CKUA Radio Worth Fighting For by Marylu Walters (review)

308 letters in canada 2002 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 the orchestra in 1937 is passed over in a short sentence; Klemperer made a >first visit= but in fact he never returned; Ah! perfido is a concert aria by Beethoven, not an aria from Fidelio; the conductors Stokowski and Rilling are mentioned but not their eccentric seating of the performers; we learn that Alberto Guerrero was a >well-known Chilean pianist= in 1932 but not that he had lived in Toronto since 1918; Canadian Music Associates is not identified as the concert committee of the Canadian League of Composers; misspellings abound B not Neil Cory but Crory, not Jean d=Arc but Jeanne d=Arc, not Velery Gergiev but Valery, not Emmanuel Kirvine but Krivine. The list is endless. There are five appendices. There is a list of every player in the orchestra since its inception, and lists of music directors and appointed (not guest) conductors, conductors of the Youth Orchestra, and composers-inresidence . A list of Canadian works commissioned since 1960 includes the surprising name of the Italian Luciano Berio and makes one wonder what foreign commissions the orchestra might have made. The discography includes many recordings the unidentified labels of which must be a mystery to many who consult it: the recordings for RCI (Radio Canada International) were for broadcast and government distribution, not for commercial release; the small and short-lived Beaver and Hallmark labels would be known only to Canadian connoisseurs. Of the eleven titles that make up the >Select Bibliography,= only six relate directly to Canadian music, and only one can be said to have any reference to the TSO. Not included are collections in the National Library B papers of the conductors von Kunits, MacMillan, Mazzoleni, and Unger, among others B presumably because they were not consulted. The University of Toronto Press published this inadequate book in a handsome format with many photographs. I can only wonder why. (CARL MOREY) Marylu Walters. CKUA Radio Worth Fighting For University of Alberta Press. xix, 390. $29.95 This is a lively, well-researched account of the life and times of an unusual radio station. CKUA began in 1927 as an arm of the University of Alberta=s extension department to contribute to the educational and cultural life of the community. Today, with a network that spans the province and a weekly audience of 150,000, it is run by an independent non-profit board. It has a limited commercial licence and draws its income from advertising, corporate sponsorships, and listener donations. CKUA=s early programming was ambitious: lectures in literature and history, live classical concerts by the station=s own orchestra, drama, farm humanities 309 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 programs, music appreciation, and educational broadcasts to over five hundred schools. The university=s electrical engineering department maintained the station=s equipment. In time the university found CKUA=s costs harder to sustain and, in 1944, agreed that the provincial Social Credit administration should take it over. The government funded it reasonably generously and without political interference for the next fifty years. Thus relieved of undue financial worries, and free from the ratings pressure of commercial stations, CKUA staff were free to indulge their programming preferences, attracting a growing audience grateful for an idiosyncratic mix of fare they could not find elsewhere. In 1994 the picture changed dramatically when the Klein government, engaged in heavy budget cutbacks, determined it could no longer justify supporting a radio station. It turned CKUA over to a non-profit foundation. Business plans drawn up by directors with no experience in radio, whose ambitions vastly exceeded their competence, proved unable to raise the necessary revenue. A $4.7 million one-time transitional grant was quickly dissipated, with all four directors awarding themselves or their companies $770 thousand worth of contracts. After three years, deeply in the red, they threw in the towel and took the station off the air. CKUA=s loyal and province-wide audience was outraged. A new board was formed, staff agreed to work without pay for a month, the transmitter was turned on again, and...