Sirius, CBC States over three million sub's

CBC Radio 3

Satellite Station Will Beam Canadian Indie Music and Culture to Millions, 24 Hours a Day 85 percent will be Canadian content - from the newest emerging artists to favourites such as the Arcade Fire, the New Pornographers, K'naan and Broken Social Scene In early December, CBC Radio 3 is launching a daring new 24-hour satellite radio station that will give an enormous boost to Canadian independent music and culture. Beamed across North America through the Sirius Satellite network (www.sirius-canada.ca), the station will feature artists from across the country and from across many genres - including rock, pop, hip-hop, electronica, and alt-country - before they hit the mainstream. For those artists, it means reaching millions of music fans they never would have before.

"This is an unprecedented opportunity to get a lot of Canadian artists on the radio, not just in Canada, but also in the United States," says CBC Radio 3 director Steve Pratt. "And right now, with so much buzz around the Canadian indie music scene, it's a great time for us to launch."

With over 3 million existing subscribers, satellite radio is one of the fastest growing technologies in the United States; and the commercial-free, 24-hour format promises to be equally popular in Canada, where Sirius will launch its full service in time for the 2005 holiday season.

Based in Vancouver, CBC Radio 3's satellite station will also feature music, arts, and pop culture stories from CBC reporters in Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax and from a host of freelance contributors everywhere in between. The exceptional host lineup will include CBC favourites Grant Lawrence and Lisa Christiansen, as well as indie rock icons Chris Murphy and Jay Ferguson of Sloan.

Early next year, the line-up will also include concerts and sessions recorded in CBC studios. A comprehensive new website (www.cbcradio3.com) will bring together Radio 3's existing web properties and will feature a CBC Radio 3 blog, as well as an interactive music player that will offer pre-arranged playlists and will allow listeners to customize their own. Radio 3's weekly, all-Canadian music podcast - the most popular in the country with more than 650,000 downloads to date - will also continue.

"This is an amazing success story for Canadian music," says Pratt. "And it's only just begun."