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Some artists got a small boost from the cancon regs but it wasn't significant.
Yes, it definitely caused problems for radio broadcasters.
It's a failed experiment and a dated concept
Time to let it go
0% CanCon

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Chances are good that you were the only one listening, best I can tell that station has no listeners.

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It seems more like a website the guy made in his basement as opposed to a TV channel.

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paterson1 wrote:
I remember hearing the same announcer breaks over different music from about 8 hours earlier.

This may have been because the PD during the rock era did both AM drive and PM drive so maybe he recycled his breaks from the morning show on the afternoon show, the station was a trainwreck at that point. I recall them using the slogan "Toronto's Best Rock Variety."

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Radiowiz wrote:
UnSub wrote:
When Jack went rock in Toronto, trying to compete with Q107 it was a complete failure. At that time the station was a 2 share and then a 1.8. It was not only a ratings failure but was also an awful radio station to listen to. At that point, they fired the PD and switched to KISS. I don't imagine they would want to repeat the same catastrophic mistake.

Jack Vancouver has been on the air since Boxing Day 2002, at one point they were #1 with like a 12 share. The format was designed to appeal to 40 year olds, those people are 60 now so maybe the format needs to be tweaked to appeal to the 40 year olds of today. It's also worth noting that the station is pretty far from what the original concept was. Looking at some of the numbers from the US where they stuck to the original concept it seems that the format is still very viable if done correctly.
Jack FM in Toronto continued to be viewed as "we play what we want" and not trusted to be a rock station.
A name change would have drawn better attention.
I tuned out because myself and many others thought they were just playing what they want and just might throw some rap music at us...because they want to play what they want.

Why listen to something that plays what it wants when you can tune into a REAL rock station that ONLY plays rock music?

Yes, a name change would have been a good idea, but even then it wouldn't have worked. There was also a PD who was completely out of his depth, so as long as he was running that station it would have zero chance of succeeding regardless of what the name was.

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When Jack went rock in Toronto, trying to compete with Q107 it was a complete failure. At that time the station was a 2 share and then a 1.8. It was not only a ratings failure but was also an awful radio station to listen to. At that point, they fired the PD and switched to KISS. I don't imagine they would want to repeat the same catastrophic mistake.

Jack Vancouver has been on the air since Boxing Day 2002, at one point they were #1 with like a 12 share. The format was designed to appeal to 40 year olds, those people are 60 now so maybe the format needs to be tweaked to appeal to the 40 year olds of today. It's also worth noting that the station is pretty far from what the original concept was. Looking at some of the numbers from the US where they stuck to the original concept it seems that the format is still very viable if done correctly.

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It seems the company also has a very well thought out digital strategy. In the second paragraph it says; "Stations interested in either format, reach out for a demo: Gary Begin, garybegin10@gmail.com." Nothing says success like a Gmail address!

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https://broadcastdialogue.com/julie-adam-set-to-exit-rogers/

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https://twitter.com/yyzsportsmedia/status/1562892762390745093

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RadioActive wrote:
UnSub wrote:
The Lisa LaFlamme story is a national story, most people outside of Southern Ontario weren't aware of Derringer prior to the series of events that resulted in him leaving Q107, many people in the west still don't know of him, but they definitely know Lisa LaFlamme.
You're certainly right about that, but don't forget, this board is about local Southern Ontario radio and TV. So that's the context I was asking in. But worth noting - I saw the Derringer story on sites from out east (Halifax) and way out west (Vancouver.) So while they may not know who he is, it's possible they saw the story. They also saw the LaFlamme headline, so yes, that might tend to give it more weight.

Good point, another factor to consider is that it seems that everyone in media knew about Derringer's behaviour and I don't think anyone was surprised, conversely, the LaFlamme story surprised pretty much everyone.

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The Lisa LaFlamme story is a national story, most people outside of Southern Ontario weren't aware of Derringer prior to the series of events that resulted in him leaving Q107, many people in the west still don't know of him, but they definitely know Lisa LaFlamme.

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RadioAaron wrote:
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In my opinion the best Jazz station in the country is Jazz FM Toronto
It's also the only one.

Got me there, I wasn't aware of any others but wasn't sure. In any event, the key difference is that the Wave is a radio station that plays mostly Jazz. Jazz FM is a group of Jazz enthusiasts who happen to have a radio station. The other thing with the Wave is that the stream sounded quite crappy. Music and imaging was ok but the mics were overmodulated and distorted. Not sure if the same problem exists with the FM signal. Perhaps they are still working out the bugs but it did sound pretty bad. If I was Geoff Poulton I'd fire somebody if my stream sounded like that.

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In my opinion the best Jazz station in the country is Jazz FM Toronto, they are a 1.6 share, so I think that's the best any jazz station will do anywhere. Since the station in Vancouver is nowhere near as good as Jazz FM we have to assume it will have something less than 1.6, so I took a guess, could be a 0.4 or a 0.8 but at that point it doesn't really matter anymore, whatever it is, they will do nothing but lose money. The good news for them is that they can't do any worse than Roundhouse Radio which was a 0.0.

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It will be a 0.6 share

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PwrSurge wrote:
Well it's official, tomorrow 93.5 will be known as Today Radio!
The format will be broad based and something new in the Toronto market, playing everything from Country to Urban, essentially a millenial version of the "Jack" format. A sampling of the artists which will be played include Dixie Chicks, Post Malone, Kylie Minogue, Bryan Adams, Drake, Arkells, Justin Bieber, Our Lady Peace, Ed Sheeran and Linkin Park.

And the jock lineup is now out! As per https://935todayradio.com/hosts/
We have Paul McGuire (circa CMT) & Nikki Balch (previously at Beat 92.5 Montreal) in the morning.
Tyler Barr for middays (coming from Virgin 95.9 Montreal)
and drive with Vanessa Newman (VT from Z95.3 Vancouver).

Station will be ran by Steve Parsons as GM, Crosby McWilliam as PD and John Downey for Promotions.

Listened for about an hour, music is pretty good.

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Sunny wrote:
I'll go with Marc Weisblott's guess and say Soft AC Breeze.

Agreed

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Mike Richards wrote:
We just discussed the truth about 92.5, CISS-FM last week on my show.
Jeff Lumby and I were there. And there was no meal... Envelopes were handed out right there.
There was no "On my God, we're locked out" drama.. Who wrote that garbage?
Here's what actually happened...(But it was still really bizarre...And still really bad)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLoer3dzuj0

Thanks, I enjoyed it!

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I found this part of the press release to be kind of interesting....

"Joining Pooja and Gurdeep on the new morning show is 98.1 CHFI news anchor Christine Cardoso, and Blair Bartrem, who will serve as Executive Producer for CHFI Mornings with Pooja & Gurdeep"

Blair was Regional PD for Bell in Southwestern Ontario, prior to that he was PD of Virgin Montreal as well as being PD of Q107 for about 12 years and before that PD of The Mix (Virgin nowadays.) Point being, based on his experience and track record he would be expensive. Even though they are calling him "Executive Producer" of the morning show, it's still really morning show producer and I can't imagine that job would pay anywhere close to what he is worth. Perhaps it was a way of getting him in to the company and he will eventually take on a programming role.

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I have many Gigs of music, ranging from the 40s to now. First I used Winamp, then iTunes for playlist management and playback. I got a couple of Google Home devices (now branded as Google Nest.) Once I realized that I could say "ok Google Play whatever" and it would, I needed to have it. I was able to play iTunes through just one of the devices using Bluetooth and I could say "Next" and "Previous" or "Volume Up". and what not. Anyhow, it was kind of lame, so I thought I'd give YouTube Music a try, it worked ok but the playlist management tools were beyond awful. One good feature was that you could upload your own songs and I'd assume any type of audio. Anyhow, I switched to Spotify and I've been very happy with it, there has been the odd glitch, but I think that's how it is with any streaming services. It works really well with my Google Home (Nest) stuff.

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I actually used DAT quite a bit. The quality was really good, it was difficult to manipulate in terms of starting the audio at an exact point the same way you could with reel to reel. I still have some old DAT tapes and I've been looking for a cheap machine so that I can listen. So far I haven't had much luck.

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paterson1 wrote:
Another viewpoint on music testing...
https://thriveglobal.com/stories/radio-s-40-year-old-music-programming-formula-is-killing-innovation-alienating-younger-listeners-and-widening-the-disconnect-with-its-audience/

Thanks for this, the article brings up a lot of valid points about music testing. I've often jokingly put forth the notion that perhaps we should see what type of score 7 seconds of dead air would get. So while the methodology is far from perfect it's the current barometer in the radio business. Again, my main point was that there is a lot of CanCon that doesn't test well and it's not one single test or one single format. CanCon unto itself isn't bad but forcing stations to play 35% or often 40% causes a lot of bad CanCon to get on the air. Also mentioned in the article was that the author heard "Somebody's Watching Me" in the same time span on subsequent days. I don't think that's a result of the underlying rotational approach to music scheduling, but more sloppy editing by the Music Director. Also, that particular song stands as an excellent example of a flaw in the AMT approach, the hook of the song has the MJ vocals and is quite good, the rest of the song isn't great. So, as a result, the song tests quite well because of the 7 second hook. So, I guess I would say that in instances like this that PDs and MDs should realize this and not even play that song at all.

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paterson1 wrote:
UnSub wrote:
Paul Jeffries wrote:
I've also found it interesting that it's not only songs that have charted below a certain threshold that don't get airplay on many classic hits/classic rock stations, but also songs that have topped the charts, even ones by established artists. For example, "Jacob's Ladder" by Huey Lewis and The News and "Shakedown" by Bob Seger were both #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (the latter being Seger's only #1 to date), but the likelihood of hearing them on any terrestrial radio station is next to nil.

I can understand that a #1 song by a one-hit wonder might not fare well after a certain number of years, but how does a #1 song by an established and respected artist not make the grade? That's never made a lot of sense to me.

PJ
It's not a threshold of chart positions, it's a threshold of music test scores, neither of those songs test very well, so they don't get played. With Bob Seger, "Old Time Rock and Roll" wasn't as big a hit as "Shakedown" but tests way better, which isn't much of a surprise. There are a couple of Huey Lewis songs that test ok, but not great, all the rest don't score well at all.

But that is also a flaw of the testing system. And this is why on gold oriented stations we will hear songs like Girls Just Want to Have Fun, The Way You Make Me Feel, Jessie's Girl, Hungry Eyes and Open Arms all the time. It's even worse if you flip around the dial because you will hear the same limited gold.

Still hard to understand why a song that was number one or even top 10 may not be played because it didn't test well years later. I would think these songs still warrant some airplay, only to give the selections we hear all the time a much needed rest. There is little WOW factor on OTA gold radio. I guess it really comes down to playing it safe and not wanting to offend. Yes you could argue that you are programming what the public wants to hear, but it is obvious that there are issues
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paterson1 wrote:

Radiowiz wrote:

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PwrSurge wrote:

Sunny wrote:

Mike Richards wrote:

paterson1 wrote:

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Paul Jeffries wrote:

radiokid wrote:

Paul Jeffries wrote:

RadioActive wrote:

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geo wrote:

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