favrite cbc 1 radio personality

Sook-Yin Lee, though I have to admit to finding Rex Murphy intermittently funny in an "oh, grandpa" kinda way.

so many memories of falling asleep to eleanor wachtel arts today
i loved dispatches w rick macinnes-rae too, the voice
poss paul kennedy though

Um... there's lots here I don't even know. I mostly listen to the local CBC shows so my answer would be Amy Bell (Rick Cluff's sidekick) and Sheryl Mackay who does the Northern BC show on Saturdays. She has the best radio voice ever, especially for 6am.

Of the ones here...the best is probably Anna Maria Tremonti. Worst is Randy Bachman. But both of those choices are largely informed by their shows. Bachman's show is just the most horrible thing to me.

I also like Rex Murphy in a jokey way.

randy bachmannns show on radio 1 is mystifying? and it's absolute unbelievable shit. "now here's a young songstress with heaps of talent" strums guitar "and her song 'a thousand miles' fits perfectly into our units of measure show" strums guitar "i saw her at the royal albert hall in 2002 and she was working with bernie taupin on a new album" strums guitar

nora young is great too

great on dnto and spark
sook-yin is like first muchmusic 1997 crush formative but i might find her a bit annoying on the radio but i wouldn't feel comfortable saying it on a public forum

i enjoyed terry o-reilly's old show but i kinda accidentally stopped following it when he rebranded it/made it less about just ads. sook-yin definitely awesome. jgold2k is great too. miss the patty schmidt days, growing up in rural ontario i think BNW was the first place i found a LOT of music and i owe her a debt of gratitude <3

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Forgot to vote.

me, too, and my two least favorites tied for first.

OTM re Bachman. What's with strumming his guitar all the time anyway? It's such a cliche that the guitarist in a band won't shut the fuck up and here he is inflicting that on us every week for two hours. The anecdotes/personal connection stuff just drive me up the wall but the worst is the actual choice of music - it's the least creative oldies format show I think I've ever heard. I just checked his latest playlist - in one show he played Freebird, Money for Nothing, With A Little Help From My Friends, Walk This Way, Purple Rain, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vidda, Hippy Hippy Shake, (Pink Floyd's) Money, Kashmir and (groan) No Sugar Tonight.

i was listening to q this morning and pras was on, talking about the sweet micky documentary, haiti. he cracked himself up with a line about how just something about if the koch brothers came with 4 billion and said we're gonna make you the president-- they'd need 4 billion because he's black, a rapper, and he started cracking up and riffing on that. it wasn't even a good interview! but i laughed out loud in my car at that. i want to make a point about how even q is pretty humorless and dull. shad kept bringing the interview to a halt by asking questions like: "now, a lot of artists now... they enter politics... and... what can the artist bring to politics? and what can the politician bring to art?" he's better than jian and not just because he doesn't beat up women but.

they kept playing ads for the irrelevant show this week-- actually they do that every week-- but i was listening a lot, i guess. it was a bit where "what if your parents did beat poetry?" and it's some bongo playing and the guy is saying "would it kill you--" fingers snapping "--to call--" female voice picks up the riff "--your grandparents," wild laughter from the audience. i think the week before the preview was about a dog that could talk but he was sarcastic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMusrJb8038

instead of an angel on his shoulder, he has an angler! it's because they "outsourced their computer system."

hoo boy

Possibly symptomatic of the poor state of the stand-up comedy scene in Canada as a whole. I'm extrapolating massively here but local stand-up scenes in Canada have literally no standards: often free to get in, no heckling allowed (maybe different across the country but in BC, its a no-no), largely amateurs, very uncompetitive, often comics just stand there with a piece of paper reading their bits and apologizing if they flop. It's desperate. Above that is the national scene which is multi-venue promoters/agencies like Yuk-Yuks, a handful of comedy festivals and entry level radio like the above. But the faces on that scene are simply the more together members of the local scenes, so the people that are writing and performing have still not had a rigorous baptism of abusive audiences and truly talented and funny comedians to compete with.

^ This is part of an incomplete rant that I haven't thought out properly. Basically I think comedy in Canada kinda sucks right now. Especially stand-up.

i saw a couple of shows i liked in van last time i was there, but even then they were pretty inconsistent (1-2 good comics, a few bad ones)
yet to see anything good in mtl that isn't JFL imports tho :/
doesn't help that cbc's brand of comedy is usually the most gentle yawn-inducing kinda stuff like that show... we need more kids in the hall and less stuart maclean influence imo

This is part of an incomplete rant that I haven't thought out properly. Basically I think comedy in Canada kinda sucks right now. Especially stand-up.

― everything, Tuesday, April 28, 2015 11:45 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i've seen dave foley in los angeles semi recently and can't say he's any better (now).

i've not been in canada in a while but i think it was just for laughs that i just couldn't stand anymore

dave foley was on q a little while ago too I THINK? at least some of the kids in the hall were. they were hacky and lame.

they're a lot of standup on cbc actually: <i>the debaters</i>, <i>laugh out loud</i> and other shows where comics are allowed to deliver like two minutes that they pitched as a radio bit, like they have two minutes on their son's little league team and they pitched it as a radio thing.

i never thought a lot about standup in canada overall. in edmonton i've seen lots of decent standup and there are quite a few nights/shows at nontraditional venues far apart from like yuk yuks attached to a casino on the yellowhead. a great community radio show on at like 1 am on a wednesday with local comics talking dirty and basically occasionally doing material while bullshitting with each other. but i can't see any of it flying on the cbc.

fuck always with the html forgetting to hit convert.

jonathan goldstein won the poll so someone must think wiretap is funny.

just like... i think i wanted to comment more on the general tone of the cbc. instead of engaging with pras when he was cracking himself up about the koch brothers putting up five bil to have one of the fugees run for president, he asks what artists can bring to politics and what politicians can bring to the arts! it's like some kind of... like... state run broadcaster... you know? even the cool young talent are so committed to the whole philosophy or whatever and it's self-important and boring and the face of hip young new cbc is a 35 year old conscious rapper with a degree in business from wilfrid laurier university.

Of course, but surely that culture is so self-evident that anyone choosing to engage with CBC is tacitly acknowledging and agreeing with the philosophy/tone/whatever. Otherwise you'd just turn it off in about 3 mins because it's so fucking stupid and irritating.

My guess is that the target audience age for Q is 31-49 approx? Which for the CBC is young. I'm not aware of any CBC radio show that shoots for anyone younger. As noted by everyone, their "young" presenters are mostly in their 40s.

should we get rid of it?

this morning on q... worshipful interview with mumford and sons, interview with the guy from the beastie boys that became increasingly awkward as shad asked questions about how it was ironic that he now represented that face of convention when he once "fought for our right to party" and the guy was talking about how he didn't know what that meant and he was stoked to go to italy because he saw a documentary about truffle dogs.

Shad had a rough introduction when he appeared as a guest host in January. Listeners berated the rapper for using the word “dope” and derided the inclusion of hip-hop artists on the show.

heard part of the beastie boy interview on my way to work today. not great. jian was deeply an idiot but the guy did have presence.

some time ago when they were testing out guest hosts i heard damian abraham do a segment. he was good. really unpolished but he was fun!

shad seems like a perma fanboy in the presence of his guests. jian did that half the time and it sucked then. but he'd still ask "tough" questions to spice things up.

in the beastie interview it seemed like the interviewee was gently guiding shad along more than otherwise.

glad i missed the mumford interview

he seems big into this thing about how artists can change the world and we should learn from them

but sometimes they just want to go to italy to see truffle sniffing dogs?

wonder if shad is the cancon jimmy fallon.

the cbc standup is white and nerdy. what do you expect? white and nerdy is their audience.

i didn't vote in this poll but i think wiretap is a fantastic exception though. really unique show. my dad stopped listening to it because he found it too depressing. jonathan goldstein does the woody allen thing well.

i was surprised to see how much their current affairs hosts skew conservative, despite the michael enright/andy barrie toronto liberal elite stereotype many (including me) associate with CBC. i mean, they're generally fairly centrist, but living in toronto/vancouver centrist seems conservative to me. rex, evan solomon, paul kennedy, jim brown not on list. anna maria seems conservative because she has a fierce sounding voice, but she's super liberal.

fwiw, the liberal elite makes me anxious, so the current affairs skew makes me happy.

rex, evan solomon, paul kennedy, jim brown are on the centrist list?

i know all of them well but even rex murphy and evan solomon, i'm not sure what they're really into it, except like seemingly sort of objective analysts of insider politics and maybe disinterested 90s liberal party types? if that makes sense. even the panels they have on even if they're identified as having worked with whatever party, they're pretty mild and their analyses are so insidery toronto star columnistish, i know what they're talking about but i don't fully get their greater philosophy or whatever if they have one.

whenever i give up and turn over to the am dial, between the traffic updates and like six minute blocks of commercials for local used car dealerships, the tone is just so different on the local talk stations, where, even if it's careless boosterism for the local arena project or attacking public transit, at least it's... you know, they have opinions on things and there's a few guys that give you that old timey muckraker cigar clenched in teeth vibe tough but fair clearly aren't into ted talks or media theorists but surprisingly thoughtful sometimes. when the cindy gladue verdict came out recently, local cbc kind of tiptoed around it and then brought in a chef from a local restaurant that won a charity chili contest and their secret ingredient is saskatoon berries and then opened up the phones for retirees to call in to identify birds they saw, but the local am talk station had some interesting angry serious voices -- between traffic on the 10s and weather on the 7s.

obviously that's kind of by design because they're the public broadcaster and didn't even want billy bob thornton mad at them.

sorry, poor phrasing on my part. i meant those 4: rex, kennedy, brown, solomon - all centrist/conservative, but jim brown wasn't on the initial list of personalities. that's all.

i like that the cbc personalities have their opinions thoughtfully shrouded. i think they generally have guiding philosophies. rex murphy is basically a conservative christian with a slight social conservative bent. pretty sure paul kennedy is a centrist/liberal christian based on his guest/show selection. solomon i think is a shit-disturber... less destructive jesse brown i think? jim brown is just one of these western contrarians with a chip on his shoulder... "free thinker" type. i generally like them all. they rarely bring any personal anything to the table and i like that too.

meanwhile anna maria got openly pissy the other day at a conservative christian doctor (who, to be fair, was rather inarticulate) and her "by design" series has generally been a little painfully ted talky. i liked her a lot more before her personal perspective started bleeding in like this.

what time were you listening when cbc got disappointing? from bc to ontario, the stations get basically daytime-tv in their focus, from the time period of 11:30 to 4:30 or so. basically from Q to the afternoon news. the worst is easily noon. when i was in BC, there was this dire show for retirees, ostensibly current-affairs, that had some boring interviews, insipid hosts, and polite callers. whole thing was generally too polite.

i'm surprised we got this far without mentioning the mess that is as it happens though. that show is very much an example of mild hosts guarding no inner depth whatsoever. the both of them, carol and jeff, are simply nerds. way too self satisfied with their puns etc. the guests can be ok but there's way too much uninteresting "weird news" for my liking.

i really think that there are undercurrents of a new-school new-media conservative cbc slowly and softly displacing the old guard like as it happens as they pursue an engaged listenership. my friend who worked briefly on tapestry said the show was struggling to justify its existence, and i wonder if the same would hold true for other shows that cater more to the demographically limited liberal-elite crowd (wachtel, rogers, among others).

if the cbc is indeed moving in this new-media direction, i think i like it despite misgivings about new media in other areas. i guess i too have felt the cbc to be stodgy and old-guard for too long. maybe the change is happening, just quietly and subtly to avoid widespread liberal ire.

Does the Canadaland podcast feel to you guys like the same sea or journalism, or is it different? (Asking as an American who gets most Canadian news/gossip from it.)

*same sea of journalism/commentary

Same, except they go meta a lot. Only listened a handful of time though - seems pretty insignificant.

I'm such a poor Canadian. I have nothing to contribute to this thread.

Not even a rant against the wretched "Searchlight" contest that has plagued the airwaves for what seems like months now? It's got little to do with musical talent and everything to do with getting no-hoper musicians to send their social media network to the CBC website every day. It's utterly pathetic.

I'm such a poor Canadian. I have nothing to contribute to this thread.

― clemenza, Wednesday, April 29, 2015 8:26 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This. My CBC-listening days sadly ended the second my car got podcast-listening capabilities.

right, daytime i just tune out entirely. the local call-in show is just as you described it. it's always a great moment when they get a caller who might have been just rolling through the dial and doesn't know the protocol. like, a regular am radio caller, who goes on the offensive or rolls wildly off topic. like, a little while ago, there was someone from the public library on, talking about their "living books" program, where, like, you can talk to a woman that wears a hijab! or a transgender man! or someone living with diabetes! at the library. and he just quickly went into a thing about how the libraries had gotten rid of books and it was just teenagers selling drugs and he was at such-and-such a library and saw kids selling drugs with his own eyes and local politics is corrupt and it went on and on because the host was too shy to cut him off. eventually, they "lost the caller" and the host still politely asked the guest, "some good points there about... um... what the library means to the community today. what would you say the library means to the community today?"

afternoons, i actually like tapestry but that's the weekend. weekdays, story from here and in the field can be interesting. spark is usually okay. then it's traffic reports and recycled stuff from the morning show. world at six. as it happens absolute garbage, smug, theme song makes me sweat. then the current again. then ideas which i like but they recycle episodes a lot now and if it's a dull topic like... dudes talking about heidegger, it can be a long hour, good show to pick and choose from.

as a junior member of the liberal elite, i used to treasure arts tonight followed by between the covers but now they replay q and then jeez, i dunno, quite often vinyl tap, which i've made my feelings about known before.

the best part of the cbc day is 1 am to 5 am-ish, when they syndicate? public radio from foreign broadcasters. i know it's the international services of these broadcasters, like deutsche welle, but they do so much better on international stories than the cbc. love listening to africa link and even the monocle's syndicated radio programs. i really miss dispatches.

rex murphy is basically a conservative christian with a slight social conservative bent. pretty sure paul kennedy is a centrist/liberal christian based on his guest/show selection. solomon i think is a shit-disturber... less destructive jesse brown i think? jim brown is just one of these western contrarians with a chip on his shoulder... "free thinker" type. i generally like them all. they rarely bring any personal anything to the table and i like that too.

i think this is all accurate.

guaranteed change the dial shows:
the irrelevant show "A weekly romp of original, biting, ridiculous, outrageous and ultimately hilarious sketch comedy."
the debaters "The Debaters features North America's hottest comedians debating topics in the news and on the minds of Canadians."
as it happens "Listening to As It Happens is like taking a trip around the world five nights a week."
under the influence
canada live shit music nobody cares about
vinyl tap "Two hours of music and stories from one of Canada's musical legends."
saturday night blues "Offering a broad spectrum of blues based music - everything from Mississippi Delta to roots rock, zydeco and swing."
a propos quebec music, a guy translates it for you
backstage with ben heppner this is new and horrible, like all music programming, "Ben Heppner gives listeners a backstage view into the world of classical and operatic music."

RIP Stuart MacLean

http://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/stuart-mclean-dead-at-68-1.3984826