Well I should actually say changed. CBC Radio 2 is known as being a classical music station. Now I can’t say I’ve ever listened to it. I’ll put my hands up in the air and admit that one. But then again I rarely, if ever, listen to the radio except for that year in college when I didn’t have a TV.
In the grand wisdom that people who listen to the radio as much as I do but still run them, they have decided to axe all but 5 hours of classical music on CBC Radio 2 (which will only be broadcast in the day when people are working or are in school) and switch to pop, jazz and blues. What??? Isn’t that what hundreds and thousands of other stations do? It’s supposed to be an experiment but as the title of this Vancouver Sun article asks “The new CBC Radio 2: Dumbed down or daring?” I have to vote for dumbed down.
It seems incomprehensible to me that such a specific station will radically change it’s output to something so common. (I don’t mean that kind of music is lesser in any way – just that it has a very wide representation in the current radio market) Yes – maybe they are losing listeners but why lose the ones you have with such a radical move. How about, instead, you add 5 hours of Jazz, Blues and Pop and leave the rest of the time for what the station is known for – CLASSICAL MUSIC! My friend used to go to sleep with CBC Radio 2 on and would wake up happily to the sounds of classical serenades. He now says that after the change of format he wakes up angry at 5 am and has to switch the radio off. Now that has to be an indication that something is not right here. So please can we stop this experiment? Just like the new facebook, no one likes it and would like to go back to the way it was.