AM Life Line - All News - John McKay

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AM Life Line - All News - John McKay

Postby Jack Bennest » Sun Oct 05, 2008 8:00 am

I got my first radio break at my home town station C-HOW in Welland, Ont. in the 1960s. While attending Ryerson Institute's RTA course in Toronto I also worked part-time at CHUM-FM (when it was still a classical station). On graduation in '65 I spent a brief time at CBC-TV Sports before joining Broadcast News in 1967.

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In '71 I was transferred to Ottawa and covered the Parliamentary beat (mostly the Trudeau years) for BN for 15 years before opening BN's new Washington bureau in 1986. In 1991 I returned to BN Toronto to be a national affairs correspondent, then spent a few years at the Ontario legislature. In 1995, The Canadian Press asked me to join the print side of the operation as an arts-entertainment reporter, where I stayed until I retired in 2006.

Over the years I travelled the country and the world with Trudeau, did royal and papal tours, covered the constitution patriation process, the free trade and acid rain issues in D.C., the Toronto Film Festival and even the Academy Awards in Hollywood for CP-BN.

John McKay, RTNDA Life Achievement Award Winner 2007






ARTICLE
courtesy of Howard Christensen, Broadcast Dialogue
exclusive to Radio West for one hour - lol


ALL-NEWS RADIO AN AM LIFELINE
by: JOHN MCKAY
is a Mississauga-based writer on media issues. He may be reached by e-mail at mckay1169@rogers.com.




The digital age may appear to be leaving AM radio on the technology scrap-heap, but the band is hanging in there as the home of the spoken word.

Talk is cheap, they say.

Except when it’s a radio format.

But all-news or all-talk programming has proven to be a lifeline for Canadian broadcasters still holding on to their AM licences. This despite the collapse of two technologies - AM stereo and DAB - that might have kept them in the running as high-quality music outlets appealing to the attractive younger and digitally-inclined listening audience.

And in the country’s more lucrative radio markets, all-news radio, a format that’s been around in Canada since the 1970s, may be making something of a resurgence, albeit with a largely older demographic.

“I like to think it isn’t, but rating numbers would tell you that AM tends to skew a little bit older,” concedes Doug Rutherford, the vice president for Corus Entertainment’s news/talk radio programming in the West and the driving force behind Corus’ recently-launched 24/7 all-news station, iNews880 in Edmonton.

“But based on content of the radio station, we’ve had some real great success in appealing to all demographics.

“The better we get at delivering compelling content the more we are going to continue to attract listeners to radio, regardless of age. We have to be mindful that content drives the bus.”

Last May, Corus flipped Edmonton’s golden oldies station CHQT Cool880 to the news-wheel format. At roughly the same time, however, they did exactly the opposite in Montreal, giving up on CINW’s news/talk format - at the cost of 18 newsroom jobs - and re-launching it as AM940, Montreal’s Greatest Hits.

Rutherford, 54, concedes Montreal is a very different market from his home town of Edmonton and while for several years they tried news/talk (which still seems to work in the city’s French-language milieu), they just couldn’t get the “traction” needed there.

“It was a standalone AM station trying to find a niche, and it didn’t have the same types of revenue potential or revenue growth that we’ve got in Edmonton.”

In making the announcement last June, Mario Cecchini, Corus Radio’s newly-appointed vice president in Quebec, insisted the quality of the station’s product was not an issue.

“Despite everyone’s best efforts, the radio market in Montreal and all across Quebec is facing difficult times,” Cecchini said in a statement to staff. “Unfortunately the ratings were not to (our) satisfaction and did not give us the boost we need after all the investment.”


Station Driven By Internet Site

Meanwhile, the anticipated key to iNews880’s success in Edmonton is similar to what many struggling terrestrial radio stations require these days, an integration with other stations in a broadcast family and a direct fusion with new media platforms.

Rutherford says they’re trying something different with a station that is actually driven by its Internet site (www.inews880.com) not just a companion to it. There is also a news resource sharing with sister AM station 630 CHED, with the stations enjoying a combined full-time newsroom staff of 30.

“The single biggest difference ... is the involvement of the Internet,” explains Rutherford. “What we wanted to do is create a situation where after three or four months of the station being on the air, you wouldn’t be able to tell if the website was driving the radio station or the radio station was driving the website. We needed to marry those two platforms.

“We wanted to make sure that the website was completely reflective of what the station was doing at that moment and the radio station was constantly wrapping its content around the website.”

For example, twice an hour web editors will talk on-air about what is most current on the net site, including posted video.

“Most news-talk radio stations have a website which is an add-on to their programming. We wanted not to make it an add-on but make it just a central focus of the radio station.”

Rutherford says seasoned CHED reporters are now multi-taskers, filing to both stations as well as to the website.

“We’ve got reporters who use their laptop at the scene of a breaking story to not only send the audio but to send the script, to send pictures.”

He concedes things have come a long way since a radio reporter fed audio to home base by breaking open a nearby telephone and connecting his cassette recorder via alligator clips, or sometimes in desperate circumstances just placing the phone up to the machine’s speaker.

He says iNews880 is also making use of what it calls citizen journalists and volunteer bloggers who provide content to the website but also get interviewed on air, another vital cost-saving alternative to funding an army of professional reporters in the field.

“They’re doing it right now for the experience and for their participation, but I think as things grow and as they play a bigger role those are things (salaries) that we will be looking at.”

Rutherford maintains AM still has some advantages over FM, especially in its broad signal reach across the prairies.

“That’s still a positive for AM. We think that AM, especially in the spoken word category, has a future.

“AM, I think, has become synonymous with news and information and spoken word programming. Not in all cases, but in many,” he adds.

“AM radio, AM spoken word, information radio, works because it is very, very reflective of the market it serves, a very local approach to content. It’s hyper-local.”


“A Very, Very Expensive Format”

Rutherford comes from a broadcast family. His father, Walt, who died in 1990, was a news director at CJCA Edmonton for years before moving on to CKWX Vancouver. He followed in those footsteps as did his brother, Dave, who is a Corus talk-show host in Calgary. (“He may be older than me, but I still sign his contracts!”)

An attempt to take Dave Rutherford’s show national failed but Corus does syndicate other talk shows, including weekend specialty programs and the popular Charles Adler out of Winnipeg, to its network stations.

The younger Rutherford got his start at CHWK Chilliwack in 1972, moved on to CKIQ Kelowna where he became news director, then it was on down to CKNW in ’83. After a year there, he took over as program director for a decade under the old WIC ownership. He was then made an offer to run the Edmonton stations and has been back in his home town since, now overseeing Corus’ 14 stations in Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.

And yes, Rutherford says, Corus just might take its 30-minute-news-wheel style beyond Edmonton.

If so, it could prove to be an emerging competitor to the format already established in several Canadian radio markets by Rogers Radio.

Rogers’ flagship news operation in Toronto, 680News (CFTR), struggled through its first five years in the early 1990s to become a strong player today with a newsroom staff of 65 and, on its 15th anniversary, as one of the top revenue-generating stations in Canada.

John Hinnen, vice president and general manager, who has been there since before the launch, says they knew at the outset that they would lose a bundle at first, with CFTR still making a profit at the time as a Top 40 music outlet albeit with numbers dwindling.

“(We) took it to Ted Rogers and basically said ‘Here’s a great idea for you, Ted. We’re making a million bucks a year on this little AM radio station right now. How would you like to lose $5 million for the next few years?’ And Ted said ‘Sounds like a great idea!’ So he gave us the go-ahead.

“Now it has the largest audience of any station in the country, AM or FM.”

Rogers then expanded the format into Vancouver with News1130 and to Kitchener with News570. It has also networked its three hybrid (news/newstalk) FM Maritime stations in Halifax, Moncton and Saint John along the same lines.

Rutherford denies a widely-held view within the industry that Corus rushed into Edmonton to beat Rogers’ plans to duplicate its 660 CFFR Calgary all-news operation, insisting he had proposed iNews880 to Corus nearly two years ago.

“It is a very, very expensive format, and we’ve invested more than $2 million so far, and we needed to pick the right time in Edmonton’s business cycle to be able to absorb those kinds of expenses.

“And so we picked this fiscal and the second half of this fiscal to really get serious about how we were going to make this work, and we had no idea that Rogers had an interest in that format in this market. We didn’t know until after the gazetting of applications in Edmonton that their intent was to try and find a licence for such a format here. We were already on the air and doing our thing.”

And it may also just be a coincidence that Corus “borrowed” Rogers’ signature green logo colours.

Some observers say that while iNews880 may never actually turn a profit, any losses would almost surely be less than money lost to a rival all-newser.

But Hinnen says Rogers still plans to move into Edmonton with a new FM news op, despite the existing competition.

“They seem to be focusing more on trying to get Internet stuff, but basically what they’re doing there is re-purposing stuff from CHED, so it’s still the same news voice. And what we’re proposing to bring to that market is a new news voice.”

Hinnen says that, unlike Corus, Rogers would be committed to its new licence for seven years.

“We can’t change format. And in the case of Corus, their station being an AM station, they could change tomorrow. There’s no restriction on them in terms of sticking with the format.

“We’re pretty confident we can make a go of it.”

Still A Role For AM

Jeff Vidler, a media market analyst and partner in the Toronto-based Solutions Research Group, says news/talk is expensive but it can turn a profit.

“All-news AM stations certainly look pretty strong,” says Vidler, who is also a regular contributor to this magazine. “There still is a role for AM, you know, if you look at the Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg markets where you get that wonderful big reach, tapping into agricultural communities, or Saskatoon and Regina as well. I mean there’s advantages to the AM signal over FM in those kind of situations where they are able to reach not just the city but the full market.”

And he says despite studies that show 35% to 50% of people under the age of 50 never listen to AM, all-news is extremely healthy in Toronto and growing in Vancouver.

“It’s a long, slow build and Rogers has shown the patience to hang in there with it, but has been rewarded big-time.

“In terms of billing, there have been times that they’ve been the number one station ? and probably among the most profitable.”

Vidler also makes the point that these days it’s almost impossible for an advertiser to buy locally and affordably on television, which has become so regionalized. That leaves a nice situation for local radio.

“A lot of the advertising on 680News is national but there’s an awful lot of small advertisers, too, that are almost kind of non-traditional radio advertisers, there’s a very clear target audience for them.”


All-News Concept Isn’t New

San Francisco’s KFAX is considered the first 24-hour all-news station, launched back in 1959, although the experiment proved less than successful.

In 1960, veteran American broadcaster Arthur Arundel, a former correspondent for CBS News and UPI, is credited with debuting the concept at WAVA in Washington, D.C., an understandably news-hungry city where one of the most successful such operations still reigns in the form of WTOP, which itself has been operating under the format since 1964.

Another legendary U.S. broadcast journalist, Gordon McLendon, also gave listeners all news in the ‘60s in XETRA which broadcast its powerful signal out of Tijuana, Mexico. In 1965, Westinghouse’s Group W stations adopted a news-wheel format (and in Canada, audio supplier Broadcast News became affiliated with its news service before moving on to relationships with ABC and AP Radio). In the 1990s, The Associated Press also made a brief stab at providing members its All-News Radio format.

For years, it has been a highly successful service in major American cities. But in Canada, the CKO all-news network launched in 1977 lasted only a dozen years. With all FM outlets (except for Montreal) in nine major cities, Canada All-News Radio, Ltd. boasted such on-air personalities as Pat Burns, Gerry Dobson, John Gilbert, Elwood Glover, Lynne Gordon, Hap Parnaby and even David Onley, the Citytv Toronto journalist who is now Ontario’s Lieutenant-Governor.

CKO’s downfall is blamed on huge losses - reportedly up to $55 million over its lifetime -- with anaemic ad revenues and sagging ratings. Observers say contributing to that failure was the decision to save money by hiring largely inexperienced journalists, something today’s all-news stations, with their emphasis on citizen eyewitness coverage, might want to remember.

Few broadcasters will admit it openly, but obviously there was considerable regret when both AM stereo and digital audio broadcasting floundered, leaving them with the relatively primitive technology of amplitude modulation (AM). That, coupled with CRTC regulations that limit ownership to two FM and two AM stations in a market, meant such owners couldn’t always flip a losing AM operation in the family to the FM band. On the other hand, the regulations also discourage golden oldies on FM, leaving that format for AM.


Wither DAB?

As with FM, when multiplex stereo came along in the ‘60s AM stereo seemed promising. But in the end there were too many competing systems and a massive migration to FM anyway and as a result owners and listeners alike simply lost interest.

Much the same thing has happened to DAB, where Canada opted for the European Eureka-147 L-band system instead of the incompatible IBOC technology chosen by our neighbours south of the border. Then automakers like GM reneged on a promise to install Eureka DAB tuners in their Canadian-made cars, shifting focus instead to that other emerging technology, satellite radio.

And there were other issues.

Such as that CRTC ruling that DAB licence holders initially would be limited to simulcasting the content from their existing AM and FM frequencies. And Industry Canada’s plan to launch a spectrum analysis that’s put everything on hold until its completion, expected sometime in late 2009. And, of course, there was the frustrating lack of availability of decent and affordable receivers.

Parts were another problem. Engineers say that while Toronto radio stations continue simulcasting in digital off the CN tower, they’ve had to cannibalize parts to keep the transmitters going. In some cases a station’s digital signal would be off the air for weeks and no one would notice. Which seems to suggest DAB is dead in the water.

“It’s certainly dormant in Canada right now,” admits Wayne Stacey, an Ottawa-based broadcast engineer and technical advisor to the CAB. “I guess the main reason is because of some uncertainty the broadcasters have about where the government wants to go with digital radio in terms of the policy.”

Stacey says the main problem with DAB is that lack of receivers, and no incentive to buy them when only simulcasting is permitted, despite the promised superior sound.

Stacey also chairs the Digital Radio Co-ordinating Group, a partial successor to the now defunct DRRI and which is preparing an FM IBOC technical evaluation.

“Industry Canada decided to undertake a policy review on that L band spectrum,” he explains. “With everything on hold pending Industry Canada, broadcasters will have to get together and decide what they want.”

So does this chicken-and-egg war mean it’s too late to keep AM from getting left behind in the digital dust? After all, there are now only about 180 such private stations left on the air in Canada - none at all anymore in Halifax -- where there were once more than 400.

“Depending on the market, some of the broadcasters have been successful in transitioning the stations to FM where frequencies are available,” observes Stacey. “Part of the problem, of course, is you get into difficulty with the CRTC ownership policies in terms of the number of stations you can have in one market. Unless that policy were to change the existing AM broadcasters really have two choices, live with what they’ve got and try and make it work in terms of the programming that they can provide, or just give it up.”

He also notes that while DAB is doing much better in Europe and the rest of the world, where they can use VHF frequencies instead of the L band, the Americans have their own problems with IBOC where penetration has proven to be only half that of the analog band. As a result, licence holders are applying to the FCC for increases in digital signal power, a process which will also take time.

He says digital broadcasters, meanwhile, would also like to see the makers of cell phones, iPods and other new-age portable devices install DAB tuners where the signal would be free, a trend underway in other parts of the world.

Rutherford declines to weigh in on the DAB issue, effectively following Stacey’s advice.

“What we’re dealing with are the technologies that we have at hand and trying to make the maximum use of what we know we can control.”

Hinnen says he never did believe in DAB as any kind of saviour for AM. The real saviour, he says, is content, no matter the platform, noting that 680News is available on AM, DAB, the Internet, cable and Rogers’ cell phones.

And audio sources include Rogers-owned sister stations, the all-sports FAN590 and Citytv, CNN and The Canadian Press and through it AP and ABC. Hinnen says even local TV stations like Global and CFTO urge 680 to pick up credited audio clips from their news programming because it’s good publicity for them.

“You know what? We’re still doing fine, thanks.”

He is impressed, though, with a new form of radio receiver coming out that is Internet Wi-Fi technology-based.

“It gets right now 11,000-plus radio stations,” he says, calling it the real future of radio. “So any type of streaming that goes on around the world you’ll be able to pick up on this radio.

“The sound is amazing (and) so much choice. This radio will be available for a couple of hundred bucks, and there’s no monthly fees or any of that kind of stuff involved, and you’ll be able to get music from anywhere in the world, a lot of it commercial-free.”


New Ratings Methodology?

Then again, perhaps AM radio, terrestrial radio in general, is not doing badly after all despite being seemingly outpaced by new technologies.

That statistical summary released in July by the CRTC revealed that the country’s commercial private radio stations still enjoyed strong economic growth in 2007 and remain a major employer, and with 23 new stations opening.

Although most of the growth was in FM, even English-language AM stations had a steady increase in revenues (French stations, not so much).

A change in ratings methodology could soon become an issue, though.

It’s by no means certain that the traditional method of conducting radio surveys works on an all-news outlet where the announcers urge listeners to come back “two, three, four times a day.”

Tom Jenks, communications director at BBM Canada, the country’s pre-eminent supplier of broadcast ratings, stops short of offering an opinion as to whether the traditional diary approach to statistics gathering works fairly for a station that expects its audience to be dropping in and out.

“In the current radio diary as it stands right now, the smallest block of tuning that people can allocate to a station is 15 minutes, and so with stations like that probably people are listening for less than 15,” he concedes.

But Jenks notes that some major Canadian radio markets are moving towards those PPMs, or Portable People Meters, new wearable audio-stream-based electronic devices that have already proven effective in more accurately measuring television viewing.

“For services like that, where we do have people tuning in and out quickly, the PPM probably will be a better gauge of listenership.”

Hinnen indicates the jury is still out as to whether PPMs will give a boost to the numbers for an all-news AM op like 680News.

“Cume-wise we’re up there, we’ve been number one in terms of 12-plus cume for a while now,” he says. “680News is not a share-driven radio station, so we’ll never do like some of the music or some of the talk stations that’ll get much higher shares.”

Hinnen says going to PPMs means minute-by-minute averages where someone listening for five minutes no longer gets the 15-minute credit.

“Truth of the matter is, all of us are trying to figure out exactly what impact it’s going to have on us.

“I don’t think some talk stations are going to be getting as big a bump, but with an all-news station I’m not sure yet. But we’re going to watch it, we’ll be very interested to see how it affects us.”

Then again, Rutherford doesn’t necessarily agree that news-wheel operations are limited to that in-and-out listener anyway.

“Traditionally, news-wheel stations are sold based on reach, the total number of people that are listening to the radio station in a week,” he explains. “But the feedback we’ve had since the launch in May has been that the station is much more listenable in the long term.

“We have had listener feedback that says, ‘I don’t mind the station being on. I’m up to date, I’m current. I know what’s going on.’ And there’s enough movement in the format, enough variety, that some people are finding it easy just to leave it on and be their favourite station.”

And he optimistically challenges the commonly-accepted analysis that hordes of younger listeners are abandoning terrestrial radio to the geezer demographic, believing that there are ways of luring them or keeping them.

“Oilers hockey is an example, Eskimos football, those are things the radio station runs that brings in a younger demographic to the radio station.

“They may listen to an Oilers game and go back to their music choice, but they begin to understand that there’s a source of information there and they come back to it, and as they get a little bit older they come back more often.”

Vidler says while news/talk is expensive, the format actually doesn’t do all that badly with the 25-54 crowd.

He says, too, that news-based AM stations tend to attract the kind of listener who doesn’t listen to much radio, who has no favourite station otherwise.

Then there is the ethnic potential in cities such as Toronto and Vancouver.

“I think you’re talking almost 30% of the population came to Canada in the last 10 years, and these are people who don’t necessarily have relationships with radio stations, or really have any feel or affinity for radio stations that are based on rock and country music,” says Vidler. “You look at the audience profile for 680News or ‘WX in Vancouver, they do extremely well with those audiences.

“It gives them the basic survival information and, who knows, maybe helps them to learn English as well.”

And he notes that while a 100 channels of digital stereo was one of the well-promoted aspects of satellite radio, talk formats like the Howard Stern Show have proven to be the most attractive to subscribers.

“Content is king and if you put the right content, even on AM, it’s amazing who crawls out of the woodwork.”

So there may yet be long life left for the AM dial. After all, old technologies die hard. CFRB Toronto earlier this year even had engineers working to get its old short-wave simulcast service, CFRX, up and running again amid reports the BBC is also re-energizing its short-wave world service.

Vidler agrees that by emphasizing local content, AM radio could survive a while after all.

“With so much competition from other types of music delivery, local information radio may in fact be the last man standing. If terrestrial radio really gets in trouble, it may be the music services that go first.”

But it looks like one thing will never be the same again in private radio, and that’s broadcast journalism in depth.

As Rutherford puts it: “Everybody’s getting their news in little snippets. The day of being able to sit down with a five-pound New York Times and spend Sundays reading pages of it, those days are gone. So hopefully we’re beginning to reflect what it is that the audience is looking for.”
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iNews880

Postby jon » Mon Oct 06, 2008 6:29 pm

Top Dog wrote:“And so we picked this fiscal and the second half of this fiscal to really get serious about how we were going to make this work, and we had no idea that Rogers had an interest in that format in this market. We didn’t know until after the gazetting of applications in Edmonton that their intent was to try and find a licence for such a format here. We were already on the air and doing our thing.”

That has got to be a misquote, stating that iNews880 was already on the air before Corus knew about Rogers' application for an FM All News station in Edmonton.

Or am I just reading it wrong?
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Postby freqfreak2 » Mon Oct 06, 2008 7:34 pm

CRTC call for apps: November 14th, 2007.

Applications published: February 8th, 2008.

Corus announces flip of CHQT: March 14th, 2008.

iNews880 debuts: May 20th, 2008.

Another fiction:

“They’re doing it right now for the experience and for their participation, but I think as things grow and as they play a bigger role those are things (salaries) that we will be looking at.”

With a 0.6 share?
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Postby Jack Bennest » Tue Oct 07, 2008 12:55 am

Mckay most likely taped him based on how the story is written so I doubt it is misquoted.

Lumpie could be telling us the story he wants us to hear.
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Postby freqfreak2 » Tue Oct 07, 2008 9:17 am

Top Dog wrote:Lumpie could be telling us the story he wants us to hear.


The mark of a true news man ... never let facts get in the way.
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Postby Jack Bennest » Tue Oct 07, 2008 1:17 pm

FF - that could be a reference to me but I think you mean Mr. Rutherford who really is not a newsman.

His talent was the staff management and sharpening his blade.



A video of the Corus 99 Bloodletting is available for a small fee.
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Postby freqfreak2 » Tue Oct 07, 2008 2:29 pm

Top Dog wrote:His talent was the staff management and sharpening his blade.


No quibble there. But he should know the difference between a truth and a ...

We're on the same page, btw ;)
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Re: AM Life Line - All News - John McKay

Postby Glen Livingstone » Tue Oct 07, 2008 3:54 pm

Top Dog wrote:We have to be mindful that content drives the bus,”
concedes Doug Rutherford, the vice president for Corus Entertainment’s news/talk radio programming in the West and the driving force behind Corus’ recently-launched 24/7 all-news station, iNews880 in Edmonton.

Rutherford, 54, concedes Montreal is a very different market from his home town of Edmonton and while for several years they tried news/talk they just couldn’t get the “traction” needed there.



If only he had thrown in the equally trite "when the rubber hits the road."

Man, that would have been sweet.
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