Montreal radio goes down the toilet

I am writing in response to Alastair Sutherland's Media Circus column on Howard Stern's arrival to Montreal radio ["Baba Booey to the rescue!", Aug. 14]. First, let me explain where my comments are coming from. I was the executive producer and host of The Next Zone, a weekly radio show on 990 CKGM for about a year and a half. It was a talk show for twentysomethings which initially tried to imitate the talk shows for fiftysomethings. It had its problems but, as every beginner in any business, I learned by my mistakes and eventually transformed the show into a funnier, more shocking, more interesting free-for-all. It had segments, callers and sketches--it was a Stern-like show.

When the show found its new format, I faxed, called and wrote to every media venue in Montreal for a bit of promotion. After all, it was a great angle: "Group of Gen-X kids finally make good." The Mirror, Hour, CBC, Pulse, the Gazette... you name it, they passed it up. So the show built up its own audience with no outside help. After a few months, the show had amassed a modest but loyal following, probably as big as it could get with no help from the station and the lousiest time slot for a twentysomething program (Saturday nights, 8 to 10 p.m.).

In late September of last year, Ian MacLean, program director of CHOM and CKGM, cancelled the show for being "sophomoric, juvenile and in bad taste," due to a sketch in which the terms "flatulence" and "constipation" were mentioned. This sketch prompted a complaint letter from a listener who thought that all free-thinking programming is evil and should be stopped. I was also eventually told that the station wanted to replace all its local programming with satellite shows to save money. (Did I happen to mention that my show was produced, researched and hosted for free?) This is the kind of support local talent in this city gets, and that is terribly wrong. I'm telling you all of this not because of sour grapes but because of being fed up with seeing my favourite medium go down the tubes.

Sutherland said radio sucks in Montreal and I agree. It needs a major shake up. Sutherland also implied Stern was the saviour. He isn't. Howard Stern is a great American DJ but he does not belong on the Montreal airwaves. Since the spread of television, the role of radio has been to bring people of the community together, and I don't mean the "global community." Radio is meant to inform and entertain the people of its own city. There's a certain appeal in knowing we can meet the radio hosts of our Montreal stations in our local drug store. You want to know you can sit in traffic on the Champlain Bridge on Monday morning and the guy (or gal) on the air knows where your city is on the map. You want to hear jokes about Josée Legault and Premier Bouchard and the Office de la langue française because that's what makes your measly life in your measly city worthwhile--that's what you can relate to. Not Mayor Giuliani. Not the Brooklyn Bridge being bogged down. And not the jogging destination of President Clinton.

If Montreal really wants a Howard Stern kind of program (and I think we should have one), we should get our own shock jock. There are plenty of hot-blooded, free-thinking Canadian males and females out there who would be more than happy to take over the CHOM morning show. (Hell, if given carte blanche and without the CRTC regs up their butts, Marrier and Carter could even do it). But CHOM won't do that. The station is not willing to take a chance on an unproven, unmastered Canadian Stern; it would rather hide behind the American flag and watch as Montreal radio is flushed further down the toilet. CHOM hasn't gotten any better; it has sold out. It saw The Buzz and, instead of carving its own niche, CHOM tried to copy it, adding a dash of Mix 96 and losing its own identity in the process. Now, instead of creating its own shock jock, it is selling out yet again.

I know what Sutherland thinks of the "syndication argument," as he called it during his interview in a CBC news report. He said that people who were against syndication were "scared little DJs who were afraid to change and who haven't made decent radio in decades." I say that while some DJs are incapable of humour or good radio, others are prevented from producing good radio by their administration. My crew and I tried to change the face of radio. Others did, too. But we were all silenced--and cancelled--when we refused to conform to the bland standards of the medium. The failure of a New York-based morning show is imminent.

But the real tragedy is that the blame will fall on shock radio itself and not on the true reason: lack of Montreal content. Stations will then be afraid to try other programs with cutting-edge content, even local ones, for fear of the same failure. Ultimately, the consequence will be a return to the aforementioned substandard blandness.

We could do so much better than Howard Stern in our own city (or at least country) without resorting to importing stars that really have nothing to offer us except a bit of glitz and glamour. This is why we, as a community, cannot support Howard Stern's morning show. Not because it's bad, but because it doesn't belong to us. And remember that glitz and glamour wear off... and then what are we going to be left with?

Natalie Diane Sarno