Friday, March 28, 2008

Why Is (Almost) Nobody Supporting the CBC's Classical Music Cuts?

Tod Maffin of the Inside the CBC blog seems to be the lone voice so far in actually supporting the cuts, not as a matter of economic necessity (which he dismisses, disagreeing with his superiors' rationalizations of the cuts) but as a matter of demographic choice. Where he goes horribly wrong is in fantasizing that the CBC's executives' point of view is actually supported:

First, I’m in the camp of people (and there are many) who actually support the expansion of CBC Radio Two to include different genres of music.

Oh really? Where are they? Why is it that the articles on this story so far in newspapers and blogs are almost exclusively of an extremely negative nature? Why is is that the Save Classical Music at the CBC Facebook group is now at 8500 members and counting? Why is it that the Save the CBC Radio Orchestra Facebook group already has over 550 600 members in its first day?

The reality is that CBC have in one fell swoop alienated their core listening audience of Radio 2, made enemies of much of the cultural elite of Canada, and militarized the classical music community in a manner never before seen.

And now the classical musicians of Vancouver, a city with one of the most vibrant musical communities on the continent, will have to go on with one of its best and brightest orchestras eliminated at the end of November.

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