NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Dispatches (radio program)

Dispatches is a Canadian radio program, which airs Thursday evenings at 7:30 p.m. on CBC Radio One. CBC Radio One is the English language news and information radio network of the publicly-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. ...

The program, hosted by Rick MacInnes Rae, airs documentary reports on international news and feature topics. A radio documentary or feature is a radio programme devoted to covering a particular topic in some depth, usually with a mixture of commentary and sound pictures. ...

When Dispatches was launched as a pilot early in 2001, the objective was to see how much of an appetite Canadians have for strong international coverage beyond what CBC Radio News and the CBC Radio One network programs were already providing. The mail and audience ratings showed that there's an enormous appetite.

Over the last 20 years or so, host Rick MacInnes-Rae has been to just about every place where major news stories have occurred. He knows what it is like to be an eyewitness to history. And he knows what it means to meet the people living through it. Rick brings those reporting, writing and de-briefing skills to just about every subject Dispatches tackles.

Most Dispatches reports are in documentary form. That means our reporters take listeners to places they might never have the opportunity to see, introduce them to people they would never have the chance to meet, and present them with insights and concerns they might never have confronted before.

Dispatches listeners witness a wider range of human emotions than they hear on conventional world-affairs programming. Nothing is out of bounds. Don't be surprised to hear something funny or sarcastic, or warm and fuzzy -- or even inspirational -- among the reports from troubled lands and agonizing conflicts.

Most importantly, Dispatches aims to tell the stories of the people who actually live in the places we might hear about in the news, even though they might not have made the headlines yet.