t “get it”, move along, and forget it ever happened. Just because you don’t get it, doesn’t mean there isn’t an audience for it.

    After all, Geri-eopardy and Wheel of Fortune are on back‒œto‒œback!

    tb3

  • Anonymous says:

    Have you seen mutchmusic [sic] lately? Radio 3 and mutch are nothing alike. You apparently know nothing about television or radio (or music while we’re at it).

    Cowardly (anonymous) and uninformed is no way to go through life junior.

    Like most people here posting anonymously, I do it to preserve my position at the CBC. Many of the blog postings here are anonymous. Ouimet is anonymous. Get used to it.

    No, I haven’t seen Muchmusic lately. I have no interest in seeing it. I saw bits of it on and off in the 80s and 90s, and a couple times in the early 2000s, when Steve Pratt worked there. I’m speaking of a particular model of programming, not what was on last night.

    In particular I’m thinking of:

    Painfully self-conscious attempts to be “cool”

    Presenting actual information and context for the music is considered a mistake, it’s better to seem likeable (cf. Radio 2’s current campaign against seeming “know-y”)

    Information completely absent or boiled down to commercial radio soundbite length

    Jumping on the “latest thing” in music, but by the time they know what the latest thing is, your mom has already heard about it

    Any music outside of their pre-conceived model is sidelined or ignored entirely.

    I hope that’s clearer now.

    Sadly, this model of programming is creeping into the corporation more and more.

  • Justin Beach says:

    @anonymous 10:40

    It’s better than 1,133 people with 1,520 people still invited but uncommitted

    That’s for the CBC as a whole.

    Uncommitted doesn’t mean they couldn’t be bothered, in many cases it just means they haven’t seen it yet.

  • Anonymous says:

    “Save Radio 3
    has 2,537 people with 3,507 still to be heard from”

    This is “wide public support?” More people couldn’t be arsed to answer than actually signed up!

  • Justin Beach says:

    @Anonymous 8:57

    Have you seen mutchmusic lately? Radio 3 and mutch are nothing alike. You apparently know nothing about television or radio (or music while we’re at it).

    Cowardly (anonymous) and uninformed is no way to go through life junior.

  • Anonymous says:

    Wheel and Jeopardy are there to make money, dubmass. You think they got put there because someone thought it was good programming?

    Although I’m willing to bet that, given the downturn, they no longer pay for themselves.

  • Anonymous says:

    Cut the funding for Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy … And then you’ve got enough funding probably for all of CBC Radio combined.

    Oh and how much is that?

    Any idea how much it costs to power and maintain hundreds of AM and FM transmitter sites versus paying a bunch of know-it-alls to maintain a podcast and a few content systems?

    it’s not Radio3 that you don’t like, its all the people that like Radio3

    Totally! You ruin a perfectly nuanced blog-ument about new web delivered radio services (because that IS what needs talking about) by turning into a narcissistic deGrassi popularity contest about subgenres.

  • Anonymous says:

    Robert Ouimet’s original dream for Radio 3 was radio with no hosts.

    Steve Pratt’s dream – Steve, like much of the R3 team, has no background in radio – seems to be something like “Muchmusic radio”.

    No thanks to both.

  • Anonymous says:

    “After two full posts, you still don’t get that, I see”

    And yet after two full posts I know exactly what you are getting at ‒œ it’s not Radio3 that you don’t like, its all the people that like Radio3… You want it axed, or cut in half so that you don’t have those rascally indie rock hipsters that you fear might know they’re cooler than you. And you fear that its popularity may just usurp whatever it is that you hold holy (please don’t say that’s dance music)

    Coincidentally you kind of contra-dicked yourself when you say things like, It isn’t “indie” I object to. after composting a line like this “…all-rock-snob service. Because that’s what indie rock and indie rockers are.” in you original podium drop. I’m pretty sure it is indie that you object to with those wide brush strokes you’re painting the world with.

    All my love,
    tb3

  • Justin Beach says:

    Even if sirius dies, which it will, Internet radio is about to explode. It’s going to have a younger demographic though and Radio 3 is the CBC’s best chance to read that demographic.

  • Justin Beach says:

    I can tell you pretty easily why the CBC can't axe Radio 3 – ok can't may be the wrong word, the could but I can tell you why it would be a really, really bad idea.

    The two facebook things started at about the same time

    Tell Parliament to Save the CBC
    so far has 1,133 people with 1,520 people still invited but uncommitted.
    http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=53334563398&ref=ts

    Save Radio 3
    has 2,537 people with 3,507 still to be heard from

    The petitions are similar CBC 245 (http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/fundthecbc) Radio 3 1,173 (http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/saver3)

    Now it's a little maddening because fixing the CBC's funding would automatically save Radio 3 but that aside: For a long time the CBC was pretty untouchable because of broad public support. We've now arrived at a point where I can generate huge interest in saving Radio 3, but people are more ambivalent about the CBC as a whole.

    Without public support the CBC is in for much rockier times ahead, axing radio 3 would mean axing one of the few CBC properties that has broad public support. They need to build on the R3 model, not kill it.

  • amanda says:

    The sad truth is that the CBC’s Sirius services were only put there so Sirius could get a license to operate in Canada. (XM has Canadian partners of their own). Sirius needed a Canadian partner, and the CBC wanted to hedge their bets on the media of the future.

    I haven’t heard it for a long time, because no one I know has Sirius, but at one time the “Radio One” channel had all the bandwidth and audio quality of a telephone call. Not exactly a primary service.

    Still no word on how the Sirius-XM merger down south will affect their Canadian subsidiaries. And also, no numbers at all on how much of a stake the the CBC has in Sirius Canada, and how much it’s worth now. Even the auditor general doesn’t know. But it can’t be much; Sirius XM stock in the US is almost a penny stock now.

    These are services that cost many times more to produce than they generate in revenue. That’s nothing new for radio, or for the CBC. But in this case no one seems to be listening. They won’t release listener numbers. Know why?
    Beyond the total number of Sirius subscribers, they have very little idea who’s listening to what.

    Ask the few people who work for the Sirius service in the broadcasting centre how many listener emails they get in a year. Answer: you can count it with two hands, one in a pinch.

    It’s probably for the best that the CBC tries out new media, just in case they blow up huge. Getting into television was the right idea; the web services are doing okay, but still searching for a mandate. But satellite radio is a bust.

    So, we should cut our losses and just pull out of Sirius, right? Well, as they say about Churchill Falls, a deal’s a deal. We can’t even drop channels to save cash… Sirius needs R3’s 100% Cancon to make up for their many other 0% Cancon services.

  • Justin Beach says:

    I decided yesterday that “Dance Music” of the popular, top 40 US variety is the new muzak – fairly uniform, repetitive, safe yet catchy and you can hear it echoing through pretty much any mall in North America.

  • Fake Ouimet says:

    “Indie rock” is a nondecomposable phrase, like “ice cream.” It isn’t “indie” I object to. After two full posts, you still don’t get that, I see.

  • Mackenzie Campbell says:

    Perhaps you should do a bit more background searching before posting. Indie stands for independent. That does not make you a snob, it means you are seeking either an alternative source to produce your music or a just a source in general to promote your music because a major label has yet to pick you up. Let it also be noted, that a lot of successful artists started off on independent labels before they got picked up and were promoted to the masses. Indie music is no different than bloggers who use an alternative medium (compared to traditional mediums like radio/newspapers etc) to promote their ideas.

    Unfortunately, Canada is so inundated with culture from America (and to some extent United Kingdom) that is difficult for Canadian artists (of all sorts, musically or artistically) to become known and successful, despite how fantastic or horrible they may be.

    Let’s face it, most private companies are out to make a buck, if they haven’t been willing to take a risk on an all indie station yet (which I would wager only major cities like Toronto or Vancouver have indie stations that aren’t run by the local university campus) why would they do it if the CBC folded R3? Just because it isn’t popular doesn’t mean their isn’t an audience for it, unfortunately, very few broadcasters are willing to see that point of view. What really is needed in this country, is a radio station (private or public) to broadcast an all Canadian music station – regardless of language, mainstream/indie, or genre – ie something like R3 but that also played Canadian music on major labels.

    And please, just because you may disagree with CBC running an indie station, does not mean you are required to blemish it’s reputation with falsehoods and embellished stories.

Leave a Reply to Mackenzie Campbell Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Upload Files

You can include images or files in your comment by selecting them below. Once you select a file, it will be uploaded and a link to it added to your comment. You can upload as many images or files as you like and they will all be added to your comment.

Write for us