The Rise and Fall of CJOR:  Ratings tell the whole story--the star of '75 is dimming

Question:  What's the difference between CJOR and the Titanic? 
Answer: They played music on the Titanic.---as told on air by CKNW's Al Davidson.

           COMPARISONS WITH THE TITANIC may be premature, but the ratings clearly document the steady decline of mostly talk radio CJOR.  The rise and fall started in the early 70s, when mega-businessman Jimmy Pattison bought the station and rescued it from bankruptcy.  "It's a very simple story,"  says Pattison.  "I bought it when it couldn't pay its bills.  It was broke and had lost its licence.  By 1975, Pattison had put CJOR at the top of the Vancouver radio market--tied with its arch rival CKNW.

        But the most recent radio ratings, issued in December, show CJOR ranks 6th out of 14 Vancouver stations.  CJOR's decline is a tale of an aging audience, format changes that resulted in inconsistent programming, advertising abandonment and staff cuts in the face of shrinking revenues and ratings.  When the axe came down at CJOR last February,  15 employees were laid off in a single day--now referred to as The Purge, according to CJOR traffic reporter Linda Lee.  The move affected the station's remaining staff a number of ways.  Lee, for example had reported on city traffic from a helicopter.  Her chopper was grounded.  She now reports on traffic one floor below street level in CJOR's windowless Grosvenor Hotel office. 

       After the purge, the remaining staff were invited to a cocktail party by Tiff Trimble, chairman and chief executive officer of the Jim Pattison Automotive Group and executive responsible for CJOR.  Trimble told the gathering there wouldn't be any more firings, but added that those who were left would have to work harder.  Despite Trible's reassurrances, the CJOR newsroom lost 7 more members in October--four were laid off and three quit and weren't replaced.  Ironically, CJOR's format calls for 80% news and information.  But the budget cutbacks, firings and the long list of resignations of key management personnel and on-air personalities are only symptoms of CJOR's falling ratings.  The cause is inconsistent programming which played havoc with listener loyalty. 

        In the mid-70s heyday,  CJOR boasted a talk-show lineup of Jack Webster, Monty McFarlane, Pat Burns, Denny Boyd, Chuck Cook and Jim Nielson.  They constituted a tremendous overhead in salaries (Webster alone was making $250,000 a year when he left CJOR in 1978 to join BCTV.)  Webster was CJOR's biggest loss-- the station 2was virtually built around him, says Trimble,  and when he left, CJOR replace him with John Reynolds, a former federal Conservativfe MP who hadn't a shred of broadcasting experience.  Reynolds left last year after failing to reach a new contract agreement.  "They expected ratings increases to happen overnight," he says. 

        Now the station is placing its morning-slot money (more than $92,000 a year) on Rafe Mair, the former provincial health minister who resigned his Kamloops seat to join CJOR last February.  Mair is gaining popularity, but he still can't match the drawing power of Webster or even CKNW's Gary Bannerman, who's leading by almost 2-1 in the ratings.   Finding a replacement for Webster was only part of the problem. 

       Most of CJOR's audience is over 50 including 68% of morning listeners and up to 80% during Mair's open-line program.  This is one of the least desirable target groups for advertisers, says Catherine Simpson, media director for Simons Advertising Ltd., a large Vancouver ad agency.   "The 18-49 group is the major buying group.  And 18-34 is a very important group.  They are establishing buying habits--buying things for their homes, buying for their families.  After 34, they're establishing their buying habits."  To try to attract younger listeners and more advertising revenue--station general manager Don Wall changed the station's format in 1978.  It was the first of a series of format changes and served only to alienate the older, loyal audience.  Wall put disco music on Saturday nights and inserted segments of music during the Terry Moore program.  Moore, now at CKNW, says he told Wall at the time that disco was on its way out.  And he says the music segments during his program "kissed off all the people who had listened to CJOR for years." 

       Wall took ill and retired in 1979, was succeeded by assistant general manager Neil Soper, who carried on with Wall's format.  Soper left CJOR a year later to join the Palmer Jarvis advertising agency and was succeeded by Al Anaka.  Anaka made the most dramataic format change--to "newstalk" a mix of news, stock market, sport and weather reports and open-line shows from 5 am-midnight.  The station plays no music until after midnight.  But Anaka resigned after less than a year as general manager, claiming he didn;t have the financial backing to implement his plan.   Trimble says Anaka was hired knowing how much money the station
could afford to spend, "but he hired too many bodies . . . the costs got out of hand when the format changes were made." 

       After Anaka quit, Trimble himself took direction of CJOR for six months this year until general sales manager Ron Vandenberg was promoted.  Vandenbert is convinced newstalk will catch on in Vancouver, citing the formats's success in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, where, he says, KIRO is number one.  Others disagree, but the crux of CJOR's problem--listeners' perceptions of an inconsistent format--remains.  Says Catherine Simpson: "People like habit and traditiion.  We know when tune into CFMI what we're gong to hear.    But CJOR has been changing for two years.  People have got into the habit of not listening to CJOR because they don't know what they're going to hear." 

      Vandenbert says it will take another 2 or 3 years of ratings--up to a year--before a trend will show.  Trimble says the station has "bottomed out."  And its volume of advertising has dropped accordingly, forcing the station to reduce its rates for a 30-second spot in the breakfast period to $35, compared to $120 for a 30-second spot during the same-period on CKNW.     Station owner Jimmy Pattison often has been accused of meddling in the station's programming.  But Trimble says CJOR doesn't rank very high in the financial importance of the 25 or so companies Pattison owns, although the station is close to Jimmy's heart.  Pattison said he doesn't take an active role in the station.  "I hire people to run my companies.  You'll have to speak to them," he said.  But he added, "Maybe we should have meddled with the station a long time ago." 

Written by Neal Hall

From the Vancouver Sun:   Jan. 8, 1982