Dumbing Down Canadian Radio?

The venerable Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is coming under heavy fire these days for a slew of programming changes at Radio One that critics say represent nothing more than a naked attempt to ‘dumb down’ the network’s content and grab more listeners from desirable demographics. The newly created Sounds Like Canada has been a profound disappointment, to the extent that its popular host has left the show, at least temporarily. The motivation for the changes at CBC may be a basic desire for the network to better reflect Canada’s diversity of cultures, but what does it benefit the company to gain a few new listeners, and lose all the old ones, not to mention a few broadcast standards in the process?