Also worth noting that several unionized positions in the City TV newsrooms in Toronto and Vancouver are among the places affected, although they will remain on the air. 

RadioActive wrote:

It's not just stations out west that have been silenced for good. CKGL Kitchener, whose signal at 570 AM carried a mix of all news and talk shows, is gone. Their signal is still there as of this posting, but there's silence on the channel. 

According to a local website, every station - from Vancouver to Calgary to Halifax and Kitchener - are gone for good, with the licences expected to be turrned back into the CRTC. And talk about a Black Day in July. It's one of the biggest one-day shutdowns of radio stations in Canadian history. 

More than 200 jobs are gone with them. 

Rogers Sports & Media lays off 230 jobs, cuts six radio stations

570 is still broadcasting. Like the other stations shut down, there is a brief announcement about the shut down that plays every 15 minutes. 

I remember it when it was CHYM-AM and was at 1490. Lousy frequency and hard to get in the GTA. But they were a decent little station until Big Red got their clutches on it. The Boardwalk will never be the same.

ED1 wrote:

RadioActive wrote:

It's not just stations out west that have been silenced for good. CKGL Kitchener, whose signal at 570 AM carried a mix of all news and talk shows, is gone. Their signal is still there as of this posting, but there's silence on the channel. 

According to a local website, every station - from Vancouver to Calgary to Halifax and Kitchener - are gone for good, with the licences expected to be turrned back into the CRTC. And talk about a Black Day in July. It's one of the biggest one-day shutdowns of radio stations in Canadian history. 

More than 200 jobs are gone with them. 

Rogers Sports & Media lays off 230 jobs, cuts six radio stations

570 is still broadcasting. Like the other stations shut down, there is a brief announcement about the shut down that plays every 15 minutes. 

The signal is now gone. Quite a surprise, I would imagine, for those in Kitchener heading home from work looking for the headlines and having no idea the top story is there aren't any.

Never mind kitchener, they even shut down the only all news stations in the other cities such as halifax?
Is 680 next?
Why does rogers not cair about radio at all?
Sometimes, you nead all news radio stations such as 570 and 680 when there's an outige and the internet does'nt work and phones are dead.
570 Also had some great local talkshows, and rob snow's national show is good.
I hope they save 680, the stations they should have chose instead are some of there music stations such as the kiss stations in northern ontario, mostly identicle programming and not much local about them.

paterson1 wrote:

Surprised that the local Corus AM CJOY in Guelph is still on the air, playing music. I always thought that they would have closed down years ago.

Agree with you here (surprise surprise). CJOY still being around is very strange......

I feel badly for everyone who is losing their job but in all fairness revenue keeps falling as AM radio audience declines everywhere. It's quite telling that Rogers is turning in the licences for these stations; it literally means no other company or family or individual in Canada was willing to buy these stations to try to make a go of it given how difficult the business is.

paterson1 wrote:

This is a shame.  570 was a good station, best traffic, news and weather info around.  Disagree with RA (surprise surprise).  When Rogers took over the station in 1994 from Maclean-Hunter, it became better and not worse.  Even up until today 570 was still a good radio service. 

Actually I was referring to what happened today, not the overall quality of the station. In fact, I quite liked 570 and thought they did an amazing job for such a small market. I have them as a preset on two radios and in my car, and now have to figure out what to replace it with. Off the top of my head, I really can't think of anything. 

When everyone else was airing boring radio on the weekends, their replay of shows I hadn't heard earlier was very welcome. I will really miss CKGL. Too bad they were owned by Rogers.

I always found WKBN Youngstown, Ohio there at night, even when CKGL was on the air. 

The bottom line with Rogers is - as always - the bottom line. They were allowed to buy these stations by the CRTC and that carries with it at least some responsibility for getting access to precious public airwaves. Yes, they definitely improved the programming for a while, but we've seen this movie before. And it always ends the same way. Its news station in Ottawa (or former news station) is a perfect example. 

Take it on, and then discover that it's too expensive (according to the bean counters) and then just get rid of it when it becomes a burden. I get it. That's business. But as the people at City TV Toronto - too many of them no longer working there - found out, there's a price to pay for having Rogers as an owner. Sooner or later, they always seem to simply walk away from what was once a viable station before they got their hands on it. CityNews is a sad shadow of what it once was creatively. I can no longer watch it.

Regardless of how much money they poured into these places, anyone who's been a victim of the mass layoffs that almost always follow can look back and tell you when Rogers takes over an otherwise established station, promising a ton of improvements and investment and vowing no jobs are going to be lost, it starts to go downhill. And in some cases, like these, that rolling snowball reaches the bottom of that hill and stops forever. 

They could have at the very least tried to sell these stations. They didn't even bother to make the effort to keep them going. I'm sure there are some Jon Pole types out there who would have made an effort to keep them on the air with new or existing formats. Especially the FM in Halifax. Rogers, who made a lot of promises to regulators to acquire these licences, simply could not be bothered. 

It's hard to argue a place has been improved by Big Red, when it's no longer on the air and everyone is out on the street.

TheWiz wrote:

RadioActive wrote:

It's hard to argue a place has been improved by Big Red, when it's no longer on the air and everyone is out on the street.

I've lived in Waterloo Region my entire life, paterson1 is right. Rogers really invested in that station for many years. Things started to go downhill after Ted died. And that's not only true for the media division, but across the entire company.

I'm not arguiing they didn't invest in the stations or even make them better for a while. I'm saying they bailed as soon as things got a little tough. Ask the 320 people out on the street how much Rogers improved things for them. I don't think you'll be surprised by their answers.

I keep hearing AM is dead / declining. Where do most people listen to radio? Probably in their vehicles. Unlike the old days, I have not seen a portable radio playing in a house for a long time. Most people are steaming to a speaker. So do you really get more listeners on FM? Unless you live pretty close to an FM station you will need to extend and orient the telescopic antenna for best reception. If the station is 25 or more miles away it will be difficult on a cheap radio. A city grade AM signal is easily receivable without extending an antenna. My point is most listeneing takes place in a vehilce where a strong AM or FM signal can be clearly received. Content is the most important element.

570 had a very strong signal to the north and east, my brother in law in Guelph always had it tuned in. Given the coverage to Kitchener, Guelph and Cambridge and its unduplicated (within the region) programming it could not find enough advertisers to make money? The population of that area is well over half a million.

I believe they rebuilt the multi-tower array at the transmitter site 15 or so years ago, so the site was relatively modern. It is located near Ayr among farm fields. The land is worth some money but it is not adjacent to any current development. Sad to see it go silent.

In addition to CKGL we have 1410 CKSL, 1290 CJBK, 1380 CKPC, 900 CHML, all silent. 630 CFCO and 560 CFOS converted to FM with a much smaller coverage range.

This leaves only CFPL 980, CKNX 920, CHOK 1070, CKLW 800 and CKWW 580 as the only remaining AM's east of Kitchener. 

Last edited by darcyh (Today 4:41 pm)

darcyh wrote:

I keep hearing AM is dead / declining. Where do most people listen to radio? Probably in their vehicles. Unlike the old days, I have not seen a portable radio playing in a house for a long time. Most people are steaming to a speaker. So do you really get more listeners on FM? Unless you live pretty close to an FM station you will need to extend and orient the telescopic antenna for best reception. If the station is 25 or more miles away it will be difficult on a cheap radio. A city grade AM signal is easily receivable without extending an antenna. My point is most listeneing takes place in a vehilce where a strong AM or FM signal can be clearly received. Content is the most important element.

570 had a very strong signal to the north and east, my brother in law in Guelph always had it tuned in. Given the coverage to Kitchener, Guelph and Cambridge and its unduplicated (within the region) programming it could not find enough advertisers to make money? The population of that area is well over half a million.

I believe they rebuilt the multi-tower array at the transmitter site 15 or so years ago, so the site was relatively modern. It is located near Ayr among farm fields. The land is worth some money but it is adjacent to any current development. Sad to see it go silent.

In addition to CKGL we have 1410 CKSL, 1290 CJBK, 1380 CKPC, 900 CHML, all silent. 630 CFCO and 560 CFOS converted to FM with a much smaller coverage range.

This leaves only CFPL 980, CKNX 920, CHOK 1070, CKLW 800 and CKWW 580 as the only remaining AM's east of Kitchener. 

Signal comparison is meaningless when auto manufacturers have cheaped out by making the frequency range of the AM audio so narrow as to be mostly unlistenable. Further, a huge portion of the population isn't going to listen to AM regardless of what's on it. 

Is WKBN 570 Youngstown, Ohio blaring in at Night now?

mace wrote:

Now that Kitchener is silent, I wonder if WSYR Syracuse will make it into the GTA.

Yes.  No problem hearing WSYR in the car in North York yesterday.  And no doubt they are even stronger in Scarborough.

In Kitchener, checking the on-line web SDR, WKBN can be heard in the daytime.    

http://22687.proxy.kiwisdr.com:8073/