To mark the fifth anniversary of the death of Radio Two

I unfortunately let several anniversaries slip by the notice of this blog. The first was the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the end of the old CBC Radio Two. This was, of course, March 19. It was on this date in 2007 that the CBC launched their stealth attack against the CBC Radio Two listening audience by cutting “The World at Six” from its 6:00 PM time slot, cancelling Danielle Charbonneau and the much-loved “Music for a While” and replacing “In Performance” with Eric Friesen with the reviled “Canada Live”. Oh yes, I forgot to mention: “Two New Hours”, “Brave New Waves” and “Northern Lights” were also cancelled. But it is easy to overlook these changes in the general slaughter that took place.


Of course, that was just the beginning. Even more drastic changes to the programming schedule were about to take place, commencing in September 2007 and finally being completed in September 2008. But for many of us, March 19 2007 was the day that the music died on CBC Radio Two.


So I thought it would be fun to mark the fifth anniversary of this blog by listing here all of the letters and correspondence that I sent to various individuals (and in some cases, the replies I received) during the course of my five-year protest against the changes that were made to CBC Radio Two. For those of you who have just discovered this blog, it’s an easy way to catch up on what has happened during the last five years. For those of you who have been following along, it’s a handy summary of what has taken place in the past five years.


The list is in the format of links to previous blog entries. Here goes:


Post to Jowi Taylor’s Blog, March 21 2007


Letter to Tell Us What You Think, March 24 2007


Letter to Jennifer McGuire, Executive Director of Programming and Jane Chalmers, Vice-President of CBC Radio


Letter to Robert Rabinovich, President and CEO of the CBC


Letter to Gary Schellenberger, Chair of the House Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage


Letter to Bev Oda, Minister of Heritage


Response from the office of the Minister of Heritage


Response from Jennifer McGuire, Executive Director of Programming


A second letter to Jennifer McGuire, Executive Director of Programming


A second response from the office of the Minister of Heritage


A second response from Jennifer McGuire, Executive Director of Programming


Letters to the members of the House Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage


Open letters to the candidates in Carleton-Mississippi Mills during the 2008 election


Replies from the candidates in Carleton-Mississippi Mills during the 2008 election


Of course, we can’t forget the nation-wide protest that took place on April 11 2008 in response to the disbanding of the CBC Radio Orchestra and the Radio Two changes that were announced at that time:


Scenes from a Protest


Although it wasn't in the form of a letter received from these two individuals, I thought the interview conducted with Mark Steinmetz and Chris Boyce (the CBC Radio Director of Music and the CBC Radio Director of Programming, respectively, at the time of the interview) was interesting for what it revealed about the CBC:


Interview with Mark Steinmetz and Chris Boyce

In a subsequent post I’ll attempt to answer the question “Where are they now”, to track the careers of some of the major players in the CBC Radio Two restructuring debacle.