Yesterday was the deadline… CBC Radio 690 AM had put its big guns special projects Sheila Peacock and programs director Joan Andersen to the task to drum up 1000 letters of support for its application to move to FM. For the past two weeks, CBC Radio One has not only been asking its listeners to write letters to CRTC, but also personally phone calling and e-mailing its “friends in the community.”
I was contacted by Sheila Peacock and wrote:
Radio is and important part of Vancouver's arts and political
community. The move to FM will greatly enhance how it can serve the
Metro Vancouver community. When CBC radio was locked out – it was a
terrible blow to the local arts community, and stopped the
dissemination of information for many small organizations who could not
otherwise reach the broad audience that CBC AM reaches.
To
further enhance and develop the benefit of Canadian culture, we need a
stronger CBC. We need to provide our national public radio with the
best reach possible to ensure the best use of our tax dollars and to
fulfill it's mandate – especially “be made available throughout Canada
by the most appropriate and efficient means and as resources become
available for the purpose, and reflect the multicultural and
multiracial nature of Canada.
No other radio station is able to
specifically transcend the multicultural hodgepodge of isolated
language groups into an effective post-multicultural and
interculturally inclusive community in the way that CBC 690 Radio does
and can do.
As Todd Wong, creator of Gung Haggis Fat Choy:
Toddish McWong's Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner, we are an
example of that new and developing Canadian culture that recognizes 1)
our Canadian heritage 2) our ancestral heritage and 3) the unique
fusion as we combine, evolve and create.
Through CBC AM radio –
we have shared our vision and activities not only locally in Vancouver
on shows such as Early Edition, BC Almanac, North By Northwest and On
the Coast, but also nationally through shows like Sounds Like Canada,
Richardson's Round Up, and Freestyle.
It is therefore imperative that CBC 690 AM be allowed access to FM radio.
Todd Wong
Sheila wrote back today: