Remembering when classical radio mattered to the CBC
Afew minutes past 10 a.m. and Michael Enright was interviewing Genseric, the Vandal King who oversaw the sack of Rome in 455. Wait, where did I put my notes …
Ah. Sorry. It was Richard Stursberg, the former CBC vice-president of English services who oversaw the transformation of Radio 2 in 2007-08. A man who does not, as you might surmise, occupy a special place in my pantheon. An individual whose new memoir I will not buy for fear of adding 10 cents to his personal net worth. Someone who, if on fire, would not necessarily spur me to action, even an hour after I had finished my third cup of coffee. That kind of thing.
This segment on Sunday Edition (an emanation of Radio One, the preferred English CBC network in the household I happened to be visiting) dealt more extensively with the changes Stursberg wrought on English television (more comedies, reality shows and crime coverage on The National) and his assertive management style (as epitomized by the lockout of 2005) than his exploits on the radio side.
Yet Stursberg did take the time near the end of the interview to say that he regretted not having acted more ruthlessly in making the changes he did to Radio 2. Possibly Genseric also felt he could have melted down a few more statues and taken more hostages in his two weeks inside the gates. You know these perfectionist types.
At any rate, his rationale for this expression of regret was interesting: Radio-canada, the French wing of the CBC, turned its Chaîne culturelle FM network into Espace musique swiftly and irrevocably, sparking criticism from loyalists and attracting new listeners at the same time.
The Radio 2 switcheroo was rolled in gradually. Complainers had the floor and kept it. All those millions of classical-haters ready to embrace the “New Two” were not heard from, presumably because they were addled by the negativity and did not get the message.
A comparison of the respective approaches of the English and French networks is worth making. Radio-canada certainly acted quickly in 2004 (a communiqué headlined “La Chaîne culturelle est morte, vive Espace musique!” is still available on the Internet) and a sharp reduction of classical content was certainly central to the plan.
Resistance was fierce. Such heavyweights as philosopher Jacques Senecal and composer Gilles Tremblay lent their support to the ad hoc Mouvement pour une radio culturelle au Canada, which collected about 11,000 signatures. All, of course, in vain.
Nicknames for the new service proliferated internally. “Espace merdique” was one. But the fundamental prime time weekday evening program, Soirée Classique, remained devoted to great concert music, intelligently presented. There was still a budget for recording live concerts. Exchanges with European networks still happened.
And all these conditions still apply. Radio-canada might not be what it used to be, but the programming is thoughtfully prepared, with concert music as a central rather than peripheral element of the whole.
On Radio 2, concert music on weekdays is confined to a mid-morning ghetto – shut-ins, of course, being the only people with an interest in the classics. Programming is pops. A “vacation in Italy” theme prevailed this week. Commentary is useless. A couple of weeks ago I heard, amid other gaucheries, Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto 3 misidentified as his “Concerto Grosso No. 3.” And this from a broadcaster with a university degree in music.
A few good people remain on weekends, during daylight hours. Bill Richardson is the perceptive host of In Concert, the last vestige of the old CBC calling as a producer of classical concerts. This Is My Music is pleasant, though necessarily spotty, the hosts being amateurs.
Not that this show is especially classical. Just about every conductor, pianist or opera singer invited to share his or her playlist feels compelled to give fair time to pop music of some sort. It simply will not do on the not-so-new 2 to show too much dedication to the classics.
Criticism of this sort is of no avail. The more important point to make is that Stursberg’s Radio 2 revolution was a disaster, and not only for classical insiders. “I only have one idea: Audiences matter,” the executive was fond of saying, aligning his personal preferences with the popular will, and portraying himself as a democratic warrior against the elite. Television ratings, it appears, did climb during his regime.
But the trend on Radio 2 was decisively in the opposite direction. Audiences not only did not matter during the Radio 2 upheavals, they did not materialize. Those hip-andhappening morning shows bled listeners profusely. Every radio executive knows that strong morning numbers carry the rest of the day.
As late as 2010, my colleague T’cha Dunlevy, in a pro-radio 2 feature for which I am sure we shall forgive him sometime before 2020, noted with paradoxical enthusiasm that Radio 2 ratings were “down 10 per cent with a 2.7 per cent share of the national market compared to its previous three per cent.” Those numbers in the real world of private radio would have led to the instant dismissal of the executive responsible.
A truly populist (and creative) response to the situation Radio 2 now finds itself in would be to restore quality programming and make it what is used to be. There is no chance of any such reversal, especially as budgets tighten. The CBC has applied to the CRTC to introduce commercials to Radio 2, a format change that will only accelerate the network’s steady descent to the ratings cellar.
Back to Radio One. Sunday Edition offers a documentary this weekend of unusual interest to classically minded Montrealers: a documentary on Ethel Stark and her Montreal Women’s Symphony Orchestra. The production by David Gutnik and Karen Levine features former members Pearl Arynoff, Violet States and Lyse Vézina and the musicologist Maria Noriega.
Stark died on Feb. 16 in Montreal at age 101. The program starts at 9 a.m.