Saturday, April 28, 2007

The warnings become clearer

The announcements on CBC Radio Two became more frequent as the bleak month of March wore on towards March 19 2007, initially just vague references to the new schedule, then more explicit announcements. "Music for Awhile" would be replaced by an evening program of jazz, beginning at 6:00 PM. The evening newscast, "The World at Six" from 6:00 - 6:30 PM, would be replaced by a short summary of the top news stories of the day. (And "short" means two to three minutes - how 's that for in-depth reporting of the day's top news stories?). "In Performance", which generally consisted of recorded performances of classical music performed by Canadian orchestras, would be replaced by "Canada Live", performances of a variety of musical genres in venues across Canada.

Wonderful, I thought. CBC Radio Two management has decided that the CBC Radio Two listener should adopt jazz as their preferred choice of music when driving home or preparing the evening meal. And apparently classical music after 8:00 PM is now out of favour - we should be listening to other genres. We should be widening our horizons, become more culturally diverse, learn to enjoy different types of music. Furthermore, apparently we do not need to be informed of the day's events when we are listening to CBC Radio Two - a three minute summary of the news at 6:00 PM is all we need. If we want more in-depth discussion of the day's news stories, we can always tune in to Radio One.

Minicult has issued a new directive, and we complacent Canadians must obey. War is Peace! Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Jazz is good!.

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