Facing a downtown in advertising to the tune of $171 million CDN, the venerable Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has just announced a series of cutbacks to its television and radio ventures:

About 400 employees are being laid off from the CBC’s English-language service, 335 will depart the French-language arm and 70 are being cut in other areas of the company, said the CBC’s chief executive, Hubert T. Lacroix.

The CBC also said it would scale back regional radio and TV programming and make cuts in news, drama, music and current affairs. It will also cut executive compensation by up to 20 percent, trim discretionary spending and reduce hiring. [NYTimes.com]

For a little more detail on the nature of these cuts, you can check out the story on CBC.ca over here. In terms of what effect these cutbacks will have on CBC Radio 3, the “Home of Canadian Independent Music”, the news isn’t actually all that bad. These effects of these cuts will be seen primarily in two ways on Radio 3:

1. There will be less live recorded music on CBC Radio 3 (the recording budget of CBC Radio 3 is being merged with the recording budget of CBC Radio 2, and in turn being reduced by 50%); and
2. The programming on CBC Radio 3’s Sirius satellite radio station and web radio will be identical (up until now, the two stations had maintained somewhat distinct programming identities). [radio3.cbc.ca]