Yahoo Finance William Watson: With Eleanor Wachtel retiring from 'Writers & Company,' it’s safe to shut down CBC
When the Reform party shook up Canadian politics in the 1990s, one of its proposals was to privatize CBC Television. In the three- or four-channel TV universe of the ’50s, it may have made sense to have a tax-funded corporation providing a full range of programming, from news to sports to comedy to variety. But even in the early ’90s, as today’s infinite-channel universe was beginning to take shape, there was no shortage of viewing options for Canadians and more than enough niches for original Canadian programming to fill without taxpayer assistance.
Reform took a different view of CBC Radio, however. According to political folklore, this was because of the legions of listeners devoted to Peter Gzowski’s morning talk shows, first “This Country in the Morning” (1976-78) and later “Morningside” (1982-97). “Morningside” was a third rail of Canadian politics at the time: touch it and you risked igniting the ire of thousands of almost religiously devoted listeners. (“Morningside” was also politically significant for establishing the archetypal “balanced” CBC political panel: Liberal, NDPer and Red Tory, though in those days it was not a problem if all three were middle-aged or older white males.)
My guess is that fans of Eleanor Wachtel’s “Writers & Company,” which is now, with her retirement, ending after 33 seasons, have never been as numerous as Gzowski’s were. But I’m sure (being one myself) they are every bit as devoted. The reason is the same sort of cult of personality: Wachtel is a terrific interviewer with a wonderful radio voice that has gotten deeper and richer over the years (as recent retrospectives demonstrated).
Her interview secrets are simple, though evidently not easy to duplicate, or more people would. The interview is never about her. She always makes clear her admiration for the writing but is never fawning. She’s comprehensively informed. She seems to have read and remembered everything authors have written, including their latest offerings, as well as most things ever written about them. And she has clearly thought about what she’s read. She doesn’t just work through a list of questions. She listens to what her guests say and follows up, coming back to things they’ve left hanging. And she’s funny, not being afraid to make a joke here or there, as people do in normal conversation.
The highest praise comes from her interviewees. When they say “That’s a good question” or “No one has asked me that before,” you can tell from their tone they really mean it. On a farewell show last month one said, only half jokingly, that being interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel had done more for him than several therapists he’d been through.
But enough praise. What about the policy question: with its best show now off the air, can we go one step further than the Reform party and shut down CBC Radio? Though I was raised in a CBC Radio family, “Writers & Company” was the one remaining show I listened to. Does it really make sense, in this age of subscription streaming, to have us all contribute to a $1.2-billion fund — paying roughly $30 a year per man, woman and child — to produce content most of which most of us don’t listen to? Especially now that we have the option to pay an amount of our own choosing for content we do listen to?
The organization that doles out the $1.2 billion is bound to come under political pressure, both external and self-imposed, to produce certain types of programming. One reader recently wrote to say that when he has guests over, he runs an over-under on how many stories about climate or Indigenous matters “The National” will feature, with double points for stories that are both climate and Indigenous. Without compelling pressure to make sure people are watching or listening, audiences can get smaller and smaller, as they have been doing.
The counter-argument, of course, is that a subscription service will not produce programming as good as “Writers & Company” — though there’s a kind of catch-22 in that argument: if the programming is excellent, you’d think it would attract an audience. But if it doesn’t, why should people who don’t listen have to pay even if it is excellent?
Would “Writers & Company” have survived in a subscription world? Data on the number of listeners is hard to come by (at least on this column’s budget). But Triton puts it 28th among Canadian-made English-language podcasts, though it doesn’t make the top 100 shows actually listened to in Canada. (“Dateline NBC” is number 1 on that list.) On the other hand, Listen Notes says “Writers & Company” is in the top 0.5 per cent of the 3,143,426 podcasts it ranks globally. Top 0.5 per cent is pretty good — except that it could be as low as 15,717th place. The show also has international appeal. In fact, more listeners to the podcast are American (25.4 per cent) than Canadian (22.6 per cent). Twenty-three countries in total account for 99.9 per cent of listeners.
With appeal that broad, you’d think it could have raised a few dollars a year directly from listeners. In fact, why Canadian taxpayers underwrite foreign listeners is a puzzle in itself.
Financial Post
