[Gentleman]

Does anyone still listen to London radio?

I stopped listening when Steve Garrison was let go. And with the teenagers behind the microphone over at 980 there isn't much worthwhile to listen to.

With the exception of the odd good station still left on the MW broadcast band, they could decommission most of these stations and no one would notice. FM stations in London are not much better.

 

[ExDilbert]

Most AM stations will likely all be gone in a few years. The equipment and towers are reaching end of usability and are too expensive to replace. CKSL 1410 is already gone due (officially) to equipment replacement costs. A lot of similar stations shut down their AM counterparts years ago. It's getting to the point where the land the AM towers reside will soon be worth more than the station itself.

It's not like London broadcasters will lose market presence by shutting their AM stations down. All of the London AM stations have sister FM stations and have for 40-50 years or more. Some broadcasters own more than one FM station in addition to the AM station. At one time, it was a case of AM broadcasters launching FM sister stations, even at a loss, to make sure they didn't miss out on the rising popularity of FM. It was a golden age for FM listeners. Many FM stations had 24 hour music formats with no commercials. A decade or two later FM overtook the AM marketplace, both in listeners and ad revenue. AM stations now struggle for an audience.

A case in point is CHLO-AM, St. Thomas. 102.3FM was previously 103.9FM, 1570AM before that and 680AM originally. The AM station was shut down shortly after it transitioned to FM. As CHLO-AM, it was a tiny "me too" station that mostly served St. Thomas and the rural counties around it. After switching to FM and rebranding as "The Hawk", it became the most popular station in the London area. Other stations quickly rebranded and changed formats to get in on the popularity of the "new" classic rock format. Due to its better signal and financing, CFPL 95.9FM quickly gave The Hawk a sound thrashing in the market and CFPL's owners ended up buying 103.9FM a few years later.

 

[Gentleman]

I remember The Hawk in its glory days when it was started by now departed Vern (Warren) Furber of Port Stanley. When the station first aired, there were no DJ's in the studio to muck up the music. It was all music. And I remember the ratings and it became the no. 1 station in this area. When it changed ownership, downhill it went.

Alas, all good things must come to an end. At least I'm blessed to listen to WNCX off air for classic rock.

 

[ExDilbert]

WNCX was very popular on cable here for years until Rogers started knocking US stations off their service and replacing them with corporate owned stations from Toronto. I could still pick WNCX up with an FM dipole so it wasn't a technical issue like it was with some other signals. Cleveland has had good rock stations for a long time. I listened to WKYC-AM from Cleveland in the 1960s. Corporations have wrecked FM radio in both the US and Canada. The Hawk was always considered to be an upstart that interfered with FM96's market share. Then the owners of FM96 bought The Hawk, gave it a second rate playlist and moved it from London/St. Thomas to Woodstock which made the signal weaker in London. They did it to compete in the Woodstock/KW market where their was another popular classic rock station at the time. Even the people in Woodstock were upset because it replaced what they considered to be their local radio station.

How does this fit in with CJBK? All these stations came to be owned by the same company and are now owned by Bell. Before Bell got hold of them they did a decent job of serving the local market with local DJs, news, weather, sports and music. The slide started before Bell but it really got bad when they obtained them. Now they have all been cut to the bone and serve up cut rate, generic, lowest common denominator pablum in all those areas. It's not local radio anymore. It's not even good radio. Ads and profit margin take precedence over everything else and even those are bad. I'd rather listen to nothing than any of these stations.