As someone who lived in the area, WLYK has been operated out of Canada targeting the Kingston market for over a decade now. Rogers ran the station like it was a Canadian station. The last time they actually targeted the Watertown, NY market was when it simulcast with 106.7 as The Border back in the 2000s.
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FCC Considers Whether To Let Canadian Company Buy U.S. Radio Station.
- Thread starter davideduardo
- Start date
Even then, my recollection is that they were doing split ads - 106.7 got US ads aimed at Watertown, 102.7 got Canadian ads aimed at Kingston.
I haven't run the pop counts, but there has to be easily 10x as much Canadian population in 102.7's 60 as there is US pop. It gets awfully sparse driving out 12E toward Cape Vincent!
Just to share music with people. If Canadian companies like the music they play and think it would get an audience.Again, you need to read about Can-Con, the Canadian requirements for Canadian Content in media.
Canadian content - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
If all the significant stations in Canada have to comply with Can-Con and you, as station owner, feel that being liberated from Can-Con makes you more popular, why would you do a show that has exactly the same content as every other station in the Canadian market you are trying to serve?
You are not getting it. The whole purpose of a Canadian radio company owning a US station... with all the legal and regulatory hoops it has to go through... is to avoid having to play as much Can-Con qualified music. In this case, it is because the library and repertoire of Canadian music is much more limited and means you play the big Canadian artists much more often and much deeper.
Avril Levigne every 40 minutes, anyone?
Correct. I'd expect they will likely continue to run it primarily aiming at Kingston.
I've only been in Watertown once, and all I remember is it was very cold...in January.
How do they manage revenue from advertisers targeting Kingston? Is it through a US division of the client, or do clients want to advertise so much on that station that they accept that the expense is not deductible, just like in the US we know that "entertainment" expenses are only 50% deductible.
Perhaps the ad rates on the U.S. station are lower than on the Canadian stations, enough so that the price difference offsets the lost deduction for Canadian advertisers. Just a thought, I don't know if that's actually the case.
I am just suggesting maybe a specialty show every weekend which feature those artists, similar to Passport International on Alt stations.
Here's the problem with that: If you own a radio station, you need to play what your target audience wants. If your target audience wants to hear a bunch of CanCon, you will, of course, play it. I doubt that's the case, though. I believe it was Sean Ross who said CanCon's biggest contribution to Canadians was “ensuring no one bothered with the radio.”
I can honestly say I don't know! In this case, it's above my pay grade - my role is just to make sure that whatever they're programming over there gets transmitted over here.
they dont have a choice to play cancon, they have to..
Though cancon can often ruin things.
I was in NW PA, listening to an Oldies station doing an 80s weekend and they ran a liner as such, the next thing that played? some awful 90s! Canadian crud...
My point of bringing up Mexico is that the article says it's a first for a Canadian company to ask for 100% foreign ownership. These waivers have apparently been going on for a while. This article is from 2017:
FCC Approves For the First Time 100% Foreign Ownership of US Broadcast Stations
The FCC yesterday released its first decision approving 100% foreign ownership of a group of US broadcast stations. This comes after significant
www.broadcastlawblog.com
You've said in the past that some US stations are 100% owned by Mexican companies. So asking for a 100% waiver is not out of the question. In fact both Cumulus and iHeart have provisional approval for 100% foreign ownership if they choose. And the FCC says it wants to make such things easier:
FCC Seeks to Expedite Review of Proposals for Foreign Ownership of US Telecommunications and Broadcast Entities // Cooley // Global Law Firm
Foreign ownership of US wireless telecommunications and broadcast entities is capped at 25%, absent approval from the Federal Communications Commission. In recent years, the FCC has formalized its review of foreign ownership requests and has allowed up to 100% foreign ownership in some cases. Th...
80s Canadian content exists as well, doesn't it? Anyway, unsure how they do syndicated shows from America there.
One option is to run the cancon during the commercial breaks and extend the shows by an extra hour. Another option is to replace certain segments with cancon.
I am uncertain about the area of non-English language or Francophile broadcasting, but what I read some years back required all contemporary music formats (meaning other than things like classical music) had to meet Can-Con requirements. The percentages have changed over the years, but it is not format specific for 95% of stations.
Brings up a question of whether Can-Con is measured hour by hour or just overall in the day and week.
Like most government regulations, it's complicated. The radio minimum is 40%, and it must be achieved between 6A and 6P. So there's a chance to run US syndication after 6. That's when you're likely to hear US talk shows. But they give the folks in Windor a break because they're close to Detroit.
WLYK is not a Canadian station. So, it doesn’t have to play CanCon. The point of most of this discussion is that it won’t likely do that because, unlike stations on the other side of the border, it doesn’t have to air content its audience doesn’t want to hear.
I don't know what the numbers are like now, but, in the late 80’s/early 90’s, a greater percentage of Canadian stations was losing money than in the US. The picture wasn’t good for US stations as a majority were operating in the red. I know the regulations have changed a little as Canadian FM's have more format options, but I haven’t heard much about whether that has helped. Given that Canada has also eased ownership limits, I'm guessing it didn’t help much, though.
I would guess Canadians would be used to the music though? It seems like all of the ones in the same format play the same artists.
Correct, but the issue is about how much Canadian ownership the FCC will allow. Up until recently, the station was a partnership of several owners, with about 45% Canadian owned. Now they want to increase that to 100. It shouldn't be hard, but the FCC wants to have time for comments. The OP says they want to target Kingston, and will likely continue the current format. As you say, not having cancon is a programming advantage for this station.
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