Gone? Or now all Westwood one all the time except in times where there is a sport to cover?
 

From what I'm reading on X - so take it with a grain of salt - every local broadcaster who worked on the station has been let go, without even a chance to say goodbye. There are also serious questions about what happens to the Vancouver Canucks games, which used to be heard on 650. 

Some posters are blaming it on the Rogers buyout of MLSE earlier this week, but I doubt the decisions on mass layoffs were made that quickly. Either way, one of the biggest cities in Canada just lost their major all sports radio station, leaving an entire staff out of work. And that's a shame. 

Here's what the Vancouver Sun has to say.

"Postmedia understands station staff have been called for an all-hands meeting this morning at 10 a.m. where the future of the station will be announced. It’s widely expected that changes will be drastic, with heavy cuts; how the radio broadcasts will carry on is not yet known, or even if any of the station’s shows will survive. If local programming is shut down, the station might keep broadcasting with programming from the Toronto Fan 590 station and perhaps keeping the Canucks play-by-play broadcasts."

The end of Sportsnet 650? Big cuts expected at Vancouver radio station

It’ll be a loss for Vancouver, but an irritant for me with that station was how they only aired select Blue Jays games, and never aired the post game show with Blair and Barker, even though it was being promoted as airing across the Sportsnet Radio network.

They were the only broadcast home for the Vancouver Canadians high-A team, though I do wonder how many listeners that got.

660 News Calgary, News 1130 Vancouver, and News 95.7 Halifax are also gone! 660 News running a recorded loop saying the station has shut down.

So two stations in Vancouver are suddenly gone. What happens to them? Do they sell them, reorient them to some other format or just shut them down completely?  And what a loss. CKWX has been on the air in Vancouver since 1923. They survived world wars, changing technology, even COVID. But they couldn't survive Rogers, the worst plague of all. 

RadioActive wrote:

So two stations in Vancouver are suddenly gone. What happens to them? Do they sell them, reorient them to some other format or just shut them down completely?  And what a loss. CKWX has been on the air in Vancouver since 1923. They survived world wars, changing technology, even COVID. But they couldn't survive Rogers, the worst plague of all. 

Two in Calgary, two in Vancouver, one each in Kitchener & Halfax. Shut down, licenses to be turned in.

brian451 wrote:

Well what surprises me is usually there is shared programming with Toronto and currently they are not even running that. So it’s confusing. Even if they were to kill off the local shows in Vancouver I would assume they would keep the Toronto programming.

Probably cheaper than paying the transmitter and hydro costs. 

RadioAaron wrote:

km93 wrote:

If I remember right 650 Vancouver was previously CISL which had a similar sound to Toronto's Zoomer Radio. Might the ZoomerPlex want to take the signal and expand to the West Coast?

Absolutrly not.

I suppose if they really wanted to to do that, they could wait until Rogers turns in the licence and apply for their own on the frequency. But I agree with RadioAaron - why would they want to even try another AM music format out there?

ckg927 wrote:

Even Bell Media, at its WORST, wouldn't even THINK of pulling this.

But they did

I checked youtube and finding any news on this was not easy. But CTV Halifax and CTV Kitchener both spent a few seconds talking about the shutdown of there respective stations. CTV Halifax gave about 37 seconds to the story and CTV Kitchener gave closer to 1 minute.

I missed that on the post about 570.
Atleest there all news station is not gon, vancouver I think still has a tsn radio station, so sports is safe.
And, there's not much local important programming on sports stations unlike all news and news/talk stations.

The news was posted from its website:

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2026/07/07/rogers-sports-media-shutting-down-news-radio-stations-outside-toronto/

I took a quick look at the "Our Team" for the Kitchener 570, boy they are quick updating the news cast portfolios.

Last edited by KenkuKwanchi (Today 12:29 am)