GNR 640 never seems to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The latest evidence came during the afternoon drive on Family Day, when they decided to air a reroll of some very old John Oakley shows when one of the biggest political scandals in recent history took a huge turn.
 
Gerald Butts, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s second-in-command (although some would say he is the real P.M.) resigned to take the heat off his boss in the SNC-Lavalin controversy. And all you could hear on Guns ‘N Roses 640 was how sad it was GM was leaving Oshawa and how important mental health is, a nod to Bell Let’s Talk Day – which was actually on CFRB a few weeks ago.
 
Yes, it’s a holiday and listener levels are lower, but when this thing broke, a case certainly could be made to call in a Peter Shurman or an Arlene Bynon to rush in and take up this story, which could be a prelude to Trudeau losing the October election. It’s a pretty big deal.
 
Meanwhile, while CFRB was live, they weren’t doing much better. Ryan Doyle signed on The Rush at 4 PM, mentioned the Butts story and then admitted that his "texts and the phones were blowing up over this – but we’re not going to talk about it until 5 PM."
 
They frequently do this, trying to delay the main content for an hour while they wait for people to get out of work, giving them access to a bigger audience. But I would argue that A) on a holiday that wasn’t the case and B) the story is too big to wait and could easily fill two hours of talk.
 
So even though they had an eager audience ready and willing to talk about this important and breaking story, they decided to do what they always do – fill up the first hour with complete and total irrelevancy, one of the reasons I rarely listen to that show.
 
It’s too bad both stations weren’t there when their listeners needed them. And in both cases, they were self-inflicted wounds.
 
One more thing – there’s already been a ton of comments in the newspapers about this and regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, I have to admit I laughed out loud at the very brief one my friend left on the Toronto Sun article on this story.
 
“So, the Prime Minister's ventriloquist has resigned.

Now all we're left with is the dummy.”
 
Left or right, you gotta admit, that's a pretty funny line.