More heads roll as CHUM AM hops into bed with CP24

Wednesday March 25 2009 - 11:19AM

chumAt five tomorrow morning, the once mighty AM powerhouse 1050 CHUM is relinquishing its self-proclaimed title as home to “Toronto’s greatest hits” and playing second fiddle as an adjunct to CTV all-news cable net CP24.

CTV announced today that CP24 will “extend its brand” within the GTA with the launch of CP24 Radio 1050, effectively launching a double-pronged attack on Rogers Communications’ successful all-news AM740 and City-TV brands.

In making the announcement, linked to the launch of a 5 am CP24 Breakfast news show, CP24 VP/GM Bob McLaughlin said: “This exciting new program, coupled with CP24 Radio 1050, enables us to deliver an unprecedented level of service to our viewers and listeners unlike anywhere else in the city.”

Unfortunately, the jocks at 1050 CHUM are not likely to share in the euphoria of the all-news merger. And the transparency of news and information somehow overlooked the fact that the deal means a further reduction in the head count at the AM. According to one insider, gone are David “Geets” Haydu, Kerry French, Lystra Doyle Wood who was the news secretary, Niki in traffic, 1050 CHUM morning guy and ex of CHUM-FM personality Gord James, and engineer Marc Wiseman
This past Nov., CP24 launched a new on-air look complete with a state-of-the-art newsroom. New technology included eight, robotic, in-studio cameras as well as high-tech video display walls that serve to brand the channel’s various programs. Banks of computers running CP24’s advanced weather and traffic systems are prominently featured throughout the set.

With a daily average audience reach of more than one million viewers, CP24 remains Toronto’s destination for breaking news, delivering top-rate coverage on issues that are relevant to Torontonians. CP24’s new website, cp24.com, attracts almost 600K unique visitors who are viewing 5.5M pages per month.

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Warren Cosford
@ 12:55PM - 03.25.09

1050 CHUM FOREVER!

Todd Miller
@ 1:10PM - 03.25.09

That blows!

Scott Carpenter
@ 7:38AM - 03.26.09

Sad… they certainly could’ve done better by that station, but what does one expect anymore?

I did enjoy recent my two year run there. It was great to get back together with my old friends Brad Jones David “Geets Romo” Haydu, Eileen Newmann, Gord James, Robbie Lane, and all the new friends I’d come to know. It was really great to know that so many people still remembered, and wanted to hear “The Boogieman” again. I had no idea what an impact we’d made on so many lives all those years ago.

This will probably end it for me. I gave up on sat-rad awhile back… nothing worthwhile going on there, I was wasting my time with it. I still think that creating radio with “nothing” as I did is the future for this biz. I did that show with a $30 mike, a phone line and a computer. My sons and I even recorded the bumpers I used on the air. No one could tell it wasn’t live. We’ll see how it goes, maybe someone will recognize the value of the over 50 audience. One with $2 TRILLION/yr in disposable assets, and who don’t hesitate to spend it. They loved that show!

For right now, however it’s back to the IT world.

SC

flash9
@ 7:47AM - 03.26.09

HUGE Disappointment losing the oldies on 1050 CHUM- will have to switch to AM740 :-(

Duke
@ 8:25AM - 03.26.09

What a shock and what a bunch of crap broadcasting a TV show on radio! It doesn’t work if I wanted to watch TV… I would! 1010, 640 and 680 are much better for talk radio. As of this morning 1050 is off my radio favourites!

Laurie
@ 7:26PM - 03.26.09

This sucks big time…a fan in the fifties and then again with the return… no other oldies station compares…will miss Gord and Robbie … 1050 can only be oldies … it’s like giving a retired Maple Leaf player’s number to another player! I will never have my radio tuned to CP24:(

Marty Fialkow
@ 7:39AM - 03.27.09

I grew up with Chum in the 60’s and ’70’s mainly and will miss it for sure. I collected many a Chum Chart and loved the DJ’s through the years. In the past few years, however, the station was getting stale and was not keeping me as a regular listener. Times change…AM is a dead air medium now…FM is clear…stereo rules the day. I wish that Chum could have kept a website open to those who want to look back, but it’s been moved to the new CP24-1050 site. I would love to thank the guys and gals that made the station survive for over 50 yrs. You will always be number 1 in my heart….but as they say…change is an everyday part of life. Au revoir!

Mattea Angelini
@ 8:30AM - 03.27.09

I can’t believe this is happening, I listed to 1050 Chum since 1961 with the exception when it went to sports a few years back. Where did everyone go??? As of this morning my dial went to Oldies 1150. CP24 isn’t something I will be listening to.

Maria Luciani
@ 1:55PM - 03.27.09

What a crummy way to celebrate Toronto’s anniversary, shutting down its #1 Oldies station. Just last week, my hubby and I drove to Erie, Pa. and we could still catch 1050 CHUM on our car radio. We commented on how great it was to hear a little piece of home while so far away.
I feel like an old friend has been literally been put out to pasture, way before their time.
I hope CP24 will enjoy listening to themselves, cuz I’m removing the station as a favourite.

sheryl
@ 5:17PM - 03.27.09

I was shocked and dismayed to find out my favorite station 1050 CHUM AM was gone. I will not listen to CP news. How much news do we need??? Enough already!!!!

Ken Prescott
@ 11:42PM - 03.27.09

THIS DISGUSTS ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The idiots at CHUM never really got it! They played the same TOP-10 oldies over and over again and bored us ALL to death. Were they not at one time a TOP 40 Station? What about the hits that hit 11 to 40 and beyond on the charts! If I hear the Wanderer again 3 times in the same day I might go crazy!! You had your chance and BLEW IT! Rest in peace CHUM…Moses will pick up your listeners and show you where you went wrong.

tony
@ 1:14PM - 03.28.09

loved 1050 chum, i loved satnite with the boogieman scottcarpenter, iloved the moring show with gord james it will never be the same. scott and gord let us know if your back on radio, love you guys love 1050 CHUM. GOOD BYE cp24 & radio 1050 i will never watch or waste my time with that crap you call radio.

Jeff Berman
@ 1:11PM - 03.29.09

This was a really dumb move AGAIN!!, almost like deja-vu. Wasn’t this tried before? I listened to CHUM every day, heard requests from internet listeners from the US and Europe. Obviously myself and a lot of others thought this was a great station. Gord, Robbie, Scott and Roger have remarkable knowledge in the music of the 50’s-70’s. They had an incredible website set-tup. I hope someone (maybe Rogers) has the foresight to bring it all back.

Tigger59
@ 2:47PM - 03.29.09

There’s a lot of IMPORTANT music history as well as Canadian and Toronto music history on 1050chum.com. Will that website be brought back or are they going to erase the information? Toronto Radio will never be the same.

wonderpig
@ 11:03PM - 03.29.09

Rogers has no foresight! We’ll just have to wait until somebody buys CHUM and puts it back in it’s rock n roll format again! It happened before (with it’s all-sports disaster) and for now, we have AM740!

Renate
@ 8:19AM - 03.30.09

I have posted wherever I could to display my anger. We have enough news stations and other media outlets to drive us all crazy but not enough stations to bring back a little joy and good music from the 50’s and 60’s and yes there was repetition but you couldn’t beat Roger Ashby’s Sunday morning show – that I will truly miss. Really sad especially when there is only loud noise called new wave to listen to. What were they thinking? Remember when it was an all sports station, yeah, that didn’t last either, let’s hope this will show CP 24 that we don’t care to listen.

1weasel
@ 5:29PM - 03.30.09

wonderpig, Rogers has nothing to do with the 1050 format change, the station is owned by CTVglobemedia.

Neville A. Ross
@ 6:29AM - 04.21.09

Oh, boo-fracking-hoo.

I am damn glad that ‘Classic Rot’ is dead in Toronto. Good riddance!

This unnecessary and unneeded format has killed all innovation in music for years and years, forcing those of us who are open-minded to new music to watch as new rock/R&B/funk/punk/soul/dance electronica groups/artists are passed up and pushed off the commercial airwaves in favor of old music and older groups/artists whose albums made back their commercial costs a long time ago. The radio stations in Toronto are an example: once the gateway for new sounds coming in from the UK and the EU, as well as new homegrown sounds, Toronto has instead become the receptacle/jump-off point for music from the USA only. Instead of being innovative in the field of having an ‘ear to the ground’ and making sure that new groups/artists are discovered that way, most of the big radio stations (1050 CHUM/104.5 CHUM FM, Q107, CFNY 102.1, etc.) have just decided to become bland purveyors of ‘the best of the old with the best of the new’-which means stay-at-home Mommy/Grandpa/Grandma music like Celine Dion, Whitney Huston, Kenny G, John Tesh, Britney Spears, Pink, Avril Lavinge(sp), etc. …all the overproduced commercial crap of the 80’s &’90’s with all of the overplayed classic music of the ’50’s, ’60’s, & ’70’s. No really innovative stuff like what we had from the mid-to-late ’70’s /early ’80’s music explosion (punk, new wave, Eurodisco/New Romantic, funk, electronica et al), no new groups/artists to replace the old, and no way for anybody new starting out to be heard so that they can prosper…no, just the same **** heard over and over again because lazy baby boomers can’t get off of their spotty behinds to go down to the record store and buy the same albums that they head before when they were younger, plus crappy, Disney-orientated pop music made because these same people can’t stand to hear anything harder on the air anymore, nor can they allow their kids to hear it! No, thanks to this format, I have to download my music from off of the Internet, or to hunt for it like a bloodhound on hard to hear college radio because it isn’t ‘like it used to be’.

Maybe now, it will be truly ‘like it used to be’, and we can hear new music if CP24 doesn’t work and CTVglobemedia decides to try a new format (hopefully playing a format called ‘Contemporary innovative music’, which would play Third World sounds, electronica, heavy metal, punk, dance, (house, acid house, trance, drum & bass), jazz (classical and modern), alt-country, R&B, and some oldies-NOT all oldies everyday, but once in a blue moon), and in AM stereo to boot. That’s what Toronto really needs, not a regurgitation of the past for people who can’t live in the present.

Robert
@ 8:24PM - 06.18.09

With all the money CTV BELL GLOBE MEDIA makes wouldn’t one think that a losing proposition like 1050 CHUM AM was a good tax w/o for corp., income tax?
Maybe the CFO will see the light and bring it back if for no other reason than money.
While the rest of us just enjoy it for what it is, the GREATEST ROCK RADIO STATION IN THE WORLD FOR ALL TIME!

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