There was a conference this week in Toronto of CBC radio producers. I know because I was asked to speak at it, and then disinvited (due to nothing nefarious, just a mixup). I was eager to give my two bits, and so will do so here, whether they want me or not. The question I was asked was: How to cover the arts on the radio?

Right now, both CBC Radio One and Radio Two cover the arts in basically the same way: by interviewing artists. This is the established practice for all media at the moment. On television, as in magazines, it is believed that a profile of an artist "brings the art to life" and "makes it more accessible." It is believed that people need another person to relate to -- in other words, that they cannot take art merely as art. That would be dry. They need a personality, and details of that person's life (their childhood, their struggle, their favourite colour). I heard a well-known CBC radio host once casually say that she disliked interviews with authors, as they tended to be more about "content," as opposed to personality (and that's not good radio).

Another media taboo is the discussion of what producers tend to call "process," by which they mean any issues of form, any technical issues that artists and art experts like to discuss among themselves (such as the advantages of first-person over third-person narration, or the advantages of acrylic over oil). Again, the assumption is that the audience is too dumb to care about details or ideas.

Some television book shows, such as TVOntario's Imprint or Newsworld's Hot Type, and some radio shows, such as CBC's The Arts Today, have panel discussions in which several experts review a cluster of books as books. But I still overhear television book-show hosts lamenting the fact that it is impossible to discuss fiction on television, as any serious discussion of a novel must begin with the assumption that the audience has read the book. This is out of the question. Nor can you effectively illustrate a novel with moving pictures, unless you have millions of dollars to spend. So the fiction-review panels tend to consist of a series of quick thumbs-up/thumbs-down opinions, and the non-fiction panels tend to be meatier, with a group of experts on a particular social issue discussing not a book but the issue in the book. The book shows still rely primarily on interviews with authors.

You won't find, on the English-language CBC Radio stations anyway, the panel-of-reviewers structure happening with visual art or with music; I don't know why. You will hear interviews with violinists or dancers, but you won't hear a music critic summing up the latest trends in classical compositions. You will never hear a visual-art critic defining a movement or "ism" on the radio. This is seen as too "elitist," whatever that means, or as merely boring.

You will find such ideas-based discussions on Radio-Canada's cultural channel. Being French, they have less fear of elitism. They also value culture for nationalistic reasons: Culture is more clearly political and ideological in Quebec, and so fewer people question its importance. And so you might hear a panel of experts -- say a writer, a media critic and an academic critic -- discussing themes such as the history of abstractionism, or the future of reading.

The English-language CBC's terror of "elitism" is of course nonsensical for various reasons.

First, there is nothing wrong with elites, particularly when it comes to highly technical and recondite fields of education. Most people are fascinated by elites, envy them, romanticize them and want to know as much as they can about them. (Compare the endless, detail-filled TV shows on the minutiae of the training regimens of Navy Seals.) Most people want to appear to be learned and intelligent; they want to be let into the club.

Second, it is the job of a publicly funded broadcaster to address serious and difficult questions that the commercial broadcasters won't tackle. There is nowhere else for the isolated brainy teenagers in small communities to get their artistic educations from. If the CBC only does what is highly popular, then it doesn't need any government support. (Will this kind of coverage be dry? On the contrary. In a world of homogenous cultural product, non-commercial art is as startling as pornography. Will it only appeal to the old? Again, just the opposite. The young are much better at assimilating the bizarre and the new.)

Third, free public education is not an elitist concept. And the CBC could be the best public educator in the world, by using experts to explain difficult concepts in everyday language. Most experts on art or ideas are already trained to do this, since they have had to spend some time teaching to make their living. Learning and teaching are inseparable to most thinkers and writers. Any discussion of art on the radio could -- and I think should -- have an educational component. It should focus on ideas and on content, not on gossip. It should use more professional critics. It should address art and artists as part of a history of art, not as colourful oddballs with a personal story to tell. It should take art seriously. Somebody must.