[Swprograms] CBC RADIO ONE Revamp aimed at office listeners

["Eric Floden" <ericf@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

from today's Globe & Mail -ef 

BROADCASTING: CBC RADIO ONE Revamp aimed at office listeners
By GUY DIXON 

Tuesday, November 1, 2005 Page R1 

Get ready to hear Madonna's new hit on CBC Radio One in the afternoons. 

Radio One is revamping its afternoon programming starting Monday with more 
pop music and news updates, and fewer long segments -- in short, less of 
what many might consider the traditional Radio One sound. 

"CBC Radio took a look at the whole afternoon period from 11 to 6 p.m.," 
said Jennifer McGuire, executive director of programming at CBC Radio. A 
study was undertaken for the first time in a long time, she noted, in order 
for CBC Radio to adapt to what it believes are listeners evolving afternoon 
habits. 

A call was then sent out via e-mail to CBC staff last spring to pitch ideas 
for a new anchor program to replace The Roundup, while local drive-time 
shows were also extended to reflect the longer rush hours in Toronto, 
Winnipeg and Vancouver. (Bill Richardson, a fixture on CBC Radio in the 
afternoon as the long-time host of The Roundup, moved last year to the 
short-lived weekend Radio One show Bunny Watson. Richardson still works at 
the CBC but doesn't currently have a show on the air.) Come Monday, the 
sweeping afternoon changes might seem like an attempt to target younger 
listeners with lighter, slice-of-life segments and fewer in-depth pieces. 
But that isn't the intention, McGuire said. It has more to do with the CBC 
Radio's belief that people busy at work or stuck in traffic prefer shorter, 
livelier fare. 

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The new programming will kick off in the late morning, before local 
noon-hour shows, with host Jian Ghomeshi's The National Playlist, which will 
feature musicians, actors and politicians debating their favourite songs. 
Listeners will also be able to call in to kick songs off the continually 
evolving play list. CBC is billing it as an iPod play list debated 
nationally every weekday. 

Following local noon-hour shows across Canada, Radio One will then air 
perhaps the biggest change to its tried-and-true sound: Freestyle, the new 
prerush-hour show broadcast nationally from Vancouver. 

It will be co-hosted by Kelly Ryan, who is dramatically shifting gears from 
her previous investigative-reporting and news work for CBC Radio. She 
describes the new show as a much-needed break from years spent covering 
everything from the events of Sept. 11 to the Pickton murder investigation. 
Alongside her will be Cameron Phillips, an actor who has spent the past four 
years freelancing for the CBC. Producer Anna Bonokoski, who was with The 
Roundup, will continue on with Freestyle. 

With a mix of 60-per-cent music and 40-per-cent talk, the emphasis will be 
on water-cooler stories, those that people talk about, but which aren't 
considered hard news. 

"What we found is that people . . . need a recess from all that information 
that CBC Radio gives them in the morning and on their local noon shows," 
Ryan said. 

"For example, in our pilot [program]," Phillips said, "we spoke to a man who 
had gone to a soap-opera fantasy camp. We talked to a woman who was the 
silver medalist from the world rock-paper-scissors championship. This week, 
we talked to a man designing billboards for dogs: They are two feet high off 
the ground." 

Also, "we're playing lots of music. Music that doesn't normally make it on 
the CBC," such as Madonna, Elton John and Top 40, Ryan added. "This is the 
kind of show you can have on in the background at work, in the dentist 
office, moms at home. We're really hoping we can move into the work market, 
the office market, retail..." 

Next week, local afternoon drive-time shows in Toronto, Winnipeg and 
Vancouver will be expanded from 3 until 6 p.m., with Canada at Five becoming 
two national newscasts at 4 and 5 p.m. and renamed The World This Hour. 

All of these changes were originally due to be launched the day after Labour 
Day, during the critical radio ratings period. However, the nearly 
two-month-long lockout at the end of the summer pushed the launch to Nov. 7 


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