Well, I will fess up and admit that I'm one that talks up Boom...a LOT...on the Buffalo RD Board. My car has 15 presents and about 2/5ths are Canadian stations:

-Giant FM out of Welland
-Boom 97.3
-97.7 HTZ FM
-99.9 Virgin Radio
-101.1 More FM
-105.1 the River

More FM seems to be following the Boom formula-it has quite a few Niagara area radio vets(Brett Ness & Jack Peets were both at HTZ, Rob White's been around 101.1 since...FOREVER)and their liners & legal ID's do have some zip to them....but it's kinda sorta a copy of Boom. Not a BAD thing, mind you. One thing that More FM(and the River)have that Boom doesn't are news updates.

As for Ostrander's comments in that thread regarding the mention of southern Ontario broadcasters, "it's all about him". 🤨

Jody Thornton wrote:

Easily Amused wrote:

As for Ostrander's comments in that thread regarding the mention of southern Ontario broadcasters, "it's all about him". 🤨

If you're meaning to say it's all about "Buddy Shula"; then I fully agree.  He seems to get out of joint if he isn't the be all end all of a conversation.  That gets old quickly.  I think he has it in his mind that he is the saviour of AM radio, but in truth, he has 80 million ( OK not that many) FM translators to make it reachable to an audience.  How is that saving AM?  And he really seems to tip-toe around WBEN, as though to kiss-ass AND shit on them at the same time.  I dunno.  Good luck, I guess.
 

I refer to Pesola and Ostrander by their names, not the stage names they were known by.  And it's not out of respect.

I know that in the early 2000's 740 CHWO prior to Moses buying the station was quite popular in Buffalo.  The station was owned by what is now Whiteoaks Communications.  CHWO regularly showed up in the ratings in Buffalo and WNY with their adult standards format.
 
This makes me wonder if Zoomer 740 has much of a following there today.  Buffalo seems to like AM radio and there isn't anything that sounds like Zoomer anywhere on the AM dial.  Maybe the station is too Toronto oriented, but people from Buffalo generally have a good knowledge about Toronto and Southern Ontario. Over my long radio career I have met many people from the Buffalo area that were very familiar with Canadian radio, and most loved the cancon!  Music that they would never hear on US radio.   

I never listened to much radio from WNY growing up, mostly since not much was available either than Rock 102 which I never considered a real radio station.  They didn't become a real station until they dropped the automation and had live announcers.  Listened to WGR a bit but found their music too adult contemporary for my taste.  CHUM, CFTR, CHAM, and CKOC had much better music on AM IMO.  The only other station from Buffalo I remember was WYRK,  but wasn't into country music as a teen in the 70's.
Any other Buffalo FM stations really weren't listenable much where I was living in the 80's but a few were on cable FM. 

I was around back then sorry to report!  And it was in the 70's that I listened to WGR from time to time.  Again I found their music when I listened  too adult contemporary for a 15 or 16 year old.  I do recall their announcers doing a great job promoting Buffalo and the Bisons, Sabres and Bills, but three teams I had no interest in.  None of their announcers come to mind for me so I didn't really get to know their personalities.  At that time I mostly enjoyed CHUM, CFTR and CKOC with a bit of CHYM in Kitchener.  Had no interest in FM at that time.  I don't think I ever heard WKBW AM or WBEN AM growing up. 

In Kitchener CHYM had jingles in German during Oktoberfest.  And CKKW had a classic image break for the festival...sort of dark German humour.  It went (all in a German accent)..Shmarty Pants, yes you, shmarty pants...you do that one more time..and we will pull your lederhosen so tight...only the dogs will hear you scream...happy Oktoberfest...Hilarious and I still remember it all these years later...

fybush wrote:

As for what comes in, it depends a little these days on what part of Buffalo you're in. There's some speculation that the new CN Tower master FM antenna is sending a little less RF to the southeast over Buffalo and western NY than the old one did, but I haven't noticed much difference yet in signal levels. 

The problem these days with a lot of the Canadian signals in Buffalo is that there are co-channel and first-adjacent translators that have popped up on the US side. WDCZ 970 has a useless little 94.1 translator up at its site in the Boston hills that provides just enough interference to CBL to make reception a little annoying in Buffalo proper. WECK has a translator at 100.1 east of Buffalo (as well as another 100.1 translator in Batavia for WBTA) that nips into Virgin's coverage on 99.9. WLKK has a 104.7 translator in Buffalo that can make CHUM a little tricky, and there are translators on 106.9 on Grand Island and 107.3 in Buffalo that make Q107 less than ideal nearby. 

That leaves CJRT, Boom and CHFI as the "best" Toronto signals into Buffalo these days. Because of CJRT's unique format, it definitely has listeners in Buffalo, which lost jazz radio when WBFO went to all news and talk. The CJRT signal is listenable all along the lakeshore toward Rochester, too. I can get it in the car in Greece without much trouble. It's worse down in my part of Rochester - I'm in Brighton, southeast of the city and with Pinnacle Hill blocking me from Toronto signals. 

That said, on a good car radio you can usually get enough adjacent-channel separation to be able to hear Toronto anyway, if you're up for trying.

It gets a lot better once you're in Niagara County, obviously.

Thanks, that certainly answers a lot of my questions. I only wish the Buffalo stations came in as well here as the Toronto stations do there. They used to, but those days are long gone. 

Definitely for worse. It was great to be able to hear another country's radio without having to go online. 

RadioActive wrote:

ckg927 wrote:

Well, I will fess up and admit that I'm one that talks up Boom...a LOT...on the Buffalo RD Board. My car has 15 presents and about 2/5ths are Canadian stations:

-Giant FM out of Welland
-Boom 97.3
-97.7 HTZ FM
-99.9 Virgin Radio
-101.1 More FM
-105.1 the River

More FM seems to be following the Boom formula-it has quite a few Niagara area radio vets(Brett Ness & Jack Peets were both at HTZ, Rob White's been around 101.1 since...FOREVER)and their liners & legal ID's do have some zip to them....but it's kinda sorta a copy of Boom. Not a BAD thing, mind you. One thing that More FM(and the River)have that Boom doesn't are news updates.

Thanks for the answer. I've always been curious - which Toronto radio stations come in well in Buffalo? Not what is listened to, but what can you actually get? Does a JazzFM come in? I would imagine a CIUT wouldn't make it, given all the surrounding stations and it isn't exactly a powerhouse. Are there any you'd like to get over-the-air but can't? 

I always imagine kids in Buffalo listened to CHUM-AM in the 60s, even though WKBW and WYSL were around. 

I used to love to listen to stations from your area, especially when WGRF was WGRQ. Same with WYSL-FM, now The Edge. And WHTT. But I can't get any of them anymore, thanks to so much interference from the locals here. Too bad. Those were great stations in their day and I miss being able to hear them OTA here. 

From my experience(since most of my radio listening is in my car)....

*Boom comes in well, save for downtown Buffalo and some small areas around the city proper. The closer you are to the border, the better it comes in.
*Giant FM? No problems since it's a kinda local station. Ditto HTZ FM.
*More FM and the River come in OK; More FM much better since it's now at 50 kW.
*Virgin Radio comes in OK, even with the 100.1 Big WECK translator(which I can't get in any case since I'm not near it).

And yes, JazzFM91 comes in OK, even with neighboring WBNY-FM one click away at 91.3 .

Last edited by ckg927 (Yesterday 4:52 pm)

ckg927 wrote:

Sadly, you can't listen to Boom online either on your desktop nor via the Stingray app.(And I've tried BOTH ways to do it.)
 

huh ???

https://player.boom973.com/ 
http://entry-amms-1.leanstream-hd.com:2112/CHBMFM-MP3 

I think there are a couple of ways to look at the cross-border situation. 

For those of us who are radio junkies, yes, we lost some interesting listening. I spent a lot of time tuned into CHUM-FM in the 80s from Rochester, back when the dials were much more open. I still hit Canadian radio once I'm west of Batavia and can hear it better. 

But we're a very, very tiny minority of all radio listeners, and I think there's also a very good argument to be made that a much larger number of listeners benefit from at least some of the new stations. Look at Kitchener/Waterloo - if the rules didn't change, CKKW wouldn't have been able to migrate to FM from AM, since 99.5 wouldn't have been an option for them. CHKX is arguably the only local Hamilton station that's left, and it wouldn't have been able to use 94.7, nor would CHTG be able to use 92.9. 

Can you really argue that there's more value to distant WNED-FM or WBUF reception in those areas instead of a local station serving local Canadian audiences? 

ckg927 wrote:

RadioActive wrote:

Definitely for worse. It was great to be able to hear another country's radio without having to go online. 

Sadly, you can't listen to Boom online either on your desktop nor via the Stingray app.(And I've tried BOTH ways to do it.) The weird thing is, More FM's app WILL allow you to listen no matter where.
 

Try the World Radio Map. No VPN required.