CANADIAN RADIO NEWS –Jon Pearkins
jon@pearkins.com
Bell Media began 2021 with Wade Oosterman taking charge. He quickly removed senior managers, then laid off over 200 staff, and has just completed cost reductions in Radio that focused on people-intensive formats. Individual station impacts are shown below.
There is finally some current published information on The Shift, a live national late night radio show that replaced Coast to Coast on mostly Corus-owned “Global News” stations. The permanent hosts are Shane Hewitt and Jawn Jang. Shane does weeknights and is based in Calgary AB. Jawn is based at CKNW
New Westminster BC, where he hosts The Shift on weekends.
All times shown are Eastern Local Time: EST in the Winter and EDST in the Summer.
610 BC Kamloops CHNL “The Shift” airs daily 0100-0500.
630 AB Edmonton CHED “The Shift” airs daily 0100-0500.
640 ON Richmond Hill CFMJ “The Shift” airs daily 0100-0500.
680 MB Winnipeg CJOB “The Shift” airs daily 0100-0500.
690 QC Montreal CKGM All Sports TSN-690 had its license renewed but was denied its request to reduce local programming from 96 hours/week to 63 hours. In 2013, the CRTC granted an exception to its Common Ownership Policy for Montreal, allowing Bell Media to keep CKGM after purchasing Astral Media’s stations, with one of the conditions requiring CKGM to provide at least 96 hours per week of local programming.
770 AB Calgary CHQR “The Shift” airs daily 0100-0500.
800 QC Montreal CJAD The Newsroom was shuttered February 1st with the elimination of all reporters and some News announcers, with evening Newscasts being done by CFCF-DT “CTV Montreal” TV announcers. TV reporters will now record both audio and video reports. The audio from CFCF-DT’s “CTV News at 6” is now being aired on CJAD; CFRB-1010 Toronto ON and CFRA-580 Ottawa ON were already airing the audio of their local CTV supper hour News.
900 ON Hamilton CHML “The Shift” airs daily 0100-0500.
980 BC New Westminster CKNW “The Shift” airs daily 0100-0500. ON London CFPL “The Shift” airs daily 0100-0500.
1040 BC Vancouver CKST All Sports TSN-1040 was abruptly ended February 9th and Funny-1040 debuted February 12th. In between, it was continuous Classic Hits.
1150 ON Hamilton CKOC All Sports TSN-1150 became All Business News “BNN Bloomberg Radio 1150” on February 9th, fashioned after CFTE (see below).
1260 AB Edmonton CFRN All Sports TSN-1260 continues, with some staff being laid off.
1290 MB Winnipeg CFRW All Sports TSN-1290 was abruptly ended February 9th and Funny-1290 debuted February 12th. In between, it was continuous Classic Hits.
1410 BC Vancouver CFTE All Business News “BNN Bloomberg Radio 1410” continues, with at least one high profile network host laid off.
1460 ON Guelph CJOY No longer airs “The Shift” overnights.
The Facebook page Canadian Radio News by Dan Sys provides much of the information for this column. Additional information was provided by blog.fagstein.com and broadcastdialogue.com
IRCA DX Monitor Feb 20, 2021, published Feb 15 via WOR groups.io (2021-02-15)