No soap, radio

There is an old joke you told one another when you were in summer camp back in 1969, when you were 12: Two elephants were taking a bath and one turned to the other and said, "Can you pass the soap, please?" To which the other elephant responded "No soap, radio." It was hysterical, because it made no sense... even funnier later on if you smoked weed. And it still makes no sense, which makes it comparable to Montreal's current radio scene.

Not sure what it's like in other markets, especially American ones where you locate a different and generally good radio station every 10-15 miles you drive when you are on an American vacation. I do know they have JACK-FM in some markets, a musical radio format far superior to anything we have here. But Montreal radio has sucked badly for at least the past decade. FM is bad enough. AM? It's virtually deceased.

When I was a teen, around 13 or so, the biggest impact on me was AM radio. With my little transistor radio having just an AM dial, I would lie in my backyard, with a sun reflector under my chin, trying to rid myself of my vampire-like pallor, and listen to Ralph Lockwood, DJ over at CKGM or Charles P. Rodney (Chucky) Chandler at CFOX. These two guys were radio gods to an English kid in Quebec and they played the coolest music, even though I heard Montreal band Mashmakhan's As the Years Go By a few too many times the summer it was number one with a bullet for 13 straight weeks. I also remember becoming a Bee Gees fan the moment I heard I Started a Joke and Words on that very same little radio.

Radio was huge here and there were many really good stations. On AM, you also had CJAD, which featured professional veteran broadcasters and newsmen and a talk format, and CFCF radio, which debuted as Canada's first station in 1919 under the Marconi label. CFCF carried Expos and Canadiens games at the time and when I later worked for the renamed AM-60 selling commercial time, I was in heaven because I was out there hawking airtime for businesses that supported my two favourite sports teams in the world.

I started worked for CKGM in 1988, just as the fondly-remembered Lockwood was departing (my first day on the job, I attended his retirement party that evening), and its sister station CHOM-FM, one of THE best rock stations anywhere.

Well, sad to say that CHOM is still one of the better rock stations, in Montreal, at least, but as for the others, you can cry all you want but that won't fix what has happened since. CFCF is dead, 940-AM, which inherited CFCF's license, had its plug pulled yesterday (two attempts to revive it failed, first as an All News, All Talk station and then as a Greatest Hits vehicle that also carried America's Art Bell-created Coast-to-Coast, one of my personal faves) and CJAD is just a shell of its former self.

This past year has been a horrendous period for Montreal English radio. After 940 became the one station I listened to day in and out - thanks mainly to the musical knowledge and charm of its veteran morning man, the legendary Marc "Mais Oui" Denis, Denis was unceremoniously dumped by the GM at Montreal's two Corus Radio stations, 940 and Q-92 FM... a guy I worked with in sales at CHOM, Mark Dickie. Then, CJAD had a massive housecleaning, ridding itself of some eight regulars overnight, including its hardest-working employee, late-night host Peter Anthony Holder, who had been on air there for some 20 years. Next, Dickie fired two members of Q-92’s likeable and experienced morning crew, Paul "Tasso" Zakaib and Suzanne Desautels, leaving a stunned Aaron Rand to fend for himself. And most recently, Ted Bird, long-time CHOM morning man, resigned after what I hear was a serious effort to force him to do so.

Then came yesterday's murder of 940-AM by Corus, which clearly has no idea what it's doing and is allowing the lunatics to run the asylum. I am almost certain that Q-92 will be the next to go because, frankly, I don't think Rand can carry the station by himself.

For those of us old enough to care (and I am sure young adults are far too busy downloading music illegally to give a damn what they're playing on radio, which may be the gist of the problem), this is just a continuation of the terminal illness of the media that began with the ongoing demise of print journalism. The computer age has forced traditional media into a coffin, a coffin that will eventually be filled with printed books, as well. Just watch. As Kindle and similar electronic reading media becomes more affordable, fewer people will buy books in their traditional formats and more and more publishers will shut their doors.

No soap, radio?

Not so funny to me anymore.