CKNW Hits Rock Bottom

In the midst of the U.S. mid-term elections I eagerly tuned in to the 4:30 - 5:00pm segment on CKNW to hear what Vancouverites were thinking and predicting. But instead, I was stunned AND I MEAN STUNNED to hear Jon McComb spend the entire segment discuss the following with two young female CKNW employees: Britney Spears is getting divorced. Who f'ing cares?!?

Clearly McComb's guests do. There wasn't one fact of Ms. Spears' life that these two girls (it's the appropriate term to describe these two, trust me) didn't instantly know. I wonder if they were presented with a basic Canadian history quiz, how each would fare.

I've long thought of McComb as a bright, articulate, quick-witted broadcaster. But if this is the trivial pablum that he's now spoon feeding his listeners then I'll tune in elsewhere. And nowadays a growing number of listeners have a much wider variety of choices. I, for one, don't actually listen to the radio with a radio anymore. I only do so with my computer via the "tuner" that I built myself. It allows me to instantly switch between Vancouver and New York and London and Berlin and Sao Paolo and Hong Kong, etc. If you'd like a free copy, you can download it here.

I doubt that I'm the only one who has drifted away from 'NW in the past year. The ridiculous removal of David Berner was proof positive that they don't care about quality and intelligent discussion of the IMPORTANT issues facing us.