I know a great many of you have been following CBC’s
financial difficulties closely and have been concerned about the effect on CBC
Radio 3. Today, everyone at Radio 3
found out that, contrary to previous reports, we are NOT being sold and we are
NOT being shut down.
However, like the rest of the company, we are undertaking a significant
cut to our budget next year. There are
two primary impacts for us, one of which will be felt strongly and the other of
which many of you may not notice.
The first impact is that CBC Radio 3 will be recording
significantly less live music in the coming year. Our recording budget is being merged with the
recording budget of CBC Radio 2, which in turn has been reduced by 50%. We will still be recording musicians from across
the country, but how much we can do and whether those recordings will be live
concerts or studio sessions we don’t yet know.
I will be working with CBC Radio’s head of music, Mark Steinmetz, in the
coming weeks to create a new live music strategy between Radio 2 and Radio 3. This is very painful – I know how much all of you appreciate our
live recordings and I also know how much it means to the many amazing Canadian
musicians we record every year.
The second impact is related to our radio stations. Many of you may not know this, but CBC Radio
3’s Sirius satellite radio station (channel 86) broadcasts a separate and often
distinct set of programming from the streaming radio station on our
website. Yes, some of our programs are
simulcast on both, but many are not. Moving
forward, we will have the exact same programming on both Sirius and web radio.
Very sadly for all of us here, this will very
likely mean an impact on our staff. We
won’t know what that impact will be until mid-May at the earliest, as it depends
on a number of factors such as the internal take-up on a voluntary retirement
incentive plan and discussions with our union colleagues about how to minimize
staff reductions.
This is a bad day for CBC Radio 3. There is no doubt about it. However, it could have been much worse and
for that I think we are all thankful. We
are moving forward with a very strong radio station, a brand new version of the
website coming within a couple months, and a powerful, passionate community of
artists and music fans. Despite today’s
bad news, I’m personally very confident that Radio 3 will continue to grow and
prosper in the future and that impact of the cuts to our budget has been
minimized at best as humanly possible.
I would personally like to thank each and every one of you
who raised awareness online about the risks to Radio 3 since the infamous ‘unload
Radio 3’ quote was seen in the media.
Your support and the visibility of that support was heard loudly inside
the company and I hope was a factor in making today’s news considerably less
than it might have been otherwise.
Steve Pratt
Director, CBC Radio 3
