RadioActive wrote:

What are you doing New Year's Eve? Back in the old days, this was a pretty unusual night on many stations, which took pains to present special shows as the New Year loomed. I remember CHUM doing a countdown of the top hits of the past year, with #1 generally timed to air right before midnight. 

Most stations these days seem to have all but abandoned those kind of shows and some - like CHFI, CHUM-FM and Q107 - don't appear to be doing anything really different on Dec. 31st - at least not according to their respective websites. 

But there still are a few who try to set the night on fire. Here's are the ones I found:

KISS 92.5 - has a special day of programming planned for Dec. 31st, culminating in 6-hour commercial free NYE music mix starting at 8 PM.

CFNY - After the Top 23 of 23 countdown, it's highlights from groups that played live at Sugar Beach over the past year. It includes sets by Sam Roberts and Kiefer Sutherland. The "Edge Lang Syne" continues on Jan. 1st.

Indie 88.1 - The independent music outlet promises to unveil its Great 88. The first play started at 10AM and runs to 5 PM, starts again and goes until midnight, with rerolls twice more on Jan. 1st. There's no need to wait to find out what the top song is, though - they've posted the entire list on their website.

I well remember staying up late as a kid to hear the #1 song of the year on CHUM. I wonder if a younger demo will be as interested today, what with streaming and other places to be. If not, too bad. I have very fond memories of those late nights to kick off another year.

A quick look on socials says otherwise....

CHFI doing a Non-Stop New Year's Eve special with Pooja & Gurdeep starting at 8PM. They also did this last year.

CHUM-FM with their annual Top 40 of the year 6

Not sure why the surprise with All Christmas on Boom…. As they’ve gone all Christmas from 6PM Christmas Eve to Midnight Christmas Day for years now.

Virgin had some Christmas music sprinkled into their regular format yesterday/today. Same for KiSS.

CHUM’s All Christmas Music went longer than it’s gone in years. 11AM Christmas Eve to Midnight Christmas Day.

Radiowiz wrote:

We already had Teletoon Retro Canada. That was shut down. What will make Boomerang Canada any better than what Teletoon Retro once was?  

I do love classic cartoons, I just fail to understand why Teletoon Retro was shut down if Boomerang Canada is a great idea?

I'm willing to bet Boomerang Canada will not be like our former Teletoon Retro provided this new channel clones its American counterpart (which is likely).

Boomerang U.S. USED to be a hub for classic cartoons. But from about 2012, to the present (and it got worse when they did a "refresh" in 2015), the U.S. schedule consists of a limited batch of Looney Tunes/Tom and Jerry/Scooby Doo toons, newer spinoffs of the properties mentioned, and Cartoon Network shows no longer of value on the main network. Boomerang has been a brand on autopilot for a long time.

Which means steps down from Teletoon Retro where there was effort put into the network (especially early on.)

The only network that does classic cartoons right these days is MeTV.

According to a listener reply from CHFI on Twitter, All Christmas Music will end tonight at 11:59PM.

haydenmatthews14 wrote:

RadioActive wrote:

haydenmatthews14 wrote:

Something's up with Pure Country 93's website. No shows, No local contests and No local on air talent. Could this mean a format flip happening? 

I doubt this was part of whatever happened, but this was unveiled on Wednesday.

CJBX Launches New Morning Show 

I thought so too but I was wrong. I know Leeanne Whitehouse she was on CFHK 103.1 Fresh Radio CFPL-FM 95.9 FM96 and I think she was on CKDK-FM 103.9 Country 104. I wonder how this will effect the Morning show on 99.9 Virgin Radio in Toronto with the departure of T.J. O'Halloren from the morning crew.
 

*PURE SPECULATION here*.... but I have a hunch Deepa Prashad (who was scrubbed from the KiSS 92.5 website earlier this week, and her bio on socials no longer mentions KiSS 92.5) is moving to TJ's spot on Virgin Mornings. The timing of her departure and TJ's departure seem too close to say otherwise.
 

Radio.Intern wrote:

Dusting off this thread because the same sound is back again.... 

Noticed last night about 6PM, and as of just after 8'o clock tonight it remains when tuning in 104.5

Update: Seems to have vanished as of this morning. About 24 hours looks to be a record for the correction, as last time the sound went on for weeks!

RadioAaron wrote:

I'm going to guess they nuke it....probably only kept it going recently as a convenient way to keep Cooper on the station in some form.

I second Radio Aaron's thoughts. Especially after the phase out of a similar program last year: Sunday Morning Rewind. Once Tish Iceton was let go, Darryl Henry kept it going until the Christmas switch. Then in the new year it never came back, replaced by more of "Toronto's Perfect Music Mix". A real shame because that was a fantastic show, especially with Tish.
 

While the latest CHFI talk is about the Christmas flip on Monday, my mind turns to what I think is an even bigger deal. 

For those that listened to Toronto Mike's episode 1004 with Mike Cooper earlier this year.... around the 1:27:00 mark, Toronto Mike asks Mike Cooper about Coop's Classics and how long he'll keep it going for. Coop responds with "I think I'm done in November, by my choice".

If that is still the plan.... and since the CHFI Christmas switch turns on Monday.... this Saturday night November 12th could likely be the last Coop's Classics ever on 98.1 CHFI (and possibly the last time we hear Coop's voice on CHFI). Whether this will be noted in the show or not is the other question. But regardless, I will be tuning in.

Coop's Classics now airs 8PM to Midnight on CHFI.

mace wrote:

What would be truly wonderful is having Antenna TV, Cozi TV, ME TV etc. available online. Unfortunately, they are not. Decades is another one I wish I had access to.

For what it's worth: The Weigel cluster of stations (MeTV, Decades, and Heroes & Icons) ARE available online in a pay subscription format through Frndly TV: https://try.frndlytv.com/ 

In Canada, provided you have a VPN, and are willing to pay.... you will get to see them on this side of the border. 

RadioActive wrote:

On Sunday morning, it was even more bizarre. I happened to get up early and turned on the radio just after 6 AM. At around 6:15, CFRB played the stinger for its regular traffic update. But instead of someone coming on and telling you there are no problems (it's a holiday after all and 6 in the morning, no one's really out driving) something happened. There was no announcer and the stinger played on. And on. And on.

I remember when this exact thing used to happen a lot... and I mean nearly every time there was a voice track shift with a traffic stinger and/or talk with a music bed when listening to CHUM FM. The stinger/bed would also blend into the next song for a minute or two until the automation had enough and faded the element out. It hasn't happened much since the refresh.... so someone cared enough to correct the problem.

I realized the other night when looking at my guide that CityTV shows Christmas movies in the overnight hours. All year round. Daily. How long has this been going on for? 

"Big announcement" coming next Tuesday April 12th at 8:40AM on KiSS 92.5 from Roz Weston. Naturally, this has caused listener questions, the biggest being: Is Roz leaving Roz & Mocha (after 13 years)? 

Let the SOWNY speculation begin....

Here's the audio from this morning: https://www.kiss925.com/audio/roz-teases-a-big-announcement/ 

Radiowiz wrote:

Radio.Intern wrote:

I remember calling CHUM's at 925-6666 about 5 years back. At the time, it was still used by CHUM/Bell Media as a main line for their radio offices. Not sure if that's the same now.

This number is still very much in service, but calling it gets you the old recording from a time when Bell owned Flow for a short time.
This makes me wonder if leaving a message on their customer comment line will fall on deaf ears as what might well be an abandoned and forgotten line that Bell may have forgotten they own. 

 

Oh wow, is Ingrid Schumacher still the voice on the recording? I swear it was her voice at one point.... pretty wild and amazing if that's still the case. 

eladb wrote:

It looks like 98.7 will pick up the Flow branding as of Monday....the website is already up. Not sure what will be of 93.5.
https://flow987.com/

So Stingray has sold the branding off to G's owners, from my understanding? Very interesting....

tvguy wrote:

I believe that CFXJ (Flow) may have been authorized to broadcast IBOC HD.  If/when that begins, WBLK will be totally obliterated because the "Flow" HD subcarriers will extend into the WBLK lower bandwidth on 93,7.  Same problem that WNED-FM 94.5 faces from Durham Radio's KX 94.7 Hamilton.  

Thanks for your detailed thoughts tvguy. I think you're onto something with the point about Flow going HD. I found it odd at first given my location, but before a few months ago I was able to receive WBLK on my Sangean with no interference from Flow, and when Georgina country would try to come in, WBLK was able to kick it out. So maybe pending HD for Flow could be what's causing this. Or as others have mentioned, a change in signal pattern/reduced power for WBLK.