Andy Winford new Bounce PD

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Andy Winford new Bounce PD

Postby jon » Mon Jun 07, 2010 4:38 pm

BOUNCE Edmonton Hires PD Away From USA
Edmonton AB from Gisele Sowa
June 7, 2010
on Milkman

Gisele Sowa, General Manager, 91.7 The Bounce, is pleased to announce the appointment of Andy Winford to the position of Program Director, effective May 17, 2010.

In his new role, Andy is responsible for managing the day-to-day operations and on-air activities of 91.7 The Bounce.

Andy brings with him more than 10 years of successes in the U.S. radio industry. His superior leadership skills routinely resulted in accelerated rankings, growth in core demos, and consistent improvement in ratings.

Beginning his career in 1998 at CBS Radio in Fresno, California in the role of Assistant Program Director and Afternoon Host, Andy spent 4 years balancing his role as an on-air personality with flexing his leadership abilities overseeing all part-time staff at the station. Over the next 7 years, Andy’s roles escalated to that of Program Director for mainstream CHR, active rock, classic rock, AC and Classic Hit stations. Under Andy’s direction, his stations routinely attained #1 rankings in key demographics. With a keen eye toward delivering top-notch results, Andy successfully reigned in budgets resulting in bottom-line savings, committed to adding new models for revenue generation for his stations, and created unique opportunities for sales teams to monetize programming elements.

Andy’s addition to 91.7 The Bounce brings a new vitality and edge to the station, and also serves as a homecoming for Andy, who spent several of his childhood years in Edmonton.
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Re: Andy Winford new Bounce PD

Postby Primitive » Mon Jun 07, 2010 5:56 pm

With US radio companies reduced to penny stocks, let's make sure we bring as much of that talent north as humanly possible so we can duplicate that environment here.
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Re: Andy Winford new Bounce PD

Postby Slip Q » Mon Jun 07, 2010 6:25 pm

Aren't you glad you don't count on The Bounce to bring you news and information in a timely manner?

It only took Bounce GM Gisele three weeks to send her press release off to Milky.

Once again, are there no competent Canadians amongst the ranks of the unemployed? I really find it
hard to believe that there is nobody in this country who is capable of programming a Top 40 station
in Edmonton.

Much like there was nobody with the required experience to program News 1130 in Vancouver.

The ultimate insult to Canadian broadcast professionals has to be those clowns at Vista bringing
in some doofus from Australia to be PD at their station in the bustling hamlet of Castlegar!

Foreigners can't own radio stations here, but they sure seem to be able to take away jobs from
Canadians.

One more reason why radio is on life support.
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Re: Andy Winford new Bounce PD

Postby Destro » Mon Jun 07, 2010 6:46 pm

Calm down Slip Q. Canadians travel and work abroad too.
blog: http://morningaftershow.wordpress.com "A voice of reason amongst the doubters!" - Sandclan
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Re: Andy Winford new Bounce PD

Postby Mike Cleaver » Mon Jun 07, 2010 6:53 pm

What goes around, comes around.
Back in the early '70's, almost all the jocks at 1050 Chum were Americans while almost all the news people were Canadian.
The lines became blurred as the decade moved on, with Americans John Belmont and Mark Dailey joining the news department and Roger Ashby and other Canadians joining the jocks.
Another reason for this today, there are far more unemployed radio people south of the border than there are here in Canada and guess what?
They'd rather work cheap than not work at all.
With "cheapdom" being the mantra of the corpse, there should be no surprises with what they're doing.
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Engineering, News, Voice work and Consulting
Vancouver, BC, Canada

54 years experience at some of Canada's Premier Broadcasting Stations
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Re: Andy Winford new Bounce PD

Postby Howaboutthat » Mon Jun 07, 2010 6:58 pm

They'll come up here - hack and slash because they don't care about the people or local history - then go back home and say 'hey look how cheap I can run a station' - and they'll be outta here.
Houston, We're dealing with morons!.
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Re: Andy Winford new Bounce PD

Postby groundwave » Mon Jun 07, 2010 9:41 pm

Apparently, there's no greater way to motivate and inspire the station's talent than having them function under an imported, para-dropped boss. "Hack and slash" pretty well says it all - starting with staff morale.
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Re: Andy Winford new Bounce PD

Postby Primitive » Mon Jun 07, 2010 10:24 pm

Okay, I'll be fair. I went back and looked at the ratings of the stations that he ran in Fresno, and the numbers were good including the number one station in the market and an oldies station in the top 6 in a 39 station market. But still there are Canadians who can program top 40.
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Re: Andy Winford new Bounce PD

Postby freqfreak2 » Mon Jun 07, 2010 10:35 pm

jon wrote:Over the next 7 years, Andy’s roles escalated to that of Program Director for mainstream CHR, active rock, classic rock, AC and Classic Hit stations ...


So we're to read 5+ stations in seven years? How come the quick exits?

And why a little old station like The Bounce in a northern clime with that kind of successful track record behind you in the sunny south?

Something doesn't walk like a duck here.
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Re: Andy Winford new Bounce PD

Postby Neumann Sennheiser » Tue Jun 08, 2010 6:43 am

freqfreak2 wrote:
jon wrote:Over the next 7 years, Andy’s roles escalated to that of Program Director for mainstream CHR, active rock, classic rock, AC and Classic Hit stations ...


So we're to read 5+ stations in seven years? How come the quick exits?


In some markets that could be one station changing format 5 times in 7 years
Only half-joking.
More possibly it may have been five different stations in the same facility all under one ownership with Winford hired to run them all.
"You don't know man! I was in radio man! I've seen things you wouldn't believe!"
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Re: Andy Winford new Bounce PD

Postby Slip Q » Tue Jun 08, 2010 8:25 am

CBS hasn't existed in Fresno for a few years now. It was one of their non top 20 markets that was sold off due to low profitability. CBS Fresno was also the home of one of the poorest performing JACK stations in all of the USA. I hope Andy Travis remembered to mention this on his resume.
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Re: Andy Winford new Bounce PD

Postby hot4vegas » Sat Jan 01, 2022 9:43 am

So I just saw this string nearly 12 years later and it’s hilarious! Most of you commenting on my appointment at the time might not even frequent this website any longer I thought I’d clear up a couple of things for the record:

1. Neumann Sennheiser (lol) was partially correct, I was the Operations Manager over multiple stations in a single facility, however when OM I had other PD’s in my supervision.

2. I may be an American but I grew up in Edmonton. I attended Beverly Heights school for grade 5 and a combo of Duggan and Thorncliffe Elementary schools for grade 6. I went to both Parkview and Balwin Junior High’s and graduated from M.E. LaZerte High School.

3. I saw my first CFL game live when Saskatchewan took on the Eskie’s at the infamous fog bowl (you could only see halfway across the field from our end zone seats) in 1973 and in the late 70’s and early 80’s I worked at Commonwealth Stadium as a hawker and later as a hawker supervisor.

4. I attended Oiler games long before they entered the NHL, in fact I saw Jacques Plantes in goal for the Oilers during his last season in professional hockey.

5. I went to broadcasting school in Los Angeles and immediately returned to Edmonton upon graduation because Canada was where my heart was since I grew up there. I couldn’t find an entry level gig.

6. When I got my chance to return to Edmonton I snapped it up turning down other offers at the time because in my heart I’m an Edmontonian through and through but as you know now, it wasn’t to be. Once Rogers took over they got rid of all the managers and installed their own team which was their right to do. I must say I was, and still am to this day, impressed by the professionalism of Robbie Gibson, Ian Slipp, Joelle St. Clair, Adam “Trubble” Milne and Jake Ryan. They performed at the highest possible level in the face of uncertainty.

7. I’d love to return one day but my life is in California. I would just ask that anyone who wants to throw darts at the back is someone’s head actually try to learn a bit more about that person before passing judgement because, in this case at least, most of the assumptions were dead wrong.
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Re: Andy Winford new Bounce PD

Postby the-real-deal » Mon Jan 03, 2022 11:27 pm

Hello Mr. Winford,

Thanks for responding. Those that claim that the hiring of Americans (and or Aussies) as broadcasters somehow hurts the Canadian job market or that they are inferior in talent, are singing a tired, sing song of xenophobia that the (Canadian) listening public is sick of hearing.

In fact, the American-Canadian free trade dynamic benefits most when Canadians, Americans, (and other expatriates skilled in broadcasting) can work wherever they want and, if they want to migrate to this country, I say let them in, if qualified. As always, let the public decide which programmers and broadcasters are any good and those who "suck" will fall on their sword, as always?

Canada, for better or worse, is an ethnically diverse nation and we have no choice but to suffer the consequences of that ? (just kidding).

Further to this, Canada has a long history of welcoming Americans to this country, going back to the post Second World War era when Frank Siniatra and the rest of the Ratpack gang (Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Junior), along with the Allen Sisters, etc, to baseball's Jackie Robinson often entertained in Montreal, then, the entertainment capital of Canada. Funny, but Quebeckers have never lamented the prominence of Americans in their province.

Just Western Canadians do that ?

One of the greatest morning deejays of all time in Montreal radio was an American named Ralph Lockwood. I'm sure there are others, but I have forgotten.

Americans who have since relocated to British Columbia over the years have done the industry proud, such as John Daly and Mike McCardell of Global and CTV Vancouver, both former New Yorkers.

A lesser known American born broadcaster who has worked here in the Okanagan Valley is Pete McIntyre, the long time News Director of KISS-FM in Vernon. Pete is a Detroit native and is one of the longest serving radio news directors in the Province.

Mr. Daly, a legendary journalist by all accounts, was my broadcast journalism instructor back in the 1980's, while Peter served as my former boss at the former CJIB in Vernon. My own career (42 years old on January 8th, 2022) has benefitted immensely from the mentorship and friendship of those two, for which I am grateful.

Due to the declining birth rate in Canada, young people are not entering the broadcasting business (as well as other businesses) and the race towards automation is partly due to the fact that there are less and less qualified broadcasters who make themselves available, each year.

Therefore, the Canadian labour force has no choice but to consider applicants from the U.S.A., as well as from Timbuktu?

Meanwhile, it's pretty much impossible for Canadian employers to obtain a temporary foreign worker permit, these days, with all of its wage requirements (much more than 15 bucks an hour), the lodging requirements, the red tape, the backlog of immigration visas, plus all of the Covid 19 requirements.

I'm astonished that Canadian radio stations are hiring any Americans, at all, since the whole process is a lot of headaches.
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Re: Andy Winford new Bounce PD

Postby hot4vegas » Thu Mar 23, 2023 6:31 am

Again, this goes to show you how infrequently I read this stuff considering that I’m just responding now, lol. I really appreciate your perspective. My point was less to defend Americans in Canadian radio (although you bring up some great points) but more to highlight my personal experience growing up in Edmonton. I grew up there and really enjoyed it. I considered myself as much Canadian as American, especially since (by the time I was 21) I’d only lived in the States as a little kid. Have a great day!
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