February 19, 2025

NWBroadcasters

Radio and TV news

The Future of Corus

Yesterday during an earnings call, Corus admitted the future is bleak, and they need to do what is possible to right the ship. One of the things they have said is they are going to reduce the number of full time positions by 300 across the company. Corus also reiterated the fact they have shut, or will be, shutting down AM730 Vancouver and 880 Edmonton.

So what does this mean? Well I don’t claim to be an expert but it does mean your local radio station if owned by Corus will certainly go through changes. On the weekend there were rumours circulating that all morning shows would go down to single person shows. Currently there are single person shows on BOOM Ottawa and Cornwall, BIG FM Barrie and Kingston, Country 99 in Winnipeg. But the thing with some of those shows, the morning show is shared already. Tim Morgan can be heard in both Barrie (Big) and Ottawa (Boom). The morning show host on Country 99 in Winnipeg is heard in the Afternoon on CISN Country Edmonton.

I think the future of Corus morning shows will be similar to what is already happening. You will see more shows in multiple markets. Rumours about the future of 107.3 Calgary points to Edge launching there. Sounds like most of the on air programming for that station will originate from CFOX Vancouver. Similar to how FM96 London and Y108 Hamilton have the same on air lineup from 6am – 6pm daily.

Other changes will be where a station broadcasts from. The Sportsworld complex in Kitchener is where 91.5 The Beat and 107.5 Dave FM broadcast from. Both of those stations will be moving to Guelph in the very near future. It also sounds like the Hamilton studios will close and programming will originate in Guelph or Toronto, and possibly in London. I have heard that the Ottawa studios will be closing and merging in with Cornwall in the near future also, as the building has been sold in Ottawa.

Consolidating buildings is one thing especially when hosts can do shows from home now. But cutting up to 300 jobs across the company and expecting it to not have an impact on radio stations is almost laughable. There are a lot of radio stations I used to listen to, that I don’t listen to as much because either shows are not live, or there is a lot of best of, and what I call recycling of material. Especially in the Toronto area, where a few Corus stations overlap, and hosts are often used on different stations.

One particular show I would listen to live on one station but on the weekends that same host was on a different station and it would just be material from the other show through the week. Sometimes I would hear the same bits repeated a lot and it makes radio less personable.

Hopefully the changes that are being made now will help Corus in the future. But something tells me that Corus is going to sell off some stations and potentially focus on the TV side of things. Let’s just hope whatever moves Corus makes, it doesn’t involve killing off good stations that have been on air for many years. I know they won’t flip the Edge in Toronto if they are adding a new Edge station in Calgary. But let’s hope stations like FM96 and CFOX and CISN Country stay. I am actually hoping that no format changes happen and that if anything Corus can find some buyers that would be interested in taking over stations and running them with a different on air lineup or a strengthened on air lineup. I do not want to see more stations shut down, or turned into fully automated stations.

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