The Southern Ontario/WNY Radio-TV Forum / How Could This Be Allowed to Continue For Hours On TSN 1050 Saturday?

**Posted by RadioActive** February 8, 2025 8:20 pm

I'm surprised no one noticed this but then it's not one of the GTA's highest rated stations.

I woke up very early on Saturday morning (4:45 AM) and could not get back to sleep. It was way too early to get up, so I turned on the radio and tuned around to see if there was anything worth listening to.

And that's when I passed by TSN 1050. But it wasn't exactly the CHUM everyone here knows. The station was distorted by overmodulated static and fuzzy audio and you could not understand a word anyone was saying. I'm assuming they were airing the ESPN feed overnight, but you couldn't tell.

I thought it was just a temporary thing, but I tried it again about four hours later and the problem was still there. Another tune in after the noon hour and it continued. In fact, it wasn't until at least 4 in the afternoon that someone finally fixed it.

That was nearly 12 hours that I know of that the station was unlistenable and unintelligible. You'd figure an alarm would have gone off alerting someone somewhere but with everything on auto-pilot, no one got the message.

It was the longest single outage of a radio station I think I've ever heard and I'd love to know what happened. The ratings say not many people are listening to 1050. They certainly weren't for most of Saturday.

**Posted by gch** February 10, 2025 12:31 pm

This is not the first time..it happened several months ago on a weeken
I tried phoning but no live, unfortunately, person to answer
I often listen to 1050 for early morning sports during the weekdays between
5 and 6 am
From what I hear, 1050s ratings are terrible

**Posted by RadioActive** February 10, 2025 12:43 pm

I think in one recent book, their numbers were around 0.1, which is pathetic (especially when you consider how it did during the glory days of CHUM.) It may be one reason why Bell is thinking of getting rid of it. What a shame for a once iconic station.

By the way, your comment on not being able to get anybody on the phone hit a chord with me. I have run into this problem many, many times in trying to reach a specific radio or TV station. There use to be a receptionist around 7 days a week. Then 5. Now, it's virtually zero.

Instead, you get voice mail telling you to enter the extension you want - but how you're supposed to know the extension with no one telling you is never explained. Then you're told to leave a message, which is never, ever returned. (And I highly doubt it's even listened to.)

If people like you and I had been able to get someone - anyone - on the phone Saturday, 1050 might not have been nothing but noise for over 12 hours (!!) It was embarrassing in the #1 market in all of Canada.

**Posted by torontostan** February 10, 2025 1:39 pm

They only have a few hundred listeners at that time, if that..... hardly worth their time to have someone monitoring the station 24/7, the spots missed are worth less than an engineer's hourly rate.