The Canadian Music and Broadcast Industry Awards nominations were announced last week.
With more than a dozen categories and 7-9 nominees per category, the bar isn’t very high. But nevertheless, congratulations to the nominees from Montreal (all anglophone stations, since I guess French-language ones are excluded):
- Program director of the year (major market): Mark Bergman, CJFM
- Station of the year (hot adult contemporary): Virgin Radio 96 (CJFM)
- Station of the year (classic gold): CHOM
- Station of the year (multicultural): Radio Centre-Ville (CINQ)
- Station of the year (news/talk): CJAD
Among categories with no Montreal nominees are music director of the year and on-air talent. I’m sure critics of commercial radio here will be liberal in their interpretation of that.
The awards, along with others for the recording and touring industry, are handed out March 22 during Canadian Music Week in Toronto.
French stations here used to get nominated and win quite regularly. When CKOI was at its peak it would always get nominated, and longtime music director Guy Brouillard may have even been a multiple winner. I’m pretty sure other stations here have been nominated.
Guy Brouillard was a music director wizard,actually so was Neil Kushnir from CHOM at the time, you’re right Steve, we are liberal, as it’s no surprise that the current music directors haven’t been nominated…they follow the suits that give them thier marching orders are not very astute or creative…
CHOM’s Picard could be informed that there are more than 5 songs, hits/classic album tracks in the repertoire of the Stones and Fab Four…My son from Gade 5 at the time knew more of the songs…
Q92 or the Beat,on the weekends with Nat Lauzon started off well on the weekend with great classic Top 40 dance tracks….from Chaka Khan and others from mid to late 70’s and early 80’s that escape my memory at the time..it was great to be shopping during the weekend in some stores and to hear in some mall store or funky boutique with the headphones on my smrtphone and listen to the those classic tracks..instead of the usual weekday fare, but not has that stuff been dropped or severely reduced…
So no surprise….Maybe I apply to se if they need some help, My home library would put theirs to shame.
I think I have a medal for “participant” somewhere in my basement….
Well I just don’t get it. How can a Program Director who has lost almost all his staff (two morning show cohosts, midday person, drive personality) be nominated for an award of anything? This would be unheard of in any other business. If a store manager or hotel owner would lose key members of their staff, they would be lucky to keep their job, not be rewarded with an award or even nomination. I guess radio is very special that way.
Of course the question to ask here is who nominates them. Is it some professional body of peers, a committee or other? How do we know its not someone with connections to the right people? Thus the whole thing becomes a pathetic farce.
As for the sorry state of Montreal radio, it’s nothing new. I remember an employee I supervised back in the 90s who came from Ottawa and was astounded at how bad the radio was here. I thought he was just some disgruntled whiner but after visiting Ottawa and listening to their radio then checking out other cities onlineI had to agree. Heck even while vacationing in the Maritimes last summer I was shocked at the high quality of radio in cities such as Fredericton, Moncton, Charlottetown and Halifax. I also fondly recall OZ FM when vacationing in Newfoundland back in the 80s. It was rebroadcast all over the province and as a result, even tiniest little outports enjoyed rock radio made CHOM sound like some shoddy student radio with zero budget.
The stations nominate themselves by applying in 50 words or less. They send relevant testimonials, airchecks, photos, etc. to the nomination committee.
Each category has its own nominations requirements, but here is the complete summary. It’s quite interesting:
http://www.cmw.net/awards/music-and-broadcast-industry-awards/cmbia-nomination-criteria/
The awards were handed out last night in Toronto. No Montreal radio winners, but Osheaga DID win best festival.
Winners are listed here in red:
http://www.cmw.net/awards/music-and-broadcast-industry-awards/
Well, a no-brainer here, it was good to see Country 105 in Calgary and K Rock in Kingston get their categories..
Not surprising that our locals didn’t pick up anythng and good for the judges to be astute enough to recognize the lack of creativity in Montreal radio…
Osheaga for sure..I’m also surprised that the Corona didn’t win their section considering all the dollars spent to get it up to snuff for today’s showbiz standards….