From the January 24 2012 Globe and Mail:
CBC dismantling LP, CD archives
GUY DIXON
Published Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012 5:00PM EST
The CBC is quietly dismantling its archives of LPs and CDs across Canada – a cultural treasure trove built over decades – even as it prepares to launch a major new music service online.
With uncertainty over levels of funding from Ottawa, CBC management has told archivists to winnow the music collections at regional bureaus by the end of March. This could mean donating, selling or discarding thousands of records and CDs – a cost- and space-saving measure as recordings are increasingly digitized.
This is happening just as the CBC’s need for music could grow heavily, as the broadcaster gears up to introduce a number of new music channels streaming online, possibly as many as 35, sources familiar with the project say.
While CBC management would not confirm that a new service is in the works, sources say it is expected to provide a number of musical formats (one for Canadian rock, one for Canadian hip hop and so on) all accessible from one central CBC website.
Some CBC archivists see irony in the fact that they are being asked to dismantle regional record collections just as producers will be coming to them for music. Many old LPs won’t be digitized, they say, and producers and announcers won’t be able to hold the physical albums and see liner notes and information that can’t be fully captured in a database.
“We believe that they are jumping the gun quite a bit by doing this,” said archivist John MacMillan, who has spent much of his career looking after CBC Vancouver’s music library. “We understand that at some point the hard-copy collection would not be needed any more, and the usage of the CDs has gone down. But the content in this virtual music library – as it’s known – is still far below the needs of the users.”
There is also a risk, some fear, of losing some valuable recordings when such large collections – some with tens of thousands of titles – are broken up. As one archivist said, not for attribution, it’s a question of whether CBC management sees the collections as a valuable archive for Canadians or simply as a resource for CBC producers.
CBC spokesman Chris Ball said that the cull isn’t affecting its Toronto-based archive, and the CBC will continue to maintain an extensive physical collection. At the same time, he notes, the CBC has been relying less and less on CDs and albums and more on digitized music, like much of the industry. The broadcaster’s digitized library is said to already contain about 1.5 million titles.
“We’re going to look at what content has historic value, what has a programming value to us,” Ball said. “The goal here is that we are digitizing that content in the virtual music library. What that’s going to be able to do is give everybody across the country [in the CBC] desktop access to our entire music library.”
Out of the approximately 650,000 CDs housed in CBC bureaus, only 140,000 CDs are unique to those libraries. The rest are duplicates of discs already housed in Toronto, Ball said. Unique physical titles will be shipped to the CBC’s permanent collection in Toronto, which currently has about 135,000 unique CDs.
He added that the physical library will continue to add new discs. “This isn’t the end point. … We’re still going to support regional artists who want to provide us with their music,” he said.
So the push is now on not only to scour the bureaus’ collections for records to ship to Toronto, but to simultaneously digitize more of those titles. This isn’t expected to eliminate many, if any, jobs since most CBC archivists also maintain other collections, such as TV and radio archives.
CBC’s popular online Radio 3 service, which features new music and has a largely separate collection, is expected to integrate more of its library into the CBC’s larger digitalized music system.
So far, the dismantling of regional record collections only applies to the English-language side. The question is whether there’s enough time to input enough of the rare LPs into the virtual music library by the end of March, and how much of the information in the liner notes will be lost.
MacMillan acknowledges that this kind of information is not necessarily used every day. “But the point of this, and I think with any library, it’s there for next year or the year after when someone goes ‘Oh, how about …?’ and they can look up something that is here and readily available, something that iTunes just will never have, ever,” he said.
The collection in Vancouver, for instance, has an unusually large array of South American titles and other music from around the world. These could be viewed as extraneous when the collection is dismantled. It also has a large number of 78-rpm records and Edisons (early 78s recorded without amplifiers or microphones).
“I can think of one or two collectors in Vancouver who would love to have them and preserve them,” MacMillan said. “Some records are in such poor shape that they may have to be thrown out. But [with] much of it, we would endeavour to try to save it as best we could and to make sure it went into a collector’s hands or [to] a university.”
He added that “it is a time-consuming process to go through, to make sure that we’re not tossing something away that doesn’t exist in a modern format … The thing about this that is most rankling to me is that, sure, we knew that this had to happen. But it is happening way too fast.”
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Friday, December 16, 2011
Joy to the World, Sunday Dec. 18 on CBC Radio Two
One of the few programs on CBC Radio Two that survived the Great Purge of 2007 - 2009 is Joy to the World, the annual program of Christmas music broadcast by the European Broadcasting Union and carried by CBC Radio Two.
This year's broadcast is this Sunday, December 18. Here is the schedule for the program, copied from the CBC Radio Two site:
Joy to the World: EBU Day of Seasonal Music, December 18, 2011
9:00 HELSINKI, Finland: The Helsinki Chamber Orchestra and soprano Maria Cristina Kiehrat present a program of vocal and instrumental from the 16th and 17th centuries at the Kallio Church. Our day begins with the Kallio Church bells.
10:00 ENSCHEDE Netherlands: The Discantus Ensemble with director Brigitte Lesne present medieval Christmas music for voice and handbells at the Grote Kerk in Enschede.
11:00 RIGA Latvia: Percussionist Rihards Zalupe, sax player Oskars Petrauskis and keyboardist Raimonds Petrauskis perform a program called "Mixed Christmas" live from the studio at Latvian Radio.
12:00 REYKJAVIK Iceland: The Carmina Chamber Choir with director Arni Heimir Ingolfsson and lute player Karl Nyhlin present an Icelandic Renaissance Christmas from Langholt Church in Reykjavik.
13:00 TALLINN, Estonia: The Rondellus Early Music Ensemble present a live program of medieval music with fiddle, hurdy-gurdy, psaltery, bagpipe, lute, percussion and voice from St Nicholas Church in Tallinn.
14:00 MONTREAL Canada: The annual Sing-In from the Church of St Andrew and St Paul features musicians and audience in music for the season.
15:00 COPENHAGEN Denmark: The Danish Radio Vocal Ensemble and the Middle East Peace Orchestra led by Henrik Goldschmidt presents a program of seasonal music in Danish, Arabic, Hebrew and English at Christian's Church in Christianshaven.
16:00 PRAGUE, Czech Republic: Musica Florea and soloists will present 2 choral works by baroque composer Jan Dismas Zelenka at the historic Church of St Simon and St Jude, dating from the 1620s.
17:00 WATERFORD, Ireland:The world-acclaimed celtic DanĪ Ensemble presents a concert of Irish Christmas music at The Local pub in Dunvargan, County Waterford, Ireland.
This year's broadcast is this Sunday, December 18. Here is the schedule for the program, copied from the CBC Radio Two site:
Joy to the World: EBU Day of Seasonal Music, December 18, 2011
9:00 HELSINKI, Finland: The Helsinki Chamber Orchestra and soprano Maria Cristina Kiehrat present a program of vocal and instrumental from the 16th and 17th centuries at the Kallio Church. Our day begins with the Kallio Church bells.
10:00 ENSCHEDE Netherlands: The Discantus Ensemble with director Brigitte Lesne present medieval Christmas music for voice and handbells at the Grote Kerk in Enschede.
11:00 RIGA Latvia: Percussionist Rihards Zalupe, sax player Oskars Petrauskis and keyboardist Raimonds Petrauskis perform a program called "Mixed Christmas" live from the studio at Latvian Radio.
12:00 REYKJAVIK Iceland: The Carmina Chamber Choir with director Arni Heimir Ingolfsson and lute player Karl Nyhlin present an Icelandic Renaissance Christmas from Langholt Church in Reykjavik.
13:00 TALLINN, Estonia: The Rondellus Early Music Ensemble present a live program of medieval music with fiddle, hurdy-gurdy, psaltery, bagpipe, lute, percussion and voice from St Nicholas Church in Tallinn.
14:00 MONTREAL Canada: The annual Sing-In from the Church of St Andrew and St Paul features musicians and audience in music for the season.
15:00 COPENHAGEN Denmark: The Danish Radio Vocal Ensemble and the Middle East Peace Orchestra led by Henrik Goldschmidt presents a program of seasonal music in Danish, Arabic, Hebrew and English at Christian's Church in Christianshaven.
16:00 PRAGUE, Czech Republic: Musica Florea and soloists will present 2 choral works by baroque composer Jan Dismas Zelenka at the historic Church of St Simon and St Jude, dating from the 1620s.
17:00 WATERFORD, Ireland:The world-acclaimed celtic DanĪ Ensemble presents a concert of Irish Christmas music at The Local pub in Dunvargan, County Waterford, Ireland.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Will Kirstine Stewart save the CBC? - Globe and Mail, July 29 2011
This article appeared in the July 29th edition of the Globe and Mail. The decline in market share for CBC Radio 2 is mentioned, almost as an aside. Clearly, radio is not that important!
Will Kirstine Stewart save the CBC?
Michael Posner
Globe and Mail Update (with correction)
Published Friday, Jul. 29, 2011 7:08PM EDT
Some years ago, a young Canadian television sales executive found herself at a trade market in Hong Kong. At an industry party, she and a colleague decided to visit a fortune teller.
The colleague, Isme Bennie, was told that she would soon confront several major transitions in her life, including moving house. The predictions all proved accurate.
And the young exec? Kirstine Layfield (now known by her maiden name Stewart) was told that she would one day become prime minister of Canada. That, needless to say, hasn't happened – yet.
What Ms. Stewart has become is executive vice-president of the CBC's English services. Arguably the most powerful job in Canadian broadcasting, it has never before been held by a woman. Not only is it the most powerful, it is, without doubt, the most daunting job. As the CBC prepares to celebrate its 75th anniversary this fall, it may be approaching a historic crossroads.
“The best she can do is keep the CBC in the game,” one CBC insider says.
Ms. Stewart remains optimistic. “Everyone is engaged by the same questions,” she allows in a recent interview. “It's a big brain challenge. But there's real opportunity here, to remake the modern public broadcaster and keep it relevant.”
The eldest daughter of British immigrants to Canada, Ms. Stewart, just 42, has a degree in English literature from the University of Toronto. With her former husband, teacher Ken Layfield, she has two daughters, Brigitte and AnnaLise. After each birth, she returned to work within six weeks, while her husband took paternity leave. “I wouldn't necessarily recommend it,” she once explained, “but it was what I needed to do to keep doing what I was doing.”
The marriage effectively ended several years ago. Earlier this year, she became engaged to Zaib Shaikh, star of Little Mosque on the Prairie. She says a wedding date has not been announced – a polite way of saying she does not want to discuss her private life.
Since winning the job last year, her first order of work seems to have been housecleaning. In the past year, the heads of CBC drama (Sally Catto), sports (Scott Moore), digital (Steve Billinger) and radio (Denise Donlon) have all departed.
“What we've done is take out a layer of management,” Ms. Stewart explains. “There were multiple levels reporting to me and we wanted to flatten that out.”
Ms. Stewart's conversation tends to sound like that. Outwardly cool, if not icy, she has clearly mastered the vocabulary of modern corporatese, all those “bottom lines” that, “at the end of the day,” will allow us to “move the yardsticks.”
But Isme Bennie, who hired her as a receptionist in 1988 at Paragon Entertainment, straight out of university, cautions against any impulse to underestimate Ms. Stewart. “Kirstine started by answering our phones and left as president of distribution,” she says. “She is smart and resourceful. She takes initiative.”
At the CBC, Ms. Stewart succeeded Richard Stursberg, a brilliant Machiavellian who had been, in roughly equal measure, feared, respected and loathed.
Mr. Stursberg departed suddenly last August, after CBC president Hubert Lacroix, the public broadcaster's government-appointed and largely invisible power behind the throne, grew weary of his gamesmanship. Mr. Lacroix nurses an ambitious agenda, which is to reshape the corporation for the 21st century. Rightly or wrongly, he decided Mr. Stursberg was not the person to realize that agenda.
Enter Ms. Stewart, then head of network programming. Before joining the CBC in 2006, she had earned her spurs as a VP at Alliance Atlantis (overseeing eight channels), Hallmark Entertainment (managing a budget of $300-million (U.S.) and a staff of 750), and Trio, a now-defunct U.S. channel.
Under Mr. Stursberg, she scored largely with reality shows, although one gamble – a simulcast with ABC's The One: Making a Music Star, hosted by Mr. Stroumboulopoulos – backfired. The show was cancelled after two weeks.
Critics, among them Ian Morrison, spokesman for Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, also complain that the CBC's ratings gain has been built on the back of cheap, lowbrow American imports, such as Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.
Yet the ad revenue generated by these game shows, Ms. Stewart argues, helped the CBC underwrite five other shows that yielded million-plus audiences – Battle of the Blades, Dragons' Den, Rick Mercer Report, Republic of Doyle and Heartland. As part of its effort to Canadianize its prime-time schedule, Ms. Stewart has promised to cancel the game shows next year.
As things stand, the CBC's numbers are doing well – BBM Canada surveys indicate it has vaulted past Global in prime time. “The jump in ratings was all Kirstine's doing,” a former CBC senior executive says. “She's a very smart programmer. Richard … listened to her.”
Those who monitor the CBC's often Byzantine politics think that Mr. Lacroix has followed a time-honoured tradition in cultural institutions – choosing a leader distinctly different than the one being succeeded. “Hubert did not want another Richard,” says an industry executive close to the corporation. “Kirstine is a safer pair of hands, and will dutifully and efficiently carry out the mandate.”
Howard Bernstein, a former TV producer who has worked for the CBC and other broadcasters, is highly critical of the corporation's leadership. In a recent post on his media criticism blog, he wrote, “Today, in the post-Stursberg CBC the Stursberg philosophy lives on: go light, get numbers, avoid depth and at all costs don't allow serious culture anywhere near the lineup. …”
He also writes, “Kirstine Stewart, once Stursberg's leading yes woman, is surprise, surprise carrying on as if Stursberg were still telling her what is what.”
Any suggestion that she might be “Sturs lite” makes Ms. Stewart bristle. “I'm surprised by that association,” she says. “Richard had a huge beneficial effect on the CBC, in terms of processes. But people are looking for programming leadership. That's where I come from. The future is about content.”
And in a follow-up e-mail, she adds, “The label ‘lite' is one I've seen levied too often at female execs to now let pass by without comment. … It's an awfully convenient way to put someone, in this case me … in a box. It trivializes and makes diminutive the goals I have for the CBC and for this role … I won't be a copy of anyone, lite or otherwise.”
The challenges Ms. Stewart faces are also far from trivial. In a world run amok with television choice, she must simultaneously maintain the CBC's thin market share, stay competitive in the increasingly vital digital sphere, strengthen ties to the regions, reflect the fast-changing Canadian demographic while fulfilling its triple-barrelled legislated mandate – “to inform, enlighten and entertain.”
And that's just the big picture.
Critics, such as The Globe and Mail's own John Doyle, have noted that while prime-time TV ratings have soared, the once-thriving oasis of serious arts and culture programming has become a wasteland; audiences have evaporated. In news and current affairs, which has borne a disproportionate burden of budget cuts, morale is moribund. And Radio 2's ratings have collapsed, since abandoning its largely classical music format in 2007.
Then there is Hockey Night in Canada – the CBC's most popular show (accounting for 30 per cent of its audience) and its single most powerful engine of advertising revenue. The broadcaster's contract to cover the National Hockey League expires in June, 2014. A bidding war for rights is inevitable, one the cash-strapped corporation will be hard-pressed to win, without allies.
Looming over it all is Stephen Harper's Damoclean sword. The Conservative government may act on its ideologically driven impulse to destroy public broadcasting by slashing the CBC's annual $1.1-billion appropriation. (It earns an additional $700-million from advertising and other revenue.)
Meanwhile, the corporation's fundamental dilemma remains: To the extent that the CBC must justify its federal subsidies and attract advertisers, it must be populist. But to the extent that it is populist, it risks becoming a clone of commercial broadcasters, and forfeits its signature identity as Canada's cultural lodestone.
Until she seeks political office, as her fortune teller predicted, it will be Kirstine Stewart's burden to find a balance for an organization whose own future prospects appear less auspicious.
Michael Posner is a Globe and Mail feature writer.
Editor's Note: Kirstine Stewart, executive vice-president of the CBC’s English services, has not dated George Stroumboulopoulos. The original newspaper version and an earlier online version of this article have been corrected.
Will Kirstine Stewart save the CBC?
Michael Posner
Globe and Mail Update (with correction)
Published Friday, Jul. 29, 2011 7:08PM EDT
Some years ago, a young Canadian television sales executive found herself at a trade market in Hong Kong. At an industry party, she and a colleague decided to visit a fortune teller.
The colleague, Isme Bennie, was told that she would soon confront several major transitions in her life, including moving house. The predictions all proved accurate.
And the young exec? Kirstine Layfield (now known by her maiden name Stewart) was told that she would one day become prime minister of Canada. That, needless to say, hasn't happened – yet.
What Ms. Stewart has become is executive vice-president of the CBC's English services. Arguably the most powerful job in Canadian broadcasting, it has never before been held by a woman. Not only is it the most powerful, it is, without doubt, the most daunting job. As the CBC prepares to celebrate its 75th anniversary this fall, it may be approaching a historic crossroads.
“The best she can do is keep the CBC in the game,” one CBC insider says.
Ms. Stewart remains optimistic. “Everyone is engaged by the same questions,” she allows in a recent interview. “It's a big brain challenge. But there's real opportunity here, to remake the modern public broadcaster and keep it relevant.”
The eldest daughter of British immigrants to Canada, Ms. Stewart, just 42, has a degree in English literature from the University of Toronto. With her former husband, teacher Ken Layfield, she has two daughters, Brigitte and AnnaLise. After each birth, she returned to work within six weeks, while her husband took paternity leave. “I wouldn't necessarily recommend it,” she once explained, “but it was what I needed to do to keep doing what I was doing.”
The marriage effectively ended several years ago. Earlier this year, she became engaged to Zaib Shaikh, star of Little Mosque on the Prairie. She says a wedding date has not been announced – a polite way of saying she does not want to discuss her private life.
Since winning the job last year, her first order of work seems to have been housecleaning. In the past year, the heads of CBC drama (Sally Catto), sports (Scott Moore), digital (Steve Billinger) and radio (Denise Donlon) have all departed.
“What we've done is take out a layer of management,” Ms. Stewart explains. “There were multiple levels reporting to me and we wanted to flatten that out.”
Ms. Stewart's conversation tends to sound like that. Outwardly cool, if not icy, she has clearly mastered the vocabulary of modern corporatese, all those “bottom lines” that, “at the end of the day,” will allow us to “move the yardsticks.”
But Isme Bennie, who hired her as a receptionist in 1988 at Paragon Entertainment, straight out of university, cautions against any impulse to underestimate Ms. Stewart. “Kirstine started by answering our phones and left as president of distribution,” she says. “She is smart and resourceful. She takes initiative.”
At the CBC, Ms. Stewart succeeded Richard Stursberg, a brilliant Machiavellian who had been, in roughly equal measure, feared, respected and loathed.
Mr. Stursberg departed suddenly last August, after CBC president Hubert Lacroix, the public broadcaster's government-appointed and largely invisible power behind the throne, grew weary of his gamesmanship. Mr. Lacroix nurses an ambitious agenda, which is to reshape the corporation for the 21st century. Rightly or wrongly, he decided Mr. Stursberg was not the person to realize that agenda.
Enter Ms. Stewart, then head of network programming. Before joining the CBC in 2006, she had earned her spurs as a VP at Alliance Atlantis (overseeing eight channels), Hallmark Entertainment (managing a budget of $300-million (U.S.) and a staff of 750), and Trio, a now-defunct U.S. channel.
Under Mr. Stursberg, she scored largely with reality shows, although one gamble – a simulcast with ABC's The One: Making a Music Star, hosted by Mr. Stroumboulopoulos – backfired. The show was cancelled after two weeks.
Critics, among them Ian Morrison, spokesman for Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, also complain that the CBC's ratings gain has been built on the back of cheap, lowbrow American imports, such as Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.
Yet the ad revenue generated by these game shows, Ms. Stewart argues, helped the CBC underwrite five other shows that yielded million-plus audiences – Battle of the Blades, Dragons' Den, Rick Mercer Report, Republic of Doyle and Heartland. As part of its effort to Canadianize its prime-time schedule, Ms. Stewart has promised to cancel the game shows next year.
As things stand, the CBC's numbers are doing well – BBM Canada surveys indicate it has vaulted past Global in prime time. “The jump in ratings was all Kirstine's doing,” a former CBC senior executive says. “She's a very smart programmer. Richard … listened to her.”
Those who monitor the CBC's often Byzantine politics think that Mr. Lacroix has followed a time-honoured tradition in cultural institutions – choosing a leader distinctly different than the one being succeeded. “Hubert did not want another Richard,” says an industry executive close to the corporation. “Kirstine is a safer pair of hands, and will dutifully and efficiently carry out the mandate.”
Howard Bernstein, a former TV producer who has worked for the CBC and other broadcasters, is highly critical of the corporation's leadership. In a recent post on his media criticism blog, he wrote, “Today, in the post-Stursberg CBC the Stursberg philosophy lives on: go light, get numbers, avoid depth and at all costs don't allow serious culture anywhere near the lineup. …”
He also writes, “Kirstine Stewart, once Stursberg's leading yes woman, is surprise, surprise carrying on as if Stursberg were still telling her what is what.”
Any suggestion that she might be “Sturs lite” makes Ms. Stewart bristle. “I'm surprised by that association,” she says. “Richard had a huge beneficial effect on the CBC, in terms of processes. But people are looking for programming leadership. That's where I come from. The future is about content.”
And in a follow-up e-mail, she adds, “The label ‘lite' is one I've seen levied too often at female execs to now let pass by without comment. … It's an awfully convenient way to put someone, in this case me … in a box. It trivializes and makes diminutive the goals I have for the CBC and for this role … I won't be a copy of anyone, lite or otherwise.”
The challenges Ms. Stewart faces are also far from trivial. In a world run amok with television choice, she must simultaneously maintain the CBC's thin market share, stay competitive in the increasingly vital digital sphere, strengthen ties to the regions, reflect the fast-changing Canadian demographic while fulfilling its triple-barrelled legislated mandate – “to inform, enlighten and entertain.”
And that's just the big picture.
Critics, such as The Globe and Mail's own John Doyle, have noted that while prime-time TV ratings have soared, the once-thriving oasis of serious arts and culture programming has become a wasteland; audiences have evaporated. In news and current affairs, which has borne a disproportionate burden of budget cuts, morale is moribund. And Radio 2's ratings have collapsed, since abandoning its largely classical music format in 2007.
Then there is Hockey Night in Canada – the CBC's most popular show (accounting for 30 per cent of its audience) and its single most powerful engine of advertising revenue. The broadcaster's contract to cover the National Hockey League expires in June, 2014. A bidding war for rights is inevitable, one the cash-strapped corporation will be hard-pressed to win, without allies.
Looming over it all is Stephen Harper's Damoclean sword. The Conservative government may act on its ideologically driven impulse to destroy public broadcasting by slashing the CBC's annual $1.1-billion appropriation. (It earns an additional $700-million from advertising and other revenue.)
Meanwhile, the corporation's fundamental dilemma remains: To the extent that the CBC must justify its federal subsidies and attract advertisers, it must be populist. But to the extent that it is populist, it risks becoming a clone of commercial broadcasters, and forfeits its signature identity as Canada's cultural lodestone.
Until she seeks political office, as her fortune teller predicted, it will be Kirstine Stewart's burden to find a balance for an organization whose own future prospects appear less auspicious.
Michael Posner is a Globe and Mail feature writer.
Editor's Note: Kirstine Stewart, executive vice-president of the CBC’s English services, has not dated George Stroumboulopoulos. The original newspaper version and an earlier online version of this article have been corrected.
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