Who is programming the Bell Media stations in the GTHA these days? Whoever it is is killing me with my least favourite radio sin - a lack of consistency. Take Friday night as the perfect example. I'm driving home around 9 PM, looking for something to listen to. I briefly tune in CFRB, supposedly a news-talk outlet. But they have a Raptors game on.

I check out CHAM, aka Funny 820, looking for some mindless moments to mark the miles. But instead of laughs, there's the Raptors, too. Why aren't they on the new TSN 1150? Because they have the Leaf game on. What's the Toronto counterpart at 1050 doing? An Argos game. (I'm pretty sure Hamilton residents can get CFRB with no trouble, so why they needed the same Raptors game on a local outlet that's not an actual affiliate is beyond me. But I digress...)  

Over at CKTB, another news-talk outlet, the Leafs are doing their best to lose again. The same game is a dial click over at Fan 590.

WTF's going on? Every station that's supposed to be something else is dedicated to sports overloads from their sister outlets. And while I'm pretty sure they make more money from airing sports than their regular syndicated stuff and there are contractual obligations that must be met, it's impossible to tell who's got which game on when.

As if that's not confusing enough, on Saturday night, the Leafs turned up on 820, while 1150 - which was supposed to be their permanent new home in the Steel City - was actually airing a rerun of Leafs Lunch that was more than 24 hours old! It seems to me if you're even remotely interested in the Buds you'll be listening to the game and not some stale analysis of what's wrong with them this year. When the final incarnation of Oldies 1150 bit the proverbial dust, I thought at least Funny 820's regular programming would finally be left alone. But that's not the case. 

Half the time it's carrying a spill over from some Bell Media commitment that there's no room for on 1150, that has nothing to do with the format and the other half of the time (or should that be half time?) they're carrying Monday Night Football.

I note this because local radio in this city let me down big time on Friday. I was looking for something to listen to locally (the skip was terrible, making most out-of-town stations unreceivable) but everywhere I went for a talk-oriented format was taken up with something that I didn't care about.

And Rogers wasn't much better these past few weeks. If you were looking for the World Series broadcast - one of the biggest championships in sports that stretches back more than a hundred years - you would have been hard pressed to find it on any radio station in this area. Instead, it was continually joined in progress around the 7th inning, after a Raptors or Leaf game finished airing on the Fan. One hundred and sixty-two regular season games and two playoff rounds later, and you can't hear how it all ends, even with the local team no longer in it.  

I can only wonder what they would have done with those other properties had the Jays actually beaten the Royals and gotten into that final series.    

I'm a huge fan of consistency and the one thing my early PDs taught me was always give listeners what they expect when they're good enough to choose your station. That's been happening a lot less lately on the AM talkers, and just like I wouldn't expect to put on CHUM-FM and hear The Grand Ol' Opry, I'm getting tired of putting on a station only to hear they've abandoned the format for hours on end, destroying the very reason I tuned in in the first place. 

So, never mind about not being able to keep track of the players without a program. This is not being able to keep track of the programs without running into players! And when it comes to this listener on those nights, at least, it was game over.

Last edited by RadioActive (November 8, 2015 12:09 am)