Opinion: Next thing you know, they’ll be dropping their radio ventriloquist acts too
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This post updated as of 12:10pm Thursday. See below:
I’m a fan of vestigial cultural survivals, but even I reacted to news of the shutdown of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio Orchestra with an incredulous ‘There are still radio orchestras?’ To give some perspective, the legendary Arturo Toscanini-conducted NBC Radio Orchestra was disbanded way back in 1954, and there may be a reason that the Vancouver-based CBC outfit has long held the dubious distinction of being the sole extant radio orchestra in North America. *
Now the life of a working musician is tough, though arguably no tougher now than it’s been for the past, say, 10,000 years. And I get the impression that a belief, realistic or not, that Canada’s cultural attainment is high has always been a favorite bragging point for our friends to the north. So a little expression of regret is understandable. But take a look at the protests that followed the announcement of the orchestra’s closing and you may ask what eon these people are living in. CBC has a little coverage, with video, and the Globe and Mail gives more detail. ‘No Kitsch! No Philistines! Don’t Mess With Our Music!’ reads one protester’s sign. A music teacher brags of having canceled her class with the following message to her students: ‘I said this is the most important assignment you could possibly have; to rescue the great culture of your country.’
Leave aside whether classical music has ever been a central part of Canada’s, or for that matter the United States of America’s, great culture. (Wouldn’t France, Austria, Italy or half a dozen other European countries have a prior claim along this line?) I just wonder who still buys the Philistine-vs.-Patrician dynamic implied in these protests. A CBC flack refers to the organization’s ‘obligation to reflect the musical diversity of the country,’ which you’d think would be a compelling argument where public money is at issue. The Facebook page Save Classical Music at the CBC counters that the CBC is trying to ‘be all things to all people.’ But if you believe (I don’t) that taxpayer dollars in a democracy should be used to support the arts, doesn’t being all things to all people kinda come with the territory? Who are classical music listeners to assume that their favorite genre has to be paid for by the rest of the country?
But as the Toronto Star’s John Terauds notes, the issue isn’t even about culture; it’s about how to get the most bang for 400,000 loonies a year. Right now the CBC is paying that amount to keep one orchestra that delivers eight concerts a year. It believes, not without reason, that it can do better by using this money to hire local orchestras:
Radio orchestras were set up 70 years ago because it was too difficult to move around the big, heavy analogue broadcasting equipment – not because there was something inherently better in having an orchestra in your studio. The whole notion of a national broadcaster, linking people otherwise isolated from a national culture, needs to be more flexible in the Internet age. After all, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, National Public Radio and the BBC are only a few mouse clicks away. In the same way, the CBC is now a portal to Canadian culture for the rest of the world, not just ourselves.
You may not believe High Culture has always been an excuse for the elites to flaunt their own excess and wastrelsy in the faces of the masses, but it’s hard to see this case any other way. The outraged listeners believe not only that taxpayers should be paying for their music, but that they should be paying for it in a way that delivers less of the actual product than they could be getting with smarter budgeting.
* The L.A. Times’ Mark Swed notes that he gave the CBCRO a standing O back in October of 2006. The piece is no longer on our site (for the umpteenth time, sorry), but can still be read here [pdf].