Astounding CKUA changes: No one gets fired!

Posted on February 7, 2014 By Mike Ross Entertainment, Front Slider, news, TV and Radio

cast as the new lieutenant in every war movie ever made: Hung out to dry by the commanders back in the bunker, shot in the back by his own troops and left to die in a foxhole.

Rhetorically speaking, pun not intended.

READ: Listeners say off with their heads.

This was real: Threats of cancelled subscriptions put just as big a scare into CKUA management as anyone at a commercial station faced with a sharp drop in ratings. That’s how advertising rates are set. Mainstream radio people live and die by these dumb ratings. CKUA subsists on subscribers whose role is likened more to lots of little advertisers. Hey, if you threw in $50 a year to listen to free radio, you’d feel entitled, too.

Through all the Coxworth outrage, other listeners grumbled that changes at CKUA are long overdue. The trait that makes this station unique – how involved the listeners are – is the very thing that can keep it from moving forward.

Management was more careful this time.

“We took a lot of lessons and learned a lot of things,” Fox says. “I think everybody agrees that we need to make changes. The listeners want to change, but no listener wants to take away what they love.”

They didn’t reverse last year’s decision of axe local news programming, however, especially troubling given how CKUA used to be famous for its broadcast journalism. Fox explains that the news budget had been cut back so much that by the time he got there two years ago, it was unsustainable.

Besides, he says, “We learned from listeners that they come for the arts and culture. They appreciated the news but they didn’t come for it … We had to make a tough call. The days of being a one-stop department store media outlet are gone. You have to focus on your strengths, on your niche.”

Some of the changes will improve CKUA’s “on demand content” on the Internet, Fox says. And if any listeners complain about use of the word “content” or even “Internet” in shaping the future of their beloved radio station, consider that CKUA was into crowd-sourcing long before it became one of the best ways – if not the only way – to make real money in an online world.

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