One of the best designed web magazines, the CBCRadio3.com Magazine site has “published” its last issue. An article in the Globe and Mail by Alexandra Gill, “CBC Radio Three’s lauded Web mag dies” (March 5, 2005, Page R5) nicely points out the irony of CBC killing this award winning radio site just when others are moving in.
I know from my students that the site had the attention of the youth demographic (or at least some of them.) It was an attempt to reach youth in a way that CBC Radio 1 and 2 didn’t. It was a multimedia magazine with music, arts, and essays rather than a radio show. The site lets you listen to music (and control it) as you read the mag – a bit like having the radio you listen to and the magazine you thumb through coordinated. The interface design was brilliant and immediately intriguing, even if difficult to figure out initially.
Why CBC is killing it is not clear. Perhaps not enough people want to watch radio off the screen or perhaps they want to get out of online media and stick to radio. Podcasts will be next.