Sympathies as well to those that lost their roles. 
If Corus Q4 numbers are off target, it’s safe to assume even more good people will lose jobs. 

Who’s left at 640?

Santiago gets the boot, but the other guy who comes on to blather with Mulroney, sounding like an exaggerated version of The Simpson's 'Apu', gets to stay?

Walter - no need to get nasty. His name is Joyjeet and he is also a very talented young technical producer.

jughead jones wrote:

Walter - no need to get nasty. His name is Joyjeet and he is also a very talented young technical producer.

No doubt, but he should stick to technical production.
 

RadioActive wrote:

This is peripheral to the Corus story, but I was surprised that an organization that prides itself on accuracy got this one wrong. The Canadian Press picked up the layoff story and as often happens, it was republished by subscribers across the country on their online sites. 

The problem is in the headline and in the article. See if you can figure out the error.

Corus makes cuts at Global BC, Global National, News 640 and talk radio

What's wrong? The Corus Toronto station has never been known as "News 640." It's had a lot of monickers over the years, currently AM640, but considering they barely even have an actual newsroom anymore, this couldn't be more of an error. Even if they were to put out a correction now, it's unlikely it would fix the problem on most sites that have already published it. 

I've seen it repeated in the Toronto Sun, CityNews and even the CBC. Only the Toronto Star's article, done by one of their reporters and not a Canadian Press reprint, got it correct.

I'm just surprised no one at CP caught it. They usually have pretty good standards over there. 

The quote from the Broadcast Dialogue article linked in the OP:

“As we continue to adapt to the evolving needs of our business, Corus has made a small number of changes in select markets, including roles at Global BC, Global National, News 640 and talk radio,” a Corus spokesperson said, in an emailed statement.

I won't completely blame CP here (though there are some ex-640 staff there who should know better), they're quoting Corus' own spokesperson. The misbranding comes from inside the house.
This tells you all need to know about the state of the company, and exactly where 640 sits on the company list of priorities.

As for why it has been reproduced everywhere, I blame that on auto-aggregators that just suck in the CP content and republish. No humans do this job in 2026.

Corus used to be a great place to work - things started shifting after the merger with Global News. Today, this sums it up for me:

haydenmatthews14 wrote:

darcyh wrote:

I almost hate to ask. How long until they shut down more stations? Will CFPL 980 survive? It is still a pretty popular station; possibly more popular than some of their London FM's.

 

AM980 still has 2 local hosts in the morning and afternoons. If 980 did shut down then where will London Knights fans listen to their games on the radio? Or the Blue Jays? They would ether move to FM96 (95.9), Country 104 (103.9) or Jack 102.3 since CHST is owned by Rogers Media. So hopefully 980 does not fall into the same fate as 570 did back in July. I don’t listen to 980 very much anymore unless for Blue Jays baseball or Knights hockey. I listen to CBC London Morning and Afternoon Drive a lot on 93.5 FM.

I have long maintained CBC radio has been taking many listeners away from private AM radio stations that have to air commercials to pay their expenses versus commercial-free CBC paid (whether we wish to or not) by tax dollars. If CBC was not available I wonder if listeners to private radio would increase?
 

I worked in private radio for many years and it always bothered me that management and sales staff ignored CBC, They would even strip CBC out of the slides they'd show at ratings meetings.
True, CBC doesn't solicit ads and are not competition when trying to sell your station. However, they are taking ears away. Which lowers your ratings, ad rates and commissions.

paterson1 wrote:

I think it is the content on the station rather than whether they play commercials or not.  Lots of commercial stations have good ratings.  Also some outlets, especially talk, seem to handle commercial loads better than others. 

 Zoomer isn't exactly full of ads, but they do handle commercials and promo well IMO.  Since they don't have a lot of national ads, many of their spots seem more like information breaks and commercials are more personal voiced by one of their announcers.  As we have mentioned many times 680 News handles commercial breaks well and has great ratings.  Being all talk helps and again many of their spots seem more informative. 

When I worked at CFOS years ago, one of our talk show hosts would sometimes say something like "let's see what's on sale this week" before going into spots.

 
As I recall, back when CBC Radio had no local presence in London and the transmitter was repeating CBC Toronto along with Ontario Morning, ratings for CFPL and CJBK individually were quite low, though one could argue the news/talk listenership in London was split between the two and together they had respectable ratings. But even 20 years ago radio ratings in London were dominated by the likes of FM96 and Fresh 103.1 and what were then known as BX-93 and EZ Rock, none of which did much in the way of news by then.

CBCL back then probably got respectable ratings for national shows and I knew a few people who listened to Ontario Morning, but I would suspect CFPL and/or CJBK probably beat CBC at drive times as Ontario Morning was trying to be all things to all people in places stretching from London to Cornwall and up to Huntsville, and PM drive was merely Here & Now from Toronto with news and information of little interest to London. CBC’s local presence opening in 2017 likely did put a dent in CFPL and CJBK’s drive ratings, and of course being on FM helps.

Last edited by MJ Vancouver (Today 12:15 pm)