Submitted by Larry Gifford, former National Director of AM Radio for Corus Entertainment in Canada and president of patient-led non-profit PD Avengers, also known as Global Alliance to End Parkinson’s Disease Association.
It happened quietly.
No parade. No public debate. No emergency meeting at City Hall.
One corporate announcement, and Vancouver lost something it may not fully appreciate until the next major emergency: its last dedicated 24-hour radio newsroom.
With Rogers closing 1130 NewsRadio (CKWX-AM) and returning the station’s licence to the CRTC, one of Canada’s largest metropolitan areas no longer has a radio station devoted around the clock to gathering, verifying, and delivering local news.
Think about that for a moment.
A city of more than three million people. No 24-hour all-news radio station.
That should concern everyone, whether you’ve listened to AM radio for decades or haven’t touched the dial in years.
This wasn’t just another round of layoffs. It marked the end of an era.
For years, Vancouver has watched its local newsrooms slowly disappear. Reporters vanished through successive cuts at CKNW. Newsrooms at the Vancouver Sun and The Province shrank dramatically. Community newspapers closed. Roundhouse Radio disappeared. Breakfast Television Vancouver ended. Burnaby Now, the New Westminster Record, and the Tri-City News ceased publication. One by one, the institutions that kept watch over our communities grew smaller or disappeared altogether.
Each cut was explained as a business decision.
Each one made sense on a spreadsheet.
Together, they have fundamentally changed how local journalism serves this city.
The closure of CKWX feels different because it wasn’t simply downsized. Rogers didn’t sell the station. It surrendered the licence. Along with CISL, Vancouver’s last all-sports radio station, Rogers handed both licences back to the CRTC, acknowledging that the economics of commercial AM radio no longer justified keeping them on the air.
That says as much about the state of broadcasting as it does about these two stations.
Private radio in Canada has been financially devastated. Advertising revenue has flowed to Google, Meta, Spotify, YouTube, and other digital platforms. Profitability has collapsed. The business model that sustained local radio for generations has been broken.
The economics are real.
But so is the public loss.
People still need trusted information. They still need to know whether the bridge is closed, the wildfire has changed direction, the earthquake damaged infrastructure, or a neighbourhood is under evacuation. They still need journalists who answer the phone, verify the facts, ask another question, and get it right before putting it on the air.
Algorithms don’t do that.
Neither does social media.
Professional journalists do.
I spent 30 years in local radio, and I loved every minute of it.
The thrill of cracking the mic, breaking a big story and hearing your own voice echo in your headphones never really leaves you. It was a thrill, an honour, and a giant responsibility. Behind every voice was an entire newsroom—reporters chasing stories, producers making calls, editors checking facts, anchors rewriting copy moments before airtime, traffic reporters piecing together the fastest way home.
Listeners heard one voice.
It took dozens of people to make that voice trustworthy.
Many of my former colleagues eventually found a safe haven at CKWX after enduring round after round of cuts at CKNW. They weren’t looking for an easier job. They were looking for a newsroom that still believed local journalism mattered.
Now they’ve lost that newsroom too.
This isn’t just about jobs.
It’s about losing capacity.
Every newsroom that closes means fewer reporters at city hall. Fewer journalists covering school boards and provincial politics. Fewer people listening to police scanners overnight. Fewer experienced editors asking, “Are we sure that’s true?” before a story reaches the public.
Communities become less informed.
Governments become less accountable.
Rumours spread faster than facts.
Democracy becomes weaker.
Radio has never been just another medium. It is immediate. It is accessible. It is resilient. When the power goes out, the internet fails, or roads become impassable, radio has always been there.
That reliability isn’t old-fashioned.
It’s essential infrastructure.
The irony is that radio has never been more important. We live in an era of misinformation, artificial intelligence, and endless content competing for our attention. The need for trusted local journalism has only grown.
Yet we continue to invest less in the very people whose job is to separate fact from fiction.
The AM dial is becoming a lonely island of static, syndicated programming, and infomercials.
But what we’re really losing isn’t a frequency.
We’re losing the people who gave those frequencies purpose.
Once a newsroom disappears, rebuilding it is extraordinarily difficult. The transmitters can be turned back on. New call letters can be assigned. A licence can be reissued.
Trust, experience, institutional memory, and community relationships cannot.
My heart goes out to every journalist, producer, anchor, technician, salesperson, engineer, traffic reporter, and support staff member who devoted their careers to informing this city.
They deserved better.
So did Vancouver.
