RadioAaron wrote:

He's not.

 
So what's your guess on it? I just read the domain insight from Radio Insight and it says 93.5 Today Radio is being registered about over a year ago, but it might not be necessarily the change.

Flow's move from 93.5 to 98.7 confuses me a bit, as apparently Flow's on air crew won't all be moved to the CINA Radio Group and a certain amount of staffs will be fired. However, it does make sense that the new owner of G98.7 wants to get rid of the previous brand built by Fitzroy Gordon and develop a new image for the station. The current music selection of G is definitely more Caribbean-oriented, with a significant percentage of reggae, dancehall and soca music, it might be possible that after adapting the Flow brand from Stingray, the new Flow 98.7 will shift towards a more hip hop oriented direction, similar to the urban stations in States such as Hot 97 & Power 105 in New York.


Moreover, the frequent change of Flow's airstaff and music playlist might deemed ineffective for the past few years, and the audience was fed up with the tweak, as a result Stingray would rather totally give up Flow and and try something else. As an avid hip-hop listener, I always find Flow being hard to listen to half of the time, mostly due to the poor music choices, which causes Flow sound like other CHR stations occasionally. I really anticipate that the new Flow 98.7 will continue the direction of G98.7, by playing some authentic urban music and getting rid of all those pop tracks.

Answering the question by RadioActive, it is undoubted that 93.5 has away better signal than 98.7. Even though 93.5 only has a maximum ERP of 3.706kW, it still transmits fairly better in the GTA than 98.7. 98.7 is also listenable throughout the GTA, except the eastern parts, especially beyond Ajax. In eastern Scarborough and Pickering 98.7 is occasionally being interrupted by CBC Radio 1 from Peterborough.


Regarding the new format of 93.5, I have little clue of what will it change to next Monday. It is doubtful that Stingray will continue its urban format, due to the multiple failed attempt in terms of improving the station. I  really wish Flow could have modified into a more hip-hop oriented direct

The reason why Flow hasn't been achieving the same level of success in Toronto as WBLK is in Buffalo can be attributed by a few factors. As some already suggested from the thread, the constant tweaking of format and personalities cause disengagement of listeners from tuning into the station. People who were dedicated to Flow were tired to notice their favourite music and DJs being dropped for unnecessary changes. There is a lot of well known Canadian hip-hop and R&B artists, especially in Toronto, however they haven't gotten enough exposure and support from Flow. Even though the recent Make In Toronto Takeover at 11pm promotes locally based artists, the rest of hours were just constantly repeating songs by CanCon artists such as Belly, Roy Woods, Anders and other few. Flow should be playing more tracks from upcoming Toronto artists during the day time. I consider G98.7 does a way better job regarding this, especially after the change in ownership, with artists such as Haviah Mighty and Fame Holiday are being constantly supported by G.


Moreover, even though Flow has slightly changed for the better after the removal of The Breakfast Club and overwhelmingly pop-ish songs from the playlist, I still consider Flow should make better efforts for increasing the engagement of listeners. Currently the playlist still consists of too many pop-rhythmic products, such as Kiss Me More, Save Your Tears, Montero and Mood by Iann Dior. Moreover, 5 out of top 10 songs played on Flow most could be heard on other CHR stations, such as Kiss and Virgin. A lot people whom I know would tune into Flow are already tired of listening these songs. Hip hop songs that are still supported by airplays in the states are however quickly dropped just one or two months after the addition, I consider the music is also another factor why Flow isn't able to achieve better ratings. Flow should be playing hip-hop tracks that are topped on the urban airplay charts of the States, also supporting more new lo

G98.7's Instagram page hasn't been updated for 2 weeks, yet hosts such as Red in the midday and Spex in the afternoon still remains at the station for now.

The new manager of the station is Gary Gunter, who worked previously in the United States as the vice-president of the black-owned Radio One and other few urban radio stations in the States. Therefore I believe the mandate for G98.7 serving Black Canadians won't be affected in a long term, under the promise of the new owner.

Here's a link to look into for the latest developments of the station. https://reggaenorthca.com/a-new-era-begins-at-g98-7-fm/

The Numeris Spring results have just released for the PPM markets. Here is the link for the results from RadioInsight:

https://radioinsight.com/numeris-ratings/

The above link has a better summary of results than the original Numeris website, as it ranks all the stations in order of share % for all of the cities.

Here's another website for the adults (men/women/all) 25-54 share for all the PPM markets:

https://broadcastdialogue.com/david-bray-breaks-down-the-spring-ppm-ratings-release/

For the Toronto market, there aren't a lot of surprises in terms of difference between now and last survey. The top 5 stations are still respectively:
CBC Radio One 15.9
Q107 9.3
boom 97.3 8.8
Classical 96.3 8.2
98.1 CHFI 8.2

Meanwhile, Flow 93.5 has continuously improved in ratings. For the A25-54 demo it has a steady 4.4, ranking #8 in the market, compared with the abysmal performance last year. Indie88 has dropped a share from 2.1 to 1.1 in the A12+ ratings, the biggest decrease in a few years.

paterson1 wrote:

Here is the new website for Virgin 93.9 Windsor
https://www.iheartradio.ca/virginradio/windsor
Looks like both stations are giving away $10,000 with contests.  Pure Country is going commercial free for 10,000 songs (about 26 days?) and Virgin 93 minutes commercial free.  Of the two changes 89X to Pure Country is the most dramatic.  The River to Virgin still major but not nearly as abrupt as CIMX. Guess that is why Pure Country is going to go weeks with no commercials.

 
The change to Virgin Radio is still somehow sensible, as there's no CHR stations directly targeting Windsor itself. It also provides a new exposure of the Virgin brand to the American market for the first time. The only issue that they need to deal with is to compete with Channel 955, even if a lot of people already mentioned Detroit's rating doesn't affect Windsor in a salient manner.

However the change to Pure Country is really questionable, since there are at least 3 country stations in the Detroit-Windsor market. Bell should have at least kept the better-performing River 93.9 on the 88.7 frequency, without directly competing with too many stations having the same format.

The lack of news coverage in terms of the demise of both stations in Canada also makes me quite sad, as radio  listening has always been an integral part for Canadians. The negligence of such event suggests that Canadian media companies isn't really putting much effort securing the status of radio, in hindsight.

I just checked on the Instagram of G98.7 this morning, the breakfast host Mark & Jem had an interview with Joshua Telemaque and his parents, the victim of the high school bullying incident in Pickering. It's great that G is willing to step up and continue to voice for Black Canadians while such unfortunate racial confrontations are still happening in the country. 

From the Broadcast Dialogue article, it mentioned there was no bidders from the Black community that decided to bought G98.7. I do really hope the new owner Neeti P. Ray will live up to his promise for continuing to make G98.7 a voice of Black Canadians, by retaining its format and airstaffs.