Canadian Music Week has announced that longtime CKOC Hamilton music director Nevin Grant will be inducted into the Canadian Broadcast Industry Hall of Fame as the 2020 recipient of the Allan Waters Lifetime Achievement Award. Grant established himself as a hitmaker during his 37-year tenure at CKOC from 1968 until his retirement in 2003. Known for his knack for breaking new hits, he started working at the station in 1966 as a copywriter following his graduation from Ryerson’s Radio and Television Arts program, and worked his way up to music director, assistant program director and eventually program director. Read more here.
The CRTC has found that the Vernon, BC market can’t support an additional commercial radio station, and is conducting a more thorough analysis before approving Vernon Community Radio Society’s application for a community station. The proposed station, 97.9 Valley FM, would operate at 1,000 watts. The community is currently served by two commercial broadcasters, Bell Media and Jim Pattison Broadcast Group, which opposed the call for applications.
The Sheet Harbour Radio Society has received approval for a new low-power community station in Sheet Harbour, NS. 94.7 CHHR-FM will operate at 45 watts. The station proposes to devote three and a half hours each week to spoken word programming, with 95% of its newscasts devoted to local news and 5% regional. The station also plans to broadcast a community bulletin three times a day, six days a week, featuring information on community events and local interviews. Approximately 82% of its music will be drawn from content category 2 (Popular Music 66%, and Country and Country-Oriented 16%) and approximately 16% from content category 3 (Special Interest Music).
Radio Humsafar 1350 AM (CIRF-AM) Brampton, ON is in test mode after experiencing delays securing a transmitter site. The South Asian station is broadcasting at 1,000 watts during the day and 45 watts overnight. What’s expected to be three weeks of testing began Dec. 19.
102.3 Radio Centre-Ville (CINQ-FM) Montreal and the community station’s current management, led by Wanex Lalanne, have come out on top of a court battle over who should have control of the station after the plaintiffs dropped the case on Monday. Tensions between station managers and a group of dissidents, who launched the suit, have been high since 2016 when Radio Centre-Ville started selling airtime to independent producers. Lalanne has not ruled out counter-suing the group for defamation.
Gord Rawlinson, the owner of Rawlco Radio and founder of Regina’s Santas Anonymous program, is donating $500,000 over five years to the Salvation Army. Half of the funds will go to support expenses around Santas Anonymous, including purchasing toys. The rest will go toward a pilot project called Pathway of Hope, which will target repeat clients needing food and shelter and get them on the road to self-sufficiency.
CBC/Radio-Canada’s Open House and Food Bank Day in Vancouver on Dec. 6 saw over 2,100 people visit the public broadcaster and a record breaking $1,021,618 raised. Local personalities including Stephen Quinn, Gloria Macarenko, Michelle Eliot, Sheryl MacKay, Mike Killeen, Anita Bathe, Brett Soderholm, Dan Burritt, and Lien Yeung welcomed the community into the CBC Vancouver Broadcast Centre along with CBC network personalities Ian Hanomansing, host of The National, and Erica Johnson of Go Public.
The 31st Annual Corus Clothes for Kids Campaign saw Global Kingston, Fresh Radio (CKWS-FM) and BIG FM (CFMK-FM) help provide over 1,000 snowsuits to children in the community. Viewers and listeners donated over $50,000 in cash through Kingston Community Credit Union and GoFundMe (via globalnews.ca/Kingston), in addition to donating snowsuits at Corus’ studios and the Cataraqui Centre Mall. Corus works with local school boards to identify needs at over 50 schools in the Kingston area.
The 4th Annual 98 the Beach Radiothon for the Saugeen Memorial Hospital Foundation raised a total of $90,294 on Dec. 13. Money raised during the 12-hour event, broadcast on Bayshore Broadcasting’s 98 the Beach (CFPS-FM) Port Elgin, ON, will go toward the purchase of new equipment at Southampton Memorial Hospital.
Evanov Radio Group’s Manitoba stations, Energy 106 (CHWE-FM), HOT 100.5 (CFJL-FM) and AM 810 CKJS Winnipeg, held their annual Christmas broadcast live from Grant Park Shopping Centre on Dec. 7. Local public figures including Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman were on hand to pledge support and encourage others to donate. A total of $25,225 in cash and food were raised in just nine hours for Winnipeg Harvest.
Benztown Imaging’s 6th Annual #Cans4Cans campaign is a social media-driven food drive in support of the Los Angeles Food Bank. The concept is simple – post a photo of yourself wearing headphones to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #cans4cans and Benztown will donate a can of food on your behalf. Benztown is asking its friends and followers to participate. Last year, over 900 people posted in support of #Cans4Cans.
CBC North has launched its first Cree-language podcast as part of efforts to recognize the International Year of Indigenous Languages. Wiih’teh is co-hosted by Mary Shem and Betsy Longchap, a reporter and host working with CBC’s Cree Unit in Montreal. Each episode features Cree words in the Eastern James Bay Southern and Northern Cree dialect about the weather, seasons and more, with the goal of maintaining and strengthening the language.
The 2019 Canadian Podcast Listener (CPL) study says celebrity podcasts are getting new listeners in the door. When CPL asked relatively new listeners to describe what initially got them listening to podcasts, 19% said it was because one of their favourite radio hosts, authors or celebrities had a podcast. Read more in the latest CPL blog post, here.
Spotify is now more popular than Apple Podcasts in Canada and 10 other countries, according to Voxnest’s 2019 State of the Podcast Universe report. As of November, it says Spotify pulled ahead as the top podcast destination in Canada, Puerto Rico, Central African Republic, Kyrgyzstan, French Guiana, Suriname, Iceland, Switzerland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, and Moldova. According to Voxnest Audience Network data, Android podcast consumption increased by 10.4% year-over-year, while iOS podcast consumption dropped by 4.8%. Desktop consumption dropped from 13% to just over 9% total. You can download the report here.
Edison’s Podcast Consumer Tracker says the most-listened to podcast genre is Comedy (36%), followed by News (23%), Society & Culture (22%), Sports (15%) and True Crime (12%). The results reflect greatest reach amongst U.S. weekly podcast consumers, based on human-reported results, not downloads.
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