REVOLVING DOOR:
Jeff Chalmers has joined JAZZ.FM91 (CJRT-FM) in afternoon drive, as longtime host Brad Barker departs the station. Chalmers will be heard from 2 – 6 p.m. ET, weekdays, arriving from Stingray’s boom 97.3 (CHBM-FM) where he’s been an on-air personality since 2014. His five-decade career has included stops at Q107 (CILQ-FM) and JACK-FM Toronto, Y108 (CJXY-FM) Hamilton, the Canadian Traffic Network, and 1350 CKAR Oshawa, among other stations. Barker – who still occasionally plays bass with The Pursuit of Happiness – had been with JAZZ.FM91 for the last two decades. Starting in 2001 as a weekend host, he went on to hold roles including Operations Manager and Music Director. Read more here.
Paul Cross has announced he’s leaving Humber College where he’s taught for the last 21 years in the Broadcasting – Radio program and served as program coordinator for the last three years. Cross will continue to host and produce his media critique podcast, Cross Talk: Media History, Commentary and Analysis. and consult on broadcast and podcast projects.
Lyle McGillivray is hanging up his headphones after 40 years of broadcasting on June 30. The majority of McGillivray’s career has been spent at Estevan’s Country 106.1 (CKSE-FM), where he landed in 1989 (which at the time was Super Country 1280 AM), after starting in radio part-time in Medicine Hat.
Greg Lowe has retired from CKBW/Country 100.7 in Bridgewater, NS, wrapping up a more than 45-year career with the station. Starting in the news department, Lowe went on to serve as Sports Director, before joining the station marketing team for the past 17 years. Acadia Broadcasting is establishing the “Greg Lowe Legacy Award,” which will be presented annually to the Nova Scotia marketing consultant who achieves the highest percentage of budgeted sales in a fiscal year.
Devin Bellinger has joined Durham Radio in Lindsay, ON. Bellinger arrives from Vista Radio in Yellowknife where he’s been program director for the last four years. Prior to that, he spent a decade with Quinte Broadcasting’s stations in Belleville as a producer and music director.
Evan Gibb has joined My Broadcasting Corporation’s stations in Brockville, 103.7 Giant FM (CJPT-FM) and 104.9 MyFm (CFJR-FM), as a Radio & Digital News Reporter, while Alyssa Brush takes on the same role in Kingston. Both are recent Durham College Radio & TV Broadcasting grads.
Richard Madan is now the Province of Manitoba’s U.S. trade representative in Washington, D.C. Madan announced earlier this month, he was signing off from his foreign correspondent role with CBC News, based in Washington, after more than 20 years in journalism.
Mickie Steinmann, Managing Director and Senior Vice President for Warner Bros. Discovery in Canada, has announced he’ll retire this October. Steinmann has been with the company since 1999.
RADIO & PODCAST:
Rogers Sports & Media has launched KiSS Throwbacks on its former SONiC RADiO stations in Vancouver, Abbotsford and Chilliwack. The move sees the KiSS brand reintroduced to B.C.’s Lower Mainland after a three-year absence. Rogers expanded its Edmonton Alternative Rock format SONiC to Vancouver in June 2022 with an infamous viral stunt that saw the station abruptly switch to playing Rage Against The Machine’s Killing in the Name Of on repeat ahead of the launch. KiSS Throwbacks will play hits from the ’90s and 2000s, with its anchor artists including Backstreet Boys, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears, NSYNC, and the Black Eyed Peas. Rick Campanelli, who stepped away from the CHFI Toronto afternoon drive show to join Breakfast Television earlier this month, will helm mornings on KiSS Throwbacks. Read more here.
Four Senses Entertainment has launched Vibe 99.7 (CFDT-FM) in Squamish, BC in line with the branding of its Whistler CHR station, formerly known as Whistler FM (CKEE-FM). Initially slated to go live on Monday, Vibe 99.7’s launch was delayed until Thursday afternoon, complicated by wildfires coming within 20 metres of the transmission tower outside Alice Lake, where Vibe is co-located with CBC. Vibe’s core artists will include Gracie Abrams, Lady Gaga, Lola Young, Kendrick Lamar, Tate, McRae, Benson Boone, Gotye, Ed Sheeran, and Alex Warren, alongside Canadian singer-songwriters like Cameron Whitcomb, Alexander Stewart, The Wknd, and Shawn Desman, in addition to artists from the Sea to Sky region. Read more here.
The National Campus and Community Radio Association’s 43rd conference, NCRC43, held in Nanaimo, BC from June 17–20, and hosted by CHLY 101.7 FM at Vancouver Island University, was a resounding success, bringing together over 85 participants from more than 30 campus, community, and Indigenous radio stations across Canada. The NCRA also handed out the CRABOs, its Community Radio Awards, celebrating outstanding achievement by member campus and community radio stations. Toronto Metropolitan University’s CJTM (Met Radio) claimed a leading five awards, including Best in Podcasting for Mulberries, hosted by Yasaman Mansoori and Sean Warkentine. Dalhousie University campus station, CKDU, captured four awards, including Volunteer of the Year for Ryan Somers (aka R$ $mooth). The University of Calgary Student Radio Society, CJSW, also claimed four wins, sweeping four music programming categories. Find the full list of winners here.
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Terry O’Reilly’s Under the Influence is celebrating 20 years on CBC Radio. The Apostrophe Podcast Company’s I Regret To Inform You has also been picked up as a summer replacement show by the public broadcaster.
Don Cherry says he’s just signed off for the season and not permanently from Don Cherry’s Grapevine Podcast after 313 episodes and 6.5 million downloads. The former Hockey Night in Canada personality, who is now 91, launched the podcast, co-hosted by his son Tim, one week after getting fired from Sportsnet in Nov. 2019, following comments in which he referred to new immigrants as “you people” in expressing his disappointment that more Canadians weren’t wearing the poppy in remembrance of veterans.
Canadian Identity and Culture Min. Steven Guilbeault has been sent an open letter by a group of podcast producers and audio storytellers, appealing to the federal government to recognize podcasting as a core cultural industry. Its signatories include Jen Moss and Roger Nairn, Co-Founders of Vancouver-headquartered branded content studio, JAR Audio; Steve Pratt, Founder of The Creativity Business; Scott Benzie, Executive Director of online content advocacy organization, Digital First Canada; Chris Kelly, Co-Founder of Vancouver-based boutique creative agency, Kelly&Kelly; Fatima Zaidi, Founder & CEO of podcast production agency, Quill, and podcast audience insights platform, CoHost; and Kattie Laur, Editor of Pod the North. The group is urging Guilbeault and the Department of Canadian Heritage to update Canada Media Fund (CMF) eligibility criteria to explicitly include podcasting; establish a new federal podcast fund to support independent Canadian podcast creation; and launch national consultations to co-develop a future-ready policy framework. Read more here.
LISTEN: Jen Moss and Roger Nairn, co-founders of Vancouver-based branded podcast company, JAR Audio, are on the Sound Off Podcast. Among other things, the conversation explores the challenges of making branded podcasts that are authentic and audience-focused, rather than advertorial. They also address the lack of funding for Canadian podcast content and their efforts to advocate for government support.
LISTEN: The saying goes that you haven’t worked in radio, until you’ve worked in Winnipeg. Personalities like Brother Jake Edwards, Terry DiMonte, Don Percy, and many others gathered June 12-14 for the Winnipeg Radio Reunion. It saw colleagues who’ve worked in the market, both past and present, reminisce and reconnect. Broadcast Dialogue caught up with organizer Ralph “Racoon” Carney – an alum of CKRC and 1290 AM (CFRW-AM) Winnipeg, among other stations – to talk about bringing the event to life. He shares some weekend highlights, alongside Paul Graham, Courtney James, Jim Goddard, and Don Percy.
The Edmonton Radio Reunion will take place Thursday, July 3 at Brewsters Brewing Company in Unity Square at 116 Street and 104 Ave. Happening from 4 – 8 p.m. MT, the event is open to anyone that has worked in Edmonton radio.
SIGN OFFS:
Michael Easton, unexpectedly, on June 24. Easton’s radio career started as an announcer and producer with CKDA and CFMS-FM Victoria in the mid-1960s. He went on to work at CJVI and CHEK-TV Victoria, and later CJJC Langley, CJCA-FM Edmonton, and CKPG Prince George. In 2006, Easton founded Puget Sound Radio, a media industry news and commentary site focused on Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest.
Sunny Sidhu, 51, on June 20, after a lengthy battle with scleroderma. A graduate of BCIT, Sidhu’s broadcasting career started at A-Channel in Edmonton in the mid-1990s as an entertainment anchor and fill-in weather host. He worked with the station for seven years, before pursuing freelance projects as a host and producer for MTV Asia, covering festivals and interviewing artists for the network’s markets in India, Pakistan, and Hong Kong, and later for the Channel V music network. While continuing to pursue hosting, acting, voiceover, documentary and other projects, Sidhu simultaneously launched a successful career in real estate. Among his recent projects were 2022 short doc, Punjabi Pioneers of Alberta, which he wrote and starred in; and Singhs in the Ring, the forthcoming feature documentary on the Singh wrestling dynasty for Crave, on which he served as a producer and executive producer. Read more here.
Bryan Onley, 87, on June 13 at the Manitoulin Health Centre, in Little Current, ON. Born in England, Onley moved to Canada with his parents at the age of 13 and settled in Hamilton. He discovered his love for radio shortly after leaving high school early to take a job as a bank teller, joining the radio station in Timmins and then CKWS Kingston, starting in the late 1950s. He was a popular DJ on both AM 960 (CKWS-AM) as well CKWS-TV where he hosted “Teenage Dance Party” throughout the 1960s, modeled after Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand.” Among other career highlights, Onley welcomed the Beatles to Toronto at Maple Leaf Gardens on Sept. 7, 1964. After going back to school at Queen’s University as a mature student where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and then a Master’s Degree with Honours in Political Science, he took up teaching in the Broadcast Journalism program at Loyalist College in Belleville in the late 1970s, where he served as a professor and then Dean and Associate Vice Principal. He went on to become the Director of the School of Journalism at the University of Regina and later travelled to Abu Dhabi to develop and lead the Communication, Journalism and Media Studies programs at the Higher Colleges of Technology.
Lynn Kelly, 72, on June 5 after a long battle against early onset Alzheimer’s. Born in Montreal, Kelly spent her formative years in Europe. Interested in broadcast journalism, she overcame her natural shyness and applied to CBC Toronto in the early 1970s, starting out in a clerical role in the news department before rising to become a reporter, writer, and producer in both New Brunswick and Toronto. She ended her career with the public broadcaster as a producer on The National.
Stanley “Stan” Fox, 97, on May 20, in Victoria. Fox was hired as a film editor at CBC Vancouver in 1953, later becoming a producer and director with the station’s film department. He was also involved in the Vancouver Film Society, which he took over alongside Alan King in 1948, co-founding the Vancouver International Film Festival in 1958. His amateur filmmaking work included award-winning films “Suite Two: A Memo to Oscar” (1947) and “In the Daytime” (1949-50), both of which are preserved in the BC Archives. He returned to television in 1981 at TVOntario as the Director of Adult Programming, acquiring and developing programs. He also served as an Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Film at York University from 1971-84. He went on to work as an independent media producer in Victoria.
TV & FILM:
CBC is offering a full-day of original programming on Tuesday, July 1. CBC News will provide live coverage from locations across the country beginning at 6 a.m. ET. The primetime schedule includes Canada’s Walk of Fame 2025. The day culminates with live concert special Celebrating Our Canada, Loud and Proud from Ottawa, featuring performances by Sarah McLachlan, Cœur de pirate, Aasiva, Josh Ross, Tom Cochrane, Mitsou, Amanda Marshall, Roch Voisine and Randy Bachman, among others.
Ekosi Productions has announced that children’s series Kokum & Dot has gone into production in Vancouver. The live-action TELUS independent kids series, which features Cree language, is filming at the BOSA Centre for Film & Animation in North Vancouver with the animation being done at Calibrate Collective on Vancouver Island. The team has begun filming 8 x 11 minute episodes which will broadcast in 2026. The series is helmed by director and producer April Johnson (Reginald the Vampire), written by Jules Koostachin (Angela’s Shadow) and stars veteran Indigenous actor and musician Renae Morriseau (North of 60). The series is inspired by the life and work of Elder Dorothy Visser with original music by Morriseau’s M’Girl, recorded by Ben Kaplan.
AMI, in partnership with Torrential Pictures, Club Red Productions and Flow Video Inc., launches Pretty Blind on Tuesday, July 8 on AMI-tv and AMI+. Led by Canadian comedy legend Jonathan Torrens (Mr. D, Letterkenny) and writer-showrunner Mark Forward (Fargo, Letterkenny), Pretty Blind captures the comedy of Jennie Bovard’s podcast Low Vision Moments and turns it into a comedy about blindness.
Blue Ant Media has launched its free, ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel, Declassified, on The Roku Channel in Canada. The launch marks an expansion of the brand’s ongoing partnership with Roku, joining Blue Ant free-streaming brands already on the platform in Canada, including Love Pets, Total Crime, Homeful and HauntTV. Programming highlights on Declassified include San Andreas: A Race Against Time; Who Sank the Titanic?; Roman Megastructures; and Top Secret UFO Projects: Declassified.
Protocol Group’s production arm Octapixx Media officially launched its new Toronto broadcast studio and control rooms with an industry gathering on June 17. Located at 150 Ferrand Drive in midtown Toronto, the new facility has been operational since April and is already producing broadcasts, including live Canadian Premier League (CPL) matches on OneSoccer, NASCAR Canada Series for Rev TV, and Top Rank Boxing.
ONLINE & DIGITAL MEDIA:
Toronto.com launches Thursday, a new Metroland Media Group lifestyle platform. Editorial highlights will include: T.O. Do – a curated guide to Toronto and surrounding area happenings; Food & Drink – a celebration of Toronto’s culinary scene; Travel – a local-first travel lens with day trips and weekend getaways exploring destinations in Ontario and nearby regions; Life – a wide-ranging look at how Torontonians live, from fitness and wellness to real estate, culture and art; bi-annual printed guides with the first set to publish in November; and two newsletters. Sponsors include Niagara Parks, City Cruises Toronto, Corona Canada, Liberty Entertainment Group, and Little Canada. Toronto.com will be helmed by Editor-in-Chief Yasmin Aboelsaud, the former executive editor of Curiocity and a former managing editor at Daily Hive.
The Media Technology Monitor (MTM) has released Suddenly It’s Everywhere: The Rise Of Vertical Video, detailing the rapid emergence and penetration of the format with Canadian audiences. It finds two-thirds of online Canadians have already engaged with short-form vertical video content. Gen Zs (ages 18-27) are particularly avid consumers, with nearly nine in 10 watching short-form vertical videos. Engagement is also high among racialized Canadians, while anglophones are more likely to watch than francophones. Despite considerable buzz around TikTok, YouTube Shorts emerges as the most popular platform for short-form vertical video, watched by almost half of online Canadians. Instagram Reels is second most popular.
REGULATORY, TELECOM & MEDIA:
Bell and the Canadian Telecommunications Association are expressing their disappointment at the CRTC’s decision to uphold its ruling allowing Canada’s largest national telecommunications companies (Bell, Rogers, and TELUS) to operate as resellers on the networks of their competitors, including smaller regional providers. The association says if the decision stands, it will lead to reduced investments in network infrastructure, including rural and remote communities, and ultimately less choice for Canadians. Robert Malcolmson, Executive Vice President and Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer of Bell Canada, said the decision has already significantly undermined the business case for future network expansion, with Bell reducing its capital expenditures by $500 million in 2025 alone and by over $1.2 billion since the CRTC’s initial decision in November 2023.
Rogers Communications Inc. has closed its CDN$7 billion equity investment from funds managed by Blackstone, backed by Canadian institutional investors. Blackstone has acquired a non-controlling interest in a new Canadian subsidiary of Rogers that owns a portion of its wireless backhaul transport infrastructure. The investor group led by Blackstone includes Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (La Caisse), the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments), British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) and the Investment Management Corporation of Ontario (IMCO).
PODVERTORIAL: This week on Broadcast Dialogue – The Podcast, we’re joined by Jeffrey Maddox, President of Nokia Canada, as the company marks 40 years in Canada and the 100th anniversary of Nokia Bell Labs. Maddox reflects on the legacy of Bell Labs, from the invention of the transistor in 1947 to its foundational role in shaping modern communications and why he calls Nokia “the company that built Silicon Valley.” He also unpacks Nokia’s billion-dollar commitment to Canada, its leadership in 5G and critical infrastructure, and how Bell Labs is pushing the boundaries of what’s next, from 6G and AI to quantum-safe networks and bridging the digital divide.
Friends of Canadian Media has announced Suzie Dwyer as the winner of the 2025 Dalton Camp Award for her essay Lessons from Around the Dinner Table, a heartfelt reflection on storytelling’s essential role in fostering cross-generational civic education. The $10,000 prize recognizes the best essay on the link between media and democracy. The winner of the inaugural $2,500 scholarship, presented in tandem with RDTNF Canada to a student who demonstrates enthusiasm for politics and a solid comprehension of journalism’s role in a thriving democracy, is Jay Ashdown for Don’t Read the Comments, a news story on the endemic problem of online hate faced by marginalized Canadian journalists.
BROADCAST TECH & ENGINEERING:
NLogic has announced the development of a new consumer insights survey, with the first data release scheduled for fall 2025. Promising “a modernized and dynamic view of Canadian consumer behaviour,” the survey will be executed by global research firm, Sago. The fall release will survey 35,000 respondents and include coverage of emerging categories like AI, health, and gaming with an eye to future local and more frequent surveys to reflect categories with a faster pace of change; and integration of video and audio audience data from Numeris for enhanced campaign planning.
North American Broadcasters Association (NABA), the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), and the Linux Foundation, announced the launch of Media eXchange Layer (MXL) SDK during the annual Network Technology Seminar. The new open-source project addresses the need for native live media exchange on local or hosted compute infrastructure, especially relevant for cloud-fit software systems defined by the EBU Dynamic Media Facility (DMF) Reference Architecture. The project’s initial Technical Steering Committee includes the EBU, CBC/Radio-Canada (User-Chair), BBC, Grass Valley (Implementor-Chair), Riedel, Lawo, Nvidia, and AWS.
LG Electronics (LG) has launched new brand campaign, Radio Optimism, the company says is designed to help strengthen meaningful human connections through shared musical experiences. It allows platform users to send song dedications via its “24/7 dedication station.” LG says the initiative addresses the growing challenge of forming genuine relationships in a tech-driven world, with the campaign seeking “to counteract the disconnection often felt in an era dominated by superficial interactions, such as likes and comments on social media.”
