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SOWNY » Are These The Most Unfortunate Call Letters In Recent Memory? » May 31, 2021 1:41 am

Mav
Replies: 12

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That's no spoof!  In the late 80s, CKCO brought in an American studio design company to build them fancy new digs for their 'Action News' concept (around the same time they got rid of the red blazers).  The desk and set looked great but they overlooked one thing:  They had a banner going around the desk that repeated the call letters.  And the way it was cut off in some shots, it looked like another word over and over...  They tried sticking a BBS logo in the middle of each set of letters, but eventually just ditched the whole thing.  

SOWNY » I've lost my MOJO » April 24, 2021 2:08 am

Mav
Replies: 9

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A couple of things....

They held the live announcement at Peel Pub downtown but kept everyone waiting for almost an hour. Half the media left, including City and CFTO.  We had to beg the Sun's Stan Behal to stick around a little longer (knowing they'd find room in the paper for girls in tiny shorts).  

A few days before the launch, the Talk 640 News vehicle was taken off the road.  It had been festooned with typically boring, newsy-looking decals and even a CNN logo...when it came back, it was completely wrapped with giant pictures of bikini girls holding power drills (not the best for pulling up to Queens Park or some horrible tragedy...or the supermarket).  

The marketing team had planned to have girls in bikinis on trampolines at major downtown intersections but insurance nixed that.  

Ahead of its time, and 15 years too late.  

BTW...Anyone heard the one about Scruff Conners and the 'special' envelopes management handed out to all the staff?...

 

SOWNY » CBC Radio One Technical Meltdown » April 14, 2021 1:54 am

Mav
Replies: 9

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RadioActive wrote:

I've only heard something like that once and it was a long time ago. It happened in the last place you'd expect - the top of the hour CBS Radio News.

It was around 1977. I was behind the controls at NewsRadio, a news service out of CKEY, that owned the rights to CBS Radio in Canada.

I've never entirely been sure what happened here, but maybe you can figure it out. Anchor Susan Spencer was obviously expecting to come on right after the intro stinger.

That never happened. My guess, all these years later, is her mic failed and she was forced to scurry into another studio as quickly as possible to deliver her newscast. Unfortunately, it just happened to be going across the country, the so-called hourly update, and it ran this way on hundreds and hundreds of affiliates.

That void you hear is 16 secs. of dead air. It may not be a long time, but when you're on - or rather, off the air - especially on a national broadcast - it feels like an eternity.

You can hear it here.

Waaaay before my time - I've heard two versions of this:  There was an issue with her studio and she had to run down the hall to another booth - that would explain the switch sound about 6 seconds in.   The other story is that they lost return and couldn't hear the sounder or the director in NYC (Susan Spencer was a DC-based correspondent and the Hourly runs out of the Broadcast Center in New York). That one doesn't make as much sense to me because you're trained to just start talking 2 seconds after the top of the hour.  Whatever the tech disaster, it must have happened seconds before the Hourly.  CBS has had a hard rule that anchors have to be IN THE BOOTH 5 minutes before air for a full run-though WITH tape and live components.  And back then, every cut was run from a reel to reel so there was no messin' around.  
 

SOWNY » 2021 April fool radio pranks » April 2, 2021 2:59 am

Mav
Replies: 17

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RadioActive wrote:

It was very convincing and was "explained" by newscaster Robert Holiday...

It was convincing and all made sense because it came straight out of an encyclopedia (see: French decimal time). 

SOWNY » Torstar Killing Off Physical Newsrooms - & More May Follow » March 23, 2021 12:45 am

Mav
Replies: 10

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All of CBS News has been 'working from home' for the last year.  The broadcast center in New York was shut down on March 11, 2020 and since then, the network's radio division has produced every single hourly newscast, update, newsfeed and long-form production (including election night) from home studios with mostly consumer-grade gear.  If they can pull that off, then shutting down a print newsroom is a no-brainer.

SOWNY » 1010 gets 10/10 for bad decisions » February 3, 2021 1:45 pm

Mav
Replies: 16

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Prod Guy wrote:

Mav wrote:

Radiowiz wrote:

Excuse me? Yes radio is a business before it can be anything else and yes it costs a lot of money to run a radio station and nothing to turn on the radio, but news is a big reason to draw listeners to AM in 2021. 

It has nothing to do with Charity, but maybe...just maybe everything to do with spending $5000 to make $6000 instead of $5 to make $6. 

 

I don't get it.  To your original post: how does hiring a disbanded news department (and no offense to those recently departed) benefit a station that barely gets ratings?  Will all the people who didn't listen to news on 1010 suddenly migrate to 640?  I'm serious, how does that help?  I get that these people need work and a creative outlet.  I've been laid off by the same bosses, it isn't fun (well, in my case it kinda was).  But claiming news will save AM couldn't be more wrong.  The world doesn't NEED AM radio to get its news anymore (it's been 30 years since CFRB was 'legendary') and most people under 35 don't even know AM even exists, or where to find it.  This is all very saddening but come on, we can't be shocked when the world changes; we've been reporting on it all along.  
 

Are you seriously asking why a lower rated station would want to grab available talent from a higher rated station?  CFRB makes plenty of money.  Bell thinks that by gutting CFRB the ratings and revenue will remain the same, costs will go down and the company will make more money.  What Bell doesn't seem to understand is that people who listen to radio like radio.  They don't want TV audio coming out of their radio.  Radio overall is healthier than TV right now, at a lower cost.  Pushing that cost to nearly zero isn't going to work because when you cut costs the product suffers and revenue drops.
 

Yes, I am.  Why doesn’t anyone want to explain how that would work?

I understand if you're talking about a big, marquee player or someone with a giant fo

SOWNY » 1010 gets 10/10 for bad decisions » February 3, 2021 2:50 am

Mav
Replies: 16

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Radiowiz wrote:

Mav wrote:

And why would they do that?  Because they can get them for cheap?  Tell me how that would improve 640s bottom line?  Or their product?  If that concept wasn't making money at 1010 why do you think it would at 640?  I love radio, but I'm so sick of everyone thinking of radio news as some kind of charity. 

Excuse me? Yes radio is a business before it can be anything else and yes it costs a lot of money to run a radio station and nothing to turn on the radio, but news is a big reason to draw listeners to AM in 2021. 

It has nothing to do with Charity, but maybe...just maybe everything to do with spending $5000 to make $6000 instead of $5 to make $6. 

 

I don't get it.  To your original post: how does hiring a disbanded news department (and no offense to those recently departed) benefit a station that barely gets ratings?  Will all the people who didn't listen to news on 1010 suddenly migrate to 640?  I'm serious, how does that help?  I get that these people need work and a creative outlet.  I've been laid off by the same bosses, it isn't fun (well, in my case it kinda was).  But claiming news will save AM couldn't be more wrong.  The world doesn't NEED AM radio to get its news anymore (it's been 30 years since CFRB was 'legendary') and most people under 35 don't even know AM even exists, or where to find it.  This is all very saddening but come on, we can't be shocked when the world changes; we've been reporting on it all along.  
 

SOWNY » 1010 gets 10/10 for bad decisions » February 2, 2021 10:52 pm

Mav
Replies: 16

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And why would they do that?  Because they can get them for cheap?  Tell me how that would improve 640s bottom line?  Or their product?  If that concept wasn't making money at 1010 why do you think it would at 640?  I love radio, but I'm so sick of everyone thinking of radio news as some kind of charity. 

SOWNY » CityPulse's smashing LiveEye truck » October 16, 2020 3:20 am

Mav
Replies: 13

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Moses 'borrowed' a ton of stuff from WABC (didn't his sister work there for a bit?).  'Everywhere' was an Al Primo idea.  They even wrote an 'Everywhere' song for the Eyewitness News stations in the mid 70s.  Here's the version used by Orlando's Channel 9, circa 76.  WABC brought 'everywhere' back in the mid 90s, after City made it a thing.  Their version was a lot more cinematic (Channel 7 spent a fortune shooting their promos on film) but it didn't have the same...oomph! as City.  Eyewitness News imaging used 'Everywhere' in promos up until about 2014.  The last station to use it regularly was the CBS station in San Fransisco - KPIX. 

SOWNY » CBS' Great Eye-rony » October 9, 2020 2:03 am

Mav
Replies: 10

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RadioActive wrote:

Paul Jeffries wrote:

RadioActive wrote:

I finally found a sample of the new logo and the sound that goes with it. It's no NBC chime! 

You can see it here. 

Wow, that was a letdown.

Although I'm sure somebody got paid a nice fat bonus for coming up with that. 



PJ

Yep. I'd love to know the price tag for that gem. Want to bet it's in the 6 figure range? I'm in the wrong business!

Add a couple of zeros to that.
 

SOWNY » Why The Trump Impeachment Trial Isn't On Buffalo OTA Stations » January 24, 2020 3:01 pm

Mav
Replies: 4

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Nielsen returns for day-one of the trial (12p to 7p ET): 10.7 million combined across all networks AND cable.  That's just 3.3 percent of the country.  CBS had the best over-the-air showing with just 1.9 combined nationwide.  The Price is Right averages 5.3 million viewers (4.2 in the 18-49 demo).  The choice is pretty clear to me.

SOWNY » Markham Station Gets Power Boost » November 14, 2019 12:46 am

Mav
Replies: 10

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A power boost also makes the station more appealing to potential buyers.

SOWNY » People who retired too soon. » September 4, 2019 11:31 pm

Mav
Replies: 6

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Cronkite had no choice.  Back then, CBS had a mandatory retirement policy at 65.  Reagan fixed that a few years later.  
Too bad. 'Cause If any business could have benefited from mandatory retirement (over the last 2 decdes), it's broadcasting.  

SOWNY » Instant Replay: CP24, The Early Years » August 13, 2019 1:57 am

Mav
Replies: 12

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I happened to be in the Global newsroom when the CRTC decision came down.  Global also had an application for a 'regional' all-news channel.  Instead they got something called 'Prime' which allowed them to re-run the crap out of everything from Love Boat to Murder She Wrote, for which they still owned the Canadian rights.  

Global's news pitch was pretty dull, but they convinced the CRTC to at least let them present a video at the hearing in Hull.  City didn't think they were allowed to submit a video (it is TV after all, wouldn't that make sense?) and only found out THE DAY BEFORE the presentations.  So, from Ottawa, Moses and Steve Hurlbut scrambled some very talented staff to make a 5 minute sizzle-reel (this is back before non-linear editing and After Effects, so they had to build all the graphics and effects in ONE DAY!).  
Now, they're done.  But they have to get the tape to Ottawa and the clock is ticking.  They didn't want to feed it by satellite (either because they were too cheap, or paranoid the competition would see something they shouldn't).  Hard to believe, but FedEx didn't overnight packages to Ottawa back then, so the bosses asked me an another young guy from the assignment desk to grab a spare CityPulse truck and drive all night.  At the last minute, we found a guy with a Cessna willing to fly to Ottawa for 200 bucks and a bag of Toronto Ts .   It was insanity, but so typically Citytv.  

One more thing; I took a very early meeting with an older man who was setting up the on air staff for CP24.  They asked me if I was interested in a videographer/anchor position and of course I said 'yes'.  Then he asked if I'd ever directed.  "Not really.  Why?  Do you want me to direct my own anchor shift?  Like, read the throw and say 'roll tape'?"  I see the wheels turning.  "That's a great idea!", he says.  
I didn't take the gig.  But thinking back now, it coulda been interesting to watch - sorta the way that Dr Pimple Popper lady is "i

SOWNY » New Night Walk [4K, Toronto] joins recently-updated Night Ride episode » August 6, 2019 12:57 am

Mav
Replies: 4

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Wonder what kind of scoliosis you get from wearing a 96 lbs steadicam (with one of those beastly Sony BVP-5 betacams) and walking around Chinatown all night?  And the part I can't understand is how NO ONE waves at the camera.   People aren't even noticing it!  Have you seen a circa 1986 steadicam?!  It looks like a Buick engine on a pogo stick, strapped to a vest!  AND they apparently shot it all in one night (in May)  

SOWNY » What Happens When You Hire An Uninformed Newscaster » July 3, 2019 12:52 am

Mav
Replies: 42

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Who's she going to ask?  All the other people in the newsroom?  I'm betting she's solo all night. So, does she ask the 21 year old board op?  I think it's more about youth and inexperience rather than being uninformed.  You can't expect every new grad to know EVERY single thing about history.  But someone should teach her how to use wikipedia and youtube.  She could have found a ton of easily-consumable context there.  At least one of those Chrysler commercials from the 80s (that's how I learned how to say Eye-a-coke-ah)

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