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| Assessing Our Flow |
| By Saada Branker |
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Step through any part of Toronto’s urban nucleus, and it’s hard not to catch wind of the inquiring buzz about the country’s first black-owned commercial radio station. What exactly has been happening with FLOW 93.5? Seems this fall has been the most palatable season of discontent for the urban music vanguard. In my bid to find the story, it wasn’t hard to find disgruntled listeners flexing for a spin at the rumor mill. All the while, the buzzing questions remained. Not a cacophony of queries but more like the fading drone of a flying insect. Firings. Boycott. A buyout. And the cruelest, most alarming of all the buzzwords: Top 40 hits station. Say it ain’t so. “What you see is what you get. We haven’t changed the music. What we worked on is doing what we do better, tightening it up a little bit,” was what Nicole Jolly, the station’s vice-president of operations told me the day I interviewed her. And it appeared that is exactly what triggered the latest flurry of criticism. What Jolly considered a tightening up was really about what the station quietly let go -- most notably, three of its well-known hosts. Next February will be six years since FLOW CFXJ-FM warmed the airwaves. Before its highly anticipated inauguration, Milestone Communications suffered several years of jockeying and elbowing for space on the FM bandwidth. That coveted license approval from the CRTC may not have happened in 2000, had it not been for the support Milestone so effectively galvanized among everyone with a pen or a keyboard within the black communities. It’s no wonder then that the recent changes coursing through the station have struck a negative chord with some listeners who considered their support key to FLOW’s success. Mourning the morning show Ironically, the infamous personnel change came in the form of a backdoor exit. Former FLOW morning show host Jemeni revealed to Eye Weekly’s writer Jon Sarpong this fall that she knew her last day at the station was coming. Ultimately, the Morning Rush's fans were the last to tune into what transpired --- and some still don’t know. No official announcement ever came that FLOW planned to let go its morning show duo of Mark and Jem, and popular Urban Suite host “Hollywood” Rich Fagon, an original member of the FLOW launch family. As for a tender goodbye toast, it never happened. To hear Mark Strong’s account, there was no blood curdling between the morning team and management. Still, on the last Monday in August, FLOW’s program director, Wayne Williams, first called Jemeni into his office. When she emerged, Strong was summoned. The foreboding had already built up quite nicely. The former host explained a leak developed the Friday before that the station was importing Melanie from quasi-rival Z 103 — a local hits station. Rumors had her slated for the morning show. Strong stopped short of divulging details of what developed during his meeting that Monday, but admitted an offer was put on the table for him to stay with the station, which he “kindly declined.” So after five years, where was the love? “In commercial radio, we know the template is to promote your morning show, to market your morning show,” said Strong in our interview. “That’s the standard. That never happened at FLOW. We were never given that platform.” Strong started his reign at the station in August of its launch year. He moved on to the morning show after hosting "Top of the World" on Saturdays. He said the flagship weekday program had its signs. “At some points we barely had a producer. And in most morning shows there are two producers, an assistant and an intern.” He knew that not having the tools to build a solid a.m. show, topped with a dwindling down of meetings, indicated to him the focus on the part of management wasn’t there. Getting the picture Despite it being perhaps a lame marketing tool for an urban radio joint, images of the colourful Jemeni and Strong failed to grace posters in the subway stations or at bus stops. Even when the two hosts suggested coining a catch phrase about their program along the bottom of advertisements, nothing evolved said Strong. “It was disappointing. We’d open a newspaper or magazine and there was always a professional shot of different morning shows but with FLOW, there was more representation of just the station.” FLOW’s abstract marketing campaigns just never worked that way. Graphic illustration has been its signature style. This season, its artistic portrayal of chart topping music artists has become the face of the station’s promotion. Its website however does feature photos of the new morning hosts Slim and Melanie, as was the case for Strong and Jem during their time. “There were many times we were happy to be doing urban radio, doing it together and making history because it is the first urban commercial radio station in Canada that stayed alive,” said Strong. “But as for morale from my vantage point, it seemed people just wanted to be quiet, do their jobs and hope that whatever they did would contribute to the movement of FLOW. Things were very solemn at the station for a while.” The station’s standpoint Points taken, I knew there was a Jolly perspective I needed to pull. A couple weeks later, I made my way to FLOW radio, situated on Yonge Street in the city’s downtown retail core. There I met with Nicole Jolly in the station’s conference room. Setting up my recorder, I wondered how the daughter of Milestone’s CEO, Denham Jolly, was faring. In defending the station’s recent changes, she sometimes testily addressed criticism in message boards and e-mails about unsubstantiated rumors. “I’m going to ask that people not make assumptions,” said Jolly, who refrained from explaining how or why Jemeni, Strong, Fagon, and the morning show producer were no longer in the FLOW. "Out of respect for their privacy," maintained this v.p. Fair enough. “They left the company,” she said, adding, “As far as I know, they’re all happy.” It can be argued that the station’s m.o. has been to embrace brand new instead of branding what it always had – a loyal and driven staff. About that revamp of personnel, Jolly was direct. "People comment on things that happen at FLOW without understanding that it’s very common in the radio industry. It’s very uncommon for an announcer to stay in one place in a radio station for more than five years. So I think people see people coming and going in FLOW without understanding that’s the way this business works," she said. Jolly admitted that there has been negative feedback on their decision to drop Strong and Jem, but insists the overall response has been positive among their 400,000 listeners throughout the GTA. Not a Hit Recorder repositioned, I pushed on about suspected changes at the station. Midway through my question, Jolly made a face, caught herself, and then interrupted politely. "I'm sorry. That term... format change?" Voice trailing, I blinked. Huh? "I’m going to ask you not to use that because format means urban and we’re still an urban station. "Just hearing the noise over the summer of people talking about us changing formats," she began. "And we haven’t. We’re like McDonalds putting bacon on a hamburger. We’ve changed a bit of our menu but we haven’t gone vegan. It’s like an announcer change, a personnel change, but not a format change…you understand why it’s important." I didn't bristle at the crucial clarification, but my mouth watered. "As far as going Top 40, that’s not something we plan to do. One thing I will say, you don’t ever say never. You can’t. Could we one day go Top 40? Perhaps. But we’re not talking about it right now; it’s not in the plans now. There are definitely reasons why it would make more economic sense to do that, but it’s not something that we want to do.” Telling numbers The economics of radio broadcast in Canada makes a lot of sense if you’re a hits station with record label stars in heavy play rotation. But FLOW has unique positioning in Toronto’s radio landscape dial. No other station is black-owned with Standard Broadcasting owning 30 percent. Most important, no other commercial station in Toronto plays hip hop, r&b and a smidgen of reggae and soca without taking a breath. FLOW does. But for all its groundbreaking gear in place, the station holds only 2.6% share of Toronto’s radio market, according to numbers reported by BBM Canada. That’s an estimated total hours people are tuned into FLOW expressed as a percentage of total hours tuned to all radio. Last year at this time, the station enjoyed a 3.4% share, amounting to about 423,000 people in the city’s central market listening in for at least 15 minutes during the week. Today that amount is down to about 387,000. Not the best place to be when, according to Statistics Canada this summer, commercial radio is experiencing the biggest one-year jump in advertising dollars since 1988. Toronto is one of three top markets where sales of commercial airtime have increased. If Toronto’s only commercial urban music station is losing listeners, local businesses might pass on advertising in the FLOW. Neither Strong, nor Jolly appeared to put complete faith in the BBM numbers. “The BBM book is a prehistoric system in my mind,” said Strong. Jolly said BBM’s calculation methods apparently favour the older listenership. “You send out a booklet like this (indicating an inch with her index and thumb) to your 20- year-old nephew and send the one to your 58 -year-old aunt and say: ‘Okay, both of you walk around a week with this and every time you listen to the radio, write it down.’ Who do you think is going to do it?” Still, Jolly said the BBM does offer them an idea of who is listening. No justification, no peace And speaking about spurring action into its 18-34 demographic: What about that boycott call against FLOW launched in September? How effective was that? “I understand the frustration and I read into the sentiment, but I don’t think you want to boycott,” said Strong who pointed out keeping the station on air has always been an uphill battle for Milestone, given the industry challenges. “Let’s say the station shuts down, then what do we have?” Jolly shared that perspective saying on one hand she was flattered because so many people showed their passion for the station. “To me, anytime somebody tries to create a movement, it comes from the heart, and it comes from caring. On the other hand, there is a group of people who are negative, and instead of creating a positive change and understanding what happened, they make assumptions; they call for destruction,” said Jolly. “I don't think anyone would be very proud if we had to close down our doors.” So can we all get along? Apparently when it comes to different perspectives about one lone commercial radio venture blazing a trail, the cliché is easier said than done. “FLOW was created in part as something for black people to be proud of, that we have a seat at the table with everybody else,” said Jolly, admonishing what she called detractors. “And it's these same people who are calling for a boycott, and if we really shut down, I’d wonder why these people would call for that, because I think it's a reflection on all of us.” copyright 2006 Numb Magazine |
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