Thursday, May 19, 2005

Canada's AM Band - Is It Over?

Some eye-opening stats from M Street Journal on the amazing decline of AM in Canada.

DX’er Barry McLarnon in Ottawa has been keeping tabs on what’s left of Canada's AM dial and he says that there are just 237 AM stations still on the air (not countin glow-power relay transmitters under 100 watts).

Ontario leads the pack with 54 AMs, followed by British Columbia with 45 and just 28 each in Alberta and Quebec. Prince Edward Island has just 2 AM signals, as do the Northwest Territories and Yukon, and there’s just one in chilly Nunavut.

Barry says Canada now has fewer than half the number of AM signals per capita that the U.S. does — but notes that the pace of AM-to-FM conversions has slowed dramatically, with most of the remaining AMs in large markets where they’ll likely stick around for a while.

..which is why we were delighted last week to see radio awards go to our friends at Harvard-owned CKRM-AM, Regina. Best medium market newscast and the Charlie Edwards Award for Spot News at the Prairie Regional meeting of the RTNDA.

AM won't be viable if we don't offer unique, local, topical and compelling content. (nor will FM for very much longer!) Nice to see that GM Michael Olstrom's Regina crew gets that.

2 comments:

Albright and O'Malley said...

gbohnert@harvardbroadcasting.com writes:

Thanks for the mention.

As well at the RTNDA EDM many good sessions..one on the New Media...Bloggers.

We called up Russ Hill News Director KSL Salt Lake City whose using a blog site to allow his reporters to blog on..as well as doing some podcasting etc...of course would be nice to have an operation like KSL.....Russ has a website team! but the concept was very interesting (and promising!).

Many AM stations are boosting their websites..maybe part of the package now?

It was certainly rewarding to accept the awards in Edmonton since the Charlie is for coverage of the Snowbird crash..and
my news people..Jim, Craig, Sarina and Jennifer handled it
without calling me in panic or missing a beat. Certainly (it is) their award.

Regards
Greg Bohnert
News Dir/TalkHost
620CKRM Regina
Harvard Broadcasting Inc
gbohnert@620ckrm
306 546 6230 voice
306 781 7338

Albright and O'Malley said...

gbohnert@harvardbroadcasting.com writes:

Thanks for the mention.

As well at the RTNDA EDM many good sessions..one on the New Media...Bloggers.

We called up Russ Hill News Director KSL Salt Lake City whose using a blog site to allow his reporters to blog on..as well as doing some podcasting etc...of course would be nice to have an operation like KSL.....Russ has a website team! but the concept was very interesting (and promising!).

Many AM stations are boosting their websites..maybe part of the package now?

It was certainly rewarding to accept the awards in Edmonton since the Charlie is for coverage of the Snowbird crash..and
my news people..Jim, Craig, Sarina and Jennifer handled it
without calling me in panic or missing a beat. Certainly (it is) their award.

Regards
Greg Bohnert
News Dir/TalkHost
620CKRM Regina
Harvard Broadcasting Inc
gbohnert@620ckrm
306 546 6230 voice
306 781 7338