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680 Newsradio: Bringing You Vancouver's News
Maybe it's the fact it's a long weekend.
Maybe their staff couldn't get in thanks to the weather.
Or maybe Rogers is just cheap. (We've known that for a while.)
Whatever the reason, on a miserable night for terrible weather and ahead of a potentially record breaking snowstorm, what did early morning listeners hear on the only station that is live and supposedly local overnight? The feed from News 1130 in Vancouver. All night long.
I woke up at 5:15 AM Sunday and hoped to get the latest updates on how the weather was affecting the GTA. Instead, I heard a simulcast of the local news station in B.C., learning there was a water main break in New Westminster, a Canadian flag rally in that same city and that it was pouring rain and 5C in Vancouver itself. Good to know.
To be fair, they did try and spread the headlines around, referencing the mess outside here in a brief story and also giving us Calgary news - which means this simulcast of "local" news was going on across the country. And they did their usual traffic and weather cut-ins, brief though they were in order to rejoin the network on time.
I know the audience is low overnight on weekends, but on a day when the GTA is in the middle of a snow emergency, serving up news from thousands of miles away wasn't the best choice.
They went back to being fully local at 6AM. But good luck to those who were up early and looking for updates.
There's a reason CKO didn't work, and one was it was a national news network not serving local listeners. Shame they haven't learned that lesson of Canadian radio history.
- RadioActive
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Re: 680 Newsradio: Bringing You Vancouver's News
Another sad dereliction of duty: CKTB, which normally has a great live early morning show on Sundays, was in reroll mode.
One of their big topics: did you watch the solar eclipse? You know, the event that happened in April of last year. Meanwhile, they're also getting clobbered by this storm.
Maybe listeners in St. Catharines can tune into Buffalo for their local updates. It's still spring on 610.
Wish it were here!
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Thread Starter- Radiowiz
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Re: 680 Newsradio: Bringing You Vancouver's News
RadioActive wrote:
Another sad dereliction of duty: CKTB, which normally has a great live early morning show on Sundays, was in reroll mode.
One of their big topics: did you watch the solar eclipse? You know, the event that happened in April of last year. Meanwhile, they're also getting clobbered by this storm.
Maybe listeners in St. Catharines can tune into Buffalo for their local updates. It's still spring on 610.
Wish it were here!
For 610, they could put polka music on there for all Bell cares. The station has been sold. Bell gets their money no matter what. They don't have to care. It's someone else's problem now.
The new owner probably just isn't settled in yet. Plus, benefit of the doubt, it's also the long week-end.
Hopefully the new owner, once settled in, will take better care of News/Talk radio on 610 CKTB.
- BowmanvilleBob
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Re: 680 Newsradio: Bringing You Vancouver's News
All of this reminds me of a dimly remembered incident from several years ago, when the small community of Fort Nelson in northeastern B.C. was being hit with a massive snowstorm. The local radio station was merely a repeater and was airing network programming throughout day with no local content. After exhausting all efforts to contact the network's head office or on-air studios in Vancouver, the mayor and the local RCMP broke into the station, switched off the network service and began broadcasting local emergency information and updated weather forecasts. In the aftermath of the storm, the station's chain ownership (I can't honestly remember if it was Bell or Standard Broadcasting at that time), agreed to hire a local ad salesperson who could assume on-air duties if needed. Now, the station, which was just sold as part of Bell's dump of stations to Vista, currently has a local on-air morning person, but that's it.
- Saul
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Re: 680 Newsradio: Bringing You Vancouver's News
The solution is simple. Incorporate emergency duties and responsibilities into every licence. On pain of losing said licence.
- Chrisphen
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Re: 680 Newsradio: Bringing You Vancouver's News
The solution is simple. Incorporate emergency duties and responsibilities into every licence. On pain of losing said licence.
This. 680's owners do not seem to be clear on the mandate of their broadcast privilege. It should be spelled out very clearly and with prejudice.
- KenkuKwanchi
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Re: 680 Newsradio: Bringing You Vancouver's News
Maybe it's the fact it's a long weekend.
Maybe their staff couldn't get in thanks to the weather.
Or maybe Rogers is just cheap. (We've known that for a while.)
Whatever the reason, on a miserable night for terrible weather and ahead of a potentially record breaking snowstorm, what did early morning listeners hear on the only station that is live and supposedly local overnight? The feed from News 1130 in Vancouver. All night long.
I woke up at 5:15 AM Sunday and hoped to get the latest updates on how the weather was affecting the GTA. Instead, I heard a simulcast of the local news station in B.C., learning there was a water main break in New Westminster, a Canadian flag rally in that same city and that it was pouring rain and 5C in Vancouver itself. Good to know.
To be fair, they did try and spread the headlines around, referencing the mess outside here in a brief story and also giving us Calgary news - which means this simulcast of "local" news was going on across the country. And they did their usual traffic and weather cut-ins, brief though they were in order to rejoin the network on time.
I know the audience is low overnight on weekends, but on a day when the GTA is in the middle of a snow emergency, serving up news from thousands of miles away wasn't the best choice.
They went back to being fully local at 6AM. But good luck to those who were up early and looking for updates.
There's a reason CKO didn't work, and one was it was a national news network not serving local listeners. Shame they haven't learned that lesson of Canadian radio history.
The simulcast started at 12:00am midnight. Cate Hayes was not anchoring (who normally does on overnight and weekends), while on the :01 every 10 minutes Lisa Emerill was announcing the traffic updates with pre recorded weather announcements.
There was a period where weekend overnight news were simulcast with Vancouver, but it seems the news were taken the previous half hour and compile into the traffic/weather update.