Shelagh Rogers will be leaving as host of Sounds Like Canada after this season, reports CBC.ca.

In a Feb. 20 Globe and Mail story, about the recently cancelled Disc Drive with Jurgen Gothe, there was this snippet:

DiscDrive is produced in Vancouver, where rumours are swirling about Shelagh Rogers's Sounds Like Canada, also broadcast from the city. CBC Radio executive director Jennifer McGuire recently told staff that there were "concerns" about the program.

I have mixed feelings about what I'm about to say, because I've heard Ms. Rogers (whom I've never met) is a wonderful person. But I found her so nice as a radio host, so warm, so friendly, so supportive of her guests, that it made my skin crawl.

However, on Friday, I listened to some of her stuff from the Miramichi on the mill closings there (having worked in forestry once upon a time, the collapsing resource economy is a subject near and dear to my heart) and found it quite good.

I think her natural niceness worked better on Morningside when set against Peter Gzowski's rumpled voice. On its own, I found it cloying.

Rogers is a fine broadcaster, and I hope the CBC finds a show that will be a better fit for her, but SLC wasn't doing it for me. The CBC.ca story hints the show itself will not continue in its current form.

The old Morningside blended the hard and the soft, while The Current takes all the high-energy, hard stuff and leaves the soft for SLC. That may have been a strategic mistake. Ninety minutes of sucrose-bombing the listeners' ears may have been too much.