My name is Bob D'Eith. I'm the executive director of Music BC Industry Association. We're a non-profit provincial music industry association. We're devoted to promoting the spirit, development, and growth of the B.C. music community provincially, nationally, and internationally. We provide education, resources, advocacy, opportunity for funding, networking, and a forum for communication. Our membership is approximately 650, with 3,000 people in our e-news database. We represent a broad range of artists from all genres, as well as recording studios, producers, labels, and publishers, so we're very much an overriding organization.
I'm going to deal with all three issues as quickly as I can.
First are the changes to CBC Radio 2. According to the vice-president of the CBC, Jane Chalmers, one-half of the present Radio 2 listeners are over the age of 65, and in an attempt to bring the demographic down to 35, some changes are being made by broadening the playlist to include jazz and contemporary music. Of course, this means some classical programming is being cut.
Obviously, we represent the entire industry from all genres--rock, pop, classical, and jazz--and also from the professional side. We support classical music in all forms and hope this genre will continue to thrive and grow in terms of both historical music performance and modern composition. We're very pleased that Radio 2 is keeping classical music at the core of its playing list, especially from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., but we feel broadening the styles of music may lead to a greater appreciation of new works and classical music: if a younger demographic is tuning in to Radio 2, they may be more likely to experience other programming by CBC, including classical music.
We also applaud CBC management for rebranding CBC Radio 2 to include more jazz and contemporary music. We feel the broader range of repertoire will bring more listeners and a broader age demographic to CBC radio, and we feel this is very important in an ever-changing music community.
One of the accusations made in a recent article by a fellow named David Drucker was that CBC Radio 2 will become indistinguishable from commercial radio, and we'd strongly disagree with this contention. Commercial radio right now is extremely tight in the number of artists it's playing. With the changes in the music industry, independent artists are finding it harder to get any radio play whatsoever. Through increasing its range of play, CBC Radio 2 will make it possible for many more independent and emerging artists, who would never have been played on commercial radio, to be able to find airtime.
With regard to dismantling the CBC Radio Orchestra, we feel this is a completely separate issue. The CBC Radio Orchestra is the only orchestra of its kind left in North America and it must be preserved at all costs.
The budgetary argument is not a strong one. I believe there's a $400,000 budget for this orchestra at this point; in overall budgetary terms, that's really not significant, and I don't think that's a great argument. The other point is that we feel maybe certain things could be retooled to make it a more profitable venture. For example, I was talking to the AFM, and they have a contract that allows orchestras to have buyouts on Canadian film productions to play orchestral music. If that were used more by the CBC Radio Orchestra, perhaps there could be other ways for it to make money to sustain itself.
As for CBC's commitment to classical music generally, that's a tough one. I think you have to look at the definition of classical music. It's a very broad term; it ranges from everything from the classics right up to modern experimental composition. Before there can be an assessment of a commitment to classical music, we have to decide what that means and what parts of classical music are important, and I want to make the distinction between the classics and new Canadian musical works.
If there is a commitment, we feel there should be more of a commitment to Canadian composition and Canadian composers—I think that's really important—and excellent interpreters like Glenn Gould. That's the role of the CBC, to help people like the Glenn Goulds of this world, and it should continue.
Mr. Chair, I'm sure I'm running out of time.