by SHANE SINNOTT

Recently in this space, I briefly recommended the CBC Radio 3 podcasts, only to discover that their whole system got revamped a few days after the column came out in print. So we’re going to revisit the matter, because they really are worthy of attention. To recap: the old system was a weekly podcast of independent Canadian music hosted by Grant Lawrence. The new deal, if you will, involves a whole bunch more.

“It’s been a ton of hard and confusing and irritating work,” says Mr. Lawrence, “but CBC Radio 3 has finally launched more podcasts to compliment our original weekly show that has been a surprise hit podcast over the past year and a half. No one has been more surprised than me, since prior to our original launch date of June 2005, when I heard the word ‘podcast,’ I could only think that George Lucas may have finally come up with a way to dispose of Jar Jar Binks. Now everywhere I go, people talk to me about the CBC Radio 3 Podcast, so we thought we better get a few more on the go, including the daily New Music Canada track of the day, which is much shorter (five to seven minutes), and five times more frequent, than our weekly one-hour show. There’s a bunch of different CBC Radio 3 hosts involved too, so there will be a lot more voices besides my own singing the virtues of independent Canadian music.”

There you go. The Track of the Day is picked by either Lauren Burrows, Lisa Christiansen, Tariq Hussain, Craig Norris or Lawrence. Furthermore, Norris, described as “acerbic and hilarious” in the press release, is going to host a weekly countdown show called The R3-30. Lawrence is still hosting the main hour-long podcast on Fridays (listen to the Feb. 23 episode for an exclusive interview with Arcade Fire). Finally, culled from all these podcasts is the soon-to-be-unveiled, and adorably named, workout podcast titled Sweating to the Indies.

Fantastic work from our public broadcaster. Visit them now at www.cbcradio3.com.

Sweating to nothing… ssinnott@gmail.com