I can see them closing terrestrial TV but not radio. If they did that they would not be much of a broadcaster.

"We are the only broadcaster in the system that has the obligation to serve all Canadians," she [Tait] said. "So that means rural audiences that may only have their television - we are not going to abandon them."

That's an interesting paragraph. CBC already abandoned rural English and French TV viewers when it closed most of their TV repeaters in 2011.
 

Last edited by andysradio (February 7, 2023 9:07 am)

The articles explicitly mentions TV and RADIO.  While I can see TV switch to streaming, to shut down radio has to be the dumbest idea to come out of the CBC board room in it's entire existence.  Data is expensive in Canada and there is no way I am going to stream CBC in my car.  Let alone fiddle with flipping between radio and streaming.  Talk about distracted driving.  I dread my first vehicle with an infotainment console.  Give me buttons and knobs I can reach in my sleep.  I listen to CBC at work, on the radio, and by policy I cannot stream it.  Catherine and the board are totally out to lunch if they think that they can shut down radio.

Ten years is a long time, and will CBC as we know it still be around?  If CBC abandons traditional TV and possibly radio, it would be doubtful that they are the only ones.  Private broadcasters could be planning for the same thing.  

I can definitely see this happening... the younger generations won't think twice about buying a data plan or home internet, but they're not going to bother with cable, or putting up a TV antenna or even deal with a traditional radio. Who knows, maybe cellular technology will improve so much in 10-15 years that it will be just as resilient as broadcast TV and radio. The broadcasters have also shot themselves in the foot over the years by not providing compelling, innovative services over the air like they do in other countries (eg. you can get 70+ TV channels via antenna in a city like Dallas, but maybe not even a tenth of that in Toronto). 

Kind of strange that she speaks as though continuing broadcast somehow prevents them from becoming digital first,

Radiowiz wrote:

Ten years from now Data will be on par with hot and cold running water. It will no longer be expensive.
Good point about where we can and can not get streaming access though...

Exactly. Even the baseline mobile plans that started appearing around Christmas are big enough that audio isn't much of a consideration for usage. 

Also, streaming will just as easy, if not easier, than using broadcast media now.

RadioActive wrote:

=12pxOn the Roundtable Tuesday morning, Jerry Agar was opining that one day there would no longer be a NewsTalk 1010, and it would be a digital only station.

=12pxI think that would be a mistake, since on the radio in the car, for example, unless you're set up for data-based Internet reception, you're competing against, what, 50 stations? On the web, it would be CFRB against millions of choices. Guess who would lose that battle? 

They're going to be competing with the millions of choices whether they want to or not. They'd better be laying stakes now. Can they maintain the audience they need to support their cost structure in that environment? Probably not.
 

After they scrapped RCI and after they flippeded Radio II to its All Garage Band format, nothing CBC does can ever shock me.

RadioActive wrote:

I'm all for digital. There's certainly every reason to embrace it. But let's not get on board that ship while throwing all the life preservers overboard, just because somebody thinks they're too old fashioned. 

Then our broadcast regulator and media companies should work harder to promote the benefits of OTA and actually provide good services and content on those platforms. The CRTC and all media companies have been continually shooting themselves in the foot and forcing people to find that content elsewhere. 

I'm not taking my antenna down dammit!!!

There's certainly a good argument for the resilience of traditional broadcasting for emergency purposes, but that won't be enough to save it.

Picture this with the timeline reversed. You're used to podcasts and spotify in your car, and now there's a new app called "FM." It has 7 music genres, all linear, with commercials, and a few linear talk streams. You find them by tuning to a meaningless number - and that number is different depending where you are.

CBC is likely pushing as many people to digital as they can, as they can sell ads within their popular talk content there.

Last edited by RadioAaron (February 7, 2023 4:38 pm)

Even though CBC Pres. Catharine Tait was careful to point out any transition to digital-only wouldn't take place for over a decade, her comments to the Globe & Mail have generated controversy. So she was forced to at least slightly walk things back in an article published on - where else? - the CBC's website. 

"Let's be clear. We are not abandoning anyone who's watching on traditional television or listening on traditional radio," she said Tuesday. 

"We are looking at a two-decade horizon. The BBC president announced a month ago that BBC would be going to digital-only by 2030. That is not the case for CBC. We are a vast country and until we have ubiquity in broadband delivery in this country, we will leave no one behind."

But a University of Calgary prof believes she has alarmed many with her statements, and perhaps should never have gone down that speculative road in the first place. 

"It'll likely happen at some point, but I see no reason that this needs to be the main fight that the CBC tries to bring forward right now," he said. 

CBC won't abandon TV, radio audiences as it charts digital path over next decades, says president

Radio is a delivery truck. The SOWNY generation, broadly speaking, grew up with radio, and the delivery mechanism has been and remains our passion. Perhaps we care so passionately about it because we've lived and breathed it for all our lives.
Yet there is something compelling about radio as a delivery mechanism that I think is truly magic to the ears. Radio is a much different animal than TV, the stage, or cinema; and the way it delivers and presents audio differs greatly from the ways done by pretty well any digital system we've witnessed thus far.
No question that what matters is the content. Of course, and the medium is being raped and pillaged. But when I play back, in my mind, the history of radio, I hear a delivery truck that itself profoundly impacts the listening experience. I know we all do.
Still, AM radio will more or less if not totally disappear sometime not too long from now. Lots of presentation mechanisms have faded and more or less disappeared over time. Or, perhaps more precisely, evolved in massively significant ways. Think of how far we've come in the last couple of decades, and consider how exponentially sped up the next ten years will be, and what the media landscape might look like by, say, 2030. Think about the nugget(s) of gold in radio, what makes radio presentation magic, and try to imagine how we might transport that magic to newfangled delivery systems.
Imagine the power of truly global reach; on a device the size of a coin; utterly mobile and portable; with stunning sound in even the most godforsaken locales; and with interactive capabilities that to date have barely been touched.
(It's not all happy happy - I worry deeply about profound surveillance and privacy implications; people opening their lives in very troubling circumstances; various extensions or modernizations of abuses and problems associated with older technologies such as television; hacking; new avenues for and approaches to propaganda; and more).
But I think the writing is on the wall, and CBC and BBC management, et al, are simply reading what's plainly evident. The ability to have the imagination to transcend is what will matter.
 

Just received a radio DX clip from a board member who regularly hears 1240 WJMC Rice Lake Wisconsin around Toronto sunrise time. In community announcements this morning (6:15 Wisconsin time), the announcer gets seriously detailed about the lunch for seniors ... down to the tomato juice. I'm trying hard to imagine this on CFRB. Maybe 70 years ago? Maybe CKLY Lindsay years before it moved from 910 to 91.9? (The horrible evening / nighttime squeal was due to a heterodyne from the UK just 1 wee dram of a kilohertz away on 909). What might give this kind of content charm on the internet, beyond simply streaming it?

There's an entire world of people who have either been or will be left behind, unable to access and/or afford it.

We could end up going from the spirit of radio to the ghost of radio in the space of a few decades.

Or who knows, new tech doesn't always have lasting appeal due to privacy concerns etc., in tangential news, who would have ever thought Alexa and other assistants would fall out of favour, maybe we'll get lucky with radio too.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64371426.amp#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16758340934401&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com

Last edited by betaylored (February 8, 2023 1:40 am)

turkeytop wrote:

Online streaming is no more like radio than intravenous feeding is like fine dining.

I know for many, "streaming" means going to the computer, logging on, and listening through the computer speakers. The reality is that the streaming experience is becoming a lot more like the radio experience - and the other way around.  It's just another button on the car radio.