I never listen to commercials on radio. I listen to the radio at home in the morning with my coffee and feet up in my lazy boy. I have a remote and as soon as an ad break comes on I am searching other stations for music. same in the car. So, I don't recall hearing these annoying radio commercials. A couple that do bother me is the current Fowler Tire tv ad when the guy pulls his beard off. I cannot stand that and it certainly turns me off of Fowler Tire. Another is the Meridian ad referring to people as numbers. That one shows up regularly on YouTube so I can't ignore it if I want to play the music video I have selected, but it does not make me feel good about Meridian.

What about communities like mine - Guelph. There is no local news on the weekend, except 570 Kitchener which has local coverage from 7AM to noon Saturday & Sunday. if the power is off, we're dead. we do have one radio that will function without power, but it's reach is only local.

CJOY no longer has a morning show or an afternoon drive drive show. They do have traffic reports. According to their website Dan Allaire covers weekday mid-days (10AM-2PM), but it will be voice tracked I expect. He does mornings on Boom in Cornwall. They still cover the Guelph Storm games.

Yes Magic 106 does have a morning show. Lisa & Brent. Lisa Richards has been at Magic for years - on her own and as co-host of the morning show with Kevin Kelly (also the PD) , until he disappeared. A couple of others partnered with her for a while but they did not work out. Brent Richards used to do fill in but became the permanent co-host of the morning show several years ago.     

been that way since Mike Devine was dropped from his morning show (plus his mid day shift on Dave-FM and evening shift on Magic 106.1). Dan Allaire is listed as doing mid days Mon - Fri from 10Am-2PM. Otherwise non stop music/commercials/traffic updates/ news weekday mornings. They also broadcast Guelph Storm and Hamilton Tiger Cat games. They would not fit in with the Magic 106 format. It will be really too bad if CJOY disappears. It has a great oldies playlist - broader than other oldies stations.

I think the Bell Let's Talk ads this year are absolutely disgusting and disgraceful. 

TheWiz wrote:

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/

The last paragraph in this article was not in the one I read yesterday. I wonder why Scott Fox was let go? Scott & Kat have been together for several years and left Z103.5 for the Beat where their show seemed to be a hit and they were simulcast on Energy 95.3 plus they were also on other Corus CHR stations. Dave Blezard did a great job filling in while Fox was off and he and Kat seemed to have a great rapport. Maybe Corus decided he could handle co-hosting the morning show along with his PD responsibilities which would eliminate one paycheck and save Corus some money.

If you go way back, Scott Fox and Dave Blezard co-hosted the morning show on Z103.5 along with Melanie Martin and later Josie Fenech (Guerra) and then Ashley Greco. 

Magic 106 and Energy 95.3 have the exact same playlist, including past hits, except during the morning show and right now while Magic is all Christmas music. 

I don't think the morning show on Virgin 105.3 is close to the Beat and I don't think Dave Blezard replacing Scott Fox will make a difference.  Virgin 105.3 and Virgin 97.5 London are the same station. Same hosts - same music - round the clock. The morning show is hosted from London and PM drive in Kitchener. The rest of the programing is from Toronto.

 

Does Chum-FM even play Kendrick Lamar? 

My wife watches Cooking Channel & Food Network Canada and we both watch HGTV, so if Rogers dumps them we won't be happy. I understand they are planning their own "Food" channel and "Home & Garden" channel with some, but not all, of the programs being carried on the proposed to be cancelled channels. This after increasing our monthly tv charge by $7 - yes, we are one of them. However, we are month to month so I suppose we can leave anytime.

RadioActive wrote:

It's totally baffling to me why anyone would want to watch a station dedicated to cooking and eating, but it's a popular station in North America. I just have no idea why. I cannot think of anything more boring. 

Not boring at all. My wife and I have been watching it regularly (but not exclusively) for years. If you are into food and food preparation, it is both fun and interesting to watch. There are too many reality and competition shows on now, but the actual cooking shows are great and educational to someone who is cooking challenged (me - not my wife).
 

I noticed that this morning as well, but here their volume was much louder than it has been and much louder than the other two AM music stations I listen to: CJOY and AM740

mojo55 wrote:

As ffar back as 1954, I recall that WKBW 1520  was playing rock and roll (mostly R&B) each night at 8:00PM with The Hound  George Lorenz.  I used to listen to The Lone Ranger on Mon Wed & Fri at 7:30PM and immediately afterwards you would hear the sound of a hound  thereby signaling the start of George's show. It was definitely ahead of its time.

There was also a guy known as Lucky Pierre on a Buffalo radio station (I don't remember which one) who was on week nights at 8PM for an hour who played new pop music. That would be late 1956 early 1957.

I was very disappointed this morning when I turned on Kitchener's City News 570 to find that the regular weekend morning news cycle (6AM - Noon) was replaced by re-runs of a weekday talk show. WTF! No weekend news on Kitchener TV and now no weekend news on Kitchener radio also? Hopefully this was just a one off as a result of the Microsoft outage yesterday.

Kevin Kelly and Ron Fitzpatrick were on the air almost non-stop during the power failure. Magic and CJOY may have been simulcasting. Listeners were also bringing gas for the generator. 

Lots of duplication in local area radio stations - much less variety or local input and imagination. 

Bounce Hamilton and Bounce Kitchener play the same music almost simultaneously.
Likewise Guelph's Magic 106 and Hamilton's Energy 95.3.
Virgin Radio Kitchener and Virgin Radio London are now one station with all the same on-air staff and the exact same music - the same playlist as Virgin radio Toronto.
Hamilton's Y108 and London's FM96 also use the same playlist.

Probably most people don't do as much radio surfing as I do so won't notice how little real variety there is today. And because of the internet and streaming today there isn't as much market isolation as there was back in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

I have always been a predominantly Top 40/CHR listener and I got more variety back when there were only three stations I would listen to: CHUM-CKEY-CKOC; CHUM-CKFH-CKOC; CHUM-CFTR-CKOC. Today half of the Top 40/CHR stations in Canada are Virgin all playing basically the same playlist. Don't know why each station has its own designated Music Director when the music seems to be controlled by "head office" (probably Toronto).