Department of "What Are They Smoking at the CBC?": Russell Smith's Modest Proposal

“No classical? Then kill Radio 2 and get it over with” Russell Smith said it well in Thursday’s Globe and Mail. “…the point of having a government-funded radio station is not to garner the largest possible audience; if that were the goal, and that goal were attained, such a station would be commercially viable and no longer in need of government support. I also assume that art and intellectual inquiry can sometimes be challenging and demanding of intense concentration, and that they are naturally not always going to attract lucrative audience, and that this does not make them any less valuable, which is why governments in enlightened countries support them and provide access to them.”

He ends: “..furthermore, a radio station that is indistinguishable from commercial stations--other than by its fanatical niceness—will have no reason to receive government support. why not just shut it down already?”

Right on! as we used to say.

If you want to read the whole version of the column, here's the link. You'll have to pay $4.95 to read it unless you're a Globe subscriber, however. I’d like to think that Smith will get a portion of that, but I’m pretty sure he won't. The Globe has been requiring its freelance writers to sign over their electronic rights for some time. Unlike the screenwriters of the Writers’ Guild of America, print writers get next to nothing even though they provide a substantial portion of the content for print and electronic versions of newspapers and magazines. But that’s another topic.