How stupid does Corus think listeners are?

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How stupid does Corus think listeners are?

Postby Rocky » Sat Oct 12, 2019 2:56 pm

What's up with Corus eliminating local morning shows and replacing them with out of market syndicated shows?

In the past couple of months Calgary's Q 107 started running the Willie show out of Vancouver. In addition their mid day show with Robin LeRose also from Vancouver's Rock 101. The only local content left there is Tarzan Dan in PM Drive.

Listening to 92.5 The Chuck from Edmonton, they are heavily promoting the arrival of Brooke and Jubal starting October 21st. This show originates out of Seattle's Movin' 92.5.

Is the Corus talent pool so shallow they no longer have any talent to move into mornings or is this just a dollar saving move so the books look much healthier to potential Corus buyers?

Either way, it really sucks that major market stations are now relying on non local programming to attract listeners to the once prime day part.

Cut back enough and one day these clowns will have no listeners, no ratings and no advertising dollars. Then the stock holders who they have been catering to will revolt.
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Re: How stupid does Corus think listeners are?

Postby retireddxer » Sat Oct 12, 2019 3:48 pm

Contrast this with KFYR-550 in Bismarck, North Dakota just before six in the morning a few days back. Live local announcer between a pair of '80s Adult Contemporary hits, sounding great.

After the 6:00 AM News, he is joined by the other half of the Morning Show team, into the station's normal All Talk format.
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Re: How stupid does Corus think listeners are?

Postby paterson » Sat Oct 12, 2019 6:42 pm

Unbelievable, does Corus not want to play in the big leagues anymore? Yes Edmonton and Seattle have so much in common. I am sure Brooke and Jubal will have lots to say about the election the day after they make their debut on The Chuck. Oh yeah, and listeners in Seattle certainly will want to know all about our election and how the Oilers
played last night won't they?

And Q107 Calgary with most of the working day programming out of Vancouver's Rock 101, another brilliant move!

Shame on Corus. Good luck in the ratings, or do they even care anymore? Doesn't sound like it..
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Re: How stupid does Corus think listeners are?

Postby sparky » Sat Oct 12, 2019 8:08 pm

Importing feature shows like AT 40 or History Of Rock and Roll is one thing, but Morning Drive is a whole nuther ball game.

How can an out of market or out of country morning show fit in markets the size of Edmonton or Calgary? The weather and all that's related with that (especially in Winter) will be missing.

Stations here in the Kelowna area are doing some out of market voice tracking in mid days and evenings and it sounds like shit. Everything is so generic and just doesn't fit with the rest of the day.

I cannot believe there is no talent within Canada that is capable of filling these slots.

I'm sure the talent is out there, but Corus and others are too cheap to pay the price.
"You get a bunch of clowns together and sooner or later you've got a circus"
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Re: How stupid does Corus think listeners are?

Postby RadioGuy89b » Sun Oct 13, 2019 12:36 am

There is talent, but maybe they want it work for $16.00 per hour in 2019
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Re: How stupid does Corus think listeners are?

Postby tuned » Sun Oct 13, 2019 11:23 am

Listeners are pretty stupid actually. They allowed their elected officials to change the rules so that a handful of large companies control all of the media. They also didn't mind when the government allowed broadcasters to import foreigners for jobs that should have gone to Canadians. Until listeners hold politicians accountable they have no one to blame but themselves for what passes as media in Canada.
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Re: How stupid does Corus think listeners are?

Postby thehighwayman » Sun Oct 13, 2019 1:12 pm

Do you honestly think they would offer as much as $16 / hour????
I am glad I got out of broadcasting when I did 30 years ago.
When I started in 1964, it was a huge amount of fun.
By 1987 ... not so much ....
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Re: How stupid does Corus think listeners are?

Postby talker2002@gmail.com » Sun Oct 13, 2019 4:45 pm

It's fine to blame corporate bosses for the state of affairs in Canadian broadcasting but really, the blame should be placed on the CRTC. Stretch it a bit if you like and include the politicians who appointed the Commissioners.

Once investors were allowed to own more than one frequency per band in any given market, the industry started its slide. Owners are now starting to learn that firing staff to improve the bottom line is not the real answer so they're trying a different attack. Importing various shows from other markets is nothing new but I believe doing the same thing from below the border is. Based on patriotism alone this should never be allowed.

C'mon CRTC, jump in, get your feet wet, save Canada's broadcast industry before it's too late. Time has almost run out!
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Re: How stupid does Corus think listeners are?

Postby paterson » Sun Oct 13, 2019 10:09 pm

Seems to be when in doubt blame the CRTC. The commission did what the broadcast companies wanted, let them grow, less government intervention, let us compete.

Having a company like Bell or Rogers only have one or two stations in say Vancouver is ridiculous. It isn't 1970 anymore. Can you believe the howling there would have been if CRTC only allowed companies one or two stations in any market, especially the medium and large markets? Screaming of socialism, communism, who the hell is the government to limit us to one station per market. Let us grow, let the market decide, we need to grow because of satellite, internet radio, streaming etc...

You can't have it both ways, broadcast groups large and small made the case years ago and the CRTC responded. They have let the market forces decide more of the broadcast landscape. They have loosened up a lot of regulations because this is what broadcasters wanted to supposedly help them compete with the quickly changing technology.

Is Canada's radio industry in worse shape than say the US, the UK, Australia? Ever listen to small or medium sized US radio? Even many major market radio stations in the states are essentially on auto pilot 24/7 and have been for years. Sure there are still good small market stations like KFYR in North Dakota, but that is not the norm and Bismark is the capital of the state, a government town, and isolated, so yeah they likely would have a good AM news station.

I am of the take that overall radio is probably doing better than the newspaper or television industries in terms of profitability. If radio is so lousy, why is the CRTC still licensing new stations? Why did Stingray media invest so heavily in OTA radio over the past two years? Why did Bell Media get into the radio game so late and buy up CHUM and Astral Media? Yes you can argue that the CRTC never should have let this happen, or you could also argue that the CRTC listened to broadcasters, trusted them and let them sink or swim on their own.

Corus is currently up for sale and has been for a while. I have no idea how Corus' many television properties are doing. It is possible that they are sacrificing radio to a certain extent to help Global and all of their specialty channels. I don't know this for a fact but who knows? As I mentioned above, what Corus is doing in Calgary and Edmonton is absolutely stupid, and it tells me that they giving up and are not in the game to win. I am sure these moves will not help them grow the ratings or revenue.

I view that the Corus radio properties are a golden opportunity for some medium even smaller sized radio groups pick up some decent stations. As I have said here a few times, I hope Pattison Broadcast Group buys some of the Corus stations here in Ontario. Even though Pattison owns a lot of stations, should the CRTC prevent them from expanding out east and buying for example the four Corus stations here in Kitchener nearby Guelph or stations in Toronto? Absolutely not.
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Re: How stupid does Corus think listeners are?

Postby Aaron » Mon Oct 14, 2019 12:38 pm

It's also false to assume that putting on a syndicated morning show is 'giving up' and just accepting that you're spending less to have lower ratings and lower revenue.

Syndicated shows can be among the top rated if they're the right show on the right station, and they compliment what a competitor is doing. I don't think the Brooke and Jubal show is the right choice for CHUCK, but I do have a younger relative who listens to it in Ottawa on the Corus CHR station. The station does pump in weather and traffic and a brief headlines package. All she wants Top 40 hits and entertaining talk. Debriefing the election? She knows the local talk station and CBC.

Local *can* be one of the best features of radio, but that doesn't mean it's always going to be the single factor, or even work all the time.
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Re: How stupid does Corus think listeners are?

Postby paterson » Mon Oct 14, 2019 3:42 pm

Sorry Aaron, programming a syndicated out of market morning show in big, vibrant, modern cities like Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa is giving up. Jump 106.9 in Ottawa, after a couple of bad books in 2018 seems to have bowed to their competitors with similar formats.

Yes Jump, and now 92.5 Chuck in Edmonton will not be debriefing the election, in fact the new morning team won't be saying anything at all about the election from the previous night, or anything about the Senators or Oilers, or the fact that one of the local high schools will be in the provincial volleyball championships this afternoon.

But they will pander to that young audience that supposedly only wants to hear about Hollywood, what was on TMZ, and what does Taylor Swift really think about Rihanna? The competition can do all of this as well, and probably will, but they have a big advantage because the morning hosts on the competition can also comment on something local where Jump and The Chuck can't anymore.

It will be interesting to see if Brooke and Jubal make it up to Edmonton and Ottawa this year to ride in the Corus Entertainment float in the Santa Clause Parade! The locals always like to see and maybe even meet the people behind the voice.
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Re: How stupid does Corus think listeners are?

Postby tuned » Mon Oct 14, 2019 4:03 pm

The CRTC has always been the convenient scapegoat for the large corporations that are looting and pillaging Canadian airwaves. CRTC commissioners ironically usually come from those same corporations. I'm tired of hearing arguments about how consolidation was necessary. It wasn't and I'd like to hear even one reasonable argument as to why it had to be done. Everything was working just fine when broadcast ownership was widely held by hundreds of companies instead of a small handful. The most egregious example was allowing utilities like Rogers and Shaw to not only own the "pipes" but also the content. This stupidity has so many historic precedences the fact that Canada allowed it to happen is shameful. There was a time when the major US movie studios also owned all the movie theatres until the government stepped in and outlawed it due to multiple abuses of power.

The fact is that since the mid-nineties when consolidation started the quality of media that Canadians receive has gone steadily downhill and along with it wages.
The CRTC is and always has been a sham. Sure every once in a while they try to look out for the public but 90% of the time they are nothing but a front for Rogers, Bell, Shaw etc.
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Re: How stupid does Corus think listeners are?

Postby jon » Mon Oct 14, 2019 4:56 pm

The only hole I could poke in tuned's arguments is that radio and television listenership has gone way down, especially on a per station basis, since the days of owning a station was a license to print money, which would have been the late 1980s, as best I recall.

One obvious factor is the numeber of new stations licensed.

But the bigger issue may be a Chicken and Egg thing. Did listeners and viewers reduce their listening and viewing because programming quality went downhill? Or did programming quality go downhill because there were no longer enough listeners to pay for the previous level of quality?

I'm not ignoring new technologies. Arguably, they are where people went when traditional broadcasters let them down.
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Re: How stupid does Corus think listeners are?

Postby tuned » Mon Oct 14, 2019 7:12 pm

If you owned a license to print money and someone wanted to buy your license wouldn't you charge them an outrageous price? Of course you would and that's what the license holders did in the 90s when they literally sold us out to the likes of Rogers and Corus. So now Rogers has the license to print money but they paid through the nose for it and now have to figure out how to pay back the debt they took on to buy it. The first thing they do is to look for operational efficiencies in administration, engineering and backoffice functions. Being a large company is an advantage here and it's not something that listeners or viewers are going to notice so it's one way to make more money to service the new debt. Another way is to sell more ads. The corporate broadcasters have been jacking up the amount of ads exponentially since they took over in the 90s. Of course this helps raise revenue but it can also drive away audiences which in my opinion is one major reason for declining audiences. Once you've taken those steps the next thing you can do to make more money is to cut your overhead. Dumping high priced talent for kids right out of broadcasting school is a great way to fatten up the bottom line but it also drives away audience. The good news is that your competitors are doing the same thing so audiences can't just switch to a station with high priced talent. Allowing Rogers and Bell to also own the content they distribute on their "pipes" doesn't exactly encourage excellence.

The lack of diversity in media ownership also means a complete lack of diversity of opinion.
The establishment is firmly in control of corporate media in Canada where as pre-consolidation they didn't have an iron grip on opinion like they do today. The entire corporate media in Canada, radio and television as well as the State broadcaster are 100% anti-Trump and 100% pro-Trudeau. It makes us the same as Communist China where the media is 100% in one direction. Free speech and diversity of opinion is being trampled not only by broadcasters but by the social media giants.
If we don't push back forcefully it will be gone completely before we know it.
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Re: How stupid does Corus think listeners are?

Postby paterson » Mon Oct 14, 2019 9:06 pm

Some good points Jon, and sorry tuned pretty much disagree with everything you have said.

I think the number of stations is a big factor and of course satellite radio, radio station apps, steaming, etc. I maintain that what the radio industry is going through here is not unique to Canada. All over the world in democratic countries stations are facing similar challenges. Consolidation ain't unique to Canada by any stretch. We are still children compared to our cousins in the south. We have allowed our media giants to grow in a different way than the US. It is debatable which was the right way, or if it actually matters. Both have their faults. US has a lot of great radio, and they have a lot more "stations" that are pretty bad as well in my opinion.

Do stations really have fewer listeners than 35 years ago? I would think there are some that have more listeners. Back in the day, then BBM tended to highlight the weekly cume for major market stations. Don't know when it changed, maybe with the PPM's but the emphasis now seems to be on daily audience. Aaron would know more about that, I haven't seen weekly cumes for major market stations in years, but I only have a public's view of the ratings.

Tuned, sorry you won't like this, but hate them or love them, CBC Radio has been having the best ratings they have likely ever had in many markets in Canada over the past 5-10 years. Where I live, our relatively new CBC local station was number #2 central market share and reach and #2 full coverage reach last fall. This is in a market with 11 stations and about 40 stations out of market that come in clear over the air. Almost half of our radio listening is out of market.

Lack of diversity of opinion? Says who? Talk radio is better than ever, at least talk, news and sports radio have personality and lots of it. Tuned are you trying to say that ALL the talk show hosts support the liberals? Really? Never listen to Roy Green? I can only speak to where i live in Ontario: Newstalk 1010 has a strong conservative mid morning host and primarily conservative drive home host, weekends a mix of left and right, AM 640 would be a mix of mostly middle/conservative and some left leaning hosts (they carry Roy on the weekends), CHML would be a mix of left and right (Roy on weekends), Newstalk 570 is mostly in the middle but also carry a lot of news and sports.

As far as I am concerned the only state broadcaster in North American right now is Fox, and even they are starting to crack a bit. How do you explain when the president can phone up Fox and Friends or Hannity whenever he wants and take up all the time he wants. Hosts that offer softball questions or help out the prez when he is getting himself in trouble on air? And the Fox news site is a joke. I know CNN isn't any better with their fixation of everything and dislike of Trump all the time. That's why I don't watch CNN much other than some of their special programs and some of those are excellent.

I still enjoy local radio, just wish most of the hosts made more of an effort, maybe do some show prep and not just surfing on their computer and going to all the same sites to scoop stories that five other stations in the market are also talking about. Having some personality and being local isn't that hard, and it only takes one person, the host of the show.
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