Changes at CBC Radio 2

There’s been some writing here in the US about CBC’s upcoming changes to Radio 2, but I want to attempt a more broad view of what’s happening.

Radio 2 is making another significant cutback in classical music. Even in the most recent phase of the redesign, morning drive is mainly classical, and afternoon’s venerable DiscDrive is…. well, it’s somewhat classical, or classical/jazz/folk/world, or “whatever Jurgen Gothe wants to play.” Both drivetime shows will now have much less classical music. Middays have been solidly classical and it looks as though it will remain so, even though the daytime schedule will shift – Eric Friesen is leaving in August.

CBC is, however, planning a major online initiative, launching three 24-hour internet radio services – classical, jazz, and singer-songwriter. This is the biggest move CBC (the English-speaking variant) has made in internet radio since launching Radio 3, a service that’s now also available in North America on Sirius. On a number of levels, this is a significant expansion of all three genres, even though they’re getting less air time on FM radio.

And now, pardon this half-assed analysis of an American: the changes at Radio 2 follow, by several years, a similar shift at CBC’s French cultural network, which transformed to Espace musique. Espace musique encompasses a very wide variety of music – classical, jazz, world music, emerging artists, chansons, even hip-hop, punk, ska, and electronica on weekends. Espace musique has also launched eight online music channels focusing on the principle genres of the service – Bande à part. (There’s a flavor of Bande à part on Sirius, too.)

CBC’s French services have traditionally been successful with listeners – CBC has tremendous strength in the production of French audio and video content. But at least part of the CBC’s success in French-speaking Canada is because of its widely understood role in preserving Francophone cultural distinctiveness and cohesiveness. CBC English radio has long been committed to preserving Canadian culture, but the changes on Radio 2 now represent an extremely broad view of the Canadian musical culture the corporation wants to embrace and extend – certainly more broad than most public radio programmers in the US would be willing to consider for a single service.

What I think will be interesting to watch is the long-term impact of this extensive change on listeners to Radio 2… if the audience grows, or not… and how its demographic shifts.