CBC Radio Three

CBC Radio 3 is a Canadian digital radio station operated by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which plays a relatively freeform mix of indie rock, indie pop, alternative hip hop, folk, country and electronic music.

The service, which lanuched in 2005 as a station on Sirius Satellite Radio, evolved out of programming on CBC Radio 2 (now CBC Music), which also simulcasted Radio 3 on Saturday and Sunday nights from December 2005 until March 17, 2007. The station was formerly available online from CBC's website"CBC digital music service launched"
CBC News, February 13, 2012. and iTunes Radio, but geographical restrictions were in place to prevent access outside of Canada. Radio 3 is no longer heard on terrestrial radio or through official webcasts, but is still available through its satellite radio operations. The French-language equivalent to Radio 3 was Bande à part.

An article on Nerve.com, published in October 2006, called CBC Radio 3 "possibly the world's best radio station".

CBC Radio 3 was nominated for a Webby Award in 2007 and previously won the award in 2003.

Radio 3's unofficial mascot for many years was Bucky, a cartoon creature with the body of a goose and the head of a deer. Bucky was primarily seen in the introduction to the weekly ''R3TV'' video podcast, and also lent his name to the service's annual year-end music awards.

In October 2022, CBC Radio 3 was dropped from SiriusXM, but remains available through CBC Listen.

Origins

Operated by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio 3 had its genesis in a late-1990s proposal to launch a radio network devoted to youth culture, comparable to BBC Radio 1 and Australia's Triple J."CBC Radio 3: the definitive timeline"
CBC Music, March 27, 2015. The network, which would complement CBC Radio One and CBC Radio 2, would build on existing CBC Radio programming such as ''Night Lines'', ''Brave New Waves'' and ''RealTime''. The original plan was codenamed "Clubhouse" and was developed by Susan Englebert, Robert Ouimet, Anton Leo and C. William Smith. The CBC filed an application with the CRTC to launch the network in 1998,"CBC Radio 3 dead, says newspaper". ''Edmonton Journal'', November 26, 1999. but later asked the CRTC to defer consideration of its application.

Although technically predating the application, one important step in the development of what would become Radio 3 did take place in 1997, when ''Nightlines'' and ''RealTime'' were merged into the new program ''RadioSonic'', cohosted by former ''Nightlines'' host David Wisdom.

A slightly different Radio 3 was launched in 2000 as a converged webcasting project based in Vancouver,"Hottest music now on cool web radio". ''The Province'', January 17, 2001. with its own servers and managed by CBC Radio. The team consisted of Susan Englebert, Robert Ouimet, Dave Tonner, Loc Dao, Rob McLaughlin and other partners. CBC Radio 3 initially launched separate sites 120 Seconds, New Music Canada and Just Concerts through a collaboration between CBC Radio, media design company Dotaku Group, and technology company Internet Edge. Each provided audio, video and Flash content as media-on-demand streaming for site users. 120 Seconds was a directory of user and artist-created video and documentary projects, New Music Canada was composed entirely of user-created and uploaded music by Canadian independent pop, rock, electronic and hip hop musicians, and Just Concerts included exclusive recordings of live performances by independent artists, both regular concert performances and Radio 3 studio sessions. The first musician to create an artist profile on the site was rapper Classified. Roots Music Canada was later added to the trio of websites, and offered songs uploaded by country and folk musicians.

In 2001, Grant Lawrence became the host of ''RadioSonic''.

In late 2002, the group, led by Robert Ouimet and Rob McLaughlin, created CBCRadio3.com, a full-screen online magazine which profiled Canadian music, literature and visual arts, accompanied by a set musical playlist which changed with each "issue"."CBC's new Radio 3 goes to the Net". ''The Province'', February 9, 2003. The site also served as a portal to the other content sites. The site was recognized internationally, winning three Webby Awards, including People's Voice Award for Best Broadband site, in 2003. The site won over 20 other awards, including the Art Director's Club, New York Festival Awards and Communication Arts Awards, as well as being published in several books. By this time, the site was averaging 5.5 million page views per month.

In 2003, ''RadioSonic'' was integrated into the Radio 3 project, and was renamed ''CBC Radio 3'' to reflect the change. With new host Alexis Mazurin, the program featured music and performances from the Radio 3 website.

On June 2, 2005, Radio 3 also launched a weekly podcast, hosted by Grant Lawrence. The hour-long podcast, which has also aired as a program on the satellite radio network, has ranked as the most downloaded Canadian podcast on the Internet, with an estimated 125,000 weekly listeners in 2006.

Satellite radio

Satellite radio was approved in Canada by the CRTC on June 18, 2005. Over the next several months, Radio 3 was relaunched as a channel on Sirius Satellite Radio. The main CBC Radio 3 site was shut down for part of 2005 to facilitate the relaunch, although the podcast, the media-on-demand subsites and the Saturday night Radio Two program remained active.

The satellite radio service launched on December 3, 2005, at which time the weekend program on CBC Radio 2 became a live simulcast of the satellite radio service. The main CBC Radio 3 website was relaunched a few days earlier, now featuring a collaborative music blog and an Icecast stream of Canadian music.

The network's primary studio is located in the CBC Regional Broadcast Centre in Vancouver, although guest hosts typically hosted from an alternate CBC studio in their home city. Mazurin, the original host of CBC Radio 3 in its radio show format, died in October 2005, and the main Vancouver studio was named the Alexis Mazurin Studio in his memory.

In August 2006, Radio 3 launched its own weekly chart show, ''The R3-30''. Originally hosted by Craig Norris until he left the network to join CBC Radio's new outlet for Kitchener-Waterloo, CBLA-FM-2, in 2013, the program was then taken over by Lana Gay.

On December 25, 2006, CBC Radio 3 held its first annual ''"Bucky Awards"''. The Bucky Awards were an awards celebration to promote independent Canadian music, and fans voted on the winners in each category.

The station aired on Sirius 94 from its launch until June 24, 2008, when it moved to Sirius 86 as part of a major realignment of the Sirius lineup. On May 4, 2011, the channel was again moved as part of a reorganization of Sirius' channel lineup to channel 152. On May 9, 2013 the channel was moved to channel 162 and was also launched on XM. The channel was removed from SiriusXM effective October 1, 2022.

''Radio 3'' leaves Radio Two

On January 17, 2007, the CBC announced that as part of a major programming realignment on CBC Radio 2, that network would discontinue its Radio 3 simulcast in March of that year. The final simulcast, which aired on March 17, was a retrospective broadcast which included past interviews with William Shatner and John Lydon, visits from past hosts David Wisdom, phone interviews with Buck 65, Joel Plaskett, Sara Quin and Jim Bryson, and live in-studio performances by John K. Samson and Christine Fellows, as well as listener requests for classic songs from any era in which ''Radio 3'' or its predecessors aired.

''The R3-30'', which was usually taped in advance and rebroadcast on Radio Two in a later time slot, also aired live from Vancouver that evening and incorporated listener phone calls into the program's usual format.

Webcast

From 2005 to 2009, the Icecast stream available from the network's website was not a simulcast of the satellite radio broadcast, but was programmed separately. Initially, the webstream consisted exclusively of music with the occasional identification break, but on September 14, 2007 it was relaunched with hosts and feature content, similar to but still programmed separately from the satellite radio station. Due to funding cuts, however, the two services were merged in June 2009, such that the webstream is now a straight simulcast of the satellite radio channel.

Prior to the merger, the two services had slightly different programming strategies – the satellite radio station aired a music mix of 85 per cent Canadian and 15 per cent international, while the web service's mix was 100 per cent Canadian. With the merger of the two services, the station announced that the program mix would be 100 per cent Canadian music on both platforms, although exceptions will be permitted for international music with some Canadian character – such as international artists covering Canadian songs, collaborations between Canadian and non-Canadian artists, international artists appearing on the bill with Canadian artists when the network is airing a live concert, or " Canadian" artists such as Neko Case and Rose Melberg.

In February 2009, CBC Radio 3 participated with ''Exclaim!'' and aux.tv to launch X3, a new collaborative cross-promotional platform which sees all three outlets air feature content spotlighting a particular "Artist of the Month". X3 artists of the month have included K'naan, Malajube, Thunderheist, Japandroids, Apostle of Hustle, The Rural Alberta Advantage, Owen Pallett, and Jenn Grant.

In addition to the service's conventional radio programming, any song in the network's music library was able to be streamed on demand from the artist's profile page on the site. In May 2011, Joel Plaskett became the first artist in the network's history to reach one million on-demand plays.

In 2012, CBC Radio 3 was integrated into the new CBC Music service.

Podcast

Unlike Bande à part, which produced a number of special short run podcasts in addition to its regular weekly music podcast, Radio 3 only produced its main music podcast through 2006.

As a result of the Radio Two schedule changes, on February 26, 2007 CBC Radio 3 created several new podcasts to complement the original CBC Radio 3 podcast, including a daily ''New Music Canada Track of the Day'' and an hour-long weekly ''R3-30'' podcast.

As well, the network also launched a new internet streaming program titled ''CBC Radio 3 Sessions'', which featured live performances by artists at the CBC Radio 3 studio. The ''Sessions'' also aired as a program on Sirius 86. As of September 12, 2007, the ''Sessions'' program also appeared in podcast format. ''Sessions'' concerts have also aired on the CBC's cable television service bold.

Notably, all Radio 3 podcasts were available in Ogg (Vorbis), a freely-licensed audio format, in addition to the more conventional mp3 format.

Video

On April 20, 2007, as part of CBC Radio 3's 100th podcast, a weekly video podcast was introduced. The new video-based podcast, ''R3TV'', revolved around the personalities at CBC Radio 3 and featured a particular artist each week, who provided commentary for the podcast and had their music videos featured in the show. ''R3TV'' was also available as a channel on Internet television services such as Joost, YouTube and Miro Media Player.

In 2011, CBC Radio 3 sponsored its first documentary movie, '' Winning America'', about Canadian band Said the Whale. The movie was directed by Brent Hodge and Thomas Buchan, and produced by Jon Siddall, Brent Hodge and Sheila Peacock. It first aired on July 23, 2011 on CBC Television in British Columbia, and then nationally on April 2, 2012.

After the success of the first film, Radio 3 decided to do a second documentary movie called '' What Happens Next?'' about Canadian musician Dan Mangan. This movie was produced and directed by Brent Hodge and Jon Siddall. It aired on CBC on August 25, 2012 in BC, and then again nationally on October 20, 2012.

Radio 3's next foray into video was in 2013, with the web series ''The Beetle Roadtrip Sessions''. It followed host Grant Lawrence across Canada visiting various musicians and other personalities along the way, including The Darcys, Hollerado, Sam Roberts, Theo Fleury, Hawksley Workman and others. It was also directed by Brent Hodge. ''The Beetle Roadtrip Sessions'' won the award for Best Original Program or Series produced for Digital Media – Non-Fiction at the 2nd Canadian Screen Awards