Q the End v.2.0

When the CBC does something right it ranks with the best broadcasters in the world. When it does something wrong my, my does it screw up sensationally. Not long ago the host of Q, whose name escapes me, was invited to vacate his chair at CBC Radio. He did and Shad a rapper with no previous broadcasting experience got the gig. I wished him luck, but cautioned that the Hogtown culturati would be listening. It was, but too few ordinary folks - myself among them - were not and Shad just got his marching orders accompanied by some corporate claptrap about the guy from London, Ont. staying in the "CBC family." Uh, huh.  Tom Power, a musician and broadcaster from Newfoundland is now in the Q hot seat. I wish him well, but like the parrot in the Monty Python sketch, the Q bird is dead.

I said as much way back in November, 2014. Q and its ex-host were and are inextricably linked. I suggested then, and I haven't changed my mind, that the music and cultural affairs program needed a complete retooling: a new name, a new host, new producers, writers, the whole nine yards. Go on hiatus. Wait till the air has cleared once and for all. Then come back all clean and lemon-fresh and start building an audience again. Uphill, sure, but much better than this latest 'do. By the time another heatwave is upon us next year it's better than 50-50 that Q will have gone to that great broadcast archive in the sky.  

But down here there'll still be a Q. That would be the Mighty Q, Q-107, where every Sunday, usually without fail, I get my much needed dose of '60s rock 'n' roll with Psychedelic Sunday until about 7:00pm, when I flip the dial to Jazz FM and Glen Woodcock's excellent Big Band show.  

Q the End

Jian Ghomeshi's career, and perhaps Jian Ghomeshi himself, are toast. Burnt, unbuttered toast. There's not a broadcaster in the English speaking world who would dare hire him following the welter of appalling allegations that have emerged in the last week. But because he is now the slice no one wants doesn't mean his baby, the music-culture program Q on CBC Radio and NPR in the States, is following its creator out the door. It should.  

I fail to see how Q can survive such an unprecedented crash and burn by its public voice, its public face. Of course, the program isn't the host, and the art isn't the artist nor the book the author. But host and program are so inextricably linked here that there is a taint about the latter now, and the CBC's chances of removing it are close to zero, I'd say. The program should go on hiatus and get a stem to stern retooling - starting with the no-brainer of a new name - all the while keeping its music-culture focus. Finding a new host for the reimagined program, let's call it Hogtown Cool, will be more difficult. I've read that Stuart McLean, hugely popular thanks to his Vinyl Café program and live tours, and an experienced broadcaster, has been chosen to take over. Well, props to Stuart McLean for agreeing to such a difficult gig, but Hogtown Cool he ain't. Neither is Piya Chattopadhyay, the host following Ghomeshi's ouster.

If CBC were paying me big bucks for my advice - I did some yakking on CBC Radio and TV more than a decade ago, all gratis - I'd say look outside the corporation and the broadcast industry for the next host. In some Canadian city someplace there's got to be a sharp young mind waiting for a chance to shine. I only listened attentively to Q once, incidentally, because former Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham was on and I am a lifelong fan of Mick and the boys. Loog Oldham tore Ghomeshi a new one: that was enough Q for me.   




     

   

Some Real Canadian Branding

When Tony Blair was British Prime Minister nation branding was all the rage. It was Cool Britannia this and Cool Britannia that. The novelty wore off: Britons were more interested in jobs, schools, a National Health Service worthy of a first world country, and so on. 


An optimist might have hoped that what was a shallow shrill exercise in self-promotion would have run aground on the British coast, but no. According to an article in yesterday's Sunday Star, there's been a cross-border effort with CBC Radio, Public Radio in the U.S. and Bruce Mau Design, a respected Toronto firm, to rebrand Canada by pitching out its 20th century brand icons - mukluks, Tim Horton's, lumberjacks and the like - and replace them with 21st century equivalents - oil sands, charging for plastic bags, the Occupy movement and - I kid you not - Justin Bieber. Of course, the idea is to get people talking and bloggers blogging. So in that spirit, here are a few suggestions to really brand Canada as a place the whole world can admire and wants to visit:
Cuts to arts funding are reversed and arts budgets are increased 10 per cent a year until Canada spends, as a percentage of its GDP, the same amount that the French spend. Seed money from the federal and provincial governments is allocated to artists' collectives to build or buy their own live/work spaces, much like La Ruche, the famous "beehive" that housed, and houses, artists in Paris. Crown land is allocated expressly for the establishment of artists' colonies, much like those in England, the U.S. and other countries. And, last but not least, the feds launch a massive ad campaign lasting years and years to convince, really convince, Canadians of the value and importance of the arts. 
I mean, if that crew of nincompoops at City Hall can produce OneCity, the best transit plan ever to surface in Hogtown, then anything's possible.