Love this! Armstrong often doesn't get the credit he deserves for his contribution to the industry.

I'm with Telus owned Start.ca for TV and Internet. Their TV service has been god awful. Maybe they'll switch over to this interface, which might be better?

My favourite one is Ken Burns "Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio"
For those who like the technical side of the industry, this is a must watch.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8n4ce2

RadioAaron wrote:

I'm assuming it's because the companies have separately pre-sold all the sponsorship elements

Yeah maybe you're right. Maybe the sponsor contract only stipulates the spots will air during a leafs broadcast with no mention of what actual station the game will air on. If I were a sponsor, I'd be annoyed my spots were pushed off to a station that doesn't normally air Leaf games.
 

I hate this. It's already annoying enough that Leafs and Raptors are split between 2 stations, now they throw a 3rd into the mix (and sometimes 4, the occasional Raptors game will air on 1010 if 1050 is airing a Leafs game). And all because the blue and red managers can't decide who gets to play with the toy in the sandbox... just give it to 1050 already!

Digital takes longer to send out and decode the signal. I'd think the delay should only be a couple seconds, maybe I'm wrong.

Regardless, most stations would put a delay on their analogue signal so the transition between the two would be seamless.

My biggest surprise is Indie 88 is beating the Edge. Good for them, I like what they're doing.

I figured something was up. A few weeks ago, Dave Rocks started pulling in the same playlist that runs on FM 96/Y108. I suspect you'll see Taz and Jim on mornings starting next week.

And although the morning show wasn't great (could have been decent if the hosts were guided on what they were doing on-air), it's still sad to see anyone lose their job. Probably would have got the news on world radio day... how ironic.

This now leaves Waterloo Region with only two commercial FM radio stations still doing a truly local morning show (CHYM and Bounce 99.5).

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.