I wholeheartedly agree, although mostly for reasons not described in your article. I do agree that the constant ramblings of this burned out former rockstar, citing all of his tirades when he was relevant are annoying at best, his choice of music is also largely terrible. He is doing this show out of boredom. "Songs that start with the letter A" is a pretty thoughtless show topic - especially given that his show blares for 2-3 hours a day. I too am in the authors' camp: I save the planet whenever he comes on by turning the radio OFF.
If CBC really wants to keep this burnout around, they should at least move him to CBC Radio 2 (or CBC Music), or see how many people really give a damn about his show by reducing him to a podcast only temporarily.
I listen to CBC Radio 1 for news, information, documentary, and Canadiana. Not for some hodgepodge of weird interconnected songs.
I also agree with the author in comparing Vinyl Tap to "Q" and it's likes. I don't think Randy is particularly violent or sadistic or oddly sexual, but it's CBCs ramming it down our throats not unlike Q that is a problem. He is using the CBC as a mattress to rest his ego (something Rex Murphy said about Ghomeshi on The National). Q is repeated and sucks back 4 hours of airtime - every weekday. At times it seems that almost any time I turn on the radio it's Q (or q or whatever).
CBC has a small army of proper journalists who want to get on the air and make a name for themselves by doing something they were trained to do. Yet we give a combined 6-7 hours a day of Entertainment Tonight style coverage on the taxpayer dime on Radio 1, nearly half of it reruns.
CBC seems to have this oddball trend cropping up in a variety of places, it has to be some "strategic objective" created by people who never listen to it. At 5 am in Vancouver, I am greeted with usually grating awful music masquerading as "a song to wake up to" on the Early Edition. Music gets popped in all over the place throughout the day. Like, if I want to listen to music, I can just flip the dial to my favorite station, or better yet to my own collection of what I like.
CBC also has an odd "keep 'em until the day they die" mentality. They will ram a host down our throats over and over and over again until something sticks, when in actuality, it's the host who sucks and should be fired. Ghomeshi got three or four tries, and was only fired when the scandal came out and they had no other choice. Sheilagh Rogers has had at least three times the reiterations, from the "Sounds Like Canada" gaggle of old women and homosexuals to a book club, to the great wonders of Canada thing and many more I haven't had the pain of listening to, riding Peter Gzowski's coattails still even though he's in the grave for a very long time.
Mansbridge is yet another example. The guy was known as "Peter is away" for nearly half of The National in his latter years, was getting an exorborant amount of money. Eventually he decided to go himself. His salary could pay for 5 or 6 journalists alone who do something other than read off a teleprompter.
CBC needs a wake up call, and it isn't playing pop or classic rock music. There are so many competitors in that space that do it so much better, it's hardly worth the bother and dollars. Play Canadian artists, and keep it to that. It was sickening actually listening to Q, it was just an endless stream of publisicsts hawking their latest book, album, or movie - most of them American. Free advertising on the taxpayer dime masquerading as journalism? No thank you, I'll take a boring story about how the Saskatoonberries are being cut down by farmers to make way for soy crops or something any day over that drivel.
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If CBC really wants to keep this burnout around, they should at least move him to CBC Radio 2 (or CBC Music), or see how many people really give a damn about his show by reducing him to a podcast only temporarily.
I listen to CBC Radio 1 for news, information, documentary, and Canadiana. Not for some hodgepodge of weird interconnected songs.
I also agree with the author in comparing Vinyl Tap to "Q" and it's likes. I don't think Randy is particularly violent or sadistic or oddly sexual, but it's CBCs ramming it down our throats not unlike Q that is a problem. He is using the CBC as a mattress to rest his ego (something Rex Murphy said about Ghomeshi on The National). Q is repeated and sucks back 4 hours of airtime - every weekday. At times it seems that almost any time I turn on the radio it's Q (or q or whatever).
CBC has a small army of proper journalists who want to get on the air and make a name for themselves by doing something they were trained to do. Yet we give a combined 6-7 hours a day of Entertainment Tonight style coverage on the taxpayer dime on Radio 1, nearly half of it reruns.
CBC seems to have this oddball trend cropping up in a variety of places, it has to be some "strategic objective" created by people who never listen to it. At 5 am in Vancouver, I am greeted with usually grating awful music masquerading as "a song to wake up to" on the Early Edition. Music gets popped in all over the place throughout the day. Like, if I want to listen to music, I can just flip the dial to my favorite station, or better yet to my own collection of what I like.
CBC also has an odd "keep 'em until the day they die" mentality. They will ram a host down our throats over and over and over again until something sticks, when in actuality, it's the host who sucks and should be fired. Ghomeshi got three or four tries, and was only fired when the scandal came out and they had no other choice. Sheilagh Rogers has had at least three times the reiterations, from the "Sounds Like Canada" gaggle of old women and homosexuals to a book club, to the great wonders of Canada thing and many more I haven't had the pain of listening to, riding Peter Gzowski's coattails still even though he's in the grave for a very long time.
Mansbridge is yet another example. The guy was known as "Peter is away" for nearly half of The National in his latter years, was getting an exorborant amount of money. Eventually he decided to go himself. His salary could pay for 5 or 6 journalists alone who do something other than read off a teleprompter.
CBC needs a wake up call, and it isn't playing pop or classic rock music. There are so many competitors in that space that do it so much better, it's hardly worth the bother and dollars. Play Canadian artists, and keep it to that. It was sickening actually listening to Q, it was just an endless stream of publisicsts hawking their latest book, album, or movie - most of them American. Free advertising on the taxpayer dime masquerading as journalism? No thank you, I'll take a boring story about how the Saskatoonberries are being cut down by farmers to make way for soy crops or something any day over that drivel.