Covering Niagara: Studies in Local Popular Culture

Where Is the Local in Local Radio?: The Changing Shape of Radio Programming in St. Catharines

WHERE IS THE LOCAL IN LOCAL RADIO? | The Changing Shape of Radio Programming in St. Catharines LAURA WIEBE TAYLOR INTRODUCTION Turn on a radio in St. Catharines, Ontario, and you will hear strong broadcast signals coming in across the dial, spanning the spectrum of FM and AM wavelengths and music and talk formats. Five of those signals—four of them from commercial radio stations—originate within the city itself, constituting and constructing the St. Catharines community from inside its geographical and municipal borders, while competitors from several nearby cities both smaller (Welland and Niagara Falls) and larger (Hamilton and Toronto in Canada, Buffalo in the United States) strive to enfold St. Catharines in their own expansive definitions of the local. Three of the five St. Catharines radio stations broadcast from under the same roof, a historic downtown landmark known officially as the William Hamilton Merritt Broadcasting House, more familiarly as “The Whitehouse of Talk” and “The Whitehouse of Rock.”1 The recent ownership of these stations has less local currency than their physical home; in legal and financial terms, 610 CKTB, 105.7 EZ Rock, and 97.7 HTZ-FM belong to Astral Media, “the largest radio broadcaster in Canada.”2 Despite corporate ownership of radio stations—the norm rather than the anomaly—radio’s “localness” is one of its key attractions for many listeners. In 2005, Canadian survey respondents consistently ranked local radio among their top three sources for access to local information, including news, weather, events, and activities.3 Broadcasters are highly conscious of radio’s local appeal, and terms like “local” and “community” are deeply imbedded 119 120 Movies and Media in radio discourse, forming a part of broadcasting rhetoric, if not always its practice. But traffic and weather reports, advertisements for local businesses, and station identifications or promotional spots that refer to the station’s hometown may be the only truly local elements of a contemporary-format radio broadcast (Berland 1998, 139; 2003, 234, 237). Although radio has the potential to contribute to and “nourish” local communities, it often falls short, and programming generally offers little substantial engagement with the community it purportedly serves (2003, 235). At the same time, the “localization” of a station’s broadcast provides one of the few ways in which radio can differentiate itself in the contemporary mass media environment. By striving to create a sense of community ownership and project a distinct identity, radio stations seek to assert their continuing relevance despite playlists and scheduling grids that closely mirror those of countless other stations throughout North America. Constructing a sense of local identity out of the particular demands and demographics of the local market—a recognizable (if not recognizably) local face—has long been one of radio’s competitive strategies, particularly in its struggle to retain listeners and advertisers that might otherwise turn to television (Berland 2003, 237). The need for distinct local expression is becoming even more pronounced in the industrialized North American entertainment/infotainment market, with so many outlets drawing from the same news sources and music lists, and competing with the decentralized multimedia immediacy of the Internet and satellite feeds. Localization is a pressing need for the stations FIGURE 6.1 William Hamilton Merritt Broadcasting House, home of CKTB, EZ-Rock, and HTZ-FM themselves, competing for their share of the public’s attention, but also for the many communities that are disappearing from mass media view. This case study focuses on the efforts of the three Astral radio stations in St. Catharines to construct and maintain their local identities even in the face of corporate ownership. The oldest of these stations, CKTB, has made efforts to develop and maintain this identity since 1933—through changes in fortune, ownership, and broadcast trends, the addition of sister stations and competitors in the local market, and the rise of new technologies and flashier media attractions to claim listeners’ attention. I explore the means by which these stations—CKTB, EZ Rock, and HTZ-FM—foster the perception of their local identities, namely by advertising their local orientation, encouraging local audiences to interact with the stations or their representatives ; programming local or locally produced content, and engaging (or failing to engage) with local artists and community events. As part of the Astral Media radio group, AM station Newstalk 610 CKTB, and FM stations 105.7 EZ Rock and 97.7 HTZ-FM share house nationally with many other radio...