I HAD TO WRITE TO SET the record straight. As the operations manager of CFRB I couldn’t let what was said (in Tuesday’s story on 640 Toronto) pass without comment.
Here are the facts about what CFRB and 640 Toronto did re the Boxing Day shooting. The facts don’t support what 640 Toronto told you in the interview. They left out a lot of stuff. They didn’t tell you that most of that week (Dec. 26th to 30th) the station was basically in tape mode. With the exception of their newscasts they were re-rolling taped shows from the previous months.
CFRB Radio was live from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. Overnight is when we re-roll our top shows of the day. It’s in our program schedule at cfrb.com. The night of December 26th the New Jersey Devils were in town to play the Leafs. That meant 640 Toronto was tied up with their hockey broadcast.
CFRB was the first radio station with reports of the shooting because Spider Jones was on his way to the station and drove by the area and heard the gunshots!
That prompted programming and news to cover the story live from the scene. Live coverage via our RPU of all the press conferences by police, paramedics and Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair. No other radio station provided the coverage that CFRB did that night or during the rest of the week.
The talk shows on CFRB spent hours discussing the shooting and its implications to the city while 640 Toronto was in taped programming. Newstalk 1010 CFRB was the first media outlet in Toronto to track down and interview live on air Mayor David Miller from Spain where he was on vacation.
Let’s fast-forward to Friday, December 30th. A candlelight vigil was planned at Dundas Square – right next door to 640 Toronto. We sent Studio 1010 to Dundas Square to provide the technical support in order to carry this vigil live commercial free.
To our surprise 640 Toronto all but ignored the vigil. They had a reporter on the scene. They remained in taped programming. John Oakley was on tape that night with a year-in-review. He was talking about gun violence but it had been recorded before the shooting so there was no mention of the Boxing Day Shooting in his year in review.
Tayler Parnaby included the Boxing Day Shooting and its aftermath with all the tape in his year in review that aired Saturday December 31st.
But let’s go back to the Friday night, December 30th.
Ryan Doyle opened his show at 7 p.m. from outside the Foot Locker where people had gathered at the makeshift shrine before the procession to Dundas Square. Live from the sidewalk outside the Foot Locker, Ryan spoke to those who gathered.
During the break for traffic and commercials Ryan made his way a few blocks south on Yonge to Studio 1010 at Dundas Square. The truck was parked in the shadows of 640 Toronto studios. All they had to do at 640 was run a cable out the front door on Yonge Street. Instead, they chose to send a reporter and continue with taped programming while the biggest local story of the year happened right outside their station. (Incidentally this is the not the first time 640 remained in taped programming while all hell was going on outside their location. When the Leafs made it to the finals in 2004 thousands gathered at Dundas Square to celebrate. Did 640 Toronto join them outside after their hockey broadcast. Nope. You guessed it. They were re-rolling the John Oakley Show that night as well.)
For the next three and a half hours Friday December 30th, CFRB broadcast commercial-free from the candlelight vigil that actually turned into a rally and town hall meeting. Speaker after speaker after speaker from family, friends, acquaintances, complete strangers and politicians talked about the gun violence and what had to be done. It was an emotional evening and it was all live on CFRB while 640, right next door, continued to play taped programming.
The premier showed up. So did the attorney general. All were live on CFRB that night discussing the death of the young woman and what had to be done to combat the gang violence in Toronto. 640 continued to play taped programming from their studios at the corner of Dundas Square and Yonge Street.
While Ryan waited for the crowd to arrive at Dundas Square he interviewed Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, for 20 minutes. Ryan invited Curtis live on CFRB to come to Toronto to set up a chapter of the Guardian Angels. This was a week before any other media touched the story.
They touched the story when the Guardian Angels announced out of New York City they were coming to Toronto.
The three-and-a-half hour broadcast from Dundas Square was in actual fact a town hall meeting. Hundreds of people had gathered. That night CFRB had more ranking provincial and municipal officials talk on air than 640 Toronto had on January 5th.
Let’s fast forward to January 5th.
On the very day of their special broadcast the premier of the province held a news conference at Queens Park to announce what the Ontario government was planning to do about the gun violence. CFRB carried that press conference live. What did 640 Toronto do? They ignored the press conference. They didn’t carry it live!
They interrupted their special town hall meeting to broadcast Leafs Lunch but they didn’t go to Queens Park to carry Premier McGuinty’s press conference about the very thing they were discussing on air.
Leafs Lunch was more of a priority than carrying the premier live as he discussed what he intended to do about the gang violence in Toronto. This is how 640 Toronto covers the important Toronto stories?
Now let’s talk about CFRB and its coverage of the gang violence in Toronto. The Canadian Association of Broadcasters honoured CFRB with a Gold Ribbon Award for its Town Hall Meeting on Guns, Gangs and Crime that aired in 2004. CFRB was the first station in Toronto to tackle this problem while MOJO was still doing T&A jokes on the air.
Plans were in the works two days after the shooting to hold a second town hall meeting on Monday, January 16th – exactly one week before the federal election. We thought it would be good timing since Toronto’s gun violence had become an issue in the federal election campaign.
But something happened along the way to January 16th. The polls started showing that the Liberals were not going to win the election. A Conservative minority was now being predicted and this meant the mayor, the premier and the chief of police who were backing the Liberals suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of the fence.
The last thing they wanted to do a week before the election was get involved in anything that would pit them against the incoming Conservative government. It was made very clear to CFRB by all levels of government and the police department that to participate in the town hall meeting would be perceived as getting involved in the federal election campaign – when they thought the Liberals were winning it didn’t bother them to stand up on stage with Paul Martin at his press conference to support his ban on handguns.
But with the tide changing they all opted to lie low until after the January 23rd election.
At the end of the day we had all the heavy hitters from the provincial and municipal governments at the December 30th candlelight vigil/rally/town hall meeting at Dundas Square live on CFRB – almost a week before 640’s special broadcast.
We had carried the premier live with his announcement on January 5th – 640 didn’t think it was as important as Leafs Lunch to carry his comments live.
So the decision was made to set aside our plans to do a town hall meeting.
We looked back at what we did live on air between December 26th and January 5th and figured we had nothing to apologize for. We didn’t hide our plans. We talked to the Sun and Toronto Star about it. It was an idea that didn’t work for a variety of reasons.
We believe what is important are the facts. What we did on air between December 26th and January 5th more than made up for canceling the town hall meeting planned for January 16th. Our listeners were well served with our live programming between December 26th and January 5th.
At the end of the day 640 Toronto is wrong. They didn’t beat CFRB by weeks as they suggest in their interview with you. 640 Toronto dropped the ball the week of December 26th because they were in taped programming and even though the year’s biggest Toronto story occurred on their doorsteps they waited until January 5th to do something live about it.
I think the record shows that CFRB beat them by six days when it broadcast live from the candle light vigil at Dundas Square right outside the 640 Toronto studios.
Greg, I hope you set the record straight by giving our side of the story.
Steve Kowch is operations manager at Newstalk 1010 CFRB, Toronto.
