Great news, pop-music snobs! Toronto’s FM dial now boasts a commercial-­free, taxpayer-funded, eclectic radio station, created without having to discard its previous musical philosophy.

Drawbacks include: the fact that it’s based on FM, the way it’s not beholden to advertisers, fickle taxpayers are funding it, the programming falls all over the musical map and it’s the same as before, sort of.

Relaunched on Sept. 2 amidst a vigorous PR and advertising campaign, CBC Radio 2 may have had no better friends in making this month’s transition to a more populist programming schedule than those with a preconceived problem with it. Who else would be offended by this 21st-century reinvention of a soft-rock radio station?

People across Canada arguing that a public broadcaster had a responsibility to keep classical music on their clock radios, that’s who. While the transition started in evenings and overnights in April 2007 — the beloved envelope-pushing late-night legacy Brave New Waves was the first show to go — it took another year and a half to implement the full schedule. Now, orchestral sounds are generally relegated on weekdays to between 10am and 3pm.

Complaints still being levelled at CBC management often argue nobody is thinking of the children, who are in school during these hours. But based on the first week of Radio 2 Morning — whose Halifax-based host, Tom Allen, was charming enough to be spared for weekday duty, while Molly Johnson helms the weekends — the mix is one even more likely to discourage teenagers from loitering in a subway station. A younger demographic, in CBC 2 terms, falls between 35 and 49 — the very audience that the talk-oriented CBC Radio 1 successfully reached when it seized FM frequencies.

Much like the way Beethoven’s fifth symphony remained part of his oeuvre even after someone turned it into a tacky disco song, Radio 2’s programming philosophy involves playing plenty of favourites as bait to help listeners learn about something new.

Can this dialectic hold an audience’s attention for long enough to work? Or was the outrage over CBC no longer making classical a drive-time cornerstone really a lament for a time when what any radio station played, or didn’t play, meant something greater?

When there isn’t a political party that can claim to reflect the views of all Canadians, can that really be achieved in this fragmented age through music?
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Radio 2’s play for a boomer audience’s love started on Sept. 2 with Neil Young’s “Long May You Run,” which kicked off that first overhauled morning show, followed by further priority-defining selections: a Billy Bragg & Wilco Mermaid Avenue jam, a French version of Harry Belafonte’s “Island in the Sun,” Mick Jagger infiltrating Peter Tosh’s “(You’ve Gotta Walk) And Don’t Look Back.” Comfort music largely made by familiar names — or at least cover versions of their songs.

As the scrutiny lifted through the week, it seemed more un-CBC curveballs were tossed: Michael Jackson’s frenetic “Working Day and Night” was spun early Thursday morning. But last Friday morning featured a pattern of weary road-tested adult-alternative staples by R.E.M., Natalie Merchant and the Barenaked Ladies doing Bruce Cockburn’s “Lovers in a Dangerous Time.”

Oh, they were interspersed with current indie Canadian artists who have quickly emerged as core Radio 2 acts: Christine Fellows, Great Lake Swimmers and Martha Wainwright, none of whom are likely to cross over into commercial radio airtime. But being introduced to a broader market via Radio 2 Mornings is surely preferred — especially when these artists also fit the agenda for exposure on the afternoon Drive.

Chris Boyce, the 36-year-old programming director of CBC Radio — who caught his first break in 1994 as a producer of the Saturday afternoon pop-culture program Definitely Not the Opera — firmly believes this middle-of-the-road mix will bring some kind of national consensus. But recent months have found him playing a different kind of politician, simultaneously defending the clout of terrestrial radio while having to concede the power of new platforms.

“Anything done at the CBC is going to get some sort of backlash from someone,” he says. “But it’s important that what’s on the radio reflects what’s going on around you.”

Last month, at a splashy lunchtime launch deep inside CBC’s Front Street HQ, this message of hope and change and change and hope found Boyce evoking what’s become a cliché analogy for what radio should emulate: your own iPod.

The device’s power was confirmed around 2004, when music stations across North America responded to their perceived technological obsolescence by toning down the huckster-style jocks and going to great lengths to pretend that the well-researched tunes were being tossed on the air at random.

Generally, no one bought it — the Toronto frequency still addled with the brand JACK-FM is now a conventional corporate rock station — although Boyce clarifies that CBC’s claim of diversity is more about block programming flow.

While each program has its own personality — from midday classical Tempo (hosted by mezzo-soprano Julie Nesrallah) to dinner-jazz Tonic to ethereal bedtime show The Signal — the ambition involves getting people to stay tuned, and maybe even savour these timeslot transitions.

“You usually don’t just hit shuffle when listening to your iPod,” clarifies Boyce. “People build their own playlists and then modify them based on the time of day. Just like there are many fans of classical music who don’t listen to it exclusively.”

Those classical music fans who held a day of protest last April in knee-jerk response to the announcement of these autumn changes continue to rant online — including in comments on Radio 2’s own blog — about how condescending they find this pitch.

But they weren’t starting a bonfire to burn Jann Arden records. No, the assumption is these changes — meant to justify the continued existence of Radio 2 by forging a visceral link with a wider audience — is but another bit of kindling that will help to ensure that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation goes down in flames.
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For those paying attention, there are parallels between CBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 2 — although the British version is more of a convalescent home for aging Pop Idol winners — but a more intriguing influence is a different kind of grass-roots radio.

Morning Becomes Eclectic, the flagship show of Santa Monica–based station KCRW, has become the best-known example of how handpicked music programming can be supported by listener donations. Yet, those listeners who consider themselves nonconformist connoisseurs aren’t tuning in to hear a trainwreck collision of genres — after all, KCRW is the station credited, or blamed, with launching Coldplay’s career.

The reputation of KCRW led to a revamp of similar frequencies — Seattle’s KEXP and The Current in Minneapolis are a bit more distinctly rockist in tone — exploring indie sounds considered the exclusive domain of critics and record-store clerks in the pre-Pitchfork era. (The dominant Canadian example, Edmonton-based CKUA, is focused on folkier textures.)

Corporate media consolidation gifted these stations with an audience craving something more enlightened, but not too alienating — a place to feel ahead of the curve so long as the altitude isn’t too steep. But those outlets often built their quirks on a low-key and low-power local scale.

CBC Radio 2, however, is mounting a similar approach on a platform that can already claim 1.1 million national listeners, none of whom have been asked to contribute to an on-air fundraising drive, given how their taxes are already paying the freight. With that funding structure itself feeling potentially precarious, the time arrived to seek out a few million more pairs of ears. This could, after all, be the corp’s one and only chance — the last generation that grew up wanting those airwaves isn’t getting any younger, y’know.
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Rich Terfry, at age 36, has arguably become the most successful on-air spawn of the flawed universe of Canadian campus-community radio. From the time he escaped high school until he signed a major record deal for his rap persona Buck 65, Terfry hosted a hip-hop show at Dalhousie University’s CKDU-FM, located far enough away from his childhood home in Mount Uniacke, Nova Scotia that he’d climb a tree just to tune in.

Now he’s the host of Drive, a national show in the 3-6pm timeslot in each time zone. More than any other host, Terfry has been charged with fulfilling the vision for Radio 2, based on the statistic that out of 30,000 pieces of commercially released music in Canada, only 240 of them earned a notable amount of FM radio rotation.

Terfry signed on last week with his radio chops intact, and a dogged determination to engage with each day’s playlist, dominated by singer/songwriters: Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell begat Jason Collett and Kathleen Edwards, and this three-quarters CanCon show is meant to be their meeting ground, along with over-calculated concessions to the fact that Canada now has different cultures than ones associated with the folk troubadour — it’s quite ingenious that they have an actual rapper serving as host.

Diversity shouldn’t have to hurt, though. For the sake of Buck 65’s own art, Terfry is glad to be living in an era that allows for unadulterated access to music from everywhere. Radio 2 is stating the case that Canada still needs its own authoritative filter with a wide-enough reach to influence their musical taste. 

“I distinctly remember walking out of Conan the Barbarian,” recalls Terfry, “and thinking, ‘That’s got to be the best movie ever made.’ But it was because my choices were limited to a multiplex consisting of three screens.

“‘Why do we need a culture?’ is not the easiest question in the world to answer. How does something become a ritual on primetime TV? How does someone get on the cover of People magazine? What I do know is there’s a passion for art that I feel, personally.

“I’ve been upset and fed up for the longest time about how criminally overlooked most recording artists are in this country,” says Terfry. “That doesn’t mean I’m making a case that certain genres don’t have a right to exist.

“It’s not a contest. There’s no winner. There’s not even an argument, really.”
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So, is it sheer narcissism that motivates people to feel that the power of the radio medium automatically improves whenever it’s playing their song?

The listeners complaining that it never does have generally moved on — captivated by technology that plays only their favourite songs and doesn’t require berating a DJ. Commercial FM stations have, in turn, been more financially successful by ignoring the demographics disinclined to listen. (That means everyone under 25 and, increasingly, most men.)
But as long as terrestrial radio is making money, an argument can be made for the CBC to provide a professionally run alternative, especially one that promises little excitement.

“There’s a huge gap in Canada between what people want to hear and what commercial stations are giving them,” says radio consultant and programmer Liz Janik. “Here’s an opportunity to close that gap. I’m a CBC supporter, but I’m also one of those people who doesn’t think what they’re doing will be mainstream enough.”

An all-blues commercial station licenced to Ottawa this summer is a greater victory for consumer choice, claims Janik, because research was showing that it’s a niche that a broad majority of listeners want, and hadn’t been receiving.

The claim gets a bit fuzzier when CBC Radio 2 are forced to win converts to the nuanced context in which they play more Feist. “Everywhere music takes you” is the slogan that will mean everything and nothing until the ratings come in.
 
Janik made her name in Toronto radio playing to pop snobs on CFNY-FM in the 1980s. When she moved on to a career that involved doing research for stations across the continent, one of the first things she learned was that the consensus favourite of that CFNY crowd was “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins. “They all wanted to hear it,” she says. “They just didn’t want to hear it between songs by Bette Midler and Rod Stewart.”
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And, on the new CBC Radio 2, it already sounds like familiar hit singles will be where the opportunity for subversion lies, a way of reclaiming many tunes that were corrupted by commercial-radio overkill.

Then again, these nuggets are also incessant reminders of how many of those disposable pop by-products of the old-media paradigm seized our collective consciousness, and aren’t going to fade into the ether until we’re all dead. (Then, however, they will.) Memories of radio as the precursor to modern-day social media still lurk large in the souls of people over 35 — even those who don’t touch the dial as much as they used to.

CBC Radio 1, for its part, has achieved its highest ratings ever with an inclusive approach to news and information. Doing the same for music is a much rockier terrain. But rather than running the risk of polarizing everyone, Radio 2 has turned back the clock to a time when broadcasters counted on people to trust them.

The big difference is that, if they succeed, instead of trading that loyalty to an advertiser, CBC will take it as a vote of confidence to deliver even more, banking on nostalgia for what radio once meant.

Well, at least the CBC figured out how to make easy-listening sound a bit more complicated. 

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