Canadian Broadcasting Corporation


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    Half an hour later in Newfoundland
    —Every radio program's preview (excepting Cross Country Checkup) has this.

    You're watching CBC Television/Ici Radio-Canada.

    The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (known in French as (la Société) Radio-Canada or SRC), is the government owned national network in Canada. It was originally a national network of radio stations founded in 1936. It was founded as the successor of the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission founded in 1932 which was, in turn, the federally-mandated replacement for the Canadian National Railways radio network, established in 1923. Indirectly, this makes the CBC the second-oldest broadcast network in the world, after the BBC. The first CBC television broadcasts began in September, 1952.

    Not to be confused with the Chubu-Nippon Broadcasting Corporation, a TV station in Nagoya, Japan, that shares the same initials.

    • Which arguably could use the logo up top for itself (the "Exploding Pizza"), as the circle in the middle is the rising sun on the flag of Japan, and "Chubu" literally means "Central".

    Radio Service

    Our job is not to tell you how to think; our job is to give you things to think about.
    —Piya Chattopadhyay, host of CBC Radio 1's Out in The Open

    English-language CBC radio is split into two over-the-air channels and one Internet-only channel. CBC Radio One provides a mix of local and national programming, mostly news and public affairs, but with some music, Radio Drama and comedy programming as well. CBC Radio 2 is mostly classical music and opera, though it has been adding more popular music lately, and consists mostly of national programming. CBC Radio Three - available only on the Internet - plays more avant-garde music. Neither network runs advertisements except during federal elections when it's legally required to run candidate ads, although Radio 2 aired ads when the Harper government cut its funding.

    French-language SRC radio also has two channels. Première Chaîne is the French equivalent of CBC Radio One, and has a similar broadcasting focus. Espace musique is the French equivalent of CBC Radio 2, and until recently, had a similar format to its English counterpart, with the name La chaîne culturelle. However, in 2004, most of the high-brow cultural programs were moved to Première Chaîne, while the now-rebranded Espace musique started focusing on classical, jazz, folk, and world music. This rebranding was controversial, but proved popular.

    There was also RCI, Radio Canada International, which was the CBC's international arm. The advent of the Internet removed its raison d'etre, and budget cutbacks in the early 2010s finally killed it off.

    Some national programs from CBC Radio One are:

    • The National Research Council Time Signal, Canada's longest-running radio show, having been broadcast live every day since November 5, 1939. It sounds a time signal at exactly 1:00 pm Eastern time every day, with a lead-in that starts some time during the minute of 12:59 pm Eastern.
    • C'est La Vie: A weekly show focusing on Canada French speaking culture. Appears to have been wound up when its host, Bernard St-Laurent, retired.
    • Cross Country Checkup: A national call-in show, aired Sundays.
    • As It Happens: A weekday call-out show; Evening news magazine where the hosts call the subjects for interviews. (also syndicated to NPR stations, mainly in the Upper Midwest). The show has a mix of hard-hitting journalism and lightweight human interest pieces, and has aired Alan Maitland's reading of Frederick Forsyth's The Shepherd on the last show before Christmas almost every year since 1979. One of the show's eariest Crowning Moments of Awesome, and the event that showed it was a serious news show, came early in its run: it was given a court injunction forbidding them to air a particular interview, so the hosts filled the time by reading the court order verbatim, staying within the letter of the law while still getting the news out. There was also the time when the hosts negotiated a hostage rescue on the air. On the lightweight side, the "God-damned cabbage" interview is routinely listed at or near the top of the show's Crowning Moment of Funny lists.
    • The Current: Weekday-morning current affairs magazine, started in 2000. The show's first host, Anna Maria Tremonti,[1] finally decided to move on to make podcasts for the CBC; her final show as host was June 20, 2019. Unusually for a weekday-morning show on CBC Radio, this doesn't mean the show will be renamed when a new host takes the chair.
    • The House: National political affairs, aired weekly on Saturday mornings (with a supplementary podcast sent to subscribers Wednesdays).
    • Vinyl Cafe: Weekly comedy and variety show, basically a Canadian equivalent of A Prairie Home Companion, down to the touring live shows and its folksy storyteller host, Stuart McLean. Vinyl Cafe Stories re-ran some of the older stories from the show. Ended in 2016 because of Stuart McLean's illness (followed by his death in 2017).
    • Vinyl Tap: Classic Rock show hosted by Canadian rock legend Randy Bachman (of The Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive.)
    • Definitely Not the Opera ("DNTO" for short): A light arts and human interest show hosted by Sook-Yin Lee, that ran at the same time as CBC Radio 2's weekly Opera broadcast. Ended in 2016.
    • Quirks and Quarks: Weekly national science program, originally hosted by David Suzuki with regular correspondent Isaac Asimov, which shows how old the show is. Currently hosted by Bob McDonald.
    • Ideas: Intellectual documentaries and lectures. Airs weekdays
    • q: A weekday interview-based arts show (and popular podcast), which hasn't had very much luck with its hosts. Originally hosted by Jian Ghomeshi, a former member of nerd-folk band Moxy Früvous, until how he treated some of the female staff became public. Then hosted by Shad, who left the show in 2016 for unpublicized reasons. Candy Palmater kept the host's chair warm in mid 2016, until Tom Power took the reins.
    • The Debators: A game show where pairs of comedians debate subjects with the aim of both being as persuasive and funny as possible.
    • The Sunday Edition: The Sunday morning current affairs and culture show.
    • The World at Six/The World This Weekend: The main evening news show.
    • Canada Reads, an annual event on Radio 1 that's part book club and part reality show. Runs for one week each year, and the books that are reviewed/voted-off all get immense popularity surges.
    • Unreserved: A weekly show about Native interests, hosted by Rosanna Deerchild. The show began as part of the "reconciliation" needed after Canada's treatment of the Native population, and has continued being aired after its one-year trial run finished.

    Until budget cutbacks in 2013 made it unfeasible, Radio One usually had at least one Radio Drama running as well. Recent series included:

    • Afghanada: Essentially Canada's Tour Of Duty about Canada soldiers serving in Afghanistan.
    • Monsoon House: A series starring Russel Peters, about the misadventures of an Indo-Canadian family and their small book publishing business.
    • Backbencher: The misadventures of a rookie backbencher Member of Parliament serving in Canada's federal parliament in Ottawa.
    • Trust Inc.: The trials of a Toronto based public firm.
    • Canadia: 2056: A satire on the War on Terror and Canada's role therein, set on the starship Canadia, the only Canadian contribution to an American interstellar invasion fleet. The ship specialized in toilet repair.

    Royal Canadian Air Farce used to be a CBC Radio show back in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, before moving to television.

    Launching in the year 2000, the CBC introduced CBC Radio 3 devoted entirely to Canadian indie music. Unlike Radio One and Radio Two, Radio 3 does not broadcast on terrestrial radio waves, but as a live streaming feed online and, as of 2005, satellite radio. Radio 3 serves as a Voice with an Internet Connection for new Canadian indie rock, (anti-)folk, and alternative hip hop, a launching pad for Canadian artists to get their music heard on a national and international broadcast service. Dedicating a non-standard broadcasting space to new music has allowed the CBC to keep their terrestrial stations more focused on their traditional programming, though given that the CBC is a national radio and television service, an Unpleasable Fanbase is all but inevitable.

    Television Service

    CBC's television arm has five main channels: CBC Television, Télévision de Radio-Canada, CBC Newsworld, Reseau de l'information (RDI), and bold (formerly CBC Country Canada). The latter three are cable only channels.

    CBC Television is a traditional TV channel; it runs predominantly Canadian programming, with a few British Series added (including the Coronation Street weekly omnibus). Télévision de Radio-Canada is similar, but broadcasts in the French language. In terms of programming layout, it resembles a cross between one of the American "Big Three" networks and PBS with commercials. CBC Newsworld News Network is a 24-hour news network, similar to CNN or BBC World News. Its French equivalent is Reseau de l'information (RDI). bold, the CBC's digital TV channel, is not too different from CBC Television. It was originally Country Canada, a rural-oriented joint venture between the CBC and fellow Canadian broadcaster Corus Broadcasting. CBC bought Corus's share in 2002 and added "CBC" to the name. The rural elements of the channel were largely dropped before the name change.

    The CBC also provides funding for Canadian television shows, and was once one of the main sources of such funding. However, its budget has suffered in recent years and other networks have stepped up in their place. It also has a bad habit of cutting funding on shows just as they get popular. Between this behavior and recent attempts to introduce "hip" programming on CBC radio, there is some not entirely serious speculation about someone in upper management or the government trying to kill the CBC. Nevertheless, over the years, the station has been responsible for a large number of landmark and notable Canadian series, including Beachcombers, Front Page Challenge, the earliest forms of the Degrassi franchise, and several comedy shows like Royal Canadian Air Farce and This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Not to mention the biggest show on the network, the extremely long-running Hockey Night in Canada - public outcry was substantial when they were outbid on most of the NHL broadcast rights by cable-only TSN in 2014.

    CBC Television enjoys a significant audience in the border regions of the United States, due in part to its emphasis on Canadian shows as opposed to the US-dominated lineups of its competition (this has been lessened in recent years).

    1. ↑ Who was a war correspondent - one of Canada's first females in the role - before becoming host of The Current
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