Popular radio station 93.5 loses its urban touch and its dedicated listeners
Tricia Kanhai
Contributor
On Feb. 2, 2011, Toronto’s Black community was hit with a devastating blow when the city’s first commercial Black radio station, Flow 93.5, fired more than half of its staff and cut most of its programming.
The “New Flow”, under the ownership of CTV, was sold by original owner Denham Jolly in a $27-million transaction. The radio station once dedicated to hip hop, R&B, soca, and reggae music saw a noticeable change when the majority of on-air talent, who were visible minorities deriving from the African and Caribbean diaspora, were fired.
The remaining on-air personalities who retained their jobs were all white people. With the firings and program cuts, ironically coming at the beginning of Black History Month, many people found that the timing of those events were in poor taste.
With the Black community in fear of having its voice diminished, concerns were increased by the dim statement released by CHUM radio president Chris Gordon. CHUM FM comes under the CTV Globemedia brand.
“It’s kind of hard to say,
‘What’s urban?’ and ‘What’s rhythmic?’ and ‘What’s hip hop? Dance? What’s crossover? All I can tell you is that we’re committed to being a very rhythmic radio station,” Gordon stated in a Toronto Star article published on Feb. 2, 2011.
Encyclopedia Britannica defines “Urban music” as a “musical genre of the ‘80s and ‘90s defined by recordings by rhythm-and-blues or soul artists with broad crossover appeal. Urban contemporary began as an American radio format designed to appeal to advertisers who felt that Black radio would not reach a wide enough audience.” Urban music is therefore a politically correct term for Black music.
When Flow 93.5 hit the airwaves in 2001, its mandate as stated by original owner Milestone Inc. was to produce a commercial radio station that was a “modern-day reflection of the rich musical traditions of Black musicians and Black-influenced music over at least the past century.”
Race has, therefore, been a part of the equation since the inception of Flow 93.5. The idea of restructuring a radio station without considering its history upset the station’s core audience.
In the so called diverse cultural mosaic that makes up Toronto, how did a community (particularly the Black community) feel that its voice has been lost on commercial radio? To fully understand this question one would have to remember how and why Flow found its way onto the commercial airwaves in the first place.
Prior to Flow’s first airdate in 2001, Black artists within Toronto did not have a commercial radio outlet for their music. During the ‘80s and ‘90s, fans of urban music would be lucky if they heard a hip hop, R&B, reggae, or soca song on a commercial radio station.
For those seeking to hear music that derived from the traditions of Black or Caribbean music, they had to tune into local community radio stations such as CKLN, or CIUT. Community radio had weekly shows that would dedicate a few hours to playing hip hop, R&B, soca, and reggae music.
Much Music was another Canadian outlet for fans of hip hop and R&B. During the ‘80s and ‘90s, Much Music had weekly shows like Soul in the City hosted by Michael Williams, Da Mix hosted by Tony ‘Master T’ Young and Rap City. Similarly to the changes of its American counterpart MTV, Much Music has gotten rid of most music video programming to make way for television series like Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars and Degrassi. However, in January 2011, Much Music did resurrect Rap City, which airs for one hour each week.
Fans in Southern Ontario who wanted to listen to hip hop and R&B music would regularly tune into Buffalo, New York radio station 93.7 WBLK. Also, during the ‘80s and ‘90s WBLK catered to the neglected Southern Ontario market. WBLK was an upbeat source for the Black community who were looking for an outlet for music that was representative of their culture.
Milestone Inc. CEO, and original Flow owner Jolly, endured a decade-long fight to get a Black radio station on the airwaves in Toronto.
After a grassroots movement to obtain thousands of signatures for the station, and the submission of three different applications to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commissions (CRTC), Jolly finally obtained a radio license from them.
The success in obtaining a license from the CRTC made Jolly the first Black person in Canada to ever receive a commercial radio license. The grassroots movement to get Flow on the air was lobbied as an organization trying to get a radio station in Toronto that catered to the undervalued and underrepresented genres of hip hop, R&B, soca, and reggae.
When Flow was finally on the air, the Canadian listeners of 93.7 WBLK diminished because the signal was now being (purposely) drowned out by Flow’s newly-acquired adjacent frequency.
Though loyal fans of WBLK were upset that the frequency was being drowned out, they were optimistic because for the first time in Canadian history, African and Caribbean Canadians had a voice that not only represented Canadian urban music artists, they had a voice to represent their culture as well. Though the station met its fair share of criticism for not playing a wide variety of reggae and soca music, the station still filled a void in the community.
The station’s recent change to a more popular music formatting was a serious setback to a community that fought long and hard with the CRTC to have its voice heard. Disconcerted, many in the Black community felt that the firing of the radio personalities in February 2011 was equivalent to losing their black voice of Toronto.
Canadian R&B star Glenn Lewis, expressed his thoughts about Flow’s program changes via Twitter. In a February 2, 2011 tweet, he stated: “Stand for something or fall for anything! We just lost our voice at radio in Toronto. Please folks in Toronto! Hit up Flow 93.5 on their website and express the importance of Black presence on Flow! As a community and as consumers this affects us all.”
Although there is an emergence of rap and R&B artists moving more into the mainstream, like Jay Z, Eminem, Drake, Rihanna, and Beyonce, they are not the only artists that represent urban music. There are many talented artists that represent the wide spectrum of Black music and urban contemporary sounds. The Black community deserves to have its voice and culture properly represented on the station that was produced with this cause in mind.
There is still hope for Toronto’s Black community to regain its voice on commercial radio though. That hope now lies with the creation of the new commercial radio station G 98.7. Founded by radio veteran Fitzroy Gordon, G 98.7 CEO and station manager, the station went on air November 2011.
G 98.7 holds the distinction as Canada’s first urban adult contemporary-formatted radio station. In a twist of fate, Gordon has benefited from Flow’s loss by hiring many of their talented staff and on-air personalities. With G 98.7’s poignant slogan proclaiming “The Way We Groove,” this new station finally puts Toronto in the flow, with a true representation of everything that is Black music.
