Cuts to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s budget last month in the federal budget will not halt the opening of a regional radio station for the CBC in Kitchener.
Wellington Halton Hills MP Michael Chong said in an interview on Monday the budget will delay the regional station’s opening, but for only six months. He expects it will be up and operating by the winter of 2013.
Chong admitted the cuts to the CBC budget will have an effect on programming, but he doubts it will affect CBC1, the corporation’s top radio station. As for a new regional station, “I think it will be great for the broader Waterloo Wellington area.”
Chong said of that station, “You can expect to hear local News coverage, local traffic, bus cancellations,” at the regional station, with main programming coming from Toronto.
“Obviously, there will be 6pm national News,” Chong said.
As for the cuts to CBC in general, Chong said many people will see little of that. He said the short wave programming has been dropped, but few people were listening to it. Further, broadcasts in Russian and Portuguese were dropped, but they also had a small audience.
“It will not affect Kitchener,” he said.
As for the budget in general, there has already been speculation the federal government will be out of the deficit financing a year earlier than expected.
Chong said he would not be surprised about that, because that budget was done using “very conservative numbers and it gave us a great deal of room to manoeuvre in the event of an [economic] slowdown. At the end of three years, our debt to GDP (gross domestic product) fall to its lowest level in decades.”
He added, “While reductions to the CBC are not easy, they are part of a broad approached with a deficit reduction goal. I’m certain the CBC will rise to the occasion to meet this need. They are proud and determined people who work at the CBC.”
Chong said in the past few years Canadian content has gone up significantly and it now offers “a great new digital music portal at musicCBC.ca, and provides “a lot of great Canadian music.”
He predicted, “it will continue to deliver value for the money.”
