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Canada Now Has Five All-News Stations

G

Gregg

While many large U.S. markets lack an All-News station, the format now covers five markets in Canada. Ottawa is the latest market to get an All-News station, with CIWW switching from Oldies.

Here are the Canadian All-News stations:

680 CFTR Toronto
1130 CKWX Vancouver
1310 CIWW Ottawa
660 CFFR Calgary
880 CHQT Edmonton

690 CINF Montreal (French All-News) went off the air when its owner said it couldn't make a profit. 940 CINW Montreal also had been All-News in English but switched to first Talk, then Oldies, then went off the air along with CINF. Is it that Montreal won't support All-News or was the owner just not prepared to make the investment to make the format work?

For the record, here are the eleven U.S. All-News stations and their market rank:

1) WCBS and WINS NYC
2) KNX Los Angeles
3) WBBM Chicago
4) KCBS San Francisco
8) KYW Philadelphia
9) WTOP Washington
10) WBZ Boston (Talk nights)
11) WWJ Detroit
13) KOMO Seattle
25) KQV Pittsburgh (Talk night and weekends)

KFWB Los Angeles gave up All-News last year for Talk and KRLD Dallas tried for a second time to go All-News in Market #6 but now uses local and syndicated Talk oustide of drive times.

This seems to support my theory that Sunbelt markets (except LA) won't support All-News stations, no matter how large the city. Houston, Miami, San Diego and Dallas had All-News stations but lost them. Atlanta, Phoenix and Tampa I don't believe ever had an All-News station, except maybe as an NBC-NIS affiliate in the 70s.

If you don't have an All-News station in your market you can't get traffic and weather every 10 minutes, regardless of how you feel about news. If a truck carrying gasoline overturns on your major Interstate highway, your local Talk station isn't likely going to break into Rush or Hannity or Beck to report it. Same thing if a thunderstorm is heading your way.


Gregg
[email protected]
 
Gregg said:
While many large U.S. markets lack an All-News station, the format now covers five markets in Canada. Ottawa is the latest market to get an All-News station, with CIWW switching from Oldies.

Here are the Canadian All-News stations:

680 CFTR Toronto
1130 CKWX Vancouver
1310 CIWW Ottawa
660 CFFR Calgary
880 CHQT Edmonton
Click to expand...

Add three in the Maritimes. CHNI-FM 88.9 Saint John, CJNI-FM 95.7 Halifax, and CKNI-FM 91.9 Moncton. I would imagine they share a LOT of programming. (and they're co-owned with CFTR and CKWX -- which IIRC are co-owned with one or more of the other stations you cited above)

How they make it work in markets that small I don't know. Probably a LOT of programming comes from Toronto. I did hear the Moncton station on E-skip last summer & heard a few minutes of local Moncton news, but on skip it didn't stick around for long.
 
w9wi said:
How they make it work in markets that small I don't know.
Click to expand...

Government subsidies? (I don't know, that's why I'm asking.)
 
Talk_Dude said:
w9wi said:
How they make it work in markets that small I don't know.
Click to expand...

Government subsidies? (I don't know, that's why I'm asking.)
Click to expand...

No. Rogers is a private, commercial broadcaster. What I suspect they'll do in Ottawa is what they've done in the Maritimes at the stations Doug mentioned: they'll brand as "News 1310," but it won't be a true all-newser. Instead, they'll do news blocks in drivetime, with talk shows filling out the rest of the day. (Several of the Maritimes "News" outlets have even asked the CRTC for permission to run an AC music format during the evening.)
 
I think it's easy for someone like Rogers to do when they share stories, features and simulcast. Probably doesn't cost them a heck of a lot to run a cluster of news stations in a general area.

What Canada doesn't have developed is syndicated talk or any talk stations. The Corus Network does do some regional and national but after that it is pretty slim.
 
Help me remember: At one point Canada has an all news radio network, feeding stations across Canada. As I recall, the on-air product was pretty well done, with local segments added to the network feed in each market. It disappeared when I wasn't paying attention. Anybody remember this and what happened to it?
 
I went to Wikipedia to refresh my memory about that. It was known as CKO and it was a mostly FM network though it had an AM station in Montreal. As Wikipedia put it ...

CKO was a Canadian radio news network which operated from 1977 to 1989. The CKO call sign was shared by twelve network-owned stations.
The network was owned by Canada All-News Radio Ltd. AGRA Industries was originally a 45 per cent partner in the network, but by 1988 it was the sole owner.
 
KeyTimes950 said:
I went to Wikipedia to refresh my memory about that. It was known as CKO and it was a mostly FM network though it had an AM station in Montreal. As Wikipedia put it ...

CKO was a Canadian radio news network which operated from 1977 to 1989. The CKO call sign was shared by twelve network-owned stations.
The network was owned by Canada All-News Radio Ltd. AGRA Industries was originally a 45 per cent partner in the network, but by 1988 it was the sole owner.
Click to expand...

Key, thanks for the lead to the Wikipedia article. I suspect the owner was Agra Canada (not Agra Industries, a Wisconsin Company). Both companies are in agriculture and it seems a little strange for either to invest in a news radio network with transmitters in larger cities.

In any case, CKO joins the ranks of NBC NIS and AP All News Radio, all news networks designed to bring the all news format to stations out the largest markets at an affordable cost, which disappeared abruptly. Wikipedia says Agra pulled the plug in the middle of the noon news. The Wikipedia article also sounds like CKO was not really all news since they did play by play sports and even brokered religion.

And for the record, the CBC receives government money; not private broadcasters.
 
I've been listening to "News 1310" on and off since it went up, and it does sound very much like a typical Rogers all-newser, a clone of CFTR in Toronto and CKWX in Vancouver.

It does sound like they're doing the 24/7 news wheel programming. No idea who is on the air right now...relief staff from Toronto? They have a lot of ads for staff...

How big is Ottawa...what's a comparable size U.S. market? I suspect Ottawa's status as the capital is a big reason they're able to do 24/7 news.
 
Gregg said:
Atlanta, Phoenix and Tampa I don't believe ever had an All-News station, except maybe as an NBC-NIS affiliate in the 70s.
Click to expand...

Phoenix had KPHX 1480 in 1972-74, KTAR 620 in 1973-78, and KRUX 1360 (who was the NBC NIS station here) in 1967-77. All failed.

KTAR-FM 92.3 is all news in morning drive only and talk the rest of the time, and has been since before they moved the news/talk format from AM to FM three years go (the AM is now all sports).

Of course, metro Phoenix was 1/4 the size in the early '70s that it is today, but a 24/7 all-news station is still a non-starter in this market. And if it were to happen, it would be on FM, probably owned by CBS. Don't hold your breath - all three of the CBS-owned stations here are successful music stations.
 
I'm curious about something. Canada is a really, really big country that covers a lot of square miles. Even if you only count the parts where people live, it's still pretty big. Do five all-news stations actually cover most of Canada's population?
 
Talk_Dude said:
I'm curious about something. Canada is a really, really big country that covers a lot of square miles. Even if you only count the parts where people live, it's still pretty big. Do five all-news stations actually cover most of Canada's population?
Click to expand...

They sure do. There are about 30 million people in Canada, and 5 million of them (about 16%) live in the Toronto metro area alone. Another million-plus live in Hamilton, St. Catharines and other parts of the "Golden Horseshoe" that surrounds Toronto and is served by CFTR (680 News). More than 2 million people live in Vancouver (CKWX News 1130), 1.2 million or so in metro Ottawa (CIWW 1310 News), and a million or so in metro Calgary (CFFR 660). So yes, that's more than a third of Canada's population in just those four metro areas.
 
travisl5678 said:
KLIV is mostly local, 8 South Bay traffic reports an hour and Weather together, on the weekends they have CNN Radio at :00 and :30 and HLN audio on the weekend
Click to expand...

Do they run locally-based news blocks 6 AM-7 PM? That'd at least put them in the KQV category.
 
Gregg said:
Atlanta, Phoenix and Tampa I don't believe ever had an All-News station, except maybe as an NBC-NIS affiliate in the 70s.
Click to expand...

Tampa Bay has had a few incarnations of all-news stations over the years, if you count weekday drive-time news blocks and CNN feeds the rest of the time as a true all-news format. None of those attempts lasted particularly long, either ... it's been about 10 years since anyone has tried.

Hell, these days it would be nice if someone would offer local TOH/BOH news after 7 p.m. weekdays and 1 p.m. weekends in this formerly big-time market.
 
I wonder how KLIV uses HLN (the former CNN Headline News) since so much of HLN these daysis talk shows and gossip. A few years ago, it was easy, when Headline News was 30 min. newscasts 24/7. But now the schedule is full of Nancy Grace, Showbiz Tonight, Jane Velez-Mitchell, Joy Bahar. I don't think that sounds much like an all-news station, unless they record the news hours and re-air those on the radio when TV is running talk shows.

I used to work for a news station that used Headline News and it was hard enough when anchors or reporters would say "as you can see from this video tape" or "from this chart." Or how many times a politician or expert would be speaking about a news item and his name would appear on the TV screen but not be mentioned by the reporter for the radio audience. Or those times going into a break when an anchor would promo stock car racing in the next segment. On TV you'd see cars racing around a track for 20 or 30 seconds but on the radio all you'd hear is 20 or 30 seconds of car engine noise.

Gregg
[email protected]
 
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