by paterson » Sat Feb 02, 2019 3:47 pm
Seems if you are playing top 40/hot a/c or any format where the emphasis is on current music, I don't think cancon is a real problem today even at 35%. I'm like you pave in terms of current music I don't always know what is cancon especially by a group or artist that is new. Still I think the regs should be updated or reconsidered in some areas.
I honestly don't remember 30% cancon as being much of a burden when I first got on the air in 1977. I was the evening announcer 6 to 10 pm with a top 40 format. Normally I would play 14-15 songs per hour. We played two hits to one gold, or recent gold, so in an hour I would play two cancon gold and three hits, or recent hits. In the four hour shift I would have played 7- 8 cancon gold.
Cancon gold and hits were on the same rotation as all other music. All gold could not be repeated in 2-4 weeks. Recent gold, (within the past year) wouldn't be repeated for one week. So I was never overplaying any particular song or even the station wasn't for that matter. The tightest a playlist song could come up would be 5 hours, with the exception of a 10pm top 10. Later when I was a P.D. never was a real issue where I worked, but music was just one component of our programming.
Good point Boss Radio, I find most stations who play all gold seem to have about 250 cancon songs and play them to death. I don't know why since there is a lot of familiar gold material they could/should play but don't seem to. Although it is not just cancon as far as I am concerned, I find many stations tend to overplay certain artists (Hall and Oates, Elton John, Queen, Eagles, Foreigner etc.) and only play three or four songs from these groups that had many more hits. I just put it down to poor programming.
Some stations surprise me like CJOY in Guelph that does an excellent job with handling a gold format, including cancon. They have a large library and don't seem that repetitive. Stations like CHUM FM and CHFI, CHYM FM, Zoomer and Jewel have always handled the "burden" of cancon well. I am in the east, but listening to some of the Pattison stations handle their music exceptionally well in my opinion. A lot of people comment on BOOM FM and generally they are fairly good, but to me they are getting repetitive and need to open up their library more than they are.
But as Boss Radio alluded to, the only people that have an issue with cancon tend to be those of us in radio. The audience never really commented that we were overplaying certain Canadian artists or songs too much. The only others to complain were the "freedom" type of individuals that didn't like any government regs, didn't like the Liberals etc. So they usually would complain about cancon being rammed down their throat, or comments that the reason that most Canadian artists had any success was because of "forced airplay." I would usually just let them vent for a while then move on..didn't usually bother arguing since it was pointless.
gwp, bang on Lyman Potts death was overlooked. There was a article on him in the Globe and Mail and also his hometown paper The Hamilton Spectator. I had never even heard of him before but he truly was a pioneer for cancon especially for easy listening MOR radio in the 60's into the late 80's. The whole CTL library in many ways was overlooked as well.