What should be done with Sonic Vancouver?

This is a question I get a lot on here, and although I do not work at this radio station or any radio station for that matter, I do have some ideas of what can be done, and it ties into my post I made yesterday which you can read here.

Sonic is clearly not working the way Rogers had hoped. Which is fine, these things happen in radio. But, I do have an idea of something that can be done to shake some things up in the Vancouver radio market. There are actually a couple steps to make it happen. Obviously Sonic is actually a Chilliwack station at 107.5, and it rebroadcasts on 92.5 Abbotsford and 104.9 Vancouver.

So first, would be to take Sonic and move it to either 98.3 Chilliwack (Currently Star FM) or 107.1 Abbotsford (Currently Country 107.1). I suggest this because data I have seen shows that Sonic does better in the Valley then on the Vancouver frequency. Also Abbotsford has coverage for the country format from JR Country Vancouver (93.7) and to a degree JR Country Chilliwack (89.5).

Second would be to then flip the trio of stations to a more Rock based format. Similar to the Rock branded stations or Q, K-Rock and others that Rogers operates. For obvious reasons they could not use the name Rock as there is already Rock 101, even K-Rock is to similar. So my thought is use the Q branding that Rogers uses in Sudbury or Timmins. They could position the station as Vancouver and the Valleys Rock station. It could essentially take songs from both CFOX and Rock 101’s playlists and compete with them. My thought is a good Rock station to compete with Rock 101 would be something good for the radio market. As well Ronnie Stanton, works at Rogers as National Programmer – Classic Hits and Content Director for the company’s Vancouver FM stations. His experience with Corus Vancouver would position him well to create a station that competes with Rock 101 and CFOX.

Another thing to allow this to happen would be to maybe apply to the CRTC to allow each station to operate separately instead of as a trio. This way If something works in Abbotsford but not Vancouver it doesn’t have to be tied into all 3.

It would also allow Jack to adjust the playlist to maybe reduce the rock songs a little bit. If Rogers were to do this, I would suggest that Jason Manning (Current afternoon host at Jack) moves over to the Rock based station and either hosts mornings or afternoons, as well as having Danger move to the Rock station and doing the opposite of Manning. Current midday host of Jack, Meredith could move to afternoons on Jack and then the midday show could be someone like Stax or Loop from Jack London. The rest of the shows on the Rock station could be Heather, Lew MacDonald, Riley Jabur and others. Could even do a best of Biggs and Barr and a best of Brock and Dolby. As well as the Sunday Classic Rock show with Adele.

Let’s just hope Rogers does something soon with this format as rumors of a format change have swirled since August of last year.