An early morning fire Wednesday in the CN Tower antenna interrupted the signal of several Toronto FM and television stations between 5:40 and 7:40 a.m., while fire crews powered down the antenna for safety reasons. CN Tower chief operating officer Neil Jones says the plastic casing on a single coaxial cable leading to the antenna, melted, which appears to have started the fire. Jones says the only damage was to the one cable and a team from the broadcaster that owns it will be called in to investigate the unusual event. While about 80 per cent of Toronto FMs stayed on-air because they have low power sites elsewhere, all stations are back up and running on full power, with the exception of the affected broadcaster.
The CRTC has issued a call for comments on market capacity for another radio station in Lloydminster, Alberta/Saskatchewan. Vista Radio has applied for a broadcasting licence for a new commercial FM station. The deadline for filing interventions is Sept. 15.
The approximate ratio of country radio playtime in Canada is still one female song to every nine male songs. Global News, which is owned by Corus, listened to three different country radio stations for 12 hours and tallied the number of songs by male artists, female artists and mixed groups (containing both male and female members). Based on 12-hour listening samples of Country 104 (CKDK-FM) Woodstock, KX96 FM (CJKX-FM) Oshawa and 93.7 JR FM (CJJR-FM) Vancouver, Global found just 16 female songs to 162 male songs; 22 female to 119 male; and 14 female to 151 male songs, respectively. Brad Gibb, PD for Corus stations FM96 (CFPL-FM) London, Country 104 and 103.1 Fresh Radio (CFHK-FM), lays some of the blame at the feet of old-school radio programmers failing to embrace more contemporary trends. Read more here.
In addition to Tim Hortons coming on as title sponsor for Jay Onrait and Dan O’Toole’s hotly-anticipated return to TSN, the network has announced Coors Light as the title sponsor of the Jay and Dan Podcast. The Coors Light sponsorship extends to a Coors Side Seats on-set interview segment, as well as a special Coors Reporter who will cover major sporting events. SC With Jay and Dan – presented by Tim Hortons will air weeknights at midnight ET, beginning Sept. 4, looping the following morning. Onrait and O’Toole will also contribute original content throughout the day across TSN’s digital and social media platforms, including Jay and Dan rankings, and commercial and movie trailer parodies.
The Rogers Cup Semifinal between breakout Canadian tennis star Denis Shapovalov and Alexander Zverev was the most-watched tennis match ever on Sportsnet. The match reached 1.46 million Canadians on Saturday night across Sportsnet and Sportsnet 360 with a peak audience of 741,600 viewers. The French-language broadcast drew even higher numbers with TVA Sports reporting a peak 777,000 viewers during the the men’s semifinal, averaging 550,000 viewers and a market share of 23.9 per cent.
Lorde will headline Day 1 of the iHeartRadio Canada Beach Ball at Vancouver’s PNE Ampitheatre on Sept. 3. Lorde joins Alessia Cara, Liam Payne, Scott Helman, Shawn Hook, The Strumbellas and Virginia to Vegas, while Blondie, Christian Hudson, Ruth B, Serena Ryder and Train take the stage Sept. 4. Additional talent announcements will be made in the coming weeks.
Indie88 (CIND-FM) Toronto afternoon host Lana Gay, singer/songwriter Keshia Chanté, country artist Dean Brody, and Montreal band The Dears are among those who’ve curated playlists for the Mastercard Priceless Cities program with Apple Music. Listeners can sample playlists and learn about the curators on priceless.com/applemusic. Starting Aug. 15, new playlists will be released every other week until the end of 2017.
