Is Radio Dying, Or Did It Just Evolve?

Saturday night, I lay in bed, thinking about the piece I want to write after news of the demise of CHML, which was once the most important radio station in Hamilton. CHML still, as an AM news station and broadcaster of live sports, had a role in the community. Last week, it was shut down this month by Corus, who claimed they couldn’t find a way for stations to make money.

Big cities are following small towns, losing radio stations as their newspapers die.

I wondered whether radio is as endangered as print media. Who will speak up for Canadian radio, since people have long seen private stations as background sound? It’s hard to argue radio we know it is a public good, nor has been since the 1950s when it lost so much of its market to television.

Except for a few huge stations like CFRB in Toronto and CJAD in Montreal, private radio stations rarely sent reporters to any news event in my lifetime.

I joined the Parliamentary Press Gallery in 1994 and left in 2017. When I started, Standard Broadcasting, the company that owned the big Toronto and Montreal news stations and some smaller outlets, had a reporter on the Hill. They don’t have one now.

CHEZ, a Rogers-owned FM station, assigned a smart journalist, John Crupi, to Parliament. Crupi did news hits and documentaries until the bureau was closed early in this century. (Crupi went on to a good career in local television).

And there was Broadcast News, the wire service for Canadian radio stations. A chain of Quebec radio stations had a reporter on the Hill, though they did fire one of their staff because they said her Rwandan accent offended their Quebecois listenership.

And that was it.

It was also very unusual to come across a radio reporter from a private station when I was a reporter in Toronto and in rural Ontario.

So it’s hard to make the argument that the loss of local radio contributes to news deserts. If small-market radio stations made significant contributions to local coverage, it was before my time. Even in big cities, radio tended to follow, not read, the news. When I was a kid working at the Globe and Mail, cabs would wait at the loading dock to get copies of the first edition, sometime between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. Those of us who worked nights would catch the hourly radio news to hear our stories. And the local TV stations would rip and read then on their nightly national and local news broadcasts.

Over the decades, the CRTC let favored companies buy up stations across the country. Local stations often reflected the community. Local owners, especially if they cared about what they broadcast, could do amazing things. Corporate ownership was lethal to individuality and creativity.

In 1965, Neil Young and his band, the Squires, were trying to eke out a living in Fort William (arguably the better half of the two cities that were amalgamated to create Thunder Bay, Ontario.) Young drove the band around the city in an 18-year-old hearse and stayed in awful motels until he and the rest of the Squires ran out of money and had to move to the YMCA.

But Thunder Bay had a vibrant music scene. The city’s Fourth Dimension Coffee House and the Hoito/Finland Hall attracted local talent and out-of-town artists. It’s where Young met Stephen Stills, and, over a few days, they became lifelong friends and artistic collaborators. The Thunder Bay music community, which I’ve never seen an article or book about, kept going through the rest of the century. It hatched musicians like Ken Hamm (one of the most important blues artists in North America), folkie Rodney Brown, Damon Dowbak (who organised a full-sized mandolin orchestra in the 1980s), Lauri Conger of Parachute Club, Ian Tamblyn, Paul Shaffer and, a little earlier, Bobby Curtola.

Some, like Hamm, Brown and Dowbak, stayed in the city and did the summer music festival circuit. Hamm set up a recording studio that made records that were played on the local private stations and the CBC outlet.

Fort William’s CJLX radio station had its own recording studio. Local celebrity DJ Ray Dee produced several of the Squires’ songs. They’re the bizarre work of talented young men, songs that are part surf music but (like on The Sultan) have weird instrumentation, including a big gong.

The cuts, which are still around on the Neil Young retrospective box set and on Spotify, did a lot to launch Young, just as local stations in the American South took a chance, played a record and started Elvis Presley on his way.

Canadians get some credit for creatin American acts, too. Windsor’s CKLW, “the Big 8”, would play Motown music when Detroit, still a segregated city, turned its back on Black artists. There would have been no Motown music scene without The Big 8. (Its importance faded after Motown Records and most of its talent moved to Los Angeles after the Detroit riots).

Now, a Neil Young, Elvis or Johnny Cash could never walk into a radio station with their record and get it played. Chain-owned stations don’t give their DJs the authority to broadcast anything that’s not on the playlist. These lists come from American marketing companies, and are tailored for various demographics: oldies, pop, urban and dance. CRTC rules require some Canadian content, which is dutifully included. But there are no recording studios in the radio stations in Thunder Bay or anywhere else, no DJs scoping for new talent.

I think this explains the lack of creativity and the homogenization of music, and why there are so few mid-range musical acts that aren’t oldies bands.

And yet…

The thing that came to me at 2 a.m. while I struggled to sleep: there’s still lots of great radio. It’s just not on radio waves.

The transmission of the human voice is a very hot medium. People with melodious voices and good speaking skills sound very attractive on the radio. And it’s a lot less work to listen than to read.

Today’s radio is, partly, on YouTube. People listen to long playlists without watching the videos. There are also Internet outlets that offer great digital concert footage.

There are also great podcasts out there. They are where documentary journalists like Connie Walker (who won a Pulitzer Prize) are making their careers.  I am addicted to Empires with (not that) Anita Anand and William Dalrymple.

In Canada, we’re seeing some good podcasters emerge. As well, CBC Raio puts its programs online, so I can listen to the best ones, like Ideas, as podcasts.

When it comes to music, Spotify and other streaming services allow us to escape from playlists written by marketers, hysterical radio ads, and the constant flow of provincial government advertising in my home province, Ontario.

Not all local radio is dead. I don’t think any of the old stations survived, but people have been getting licenses for over-the-air broadcasting in the Renfrew-Pembroke area and in Prince Edward County, both in eastern Ontario.

These stations are remarkably popular and, as far as I know, at least break even, which makes me wonder what might have evolved if the CRTC had refused to allow so many small-town stations to be bought by big corporations.

There’s nothing to stop people from creating their own Internet radio stations, either doing talk radio or making licensing deals to play music. I’d be really surprised if any start-up does journalism, but it could happen. An Internet station could be hyper-local, like the stations in Picton and the Ottawa Valley.

My only complaint about the new “radio” is – except in these small start-ups -- the lack of opportunity for new acts and the lack of local news. For the latter, I rely on my local CBC station.

Will newspapers end up being replaced with a similar new media and micro-media landscape? Will online papers, the equivalent of Internet radio stations, thrive or even survive? Or will there be other options?

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