Shortly after I posted yesterday's blog entry, Mr. Paul Arbour, the NDP candidate in Carleton-Mississippi Mills, sent a reply to the question I sent concerning each candidate's position on the recent programming changes on CBC Radio Two. Bravo, Mr. Arbour! Now, I still have to receive responses from Mr. Gordon O'Connor (Conservative party), Mr. Justin MacKinnon (Liberal party) and Mr. Jake Cole (Green party).
I have not posted Mr. Arbour's reply here since he did not explicitly give me permission to do so. I will post it if Mr. Arbour sends me another e-mail giving his permission.
I'll continue my imaginary discussion between Bob and Ted, two members of one of the campaign staffs, from yesterday. In case there are some who have not realized this yet, Bob and Ted are fictional characters. Any resemblance to any persons, either living, dead, or CBC management, is purely coincidental. However, at least we know now that they're not NDPers.
"So, Bob, how's the wife these days?"
"Carol's fine, Ted. How's Alice?"
"Good, good. Carol's still home with the kids?"
"Yeah, that's right. Bobby's four and Britney's three."
"Must be tough to be at home all day with two pre-schoolers."
"Yeah, it is. I couldn't take it. Carol claimed that listening to CBC Radio Two kept her sane. That was, at least, until CBC made their changes to the daytime programming on September 2nd."
"So what did she do?"
"Well, she tried listening to the 'new 2' for a while, but the new programming drove her up the wall. She told me that if she wanted to listen to middle of the road crap, she could tune to any of the other commercial radio stations that are out there."
"So that's where you got that 'middle of the road crap' statement."
"Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, I told her to listen to CDs instead. She tried that, but she said she was constantly having to go back to the CD player to put on another CD and, anyway, it didn't seem spontaneous, having to select your own CDs and make up your own playlist. And then Bobby put and end to that."
"What did he do?"
"Put apple sauce in the CD player and pushed 'play'. He'd heard us talking about the Apple iPod, Apple iPhone, Apple iTouch so much that he thought apple sauce might have some innate musical qualities."
"Must take after you. So why didn't Carol listen to streaming audio on the internet instead? CBC says they're playing just as much classical music over the internet now as they used to play over the air."
"Well, that's fine for you and me who are tied to our desks most of the day and glued to our PCs. But Carol, she's running all over the house. She's not near the PC that often. And we can't put a PC in every room."
"I guess not. So what's she doing now?"
"Well, the whole thing finally came to a head one day when I came home and she greeted me at the door with a bottle of Wild Turkey in her hand."
"Jeez, no! She didn't start drinking home alone with the kids?"
"No, of course not! She was just waiting for me to get home so that I could look after the kids. Then, she poured herself a drink."
"What about her parents? I thought they lived nearby."
"Yes, they do, and they're pissed off at CBC too for changing the programming. Vern, as you may remember, used to be a minister and wouldn't normally even say the words 'pissed off', but he's royally pissed at CBC right now."
"No, no, I'm not talking about the CBC, I mean, don't they help out with the kids from time to time."
"Well, sure, they used to, but since Vern retired they've been hard to pin down. They're either at the cottage, driving to or from the cottage, or on vacation somewhere. Just this summer Vern and Martha drove out to Vancouver. Then, when they came back, they went out to St. John's for a couple of weeks. Vern described it as 'listening to CBC Radio Two, coast to coast'.
"So, they're big CBC Radio Two fans too, huh? Must run in the family."
"Well, they used to be Radio Two fans. CBC Radio Two was always a big part of their daily lives - they always had a radio going on in the house, tuned to Radio Two. Until, that is, CBC replaced 'Music for a While' and 'In Peformance' with 'Tonic' and 'Canada Live'."
"What, that happened sometime back in 2007, didn't it? In March or April of 2007? I've been reading this guy Wooten's blog, and he's been harping on this ever since then."
"Yeah, that's right, Vern first mentioned it sometime in the spring last year. This summer, he finally got so irritated by the crap (as he puts it) that they feature on 'Canada Live' that he threw the radio into the lake from the cottage porch. And that took some throw - must've been 30 yards or so. He used to QB his high school football team, y'know."
"Well, that's impressive for an old guy."
"Yeah, and the even more impressive thing is that he spent the whole next day diving to find the radio. Martha said she didn't want the radio polluting the lake, because of all the lead and whatnot in the radio."
"So what are you going to do about Carol. Wild Turkey is no replacement for CBC Radio Two."
"Well, problem solved. I went out the next day and bought her three Sirius satellite radio receivers and put one on every floor of the house. Now, she can have Classical music from 'Symphony Hall' or Opera from 'Met Opera Radio' 24/7."
"It's a bit expensive, isn't it, to have a subscription for three receivers, not to mention the three receivers in the house?"
"Well, yeah, it's not as cheap as having a $29.95 radio in every room of the house and receiving music for free over the air. That's one of the things that bugs Carol and me so much - now we have to pay twice - we support CBC Radio with our tax dollars, but don't use their service, and have to pay for satellite radio."
"CBC is one of the owners of Sirius, isn't it? Maybe the programming changes were a clever plot to promote Sirius satellite radio subscriptions."
"I think you've been reading too much Grisham, Ted. But I'll look into it once I'm an ADM."
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