CBC management has reversed a decision to remove old episodes of Q featuring Jian Ghomeshi from the public broadcaster’s website after a “flood of letters, comments and social media messages” from listeners who objected to the plan.
In a post on the Q blog Tuesday, producers said all audio and video segments will remain on the CBC website for a period of two years, as is standard for CBC Radio programs, and that no videos will come down from the program’s popular YouTube channel. However, segments featuring the disgraced former host now facing sexual assault charges will not be rebroadcast.
An announcement earlier in December that CBC would scrub the website of all audio and video featuring Ghomeshi was met with an outpouring of anger. Podcaster Jesse Brown, who broke the story on allegations of sexual assault against the radio host, wrote that Q’s online archives had been instrumental in his investigation and suggested the decision to excise those episodes was more about distancing the CBC from the scandal than actually reckoning with what had happened.
Many listeners also pointed out that, as the premier cultural affairs program in the country, countless Canadian and international artists had been featured on the program and that scrubbing the archives of Ghomeshi’s presence also punished those performers. Besides, the whole program is paid for by Canadian citizens anyway.
Thank you for the flood of letters, comments and social media messages concerning back episodes of Q, and how accessible you’d like them to be to the public.
The resounding message from the audience was, in short: while it’s understandable that Q won’t be re-broadcasting old episodes featuring former host Jian Ghomeshi, they should remain available to those who actively seek them out online.
A point of clarification: no audio or video segment was ever in danger of being altogether deleted or destroyed. It was the accessibility of the archives, not its existence, that was in question.
So, after weighing your feedback, here’s where CBC has landed: Past Q episodes will not be treated differently from past episodes of other CBC Radio shows.
This means that all audio and video interviews and performances will continue to be available on the CBC site for the standard period of two years following original air date. Segments older than two years will automatically move offline (to make room for new content) but will still be available in CBC servers. Individual segments can be restored as needed in the future.
No videos will come down from our YouTube site.
Source:: canada.com
