A bit of history first ...
Back in late 2007, the CRTC announced hearings for four new Edmonton radio licenses. Among the applicants was Rogers, proposing an all-news station.
The hearings were set for the end of May 2008 at the Matrix Hotel - ironically directly across 107th street from the building where CHED was born back in 1954.
I wrote a letter to the CRTC in support of the Rogers application, stressing the need for editorial diversity in local news given concentration of Edmonton media ownership.
In previous years, CHED had been hailed for its breaking of stories - mainly due to having inherited CHQT's aggressive news department after Corus bought the station from Shaw Radio in 2000.
A week before the CRTC hearings took place in late-May 2008, Corus flipped under-performing CHQT, then Cool 880 (oldies), to iNews 880 (all-news).
I attended the hearings at the Matrix Hotel.
After Paul Ski had finished his presentation for his Rogers all-news application, the CRTC brass presiding over the hearings seemed puzzled (as if a note had just been slipped to them under their cloth-wrapped tables).
Isn't there already an all-news station in Edmonton, one commission member asked.
Ski had to admit there was. But he didn't have an argument for how Edmonton could support two all-news stations.
What wasn't made obvious to the CRTC was the machination of Corus' tightly-timed flip. It also raised the question of how "in tune" the CRTC was to sudden hearing-dependent format flips.
I introduced myself to Mr. Ski after his presentation. He had read my letter to the CRTC and he thanked me.
What's next, I asked. Ski replied, Plan B.
Plan B never came to be. That's because Plan A had worked so well. And Plan A belonged to Corus as the Rogers application was later formally denied.
By flipping CHQT to all-news, Corus protected CHED's status as Edmonton's then-premiere news/talk station and effectively shut Rogers out of the market.
To this day, CHQT as iNews 880's Numeris ratings remain half what they were (at best) during their days as Cool 880 and it suggests how much Corus continues to spend to have once-kept Rogers from being a direct competitor.
At the time of the 2008 flip, Corus honcho Doug Rutherford declared to all who would listen and report (primarily Corus/Shaw-owned media) that iNews 880 would raise the bar for journalism in Edmonton.
As a news junkie, and intrigued by Rutherford's bold declaration, I tuned into iNews 880 daily for months. The experience left me longing for the good old days of CKO.
I also had occasion to visit the iNews 880 operation several times during its early years. The visits confirmed what I had heard on air.
If raising the bar meant surfing the web, selecting 40-second wire-service voicers, and adding a few phoners to the mix (mostly borrowed from the CHED newsroom), then iNews definitely set a new bar for journalism (however, I failed to find out in which hotel the bar was located - perhaps the Matrix?).
I also failed to hear a single story from an iNews 880 reporter actually on a street somewhere covering anything.
So now it's ten years later and the launch of Global News Radio 880, enshrined with the same verbosity of iNews 880's 2008 launch but this time with the announcement of the merging of Edmonton's "two greatest newsrooms."
I'll grant that Global TV's newsroom has done some excellent work ... but the CHED/iNews side of Corus has been running on fumes for years.
After numerous retirements and firings of once-great reporters at CHED, only the hard-working Scott Johnson remains as the echo of the once-proud mantle of investigative journalism (and he seems to be the station's only man on the street).
And in the decade since iNews 880 hit the air, I suspect more pencils and chairs have been broken than actual news stories at the Corus compound on Roper Road.
As CHQT is now simulcasting Global TV for several hours a day, a bad situation for local news junkies seeking diversity in media has only gotten worse as such mergers are usually done under the guise of cost-cutting, leading to fewer reporters chasing fewer stories and more-and-more rip-and-read press-release journalism.
So how did things play out on Day One?
During Global's six o'clock news TV coverage of the big event - live from the CHED newsroom - news anchor Gord Steinke was alone ... without one reporter or newsreader in sight even "pretending" to be at work. It wasn't a matter of shyness - there simply wasn't anybody there.
Conspicuous by their absence, they were ... and not even local radio news stars like Bob Layton, Bryan Hall or even Eileen Bell were on hand to sell the big announcement (that job fell to unknown Corus execs who listeners and viewers had no interest or investment in).
And when Global ran hours-old footage of the former iNews/now Global News Radio 880 newsroom "in action," they showed three unidentified people passively clicking mice while surfing the web - exactly what I saw during my own personal visits to the alleged news war room years earlier.
So how did things play out the next day when the rubber met the road on the new Global News Radio 880?
I crawled into bed about a half-hour after Game Two of the Stanley Cup Capitals-Golden Knights game had finished and tuned into Global-whatever 880 curious to hear the new promised land of news in Edmonton.
The first thing I heard on the up-to-the-minute news station was a sports update, giving me the score of the game as of the end of the second period, along with an invitation to hear the third period on sister station 630 CHED.
The only way I could only follow-up on the invite if is I was able to travel backwards in time.
I wish I was making this up.
The legacy of commercial radio news reportage (I've purposely kept the CBC out of this discussion) has sunk to such a new low that there is only one way to describe the arrival of Global News Radio 880:
You can only polish a turd to so high a gloss.
Bryan Hall missed the memo at the time of his 7:12 sportscast on 880 this morning. I'm fairly certain that he closed his 'cast with a reference to iNews 880 not Global News Radio.
See above turd remark.
Hall has been past his best-before date for over a decade. Only his sales contacts keep him employed. I'm just saying.