1 of 1- RadioActive
- Moderator
Offline 
Cancon At 50: An American’s Opinion
Broadcast Dialogue offers an opinion on Cancon from someone you might not expect: a big American fan, radio veteran Sean Ross. In a wide ranging piece on the half century since the introduction of the regs, which many stations fought against tooth and nail, he offers two bits of info that I don't think I ever knew.
He says stations that border the U.S. (like those in Windsor) are only required to play 20% Cancon, because they're forced to compete with outside signals. Is that true? And does that mean the same goes for outlets in say, St. Catharines? (He also notes that Canadian radio stations are mostly geoblocked in the U.S., just as many of those from the States require a VPN to receive here, something he believes is a lost opportunity to get our artists heard across the border.)
The other bit of information he offers is about Bill Amesbury. You probably remember his Canadian hit, "Virginia, Touch Me Like You Do." He says the artist has since had a sex change operation and is now known as Roberta Amesbury, something I had never heard before. (Although Wikipedia refers to her now as Barbra, and says she came out as transgender after she left the music business.)
Anyway, you can read his opinion about that and a lot more in the article here. But be warned. He also says he's a big fan of "Seasons In The Sun" by Terry Jacks. So proceed with caution!
- splunge
- Member
Offline
Re: Cancon At 50: An American’s Opinion
it depends on the circumstances of each market. CRTC search engine isn't working for me to find examples, but here's the policy.
- paterson1
- Member
Offline
Re: Cancon At 50: An American’s Opinion
I think it was in late 1999 that CHUM's Windsor stations were given the ok to play 20% cancon. Windsor is special in a few ways since CHUM was able to also own 5 radio stations in the market plus a TV station which serves Windsor.
As far as I know Windsor is the only border market to have the 20% ruling for music and only because it is directly across from Detroit, considered a US major media market. This is not a general thing that applies to border stations as the writer implies.
I don't believe stations in Niagara Falls ON, Kingston and Sault Ste. Marie, have the same lower quota, or at least I couldn't find anything on line that said they did.
WYLK is a US owned station in Cape Vincent NY that serves Kingston and run by Rogers did play 20% cancon for a bit but have been playing 35% for a long time now, which was their decision. WYLK basically has the same playlist as KISS FM in Toronto. The other stations in Cape Vincent that target Kingston play whatever cancon or not they want.
Before all of the geoblocking of FM signals you would regularly hear callers from Buffalo and area phoning into CHUM FM at noon with Ingrid Schumacher and also to The Mix to request music, and often Canadian songs. This happened to me quite regularly when I was doing all nights at FM 96 in London in 1980. I was always getting calls and requests from Erie Penn. and fairly often for cancon songs. The station was quite popular in Erie back then.
- splunge
- Member
Offline
Re: Cancon At 50: An American’s Opinion
i know that neither of the Byrnes' stations in niagara have that, and i'm not aware of the rogers stations in the soo requesting an exemption. there was one station in cornwall that asked and was denied. that was only a few years ago. a station in sarnia comes to mind....
sry to be vague, i still can't get the crtc search engine to work for me.
- paterson1
- Member
Offline
Re: Cancon At 50: An American’s Opinion
I was checking around as well and couldn't find any other border markets or stations that had reduced 20% cancon. The writer was making it sound like all border stations had the lower quota which isn't correct, but there may be one or two others somewhere. I think I do remember something about Sarnia as well but I don't know if anything actually came of it.
The thing I remember about Windsor was the fact they were an exceptional case since the Detroit FM stations back in the 90's were booming into Windsor loud and clear, and the fact that Windsor/Detroit was considered to be one market by agencies and US rating companies for both radio and TV. I am sure there were a lot of new FM signals that sprung up from Detroit and area in the 80-90's.
- kevjo
- Member
Offline
Re: Cancon At 50: An American’s Opinion
paterson1 wrote:
The thing I remember about Windsor was the fact they were an exceptional case since the Detroit FM stations back in the 90's were booming into Windsor loud and clear, and the fact that Windsor/Detroit was considered to be one market by agencies and US rating companies for both radio and TV. I am sure there were a lot of new FM signals that sprung up from Detroit and area in the 80-90's.
That was the what made the difference for Windsor. They had 4 commercial stations in the shadow of dozens of stations booming in from across the river. In most of the rest of the Canadian markets there isn't that sort of isolation. Buffalo/Niagara Falls border on the most densely populated area in Canada so there is a great number of stations to serve the Golden Horseshoe. As far as the rest of southern Ontario, there are no other border towns where the number of stations is lopsided the way it is for Windsor. I does, however, raise an interesting question. Is 20% Can-con the threshold level for maintaining listeners? If so, does the argument that 20% should be the across-the board quota?
- Radio111
- Member
Offline
Re: Cancon At 50: An American’s Opinion
The Detroit FMs signed on from the 40s to 60s. What is now CIDR Windsor also signed on in that period. The sole reason Windsor has the exemption is because nearly all of the Detroit stations, a much larger market, reach the area and thus compete for listeners. Toledo does to a degree too if memory serves.
The CRTC not allowing CKLW’s Top 40 format to migrate to FM didn’t help matters.
I believe Sarnia did not receive the exemption. Port Huron doesn’t have that many stations, and Detroit is spotty in some areas, not nearly the factor they are in Windsor.
- paterson1
- Member
Offline
Re: Cancon At 50: An American’s Opinion
The thing I remember about Windsor was the fact they were an exceptional case since the Detroit FM stations back in the 90's were booming into Windsor loud and clear, and the fact that Windsor/Detroit was considered to be one market by agencies and US rating companies for both radio and TV. I am sure there were a lot of new FM signals that sprung up from Detroit and area in the 80-90's.
That was the what made the difference for Windsor. They had 4 commercial stations in the shadow of dozens of stations booming in from across the river. In most of the rest of the Canadian markets there isn't that sort of isolation. Buffalo/Niagara Falls border on the most densely populated area in Canada so there is a great number of stations to serve the Golden Horseshoe. As far as the rest of southern Ontario, there are no other border towns where the number of stations is lopsided the way it is for Windsor. I does, however, raise an interesting question. Is 20% Can-con the threshold level for maintaining listeners? If so, does the argument that 20% should be the across-the board quota?
I don't think 20% cancon would be any kind of benchmark for retaining listeners. In Windsor it was simply because of the growing number of stations in the already very lopsided market. Broadcasters were likely looking for anything they thought would help; and the CRTC hadn't given Windsor many bones over the years so they agreed to the lower quota. Did it make any difference? Probably not but how could you prove one way or the other? Any loss of ratings or revenue had a lot more to do with fragmentation than the number of Canadian songs being played.
In the big picture, I don't see that the cancon regs for music on radio has hurt broadcasters ratings or revenue at all. Up until now radio has been healthier in Canada than the US. Over the past 10 years three of the biggest four radio groups have declared chapter 11 in the US- iHeart, Cumulus and Townsquare. And just a few days ago Cumulus announced it was closing down it's Westwood One news service which has over 900 affiliated stations.
Our big radio chains have never come close to bankruptcy protection, but with the current economic uncertainty things could change very quickly. If stations start to go under here in large numbers or one of the medium sized companies declare bankruptcy in the months ahead it won't have anything to do with any CRTC regulations.
That will rest only with COVID-19 and all of the economic upheaval it has caused over the past 4 months.
- Radio111
- Member
Offline
Re: Cancon At 50: An American’s Opinion
The Windsor stations, save the CBC, focused more on Detroit due to the larger market. I believe I read somewhere that is no longer the case as Bell shut down the US sales office.
I don’t recall seeing the Blackburn stations, which signed on more recently, doing that.
- kevjo
- Member
Offline
Re: Cancon At 50: An American’s Opinion
The Windsor stations, save the CBC, focused more on Detroit due to the larger market. I believe I read somewhere that is no longer the case as Bell shut down the US sales office.
I don’t recall seeing the Blackburn stations, which signed on more recently, doing that.
As was mentioned above, it was the lopsidedness of the Windsor market that resulted in the relaxed rules. For this reason the Sarnia stations were not granted any exemptions. While many DetroitI stations penetrate the market, it's to a much lesser degree and the number of stations directly across the border from Sarnia isn't much greater. Now I happen to be a fan of Canadian music but the question remains - if can-con vs. no can-con had no effect, why was it a factor in the rule relaxation? The CRTC has been well aware that there are many programmers in this industry who've taken exception to the can-con rules so the CRTC must have seen a compelling reason to grant a reduction.