Friday, March 28, 2008

Giving the barn a new coat of paint and calling it an artist's retreat


The CBC is all about regeneration and re branding this week. Yesterday they announced that after some seventy years of beautiful music together (well OK a few folks have come and gone over the years) the CBC Radio orchestra is to be no more.

The Vancouver based radio orchestra, normally heard on CBC 2, consisted of 35 free lance musicians who have been told by CBC execs that they will play their last note together in September. A move that didn't really come as much of a surprise to anyone who has watched the shift of demographics that the CBC is trying to chase down these days.

While they were humming that's the day the music died at the CBC, they were busy resuscitating their Country Canada channel. The digital offering that mainly offers up reruns of CBC's past prime time programming (many of which the CBC cancelled at one time or another) , seems to have found that the moniker "Country Canada" wasn't exactly pulling in the urban folks, so they've moved off the farm and into the city so to speak.


From the Metropolitan Opera, through the era of the Tudors and on to a new indie music series, it seems that Bold is going to an artistic and dramatic channel of sorts, an interesting shift from where it once came from, steeped in the lifestyle of rural Canada.

Of particular interest is their promise to provide "Live and Uncut" coverage of the Ford Women's curling championships. A rather "bold" promise we think, as usually live and uncut has connotations of much profanity and maybe even a little nudity.... gasp..... this ain't your Gramma's channel anymore..

Now we seriously doubt if the curling lasses are going to be tossing their clothes aside as they sweep their way down the rinks, but just the inadvertent teasing the prospect should bring a few eyeballs onto the new channel. Just imagine the possibilities of "art film curling", a sure fire winner we would think.

Of course even suggesting the same for the men's tournament and well the days of the old Country Canada audience cumes, will seem like the numbers of Hockey Night in Canada...

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