Stingray Media has announced a new evening program for it's three Breeze stations across Canada. The Evening Breeze will run weekdays local time from 7pm to midnight in Edmonton and Halifax. The show will run in Vancouver from 7 to 9pm, CHLG-FM will then continue with smooth jazz programming 9pm until midnight.
The Evening Breeze will originate in Toronto and 97.3 BOOM FM's Stacey Thompson will host. Feel good stories will be featured, requests and dedications are welcome via text and the web, and listeners could be called back for audio interaction.
The Breeze format has met with some success in San Francisco, Philadelphia and Detroit. In Canada the Breeze imaging was introduced on Boxing Day in Vancouver and Edmonton so a little early to tell what impact the softer A/C sound will have here. Steve Jones, Stingray's SVP for brands, content and radio says the format is a long term build. So far ratings in Vancouver and Edmonton have more or less been flat from the previous formats. Edmonton did see a bump in the last ratings period which was due to Christmas music. Jones says after Christmas, ratings have been similar to the previous classic rock format for Capital FM CKRA.