I’ve come to realize that the CBC is obsolete, and all the fuss and bother about classical music ‘disappearing’ from CBC 2 is pointless. I listen to classical on the net all the time. I prefer it actually, since I can do without the CBC hosts. (That promo guy they have on now drives me nuts; not to mention all the other falsely enthusiastic banter).

For the past two days this is what I listened to at work:

http://www.icebergradio.com/ – classical section, baroque and renaissance.

I’ve been sympathetic to Russell Smith’s defense of CBC 2 in his Globe column over the past couple of years, even bringing up his arguments to a CBC employee I once knew.

Marc Weisblott, in reviewing this for his latest ‘Scrolling Eye’ post on the Eye website, writes

What [Russell Smith] said during a debate on CBC Radio One’s The Current on Wednesday was a bit more nuanced, though, advocating radio for “the sensitive kid bored by the beer-drinking frat culture” like he was. “There are hundreds of thousands of emo kids, and underprivileged kids, around the country who need an escape from the boredom of the bored mass culture around them.”

But, when those proverbial emo kids have never touched a terrestrial radio in their lives, the only place to turn is to the vitriolic greybeards.

…Exactly. I was one of those sensitive kids bored then & now by frat culture, and that’s why I listened to CBC 2. But I’m dismayed to find the same voices on it that were there when I was a child (Jurgen Gothe, I’m thinking of you, and wish you well in your upcoming retirement).

The internet is now there for curious and sensitive youth. With regard to classical, I tend to use Wikipedia to find a location to download it from when I want something for the iPod. The only way Smith’s argument stands up for me is to consider sensitive bored kids using dial-up on the Prairie. In that case, one should bring the protests to the likes of Bell, who’ve begun throttling bandwidth.

To remain relevant to the 21st Century, the CBC should become an ISP, and primarily focus on net streams. Radio should be so old hat to them they could afford to treat it as an afterthought. The situation at the present moment is the reverse. While they did revamp their website last fall, they are still focused on using Windows Media Player, still being stingy with MP3 downloads and podcasting, and still have a stream which is prone to buffering errors.

I get the message, and the message I have in return is

Fuck you too CBC 2.