They were having technical issues starting yesterday (Friday) morning. Their noon hour phone-in, “Fight Back with Libby Znaimer” was cancelled because they couldn’t access the phone line. Later, their phone-in daily contest was also cancelled for the same reason. This morning their Gardening Show was also cancelled and to make matters worse, you can’t access their playlist online, dammit!
And none of their stations are currently streamable.

As much as I like to tune in to AM740 to escape all the noise out here, they sure take their time when they’re having technical issues, it could take until Monday to get sorted, speaking from experience.

tvguy wrote:

 We are very sorry for the interruption in service for Zoomer Radio. We are dealing with a severe network and server issue, but rest assured that we are working as hard as possible to get everything back up and running as quickly as possible.This issue is impacting our online stream as well as our app. We are still available on traditional airwaves, so we invite you to tune in that way if you are within our range.AM740 across southern Ontario and 96.7FM in downtown Toronto.Thank you for your patience.

 
Thanks for the update tvguy, and I only noticed the issues as I do tune in, often! Good luck with it! (I missed Charlie Dobbin this morning, part of my Saturday morning coffee time…..!)

DeepTracks wrote:

If I may ask, how did you come-by that info/statement? I looked at their website and (at the time) could not find any info related to the problem.

Yes, I couldn't tell if TVGuy is an engineer or otherwise involved with the stations and is posting that text as himself, or is copying and pasting that block of text from somewhere else on social media. Hopefully they will clarify.

Shorty Wave wrote:

AspectRatio wrote:

DeepTracks wrote:

If I may ask, how did you come-by that info/statement? I looked at their website and (at the time) could not find any info related to the problem.

Yes, I couldn't tell if TVGuy is an engineer or otherwise involved with the stations and is posting that text as himself, or is copying and pasting that block of text from somewhere else on social media. Hopefully they will clarify.

 
I think tvguy is involved somehow with the stations just by the fact he replied to my post fairly quickly, a bit of pride with your job type thing. I also didn’t see anything posted on their sites so tvguy is our only source of info, thanks again for that! They’re still OTA only and that why I still have a radio, or four….

A "radio" does one no good when one is far too distant from their coverage area - just sayin'.

And the radio stations here in Sudbury do not come anywhere near to my want for classical background music with the occasional news break.

Shorty Wave wrote:

Just checked and they are still are all offline but still OTA fortunately!

Thanks "Shorty". I must have missed the announcement of their not yet fixing their streaming capability.
Oh - wait a minute .
 

Yikes! Both stations are still offline and the server situation is quite the issue effecting their programming as “Fight Back”, their daily phone-in was cancelled yesterday, plus in the afternoon I heard a voice track of Liz West signing off for the day 90 minutes early, intercut with an ad I think, plus a rewinding sound, odd. This must be an engineer’s nightmare and I wish them well!

Shorty Wave wrote:

They’re back online this morning! That took quite a while for them to rectify but happy that they got it sorted out.

Well...not quite.

On their own app for Classical FM only the GTA feed is working. Clicking on either Cobourg or Collingwood is just dead air. And when you select AM740 they are duplicating ClassicalFM and not their AM sister's programming.


 

Full disclosure, I like to tune into the Garden Show phone-in on AM740 on Saturday mornings. Unfortunately there were no callers today as their phone lines, via their server, VOIP I assume, are still down. This started over three weeks ago and it has affected many aspects of their multiple stations and yet it is still an issue. Somewhat disappointing and has given me cause to find something else to listen to, damn!

RadioAaron wrote:

It was a major ransomware attack that also affected backups. They're having to basically rebuild the radio and TV stations from scratch. Only a hard-drive of music was left unaffected.

 
Wow, that explains a lot. I feel for them having had that happened and ask myself why? It’s not like they’re rolling in money, shameful. With only a hard drive of music to work with, that explains why I’ve heard serious repetition of songs and they were really light with the Christmas music this year. I wish them all the best and will stop mentioning it on SOWNY. Thank you for the update RadioAaron, appreciated.