There is good news in Canadian radio, if you know where to listen

Posted by author February 11, 2025 World

As a teenager, Backstreet Boys fan Shannon Burns won tickets to their concert for her and her sister on Virgin Radio. Today, she hosts Virgin Radio’s nationally syndicated midday show, and relived her excitement when she gave away tickets to a Backstreet Boys concert.

In a decade, the listener has become the host. Burns, with her melodious drawl, a voice that smiles and 759,000 followers on TikTok, is bridging the gap between Canadian radio’s past and present.

She grew up and came out on the radio, and represents a new kind of DJ in Canada who not only knows how to play the hits, but livestreams herself while she does it.

“Radio never goes away – it evolves and changes,” said Burns at the Virgin headquarters in downtown Toronto, where she records station promos and contest announcements between songs. She doesn’t actually select her music, but her personable introductions and energetic segues keep the familiar Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift tunes feeling fresh and alive on the air.

“I love that radio is heard by so many people at the same time,” Burns continues. “There’s something special about hearing your favourite song come on the radio and knowing that there are other people listening and enjoying that song at the same time you are.”

From Virgin Radio’s Toronto studio, midday host Shannon Burns tries to cultivate the same excitement for radio that she experienced growing up – but with new avenues to reach people, such as social media and livestreaming. About 734,000 users follow her on TikTok.

Laura Proctor/The Globe and Mail

She’s not the only one who thinks radio is something special. It’s no secret the medium has seen monumental challenges, as giants such as Apple, YouTube and Spotify have moved in, and stations are being shuttered and sold off across the country. According to Numeris, an audience-measuring firm, average radio listening hours of Canadians over 12 decreased by 35 per cent between 2013 and 2023, while hours spent listening to streaming services over that same time frame increased 129 per cent.

There’s static across the dial and the signal for Canadian radio’s future isn’t immediately clear. But if you listen harder, it’s not all bad news. Overall financials are slightly up since the start of the pandemic – people are back in their cars where the majority of radio is consumed – and some stations have managed to find ways to survive and thrive, thanks to dedicated industry veterans and loyal listeners, along with innovative fundraising and a focus on local markets.

The latest Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications ad revenue reports from the fiscal 2023 year show an increase of 3.14 per cent in radio advertising compared with the year before, and Statista, a global data platform, forecasts combined radio advertising revenue in the United States and Canada to reach US$16.3-billion by 2028, a 2.5-per-cent increase from where it is now.

Despite these gains, radio is expensive to run, and its balance sheet is difficult to decipher. Stingray, which owns more than 100 radio stations, reported $36-million revenue in its most recent quarter, up 4 per cent from the same period a year ago, and Rogers – which, in November, 2024, laid off more than two dozen employees in its radio and podcast divisions – doesn’t separate its audio earnings from other revenue streams. Meanwhile, Corus reported an $8-million profit in its radio division for the first three quarters of its 2024 fiscal year.

But last February, Bell’s chief legal and regulatory officer Robert Malcolmson decreed radio is “not a viable business any more,” and sold off 45 of its 103 stations. This sent shockwaves through the industry, but radio’s defenders quickly emerged. Vista Radio, headquartered on Vancouver Island, snatched up 21 of those 45 Bell stations and doubled down: Not only wasn’t Vista laying off Bell employees, they were hiring additional people to work at those stations.

Alan Cross, host of the Ongoing History of New Music podcast, has held various radio jobs since 1981. He signed a new contract with Corus in 2022 and says radio will always be part of the Canadian soundscape. Cross doesn’t see his job on the radio as something passive. A radio DJ is part of an important ecosystem that makes, breaks and fosters Canadian talent, he says.

“Radio is the cockroach of media – corporations tried to kill it many times, but it always comes back, and stays.” He adds that Canadian radio’s current conundrum is one it shares with Canadian TV as foreign streamers with revenues topping $25-million, such as Netflix and Disney, resist the government’s mandate to put 5 per cent into a fund producing Canadian content, the way Rogers, Corus, Bell and Stingray all do.

Currently, Amazon (market cap: US$2.4-trillion), Spotify (market cap: US$125.9-billion) and Apple (market cap: US$3.46-trillion) are legally challenging the fee, saying their subscription price would be too high for Canadian listeners if they paid it.

Products such as iTunes, Amazon Music and Spotify all stream in Canadian automobiles – once radio’s monopolistic domain – and, according to Media Technology Monitor, a technology data firm, one-third of Canadian adults have listened to a podcast in the past month and 31 per cent tune into podcasts weekly.

By and large, Canadians aren’t listening to these programs on Canadian platforms: 35 per cent of Canadians get their podcasts on Spotify, the world’s largest podcasting platform, whose stock price has more than quadrupled in the past two years, followed by YouTube, where 22 per cent of Canadians listen to streaming audio shows.

“These foreign companies are draining money out of Canada without putting anything back,” says Cross, adding that this tax, which could bring in $200-million a year according to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, could nurture touring, recording and music video production for Canadian artists.

CKUA Radio, a non-profit based in Calgary and Edmonton, which first went on the air in 1927, plays 126 hours of new local programming, which includes songs and talk-show programming, each week.

Its CEO, Marc Carnes, says radio’s best defence against streamers and layoffs is localization. Bell found radio no longer viable because it was never meant to be centralized, he says. This premise, also touted by Vista Radio when it purchased the Bell stations, empowers local DJs to become part of their communities – appearing at local events and talking about the news happening in their own neighbourhoods.

Carnes’s own station nearly went belly-up last year. While his revenue and audience increased in 2024, CKUA has real estate investments that went sour last spring in downtown Edmonton. Suddenly, Canada’s oldest-running station found itself in the red.

So Carnes turned to his listeners. CKUA began seeking donations and its audience opened their wallets. By the end of 2024, CKUA raised more than $2-million, all through listener donations. Carnes says the financing illustrates the power of local radio in its community.

“Our listeners give us money for something they can get for free because local radio gives value to people’s lives,” Carnes says, adding that last year his station gave air time to 850 artists from Alberta. “We didn’t lose a single person during the downturn and haven’t done any layoffs because the listeners told us with their wallets that they want to connect to that voice they hear.”

The way forward for radio in Canada might just be a combination of tactics: listener donations, local advertising, committed hosts on multiple platforms, alternative revenue streams and programming decentralization.

Back in Toronto, Burns converts TikTok followers into Virgin Radio listeners, sometimes teaching her younger audience what radio even is. Cross does speaking tours and has his own podcast, available on Spotify and Apple Music. CKRZ 100.3, which began in 1987 as a pirate radio station in an old army barracks within the Six Nation of the Grand River in Brant, Ont., sells bingo cards.

CKRZ plays Indigenous contemporary bluegrass, rock and blues, and is a source for local news, language lessons and events in the community. Dubbed “Voice of the Grand,” the station, says executive director Amos Key Jr., found itself $75,000 in debt in 2022 and down to just two employees. Bingo, played over the airwaves with cards purchased from the station, now accounts for 75 per cent of the station’s million-dollar operating budget (it can be played for money outside the jurisdiction of Ontario Lottery and Gaming because CKRZ is located on Indigenous land). Key Jr. hired seven new employees, doubled down on Indigenous artists’ airtime and says owning an Indigenous station is a civic duty.

“Commercial radio stations don’t play our music, but for our people to hear our own music builds nationalism, builds our pride,” says Key, Jr., an accomplished blues player. Free public radio is the best way for a younger demographic to hear Indigenous languages and artists, he says. Key, Jr. stopped taking salary at CKRZ during the pandemic and only now, with bingo putting funds in his station’s coffers, can he pay himself again for doing a job that he clearly loves. He doesn’t believe Canadian radio is dying and thinks now is the time to expand. “Indigenous people need to hear their own voice in their own community and there might not be any core funding for radio anywhere, but we find a way,” he says. “We always have.”

Angeline Tetteh-Wayoe works on the radio at CBC, which has its own unique revenue structure, receiving 70 per cent of its billion-dollar annual budget from government funds. Tetteh-Wayoe, host of CBC Music’s The Block since 2021, says she wasn’t represented by the mainstream radio personalities of her childhood. But campus radio made her feel seen: music, delivered for free by authoritative Black hosts she revered.

“Here I am, a Black person, and I don’t see a lot of people that look like me, but I can hear people that look like me,” she says. “This is where I’m going to live.”

Tetteh-Wayoe says listeners like her will never let radio die because of the service it provides. Spotify has algorithms to keep you listening for a fee, she says, “but if you have a radio, you have free access to the comfort of the human voice.”

Far from simply hosting her show, she says she’s ready to fight for radio’s survival.

“Long live radio, baby. It’s a pillar I cling to in this modern world.”