Silly Little Country

What do I miss from the CBC Lockout?

Damian Penny posed this question earlier and I don't have much trouble answering. He mentions his morning CBC Radio One show - but in Toronto, the show has improved. I have gone back and forth between the somewhat polite and tentative managers now doing the job on CBC Radio One in Toronto, and the old crew, doing it at CIUT, and I prefer the managers! They actually conduct interviews with intelligent people and show them respect and let them talk. This stuns me - I did not know it was possible. Sometime I am not sure what the political positions of the hosts are. Surely this is not how broadcasting should be done in Canada! (Yuk, yuk)
But I do REALLY miss one CBC Radio One feature I loved - the show was called Overnight, and featured half-hour news broadcasts from a variety of public broadcasters around the world. Sleepless nights could expose one to great rewards, unexpected interesting reports from Sweden or Finland or the Netherlands or Poland. Now they seem to be filling the time with enough Canadian musical content to last centuries (and most of it is appalling) in meeting Canadian content laws.
So why did this show die off with the lockout? It must take almost no labour to prepare - just get the shows in from the suppliers, line them up, and play them. Are there some international union deals that say Swedish radio won't give us this stuff in a lockout? But the BBC news shows are on the radio? What gives? Can someone explain?
To private radio broadcasters - I could tolerate ads during my sleepless nights, and would even donate money to get this show back to help with this problem of mine. It must be incredibly inexpensive to mount this show. Unless you are all targeting the REALLY sleepless.

posted by Alan Adamson @ 5:59 PM