Last Updated on: 14th August 2026, 01:02 pm
Rogers Sports and Media up and murdered six radio stations yesterday. Sportsnet 650 Vancouver, Sportsnet 960 Calgary, 660 NewsRadio Calgary, 1130 NewsRadio Vancouver, 95.7 NewsRadio Halifax, and most important to us living around here, 570 NewsRadio Kitchener.
They did it for the same reason that all these cunts say they have to do it. I’m so sick of writing it that I’m just going to copy and paste some of what I wrote when CHML shut down to save myself the effort. Just replace Hamilton with Kitchener as you read and you’ll be fine.
The reasons for its demise should be all too familiar to anyone who pays attention to this stuff. Overly large company wants to own everything, but doesn’t much care for the part where it has to pay to run it.
They also blamed Canada’s unfavourable regulatory environment, because that’s what you do when you’re a private company that historically gets whatever it wants from the CRTC and the government but still don’t think it’s enough.
I hate to have to go on this rant again, but if anyone should be complaining about the regulatory environment, it should be the people of Hamilton who just lost a nearly century old radio station because of shareholders who have probably never been there or listened to it. If we hadn’t spent decades allowing the rampant media consolidation that creates monsters like Postmedia, Bell, Rogers, Corus and the like, chances are we wouldn’t be seeing this sort of thing happen over and over again at the pace it’s been happening in the last five-ten years. Those companies exist solely to wring every bit of value they can out of assets and then discard them. They have zero interest in running properly scaled, sustainable businesses or in the communities that those businesses are supposed to serve.
Nailed it.
What makes this one extra insulting is that Rogers, unlike Corus, still has gobs of money. Gobs enough that right before they committed this massacre, they dropped billions of dollars in order to complete their quest to monopolize Toronto sports. The fact that the good people of Waterloo Region now have no station on which to listen to any of those sports would almost be funny were it not so extremely goddamned off pissing.
570 failed us a lot because Rogers never much cared for putting sufficient resources behind it, but make no mistake, its loss is going to be felt here for a very long time. During the hours it was allowed to function properly, it filled a need that no one else in town has truly filled in years. If you needed ongoing traffic or weather info, that’s where you went. Wondering why your hydro went out? That’s where you went. Promoting a community event or need to talk up an important issue, that’s where you went. And now, with the stroke of a greedy asshole’s pen, it’s all gone.
Yes, there are other stations, but most of them are automated to absolute death. The CBC has a very good morning show, but that’s about all it has. Once the clock hits 8:37, it’s pretty much useless from a local perspective. Nothing against Q or The Current, but they’re not what I need when I’m ass deep in snow and wondering if I’ll ever get out.
But speaking of the CBC, this feels like a fine opportunity to make an argument I’m sure I’ve made before. It needs an afternoon show. There is absolutely no reason why our local drive time programming should be coming out of Toronto. There’s more than enough going on around here to fill another three hours each day. And especially after the events of this week, it shouldn’t be super difficult to put a team together. As it was it was a missed opportunity, but as it is now there’s absolutely no excuse for not doing it. If the CBC is truly serious about being relevant to Canadians and their communities, let’s get going.
Rogers, for its part, says that while the radio station may be gone, the 570 website will continue to cover local news. But if you think that commitment is going to stick around for the long haul, I currently own a bridge you should come take a look at. Keeping promises really isn’t their thing.