Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to talk about a couple of things today. First I'd like to comment on the decision about Radio 2. There are problems with that decision. First, you're hemorrhaging your core audience. When I heard of this decision I immediately thought of Coke's decision in 1985 to get rid of its product and replace it with something new. Yes, it was kind of the same and had the same basic ingredients, but then it backfired. They had to reverse their decision because a lot of people identified with that product, and they alienated their core audience. I think that's partly what's going on here.
If you're trying to highlight some of the new songs and works that artists create in Canada each year and have them appeal to a younger demographic, then logically you would be putting this online through streaming audio, as opposed to on the FM band. The FM band probably attracts a much older demographic, versus the younger demographic, which is much more apt to use the online streaming method. From that second perspective, it doesn't make any sense.
Another point is if you want to highlight a greater diversity of music, you should have a third station on the FM band. If there's no room, governments and agencies should make room. Every other public broadcaster in Europe has more than one or two stations. They have numerous stations.
We don't think big here. We end up doing things in half measures, and I think that's the corporation's biggest problem. Over the decades it has whittled away to nothing, and it is becoming increasingly irrelevant. I don't blame you for that, but I'm telling you that's the reality. I think it's partly because of a lack of funding and partly because of programming decisions like this that alienate your core audience. In the attempt to diversify your programming, you alienate your core audience and make yourself even weaker than the weak position you find yourself in.
Those are the points I would make on the Radio 2 decision.