I prefer it on my radio

It's remarkable how dramatically your tastes can change over the years.

For instance, there was a time when I simply watched too much TV to the consternation of my parents. In fact my earliest memories include coming home from kindergarten and making a beeline to see Sesame Street every day.  When my parents wanted to punish me, the most memorable penalties were weeks long TV bans, which were agony in their own way.  In fact, one of the most memorable things in my life was watching Magic Shadows on TVO on Friday nights in the 1980s when the classic Republic Pictures serials like The Adventures of Captain Marvel were played and eating a personal pan pizza my mother cooked by hand that night.

Yet, now my TV is unplugged most of the time and disconnected my cable subscription 2 years ago and I don't miss it all that much. Instead, I listen to CBC radio and various podcasts instead. In fact, the biggest treat when I have Saturday mornings free is for that rare opportunity to listen to CBC Radio One's shows.  Any video I want to see is more likely than not available online and DVD and I feel happier about that situation than I ever thought I would be 20 years ago. I do know that I mentioned this state of affairs to my parents, they looked at me as if I had gone insane at doing something so out of character in their eyes.

As for reasons, I don't need hindsight to tell me why.  For instance, my first move was when I heard about the story of Ronald Reagan's press secretary congratualating a major TV news show for a negative story on him, gloating that since the visual footage was flattering, no one was going to listen to the truth they were saying about him.  At that moment, I vowed I would largely avoid TV news and get my news from the radio so I would focus on what is being said and I have largely kept to that ever to my benefit.

Furthermore, I've found that radio as a broadcast medium is simply more convinient;  it's a medium that allows me largely to do any number of things while I am listening, although reading is a challenge with the divided attention. For instance, I can walk or work outside with my MP3 player's radio function going and I can keep going just fine. By contrast, TV demands you stay in one place and focus all your attention to the screen; for many things, that is a shackling I will not have. Furthermore, I grew tired of comforming my life to a TV broadcast schedule and even with recording tech, I've let the recordings pile up.  In that case, online video I could access at will has become far more to my taste and even DVDs seem to be becoming more and more a bother in themselves.

Also there is the fact that CBC Radio One provides largely all of what I want in broadcasting such as news like Ontario Morning and The Current and entertainment like the Vinyl Cafe, Vinyl Tap and Afghanada. It's gotten to the point where their summer replacement shows are the chief things I look forward to in the summer and the fact that I can have all this without commercials is wonderful in itself.  While I enjoy other podcasts, they are a separate medium in my mind to some extent, much like audiobooks; there is a certain delay to them while radio has an immediacy that is compelling itself.

That makes the upcoming budget review developments in Ottawa matter of foreboding with Tony Clemente with his treasury axe with a deficit pretext to bury any protest.  The Conservatives' loathing for the CBC has been obvious for years and its disheartening to read/hear ignorant rightoids screach about it being "biased" when those blatherings seem usually the result of a bullying arrogance that can't stand seeing their views being challenged even in a fair forum. Any radio network perported to be "leftist" and yet have a notorious rightwing reporter like Barbara Frum be one of their top journalists while her son David and even Preston Manning have hosted CBC's marquee current affairs radio show, The Current, occassionally is more fair than they want to admit.

That said, Harper and his cronies aren't all that interested in realties when their self-serving ideologies say otherwise. After all, if they acted like really rational beings they would have left the long form census alone knowing that killing a essential form of societal research because of a handful complaints is nonsensical. Now with a majority government, I don't know what is going to happen next, but I hope the lobby group I've contributed to, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, might be able to protect the CBC, or at least the radio portion from people who can't hear a bigger picture.

In any case, I will enjoy it while it lasts.