dieter wrote:

Way back in the dark ages when I worked in radio out west, it was a usual practice for political staffers (usually Tories) to call in to our talk show when their opponents (usually the NDP) were the guests and read their talking points.

I challenge the assertion that it's mainly a "Tory" thing, all political parties do it pretty equally.

I worked on talk shows for many years and screened thousands of calls. Whenever, there was a big name politician in studio, and especially during an election campaign, suddenly we'd be getting calls from people who never called before and from places hundreds of KM away from our main broadcast area. I'd do my best to screen the bogus agenda callers out.

Storm wrote:

I am wondering if the Hamilton management positions will be taken over by someone else, or do they also fall under the umbrella of the "Kitchener/Guelph Cluster".

I've heard rumblings that the Hamilton cluster will be shut down. 95.3 will be run out of Toronto and 107.9 is moving to London.

Storm wrote:

And last, what happened to Scott Fox?

According to the last sentence of this article, he was let go: https://nwbroadcasters.com/2024/12/19/corus-making-changes-within-ontario-radio/

darcyh wrote:

I thought I would start a new thread about CKOT 101.3 from Tillsonburg. A few years ago this was an independent station that was unique in the market. With its 50 kilowatts (now 22kw) of power it got a good signal into London, Kitchener, Brantford, Guelph and Woodstock. It was generally live from 6:00 am until midnight with automation overnight. I would be driving on the 401 on a Sunday night and Easy 101.3 would be the only station with weather and road condition reports.

The music content was pretty good with a diverse playlist. The station probably benefited from a change in format at CFCA FM 105.3 Kitchener (another once great station) when it abandoned its 'old fogy' programming and targeted a much younger demographic. 

Long story short; once Rogers took over they started playing the most annoying supposed easy listening music. Live programming was reduced. The station lost all of its local charm. Just another scan pass station on the FM dial. I wonder what its ratings are today?

Perhaps the new owner(s) could consider returning this station to a full service operation with some actual live announcers and a return to more traditional easy listening music. The old CKOT had a pretty long list of advertisers. There is no shortage of potential sponsors: car dealerships, funeral homes, appliance, furniture, flooring, renovation, drug stores etc. that could benefit from a station that makes no apologies of catering to an older demographic.

The station can't get any worse than it is... 

I'm seeing a lot of positive reaction about CKOT becoming 'Local' again. But how many local people are actually employed at an average MY FM station? In checking out their different brands, it seems like they are running the same playlist, with the same voicetracked announcers on multiple stations. And although newscast content may be local, that actual newscaster may be reading from 300km away. This is exactly what the big boys are already doing.

I hope I'

RadioAaron wrote:

TheWiz wrote:

Wait a minute. It sounds like Bell will no longer be carrying The Discovery Channel, Food Network, Animal Planet etc... established brands that viewers know very well. Instead replacing them with their own knockoff versions of these channels?

Am I reading the article correctly?

Rogers got the rights to most of those brands at Bell and Corus' expense, and will be launching their own versions

I understand the rights issue. But this shouldn't hypothetically prevent Bell from offering these channels on their cable TV services. These channels have been available through all cable providers up to this point regardless of who owns the actual content.

It sounds like we are entering a point soon, where cable providers will only be offering content that they themselves have the rights to. Audio streaming has been moving this way for a while (i.e. Rogers "Seeker" app only contains their content), and now it's happening with Television. All because the financial arms of these companies have lost touch with what is best for the end user.

This is interesting. I wonder if Amazon is testing to see they may be interested in taking over the NHL TV deal when it expires in 2026.

I installed the app and quickly uninstalled it when I realized it contained only content from Rogers.

This is one of the big problems with the industry right now. Content on apps and streaming services is determined by who owns the rights to which content, and not what the consumer might want to watch or listen to.

The radio industry needs to come together and create a system that benefits the listener. Radioplayer was a decent attempt at this few years ago. Most radio stations/companies signed on to RP with Bell being the lone holdout going with iHeart. Most Canadian stations and podcast content have now signed on with on iHeart. I wish Rogers had done the same.

Now we have the "Seekr" app. Which of course is not spelt the way you'd think. If you have to explicitly tell people how to spell your product, you've already lost the marketing war.

I agree, the Seekr app looks slick and is designed well. I'm not a fan of the iHeart radio app, the layout seems to confusing and chaotic. But it seems to be the location where all content could be in one place.
 

RadioAaron wrote:

Format is 70s & 80s Classic Hits.

No audio on the stream, yet. AM signal still playing Bloomberg.

https://www.1150ckoc.com/

There's audio on the stream now. The AM dial appears to still be bloomberg.

Radiowiz wrote:

THIS is very sad. Although I have not been to NY in ages, I counted on News radio 88 to be the best and most reliable source of news and information in New York.  

Agreed. Between WINS and WCBS, I always preferred the presentation of WCBS. Pace was faster, writing was better and the production was tight.
 

RadioActive wrote:

By the way, the article says the parting came for "unconfirmed draft reasons.”

Maybe I'm just not familiar with the lingo, but what does that mean?
 

I've been in the industry more than 20 years... I have no idea what this means!

Could it be a goofy sports reference since he worked at SportsNet?

Was at a restaurant last week and they had the CityNews channel on a few of the TV's there. I glanced up 3 times before I realized it wasn't CP24.

It looks virtually identical in appearance. If I were Bell, I'd sue over such a similar layout and colour scheme.
 

rk12 wrote:

An omni signal coverage from downtown indicates an FM station.

I'd be willing to bet that the coverage map shown isn't too "Technically" accurate. It kinda looks like someone quickly threw it together using a free image editor. As opposed to pulling a screenshot from Radio-Locator.com or some similar site.
 

Forward Power wrote:

arc23 wrote:

Did any Canadian stations carry the show?

Barrie's CKVR was one...

...and RA is right, no one did it better than Johnny. His successor, Jay Leno, was okay, but I absolutely do not like Jimmy Fallon at all. He's not funny, NBC over-promotes his show, and he constantly upstages his guests.

Although most of Carson's run on The Tonight Show was before my time, I'll still watch some of his clips, with my all-time favourite moment being Carnac's "sis-boom-bah" joke from 1981... and Ed laughing hysterically at that one.
 

Me too FP, I was 13 when Johnny went off the air so I didn't experience his tenure on the Tonight Show, although I stayed up late to watch his final show.

I've always been fascinated by his career, so I've seen a few documentaries and countless video clips over the years. My absolute favourite Carson moment was the "Potato Chip Lady".




 

I subscribe to Stack TV and love it, they have a lot of the content I'm interested in... but that's just me.

RadioActive wrote:

It's all cosmetic, of course, but I often wonder how they come to these decisions. A refresh of these things can't hurt I suppose, but really, how many people will even notice? If you're curious, you can hear them at the next traffic break (usually on the quarter hour) or at the top of the hour before the news. 

Some listeners notice these things and sometimes, are quite passionate about it. I remember many years ago the FAN decided to change their sports update intro music that had been in place for many years. The listener response was not favourable and the old intro music was back a couple weeks later.
 

I've watched Pluto TV a bit and quite enjoy it. I've heard that they don't air every episode of a given series and you tend to see the same 20 or 30 episodes over and over again. Do others find this?