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January 1, 2020 7:51 pm  #1


Do you hear that? There is a kind of hush all over the radio world !

Do you hear what I hear? No more Christmas music, like the blink of an eye, the flash of lightening and radio has almost returned to regular programming?

I look forward to regular music now, talk radio talking U.S. politics, the Conservative party righting the ship, someone blaming Doug Ford, a potential City of Toronto employee strike and a new Metro Morning host being named.

Ahh, yes, the holidays (radio, T.V. wise) are essentially done for the season!

Happy New Year...oh and just in case you need proof, the first pitch flies at Blue Jay Spring Training on the FAN 590 on Saturday February 22nd against the NY Yankees...that's about 7 weeks away!


 


The world would be so good if it weren't for some people...
 

January 1, 2020 8:07 pm  #2


Re: Do you hear that? There is a kind of hush all over the radio world !

Actually Joe, you're going to have to wait until at least Thursday for regular programming. I tuned into various stations on New Year's Day and was greeted by a mess of not-ready-for-primetime podcasts on GNR640 and 700 rerolls of the best of John Moore, a Jerry Agar panel, an Elton John special, John Tory's year-end debrief and other programming that kept getting rerun every few hours. 

Almost all of it was unlistenable.

My real question is: are you right? Or will they take the rest of the week off, since for many, school and work really restarts next Monday. If that's the case, it will mean some of the talk stations will have been in holiday mode for at least 10 very long days. Even their newscasts, from Canadian Press, have been identical on almost every station. 

Which for supposedly 24-hour-7-day-a-week operations in Canada's biggest market, is pretty inexcusable.

 

January 1, 2020 9:10 pm  #3


Re: Do you hear that? There is a kind of hush all over the radio world !

I caught some of WBEN's broadcast of "the year that was 2019", an ABC network production that summed up the big events of the year, which I thought was pretty decent this morning.

 

January 1, 2020 9:51 pm  #4


Re: Do you hear that? There is a kind of hush all over the radio world !

RadioActive wrote:

Actually Joe, you're going to have to wait until at least Thursday for regular programming. I tuned into various stations on New Year's Day and was greeted by a mess of not-ready-for-primetime podcasts on GNR640 and 700 rerolls of the best of John Moore, a Jerry Agar panel, an Elton John special, John Tory's year-end debrief and other programming that kept getting rerun every few hours. 

Almost all of it was unlistenable.

My real question is: are you right? Or will they take the rest of the week off, since for many, school and work really restarts next Monday. If that's the case, it will mean some of the talk stations will have been in holiday mode for at least 10 very long days. Even their newscasts, from Canadian Press, have been identical on almost every station. 

Which for supposedly 24-hour-7-day-a-week operations in Canada's biggest market, is pretty inexcusable.

In the fall ratings, in ad demos, share:

Commercial music stations: 68.6
CBC 1, 2, and French: 13.9
680 News: 4.8
Commercial News/Talk: 4.0
Sports: 3.1

The reality is that AM News/Talk is a niche format; it's not mainstream. Yeah, there's a chicken or egg scenario...in that if they shoveled more money at them they'd do better -- but there's a ceiling. It's a prime-time, car-only format. Spending money on programming on weekends (and every day for the last 2 weeks has been, realistically, a weekend) is money down the drain.
 

Last edited by RadioAaron (January 1, 2020 9:57 pm)

 

January 2, 2020 8:18 am  #5


Re: Do you hear that? There is a kind of hush all over the radio world !

I spent New Years Day watching a marathon of the original Twilight Zone episodes on the U.S. SYFY network.