CBC Radio One delays major program surgery
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Monthly Digital Subscription
$1 per week for 24 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Billed as $4.00 plus GST every four weeks. After 24 weeks, price increases to the regular rate of $19.95 plus GST every four weeks. Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
Monthly Digital Subscription
$4.99/week*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Billed as $19.95 plus GST every four weeks. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
*Your next subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $16.99 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $23.99 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/05/2002 (8750 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
CBC Radio One is putting controversial plans to reinvent itself on hold.
The news and information service has killed off weekday morning show This Morning, but won’t perform radical surgery on its Saturday lineup until next year, executive director Adrian Mills wrote in a memo to English-language radio staff yesterday.
The public broadcaster had been planning changes to weekday mornings and Saturdays as part of an overall strategy to attract younger listeners. Right now, CBC Radio One’s core audience comprises people in their 50s and 60s.
This Morning, currently hosted by Shelagh Rogers on weekdays, has been replaced with a “town square” program from 8:30 a.m. to noon and an as-yet-unnamed block of programming from 10 a.m. to noon. Also beginning this fall, the Manitoba weekday morning show hosted by Terry MacLeod will run from 6 to 8:30 a.m. But a more ambitious plan to scrap the network’s entire Saturday lineup in favour of some kind of live programming has been put off until January 2003 at the earliest.
What this means is three Winnipeg-based Saturday programs will be back on the air in September: nationally broadcast pop-culture show Definitely Not The Opera, Manitoba entertainment newsmagazine Culture Shock and the local weekend morning show hosted by Ron Robinson.
Political newsmagazine The House and long-running science program Quirks & Quarks will also return on Saturdays.
But there are no plans to resurrect Vancouver-based Basic Black, as longtime host Arthur Black is retiring at the end of June. Also, DNTO host Nora Young is calling it quits and will be replaced in the fall. The departures of Black and Young are what originally led CBC brass to consider major changes to the Saturday lineup.
According to Mills, the plans are on hold because of financial concerns. “After much consideration, the original Saturday proposal and associated schedule implications — while ambitious, exciting and innovative — needs to be revisited in order for us to be able to deliver a high-quality schedule at an affordable cost,” he wrote.
However, other reports suggest the CBC was not ready. Citing unnamed sources, the Toronto Globe & Mail claimed there was no way the network could create so much new programming in time for the fall because much of its staff goes on holidays in July and producers had not been hired for the new shows.
(Bartley Kives freelances for CBC Radio One.)
bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca