Here's the first RPM Chart from Jan. 23, 1971, the week the rules went into effect. There was already some Canadian content on the previous lists, but this would have been the first one since CanCon went into effect. 

I recognize a few of them, like Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind" or Andy Kim's "Be My Baby." But "Sally Bumper" by Houston (#65) or "Sacroiliac Boop" by The Happy Feeling (#75)? Never heard of them and if they got any airplay in Toronto, I certainly don't remember it.  

Well really looking at the RPM 100 singles chart there are quite a few songs cancon or otherwise I don't recognize or recall.  Mr. Guder from the Carpenters, If There is a Hell Below, Curtis Mayfield, Mixed Up Guy by Joey Scarbury and Problem Child by Mark Lindsay are just a few that don't come to mind for me either, and that I never played on air.   And shouldn't Only Love Can Break Your Heart by Neil Young be cancon?  Doesn't appear to be marked as such.  I really enjoyed RPM back in the day, but found their charts a bit questionable at times. But I give them full marks for carrying the torch for so many years!

Never understood the griping about Anne, Neil and Gord getting too much airplay.  They never did where I worked.  I always thought that was just an excuse from people who either didn't know how to program music or just didn't like the regulation and would always complain about it regardless.  And as we all know, there was always lots of complaining about a lot of things, but that was also part of the fun!

I think cancon actually hit it's peak in the era of Much Music and shows like Video Hits which was on CBC. Much Music in particular was really breaking the hits more than radio and doing a better job of introducing new artists. During this era domestic artists were selling lots of singles and albums and getting tons of airplay and selling out venues across the country.

 Artists like Gowan, Platinum Blonde, Spoons, Martha and the Muffins, Blue Rodeo, Tragically Hip, Payolas, Zappacosta, Tom Cochrane and Red Rider, Glass Tiger, The Box, Streetheart, Northern Pikes, April Wine, Strange Advance, Kim Mitchell and many others were having great success for the most part only in Canada. And there was a whole other list of artists that had the international success like Adams, Dion, Hart, Morissette, Twain  etc..

Today we seem to be in another sweet spot overall for domestic music.  Yes you can argue the regulations have in some ways fulfilled their intent and by some measures have been a success.  However you could also argue that if it has been a success, then why change or drop the regulation?  If it ain't broke, why fix it?

Some will argue that over the years cancon has actually hurt Canadian radio and formats.  I have never seen any information that indicated playing Canadian music has hurt the revenue of radio.  I can't believe advertisers would pull their budgets because too much domestic music was killing the ratings and therefore they aren't going to advertise.  All indications are that Canadian radio as a business, while not exactly robust right now, is surviving the pandemic better than many.  So far next to no stations have gone dark. 

I think cancon should be modified a bit.  Stations that play current hit music do seem to focus on certain artists a lot, but they do this with many artists, not just Canadian.   However to their credit most of what they play is either new or recent and I have noticed that these stations also play artists that I had no idea were domestic.  Just like the RPM chart above from 1971 there is a lot of music that I am not familiar with either.
http://charts.bdsradio.com/bdsradiocharts/charts.aspx?formatid=34
And 50 years later this is what we have now.  Naturally all cancon from the Billboard chart is conveniently marked with the maple leaf.  You will notice a few songs by Canadian artists that don't have the leaf, and these songs don't count as cancon.

Last edited by paterson1 (January 18, 2021 6:15 pm)

Dale Patterson wrote:

I remember some of the ways stations tried to get around Can-Con. One trick was to "ghettoize" (to use a 1970s term) the songs, playing them at the end of the hour in hopes they wouldn't get noticed as much. Another was to play short Canadian songs then fade them out early (I recall some stations edited the songs to make them even shorter.) Also, some stations would play a Can-Con instrumental as bumper music and count it toward their quota. "Stacking" was also common, especially on weekend mornings where the 6-9 a.m. slot would be all Can-Con to get a head start on the quota. They also did this late at night when fewer people might be listening. Then there was "hidden" Can-Con, songs like "I Saw Her Again" by the Mamas and Papas or 'She's A Lady" by Tom Jones. But they eventually closed all the loopholes.

I have heard these things before many times and I do know that some in fact did happen like the "beaver hours" from maybe 10:30 to midnight and also some early morning like 6 to 7am.  In fact on a few stations this still does happen mostly with a gold format.

But back in the 70's I still can't see three hours of all cancon on a Saturday morning.  First of all after 7am ratings were strong on a Saturday and on AM usually busy and  full service with lots of news, sports and features.  So if the intent was to bury or hide songs I don't think Saturday morning would be the time.

The other stuff like editing songs or speeding them up or fading purposely early, I guess could have happened at some stations but I doubt it was very widespread.  I have talked to a few over the years who disliked the regs and tried to make it sound like these discretions were the norm and I am very skeptical.  And you are right Dale any loopholes were fairly quickly taken care of.  

All I know is that having worked or having direct contact with the music formats of 11 different stations in my career, which began in 1974, none of these things happened or were even considered.  And all of the various companies I had the pleasure of being a part of were number one in their respective market in terms of ratings and revenue.

Also new announcers that came from other markets like Calgary, London or Winnipeg never inquired why we weren't stacking or editing our cancon.  And this was when I was not in management so if they came from a station that normally would do this, they likely would have brought it up at some point,  since they would bring up everything else their old station would do that we weren't.

I do recall in one market a competitor seemed to be stacking a lot of cancon at various times of the day and didn't play much morning and afternoon drive.  Didn't matter, we creamed them in the ratings every time, and they had a similar format.

The only time we would beef up was for special programming later in the day that had little or no cancon, or if we were running low near the end of the day.  I always felt doing back flips with your music and trying to beef up during the down hours was a waste of time and didn't make any difference in the ratings.  Why make something that actually was pretty straight forward complicated?



 

paterson1 wrote:

The only time we would beef up was for special programming later in the day that had little or no cancon, or if we were running low near the end of the day.  I always felt doing back flips with your music and trying to beef up during the down hours was a waste of time and didn't make any difference in the ratings.  Why make something that actually was pretty straight forward complicated

 

Stacking at off-peak times makes total sense, which is why one of the consistently top stations in the market does it. It is straight forward: It allows you to play more of your bigger songs when significantly more people are listening. Of course that's good for ratings - especially in PPM

Last edited by RadioAaron (January 18, 2021 9:04 pm)

That was almost very mysterious.  Of course it's Boom.  Everyone knows it.  I don't even turn it on on weekend mornings because it's a Cancon hellscape.