What does CKNW do now?

[kal]

Dave Pratt has left the Black Tower?

He's certainly left the air at 'NW and should resurface at TEAM 1040 any day now. Seems that the deal is done. There may be an off-air cooling off period but he'll be back, perhaps with the Bro. It's been a tough week at the silver building on West 2nd. This can only add to the turmoil there and more or less closes the door on sports at 'NW.

[Rocky]

I've been in Vancouver for a few days this week working on a project so I've been able to do some morning radio listening.

I cannot believe how bad CKNW sounds. First off, their on air signal sounds like crap. There is no punch to it. It's flat. Boring. Hard on the ears. News 1130's signal is bright, it jumps out at you.
It sounds as good as some legendary Top 40 stations sounded in the 1970s and 1980s. Even CBU has a great signal. Try punching between 1130, 980 and 690. 980 is in the mud. That could be
one reason listeners are fleeing by the busload.

The imagaing on NW sounds old, stodgy and stale. Haven't they been using this same voice guy since the 1980s? Are the newspeople so incompetant that they can't even tell the time? Why do
they run three or four promos/IDs with the same voice back to back at the top of the hour? As mentioned by others, the Global weather and AM 730 traffic makes absolutely no sense.

It appears the only show not on holidays is the morning show. What a trainwreck that is. This poor old English chap is more than a fish out of water. From what I recall, he was a longtime NBC
reporter in Europe who was lured to Vancouver when NBC was closing up shop in Jolly Old and poor old PT would have been left jobless. The reporter part has never left him. Unfortunately,
when he moved from talk show host to morning personality (filling some very big shoes), the NW programming department wasn't able to develop the personality portion of their new host. It
appears somewhere along the road of life, he'd had a very successful personality bypass. He can't communicate with his fellow workers other than a quick, cold intro. His interview segments
are the same, Basic questions and responses, he doesn't communicate with the person he's talking to. Most of his interview segments have little or no relevance to life in Vancouver and many
appear to be reworked voices from yesterday's news. If you're not attracting listeners in the morning, the rest of the day suffers. The last couple of years of BBM results prove that.

In checking out the competition, News 1130 is very listenable. There's good chemistry between the anchors, you feel you're a part of the show, not an eavesdropper listening in on private
conversation. The traffic reports could be a bit shorter, some tend to drag on forever.

Much like BBM has been telling us, CBC is the big winner. The morning show is full of personality, lots of chatter between the host and hose around him (sports/business/traffic etc). When they
do an interview segment, it usually something local or regional and it's not done in old time reporter style. The shows producers actually go looking for material that has some local interest and
relevance. No skimming the Province for yesterday's headlines here.

Back to the big question. I doubt NW will ever return to it's former place in the market. Chances of them getting back The Canucks or Lions are almost nil. The sports department is gone.
There won't be another Frosty. The newsroom will never be what it was. Remember the days when they had fill in talk show hosts that weren't TV anchors, celebrities off the street or news
people?

In the 1980s, Video Killed The Radio Star. In the 2000s, bean counters and corporate greed killed the radio station.

[Coolcat]

I have to agree their fill in hosts get worse by the shift. I tuned in several weeks ago when the weekend guy from Victoria was on holidays and the quality was definitely rock bottom.

NW has to regroup and streamline quickly otherwise they will be relegated to 6-7 share if they are lucky within a year.

Their left over standouts are McComb, Sara, MacDonald, Smythe and to a lesser extent their Victoria Guy doing talk on the weekend but all have limited appeal. What has to go is Till and Good. As for the new show at night it doesnt sound promising but give it a mulligan for 5-6 mos. First thing to do is fix the morning show immediately, replace Good asap probably with Smythe if they can convince him working one of the two dailies in Vancouver is risky business right now and build around the people that are left.

Chances are though they will mess it up as they appear to be a station you want to bail from rather than one everyone wants to work for.