The CBC Ad in Saturday's Globe and Mail:Paying Big Bucks to Convince Us We Don't Know What's Good for Us

The CBC just dropped about $30,000 trying to convince us how cool their new Radio Two programming will be. Saturday's Globe and Mail included a full page colour ad in the Review section, touting the changes with a list of industry types who think the gutting of serious music programming is a good thing. According to the Globe's rate card, the most advantageous rate is $11.71 a line for that placement, and a full page runs 1600 lines. That comes to $18,736, to which $9,228 in colour charges must be added, plus an undetermined amount for putting the ad together.

This ad comes a day after the CBC Vancouver Orchestra was axed for "budget" reasons. Come on, who do they think they're fooling? There's money to push this stuff, but not for good programming? Nonsense. I'm not sure how they do their accounting, but $30,000 would pay for recording a live chamber music concert certainly, or several of weeks of good programming from a radio host who knows something about music.

As Jeffrey Simpson wrote in the same edition, the CBC has only one mandate: "to treat its audience intelligently." Neither the programming changes nor the advertising campaign does this. There is no one from the serious music world listed as supporting the new programming: does the CBC brass think that no one is going to notice this?

Check out the CBC Save Classical Music FaceBook page. Send some e-mails:
CBC chief: ht.lacroix@cbc.ca; Head of English Radio: jennifer_mcguire@cbc.ca; Head of English CBC: richard_stursberg@cbc.ca; Head of Music Programming: mark_steinmetz@cbc.ca