48 Years Ago Today

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48 Years Ago Today

Postby paterson » Fri Jan 18, 2019 10:18 am

October 18,1971 cancon requirements became the law of the land for AM radio across Canada. Cancon is still a lightening rod for many in the broadcast industry and some feel it is one of the main reasons for declining listenership in our industry, at least for music oriented stations.

I know many will roll their eyes, but today on the 48th your thoughts. I think we can all agree that changes are needed for radio. What do you think about cancon? What changes should be made? Do we even need any cancon requirements any longer?

:towel:
The "hitlines" are open! Give us a call!
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Re: 48 Years Ago Today

Postby paterson » Fri Jan 18, 2019 10:21 am

Haha..sorry January 18th! :bag:
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Re: 48 Years Ago Today

Postby pave » Fri Jan 18, 2019 11:24 am

American radio is suffering the same as Canadian radio, and blaming CanCon as a reason gets no traction.
More importantly, were it not for CanCon, there wouldn't be a Canadian music industry - with the exception of La Belle Province.
Even Bryan Adams and The Hip wouldn't have got out of the basement.
The shambles that has become Canadian radio is industry-supplied, self-induced, corrupting and festooned with road signs directing the gullible straight up the Lemming Trail.
This disgusting state has nothing to do with tunes selection or the nations from which they emanated.
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Re: 48 Years Ago Today

Postby Talker » Fri Jan 18, 2019 2:45 pm

While it may be true that the CanCon regs helped many performers get recognition and airplay, it's usefulness has passed. Stations and their owners now realize that promoting Canadian/local performers is a good thing for their communities. It also has some impact on their bottom lines.

Foreign, read out-of-town, ownership impacts on local stations far more than CanCon. The big kids-on-the-block should realize this and gradually divest themselves of their multiple stations per market system. CRTC should also take note and act to right their original wrong from decades ago.
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Re: 48 Years Ago Today

Postby pave » Fri Jan 18, 2019 2:58 pm

Depending on ownership to realise that playing CanCon is in their best interests is, practically, a mugs game.
Besides, it may not be in their best interests.
I mean, it's not as if audiences are carrying placards in support of Canadian, never mind local artists.
I wouldn't trust these corporate cloth-heads to walk my dog - not unless I didn't like my dog.
If CanCon wasn't The Law, they would drop it in a moment.
Then, to add insult, they would likely claim that any "really good" CanCon would rise on it's own merits.
Now, what is the term for which I am searching?
Oh, yeah: "Bullshit".
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Re: 48 Years Ago Today

Postby paterson » Fri Jan 18, 2019 4:25 pm

Thanks for chiming in pave and gtbell. True that audiences are not carrying placards in support of Canadian talent. In fact in many cases I wonder if the general public has many opinions on this at all. In my years in radio the only people that have strong feelings on cancon tend to be people in the business and not the listener.

Years ago reading hundreds/thousands of BBM ballots almost nobody mentioned cancon per se. Usually had to do with the type of music we were playing-"Too much disco, not enough rock, station plays too many commercials and not enough music etc." Not surprised that most comments were actually directed at news or talk shows, community involvement and personalities which is good.

But getting back on this 48th anniversary of cancon, should it be dropped, changed, has it been a bust or success, or is it no big deal? Should the government have any say in what we play??? The hit lines are open!! :yahoo: And I still have a bag over my head....
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Re: 48 Years Ago Today

Postby gwp » Fri Feb 01, 2019 3:44 pm

Speaking of Canadian content. It is odd that the passing of the founder of the Canadian Talent Library attracted so little coverage. Lyman Potts was a very special guy
https://www.billboard.com/articles/news ... g-dead-102
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Re: 48 Years Ago Today

Postby BossRadio » Sat Feb 02, 2019 8:37 am

Re: CanCon.: .My current job forces me to listen our local FM Soft AC/gold outlet for almost nine hours per day. As an ex-radio guy,hearing Joni, Guess Who,Lightfoot and the rest of it's ridiculously repetitive Can-Con library over and over again,week after week is agony. That being said,my co-workers,who are mostly 40 and 50 something guys,seem not to be affected,and I even catch them bopping along,sometimes singing.So apparently, for them ,hearing Someday Soon or Shadows in the Moonlight et al, ad infinitum isn't such a bad thing. Could it be they have been programmed to receive since 1970?
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum
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Re: 48 Years Ago Today

Postby Tom Jeffries » Sat Feb 02, 2019 1:02 pm

48 years of Can/Con.

It was painful being on the air, during many of the early years, of Can/Con. I must have played "Big, Yellow Taxi" - by Joni Mitchell and "These Eyes", by the Guess Who, a mazillion times.

I know it helped some artists, but I wonder how far that spread.
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Re: 48 Years Ago Today

Postby pave » Sat Feb 02, 2019 1:29 pm

Even as I force myself to monitor commercial, music-radio, I still don't know what's CanCon or not.
Unless I hear something I am really enjoying - I don't care.
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Re: 48 Years Ago Today

Postby 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.
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