Totally Toronto
Posted by gigantichound on 19 Sep 2007 at 01:39 pm | Tagged as: Current Events, Media, Toronto
– is CBC Radio 1’s slogan at the moment, unless they’ve taken it off the air out of embarrassment – it’s hard to miss.
One the one hand, this is just truth in advertising – CBC Toronto, which serves all of south-central Ontario, at least in principle, has always been indifferent to the large parts of their listening area which you can’t get to on the subway. Simcoe County, for instance.
On the other hand, they’re presenting it as a good thing – hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, and all that.
Which is why this is welcome news, though I’ll believe it when it happens – CBC Radio in Hamilton, like a Hamilton NHL franchise, has been on the list of unconsummated reasonable ideas for years. It was being discussed when I was in high school in the ’80s, listening to the Toronto traffic reports trudging to the bus on a rural sideroad, and it’s still being discussed.
Hamilton is too far from Toronto to be a true part of the megaglopolis, but too close to be a free-standing centre in its own right. It’s a big city in the shadow of a bigger one, which has always been a bit undignified. I will admit to moments when my favourite thing in Hamilton is the on-ramp to the Toronto-bound 403, but still.
If you defined the station’s news area as Hamilton/Niagara/Brant and the rural area west of that, there should be more than enough to keep everybody busy.
Actually, the Spectator’s obtuse response to the idea is one hint about why it’s needed. (Update: More here)
The CBC’s piety about The Regions (Favourite Winnipeg Intersections, anybody?) has never extended to regions of Ontario, for reasons I don’t understand.
They need a serious Barrie-based station, too, while we’re at it.
Hmmm, but as more and more people commute into and out of the GTA from East Gwillimbury, Brooklyn and Dundas, are they more interested in a local station or the traffic info they get for the Toronto area on Metro Morning and the drive-home show (whose name temporarily escapes me). One could argue populations in these areas are more tied to Toronto now than they were before, so perhaps there is less rationale for separate stations now than there might have been before when Barrie was still cottage country (my childhood and youth) and Hamilton was far away. I don’t deny, at all, the Toronto-centric nature of current Radio 1 programming, but what if it were adjusted to feature fuller news, traffic, etc. coverage from the Golden Horseshoe/Barrie areas — problem solved?