Tag: Radio and TV

CBC’s Freestyle

I listened to the first edition of the new afternoon Radio 2 to 4 show Freestyle as I worked away yesterday and I was not upset at all. New CBC things usually get quite upsetting but this did not.

To be fair, host Kelly Ryan was one of my favorite people in the undergrad gang and I like to hear her brightness mid-afternoon. People will get moany about things like the pop music being played seeing as it is just twenty years since they removed classical music – was it RSVP? – from the afternoons on CBC 1. That’s kinda breakneck whiplashy for Canada.

I hope that Kelly’s news background and interviewing strength will come through more and more especially with their use a technique of no introductions to interviews used on BBC radio which gives a bit of pace. It will find its place.

New CBC Afternoons

Interesting to read that my old pal from Halifax days, Kelly Ryan, is reviving her radio host career started twenty years ago when she did CBC Halifax’s weekend wake-up show. Once I goaded her into referring her co-host as “L-7” and “four corners” based on the Flinstone’s beat poet episode of another twenty years earlier. I think she got into news not long after that. Kelly has had some grim national radio news reporting jobs like 9/11 and the Picton mass murders. With her sense of humour, I have high hopes for this show.

I am a little more concered with the Globe’s report on what will happen with the CBC Radio 1 11 am to noon slot:

The new programming will kick off in the late morning, before local noon-hour shows, with host Jian Ghomeshi’s The National Playlist, which will feature musicians, actors and politicians debating their favourite songs. Listeners will also be able to call in to kick songs off the continually evolving play list. CBC is billing it as an iPod play list debated nationally every weekday.

Gee – Jian is going to rate songs…like he has for about 3 years now in unending repeats. Nice pandering to the iPod bubble, too. I have low expectations but it is nice to see, at least, that the Ghost of Peter Gzowsky Past may have less air time.

Brent Doesn’t Fear

I was listening to Brent on CBC Radio’s last remaining good show, Go, this morning and he played “Don’t Fear The Reaper”…again. I checked the old notes for his musical choices that I kept when he was on CBC Ottawa and didn’t see that he played the Blue Oyster Cult classic but he did play it on that afternoon show he did right after the lockout, though only a cow bell-less cover.

I am starting to think he obsesses about the song. I also am starting to think that it is the seminal piece of art from the 1970s. There may have been better tunes but there was not a better 70s song. Compare and contrast, class.

NCPR Drive – Last Day


…radiation of pure thought…

It is the last day of the NCPR funding drive and I have been strangely attracted by the whole event. I gave my $75 bucks early on – and I hope you did, too. You didn’t? What is up with that?

You pretend that you can live in a virtual community, you look out your window and wonder why you live where you are and then you pass up joining a group that gives you the illusion of community better than few others. Think about it. If the web promises anything it is that you can rearrange the elements but what you still want after that rearrangement is a sense of place. And this place looks like this – pass Humblebub a hankie, would you?

And keep in mind I am not talking utopia. New York state politics is one of the most entertaining forms of screwy corruption meeting massively complex interests that you will ever come across. Ask NYCO. Plus it is that woodsy edgy bit of the state, way more Northern Exposure than Twin Peaks…mostly. And if you are in Kingston – did you know that you get 2-for-1 pizza from Tatas with an NCPR member rewards card? That alone may pay for my contribution. This is a great virtual space and one which is largely paid for by the people who listen to it. I think it could be the mega-station of NPR stations, one global smalltown.

So why not pick NCPR as the backdrop of your internet experience, like one of those screens with a picture of a forest scene used behind in photo studio portraits of children. Where else would be better?

Let us meet there all together one fine day.

Day Off For Nuttin

I decided there is only one thing better than one long weekend in October and that is two. I don’t really take too many days off and usually carry days from one year to the next. It is still a newish idea to me that I have legislated days off as opposed to days that I stay away from work. Here are some things to consider along with me as I aim at achieving a whole lot of nuttin:

  • Anyway, it is the first day of NCPR’s funding drive and eight hours into the week they are already at 31% of their estimated requirements. I will give and, right after I convince you it is one of the best radio stations out there, you should, too.
  • Based on the beer blog and with the goal of having a hobby that pays for itself, I have been invited to take baby steps into the more formal world of writing about been by news-printy inky-handy publications based in Wisconsin and New York City. What would you like written about beer?
  • The blog bubble has taken off in style with a widget being sold for 2.3 million. That is nuts except if there is a revenue stream in the works and I am thinking RSS spam. All aggregators being sent ads amongst their RSS feeds somehow. The future will suck and then collapse as usual.

Being Unhooked

It was very odd being dislocated from TV and the Internet even for four days. That in itself tells you what I loser I have become. When I think of what I was thinking over the last few days, when my concern was to ensure I had some idea of the hotels you could land at unexpectedly over the next five interstate turn-offs, there was plenty I found I did not need to care about – what a talk radio host said or what charges were laid against which politician.


“Dang – shoulda napped”

Baseball, on the other hand, becomes central as AM radio is a perfect medium for that sport and baseball is a perfect sport for that medium. Before the game – for hours before the game – there is much to consider about how a baseball game may play out. For example, knuckleball pitcher Tim Wakefield did not play well yesterday in the Red Sox loss to the Yankees but I had a sense he would not before the game as he was pitching on short rest. I don’t think you can have information about a player like that in any other sport or at least the known is not so well known. It is also complex. Much turned in the early innings on Randy Johnson’s temper. When he was facing bases loaded and his catcher went to talk with him, he was livid. His arrogant confidence and their relationship were important factors in the game. Sadly, he regained his composure and got better as the game went on. Maybe that was also due to him warming up for only seven minutes. That’s a fact. Just seven. Usually starters warm up for twenty. Now I know.

Despite the joy of driving up I-81 with a belly full of hammy turnip greens and grilled haddock listening to A Prairie Home Companion, it was interesting to watch my listening generally move from NPR or talk radio to sports radio, to replace the sort of facts I usually feed myself with sports stats. There is something utterly unimportant about sports stats which are also immersive – maybe it’s their utter unimportance. I think if I was driving along dealing with what was being dealt with and listening to news my brain would have imploded with argument and anger at the vanity, stupidity and selfishness of what is at the core of what passes for news. You can’t argue with baseball. It just has to happen. OK, you can argue that in 2003 Timlin should have gone in an inning earlier. He should have, too, but I still have a point. It also happens at its own pace. A game can be two hours or three and a half. A pitcher’s duel or a slug fest. Despite all you know, you just never know.

CBC Lockout Update II…XIV…XXXVIII

I read John Gushue in St. John’s every morning on the CBC lockout situation just as I read him every morning before. He certainly puts a human face on the situation as well as a fairly neutral presentation on events. But, underneath all that neutrality, what strikes me from all this is there is absolutely no plan from management to improve anything with the CBC services that do, as some more fiscally conservative than me point out, draw a fairly significant amount from the public purse – though pennies a day to each of us.

As we are not locally serviced by CBC radio – not by even a bureau – the St. Lawrence Valley of Ontario is perhaps not as shocked as places like the North where my undergrad pal and fellow crow Dave White (now only a Google cache) hosts in Yukon or in the Maritimes where the economy or interests practically bar the development of robust independent news services. But still, for all this disruption nationally, it would be nice to have the slightest clue that there is a basis in service rather than labour relations justifying the lockout. It is odd as a Canadian to watch from time to time when the BBC explains itself and its future plans to the British public or listen to NPR do phone-ins on what the audience would like to have presented. Sometimes I think that CBC management treats the audience like a sector of its labour force, needing only to be told what’s good for it.

Mr Canoehead Returns

The first 80s remake I really am looking forward to. The Frantics apparently have made a one-hour special for CTV. They were the best on radio as it is easier to imagine a man with a canoe welded to his head fighting crime without actually seeing it. Nonetheless, I will park myself in front of the tube when it comes on.