Denny Boyd on Corus

Radio News from British Columbia

Postby butch » Sun Jun 11, 2006 8:53 am

Boyd's Town (North Shore Outlook)



By Denny Boyd
Jun 08 2006

That pack of Corus radio minstrels up on the thin air floors of the TD black tower at Granville and Georgia are still a couple of clowns short of a circus. But they're working on it. It's just a matter of time and a few more blockhead decisions.

Corus scraped another mess off its shoes last week by pulling the plug on MOJO Talk Radio, another blunder that had seemed a good idea at the time but stiffed. They killed MOJO so abruptly that no one heard it happen. That was the problem all along - no one ever heard MOJO because no one was listening.

The sports talk programming was the fourth format Corus had tried there in four years and none of them worked.

At the time of death, MOJO had a 0.9 per cent share of the local audience. That means that at any hour of the day they had one listener, but he had a banana in his ear.

It might be amusing to laugh at the mistakes Corus has made except that every failure dumped another load of qualified broadcasters and technicians on the street, unemployed in a very thin market.

Corus is a Canadian-based media company that owns 52 radio stations and four of Canada's specialty television networks. They make bags of money because mostly they do it right.

But since they came to Vancouver after the tragic break-up of Frank Griffiths' WIC network (his survivors didn't have the sense or the moxie to carry on and the assets were sold off) they have failed miserably.

The WIC flagship was CKNW, which most North Shore adults grew up with. Over the decades, CKNW provided us with a hall of fame of bright, entertaining, influential broadcasters.

Try Jack Webster, Garry Bannerman, Ed Murphy, Hal Davis, Bill Hughes, Ron Bremner, Ted Smith, Al Davidson, Norm Grohman, George Garrett, Rafe Mair, Jim Robson, Bill Good, Warren Barker, Jack Cullen and Frosty Forst.

They were people who created formats and led the market in audience draw.

Now, under Corus, NW hardly seems a Vancouver outlet, rather an aging station designed by two camels and a marketer, The programming does not reflect the personality of Vancouver because Corus has never figured out the Vancouver radio listener. That's why they give us that rasping blowhard Adler in the afternoons, and Crime and Punishment, two hours on Sunday of rehashing the grisliest crimes of the week, just in time for the returning church-goer.

The Corus mission, at least locally, is not to improve programming and audience, but to prop up the company's share price, no matter how many services must be cheapened, no matter how many loyal, competent staff people have to be jettisoned.

God, I'd give one radio ear, just to hear Mair bellowing about fish farms again.
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butch
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Postby radiofan » Sun Jun 11, 2006 12:31 pm

Denny's bang on! I almost thought he had Pluto writing for him.
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music.
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