The Team radio station goes Oldies

[Jaimoe]

It just goes to show you that radio can be a terrible business to get into. The Team switched formats at 3pm yesterday, going back to the out-dated and boring oldies. As a result, 44 people were laid-off at the 1050 Chum Toronto location - this includes former TSN announcers Paul Romanuk, Jim Van Horne and Mike Richards. Romanuk said he felt lied to and betrayed by management.

It's sad, but when stations switch formats, they usually lay-off almost their entire broadcast staff. I remember a few years ago when Kiss FM in Toronto switched formats. They laid-off their entire staff ( excluding sales ) after a staff party. When party revellers came back to their workplace, the building was locked. There was a notice on the outside door telling employees of their plight.

However,there is good news for you in Ottawa, Montreal and Vancouver. Your stations will remain sports for the time being. I guess I'll have to switch over to Buffalo's 550 AM for the Jim Rome Show. I predict that one or all of the 3 remaining sports stations will change formats soon. Too bad. Forget about a Jim Rome Tour Stop.

[arcane]

I find this "unexpected switch" thing fascinating, considering that the station has to make a public application to the CRTC to change formats (IIRC).

[rubberdinghy]

The Team 1200 in Ottawa still seems to be all sports talk...

www.team1200.com

[Jaimoe]

Imagine how mad and hurt guys like Romanuk and Van Horne must be. They talk to their bosses every day, seemingly everthing at work is cool. Then bang. The station switches formats. The management must have decided to switch formats weeks to months ago. No wonder Romanuk feels like he was lied to. He was. I hope Ottawa keeps their Team format. Don't be surprised if they don't.

[Chewie]

quote:

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Originally posted by Jaimoe:

It just goes to show you that radio can be a terrible business to get into.

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jaimoe,

man...it's a shitty, shitty biz fo' sure!!!

i've been in the biz for almost 8 years now and i can't wait to get out of it...

i know where u work but where did u go to school? did u start in radio? when did u start for chum?

let's talk...not many people can understand this industry of ours...

[Jaimoe]

Hey Chewie. I work for the television side of Chum thankfully. I do know the radio business however. I went to Ryerson for Radio & Television Arts. My first year there was all radio broadcasting. I love radio but it's hard to make money in it. I still have friends that work in the radio business, as DJs and producers. None of them are making much money. They'd all switch to TV if they could. I remember how happy I was when The Team network started, but then I realized that most of the employees that were working at the Chum radio network lost their jobs. What side of radio are you working in Chewie? I'd recommend switching to talk radio/news. They tend to be more stable. The music business is too trend orinted, unless you work at Q-107. I still don't understand why that conservative programmed, ball-less station gets the ratings it does.

[SolarGarlic]

Well, this sucks. The Team 960 in Calgary is attempting to stick with it...though we may lose the Rome show. Instead of Romanuck and the Van Horne shows, we get the Sporting News Radio from the States. This blows.

[Chewie]

Originally posted by Jaimoe:

Hey Chewie. I work for the television side of Chum thankfully. I do know the radio business however. I went to Ryerson for Radio & Television Arts. My first year there was all radio broadcasting. I love radio but it's hard to make money in it. I still have friends that work in the radio business, as DJs and producers. None of them are making much money. They'd all switch to TV if they could. I remember how happy I was when The Team network started, but then I realized that most of the employees that were working at the Chum radio network lost their jobs. What side of radio are you working in Chewie? I'd recommend switching to talk radio/news. They tend to be more stable. The music business is too trend orinted, unless you work at Q-107. I still don't understand why that conservative programmed, ball-less station gets the ratings it does.[/quote

hey now,

i until about two months ago was hsoting a morning show on an aor rock station in chatham, we actually had a good thing going until FUCKING management stepped in...

our board of directors, prez, agm, ops manager and the rest of the brass have their heads up their fuckin asses!!!!!!

yeah, i'm bitter.

i was gonna go to ryerson...but things changed...

any jobs your way???

[Jaimoe]

I heard they're hiring at 1050 Chum. Hope you like the oldies!

There are no jobs in televison right now at my workplace. They just laid off 2 crews - one at Much; the other at CP24. There may be positions opening up in September, when the budget is completed and posted.

Here's an article about format changes from Jim Slotek in today's Sun ( in case anyone's interested ). I like his improvements to the oldies format. I'd use the same criteria for AOR stations too, especially Q-107. WHY THAT STATION DOESN'T PLAY THE FUNK IS BEYOND ME!!

Thursday, August 29, 2002

Radio daze

Stations change formats at the drop of a demographic -- often in mid-broadcast

By JIM SLOTEK

Imagine you're watching TV -- Martha Stewart Living, say -- and after the credit crawl, a WeedWhacker commercial and one for the new deep-fried bacon double-cheese chowder at Wendy's, a porn film starts playing unannounced.

At the programming office, it's backpats all around as geeks with reams of demographic charts predict trucks dumping money at the station's front door.

Six months later, the book comes in. The female audience has mysteriously disappeared. A much smaller, predominantly male audience has taken hold, but with sharply different viewing patterns. These can be summed up as "Somewhat interested... Interested... Very interested... Extremely interested!... suddenly not interested anymore. (Flick)..."

Panic strikes at head office. A button is pushed, everyone involved in the recent format change is fired, and in the middle of Shaving Ryan's Privates, Martha Stewart returns.

Welcome to TV if it were run like radio.

Tuesday, not much more than a year after switching from its trademark oldies to (yet another) all-Sports blab format, The Team 1050 returned unannounced to its old call letters 1050 CHUM, dragged out the old "Oldies radio... 1050 CHUM!" airchecks and started playing some Elvis.

Apparently lost in the mists of time and embarrassment were CHUM Radio president Jim Waters' assertions that music has no future on AM and oldies are a money-loser. (Who knew that guys from Orangeville phoning up with ludicrous Leaf trade suggestions would be an even bigger money-loser? Apparently, even their own families don't want to hear them.)

This came a few weeks after the long-time standardbearer of dance-pop -- Hamilton's Energy 108 -- went country without so much as a howdy do. And this was a reverse of what went on a few years ago with CISS-FM, whose owners -- apparently possessed by the spirits of the ancient Sophists -- managed to convince the CRTC that Toronto needed Billy Ray Cyrus-style country more than it needed a black music station.

You know the rest. A few years in, CISS said "never mind," and switched to dance-pop, again practically unannounced.

A betrayal of its listeners and the terms of its licence? You bet. The CRTC should be looking into that any day now.

Radio in general has no continuity, no promise of service, no imagination and no guts to stay the course. And they wonder why they're losing hordes of listeners to car CD players.

So now CHUM is back. And here's a clue. If you can't make oldies work, then you can't make anything work.

The problem, again, is imagination, and a playlist that's stuck on the same-old Motown, Stones, Beatles, Elvis stream we hear on bad movie soundtracks and GAP commercials.

You want to make oldies work? Do it differently. Herewith, some free advice (and you know what that's worth).

1. CHUM arbitrarily sets a 1955 to 1975 limit on its playlist, then complains that its listenership is dying off. Duh! Move the scope ahead a year, every year. Play some '80s music. That's bona fide nostalgia now, and only Q-10Zeppelin seems to acknowledge it. Let AM 730 have your drop-offs.

2. Other people lived in the '50s besides Elvis. Like, oh, I don't know, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Muddy Waters, Ike Turner and any number of black artists, as well as Elvis's fellow Sun Records guys like Billy Riley and Johnny Cash.

3. Bobby sox music doesn't age well. A little less Paul Anka and Bobby Curtola please. Yes, I know, they're Cancon, but there's always The Ugly Ducklings, Myles & Lenny and Syrinx.

Also, any of Anka's '70s tunes with Odia Coates should be grounds for licence review. Play You're Having My Baby and it should be automatically revoked.

4. Bands generally recorded more than one hit. Play Snowblind Friend by Steppenwolf instead of Born To Be Wild. Waterloo Sunset by The Kinks instead of You Really Got Me. I love Walk Away Renee by The Left Banke, but Pretty Ballerina by the same band was haunting and mournful and imaginatively arranged. Alex Chilton didn't disappear after The Box Tops' hit The Letter. His next band, Big Star, recorded a whack of good pop tunes, including the That '70s Show theme, On The Street.