Matt Sutton comes from Australia. There was a time when having people with funny accents was novelty. Then it became common place. With the advent of Youtube, Facebook and people consuming their media globally, it's not a thing anymore. In 2012, I had the delight of bringing Matt to Canada as we launched Fresh-FM in Winnipeg. The best part was bringing him over from Brisbane's B105 and introducing him to Canada... in February. There were subsequent promotions like "Make Matt a Winnipegger" and his "Lyrical Conversations" which still get talked about today. One thing that did come up a few times in this podcast, in the role that community played in his development, and the development of Australia's most successful morning duo, Hamish and Andy. It's something that is not as prominent in North American radio because of the sheer volume of stations. Matt is now the afternoon drive host at Z95.3 in Vancouver and he loves it more than he thought he would. But he's still loyal to the Winnipeg Jets and Blue Bombers. Matt even put together a fun promotion called the Fresh-FM Pool Party. He invited over listeners to a pool party. When I asked where the party was going to be held - he said - my place. Super. #australia #Brisbane #vancouver #z95

Vanessa Newman is the afternoon host at Z95.3 in Vancouver. She is a recipient of the British Columbia Broadcasters Performer of Tomorrow. Her radio journey starts in the late 90’s spending summers in Montreal with her Uncle Terry Dimonte from then Mix 96 and later CJAD. In this episode, Vanessa and I meet for the first time, after a collection of near misses. We will hear how she shied away from the radio limelight but later found her way into promotions and eventually on the air. You can connect with our two past episodes that we did with Sutton here and here.

This week's episode features the host of Edmonton's CISN Country 103.9 morning show, Chris Scheetz, who was recently named one of the On-Air Personalities Of The Year (Large Market) at the 2017 Canadian Country Music Association (CCMA) Awards. Chris tells us about why Edmonton continues to be the leader among radio-driven charitable initiatives, we delve into his decision to not pursue a position in management, and we his relationship with family and his co-workers. Chris Scheetz couldn't be more country. He spent his early years working on the family farm in Thorsby, Alberta listening to CISN country 103.9 while driving a tractor. When it came to radio, he was hooked. By1989, he was working overnights at CISN country 103.9 and the rest is history. Chris has been apart of some remarkable promotions, assembled quickly out of need and urgency. He recounts the time he spent days living in a tractor to raise $103,000 for farmers in Alberta. He supported beef farmers with a cross-border BBQ when their product was sanctioned by the U.S. government, and CISN Country 103.9 is involved with annual charity drives for the Stollery Children's Hospital and 630 CHED's Santa's Anonymous. It is a point we have touched on in the past, and that's the great work Edmonton radio does for its community. When we asked Chris why, he cited Edmonton's long history of community spirit where it's "expected", and the competitive nature of the Edmonton radio market. We have done other episodes with Yukon Jack, Marty Forbes, and Terry Evans; all use their radio standing to further their community. This week's podcast is powered by Promosuite. #Edmonton #broadcast

Jeff Vidler makes his third appearance on the podcast to talk about the Canadian Podcast listener study which does an annual deep dive into the progress and behaviour of podcast listeners in Canada. Over the last year, over 4600 people have contributed their study which brings together advertising insights and podcast listening trends. This is the 4th edition and Jeff has taken the time to tell us about what's new in Canadian Podcast listening. In this episode, you'll hear why Spotify has become so popular, what the business of podcast advertising looks like these days, and what effect the pandemic has had on podcast listening. If you would like to download a copy of the study, please click here. Jeff and I also talked about the success of the Call Her Daddy podcast which is a bigger hit in Canada than in the USA. I believe that Spotify and the number of younger people in Canada connected to Spotify has a lot to do with that. Spotify skews younger, there's more younger Canadians on Spotify, and it is a very visual platform unlike Apple which doesn't support artwork as well. Apple is changing that by the way. Here is their new embedded show player. Free Advice: There is NO DISTINCT STATS ADVANTAGE to using this player on your website. It basically another player.

Sue Tyler is the afternoon host on Power 104 in Kelowna, British Columbia. Recently I saw her streaming on Twitch and was reminded that I really I need to hear the whole story. Sue has been on the radio for over thirty years. Like many of us who embark on the radio journey, we have our goals set on a destination or an end place. Sue Tyler is the afternoon drive host at power 104 in Kelowna, British Columbia. how she got there is culmination of life decisions, survival, wherewithal, and circumstances combined with the talent of understanding and connecting with people. Sue now has a Twitch channel which you can find here. In this episode, you'll hear about Sue's start in Ottawa and her passages through Peterborough, Toronto, and eventually Kelowna. Sue is also very good on the phones and shares some of the secret sauce in getting people to call in. She has also reached out to consultants like Lee Abrams and John Parikhal as she looks to connecting to listeners in the future. As mentioned in the show, Sue spoke to one of the pioneers of AOR radio, Lee Abrams. I don't spend a lot of time on Twitch, but they don't keep videos up there for long. I would love to have heard this conversation! Wait! In fact Sue sent me the link and here is the conversation.

I don't have time to sit around and be everyone's therapist on social media when it comes to the U.S. election results. So many of the people I follow are smart, intelligent, progressive, successful and brilliant. But all that success has allowed the "online and outraged" to put blinders on to what ails our world. Allow me to Monday Morning Quarterback this for you and tell you why you should have seen this coming: Ask yourself: Why on earth would Donald Trump get enough momentum to win the Republican nomination? What sort of person latches on to that and backs it? When your choices are traditional politicians like Rubio, (another) Bush, and Cruz; politicians who live life with a full filter between their brain and their mouth. A well known broadcast secret is if you want to make it boring, bring a politician on. Everyone knows that the words are calculated and they are skirting around the issues. There is no filter with Donald Trump and people are fine with that. I don't know who Van Jones is because I never watch CNN unless Don Lemon is cruising New York in his Blizzardmobile, but I kept this gem: There is also another great piece from Van Jones trying to figure out how he is going to tell his kids about how Trump got elected; I recommend showing them this blog. Americans have never been very worldly people. Rarely do they look beyond their borders to see what's coming. The country that was founded by dissatisfied British ex-pats looking for a better life. Their descendants should have seen the Brexit vote in June as a sign of things to come. In case you missed Brexit, it featured British citizens voting to leave the European Union in search of a better life. The Brits believing there country was tangled in a trade agreement benefiting corporations and London more than the rural and working class. Sound familiar? That's what happened last night. Middle America and the working class have been fucked over by every corporation who funnelled money to Washington, to Hillary's campaign, and every Congressman (or woman) who got elected last night. Trump voters blame them, and the NAFTA agreement, and Mexico and Canada, and Wall Street. People who own manufacturing companies let the dot coms do all their selling, China to do all their manufacturing, and sent the worker home with no future. Well last night those people go their revenge and they upset the apple cart. By the way, Michael Moore saw this coming for many of the reasons I point out. Democrats just couldn't get out of the way of themselves. They were prepared to annoit Hillary sometime after Obama won the 2012 Election. Money was collected and stockpiled; campaigning calculated with the "best" people in place. At no time was a vision of the future provided for the working family that has been left behind. Bernie Sanders took up that cause, accepted no corporate donations and he had Trump-like momentum. He beat Hillary in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Alaska, Utah, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Montana, Minnesota, Kansas, Idaho, Indiana, Nebraska, and Wyoming. All places that went strongly Trump. Rather than seize Bernie's momentum and put him on the ticket, e-mails (again) suggested that the Democratic Party railroaded his campaign in the lead up to the DNC. Think about that: A political party used corporate donations to screw their own people over; people who were saying we want Bernie and his ideals to be apart of what will shape America's future. And Hillary's people drowned it out with corruption and told them, "You have to vote for me (and 4 years of this) or you get Donald Trump." Those people did the math and felt a loose cannon trumps corruption. Electing a woman for the sake of electing a woman is not a reason to vote for that person. People vote for the best candidate that has the best chance of providing the opportunity of changing their life. Put yourself in the family who has been restructured, job shared, outsourced, dot commed, and ignored; and there's not a lot of reason to vote for Hillary. Her biggest baggage is not that she's a woman; it's that she's a lifelong politician. A position that just got an Uber-like job restructuring. Trump is a successful business man who understands that the way to win is to solve a problem for people. And he just spent the last year convincing people he could do that. For the last 12 months, BOTH parties have been screaming to be heard above the noise of corporate donations and a broken political system that fails to get bills passed the right people elected. No one was listening. But are you listening now or just banging away at the keyboard saying that white men are to blame? If that's the case then why did women who "could not/did not" attend college vote 62 to 38 percent in favour of Trump? Attending college is expensive and there are a lot of people who will never get a chance. Want smarter voters? Make college education affordable. (Bernie's free education plan doesn't seem so nuts now, does it?) Are you still hung up on all the things Donald Trump does and who he is? That's what the Democrats did and look where it got them. My social media feeds are a mess and clouding issues that need to be shared and talked about. Sadly, this is America's reality for the next 4 years. Expect it to get worse. America probably won't see real change until the economy tanks like it was 1929. By the way, the previous year was last time the Republicans won the presidency, house and Senate. Stand by. In the meantime, Republicans can start their "Dump Trump" campaign and recruit Condolezza Rice for President in 2020. Again, another case of the best candidate sitting on the sidelines. Democrats, you need to get immediate therapy. Money made you arrogant and enabled a belief that it could fund denial in a candidate people repeatedly said they didn't want. Feedback from my Grade 12 English Teacher, Ron Patterson: "The arrogance of politicians and their reluctance to change are directly connected to the market and shareholder capitalism. The very same people who want to see the USA change also want to see their mutual funds grow, and that only happens with global trade, big pharma getting bigger, and more wars. Look at the stocks that went up after this election. And the people who profit are the lobbyists, who grease the hands of the politicians, who pretend to cater to their constituents, who want to see their mutual funds increase, but who also want immigration slowed, full-time employment, no unions, and a return to the fictional American Dream days of Mayberry. And even though the roots of America are expats from Britain, the real makeup of Americans is a cross-section of cultures melted into a pot that wants freedom from government until the next disaster. Lastly, please cut our taxes but give us a sound infrastructure. The contradictions abound, but the ultimate one is to elect the guy they chose to make all this happen in a system that controls that guy, who incidentally profited from the very system he has said is broken." #election #politics #trump #clinton

Jeremy White works evenings and weekends at the Beat 92.5 in Montreal. He got his start in community radio at K103 in Kahnawake in the Mohawk Territory just off the island of Montreal. The radio station played a key role in the 1990 Oka Crisis which exposed Canada's fractured relationship with its First People. Jeremy shared some family stories from that era, along with growing up with the station, and listening to the incredible talent on CHOM, and Mix 96 like Cat Spencer, Terry Dimonte, Kim Rossi, and Ted Bird. In this episode, Jeremy opens up and life in Kahnawake, starting at age 15 at K-103, and then getting hired by Leo D'Estrella at Q92 which evolved into the Beat. We also discuss Jeremy's online presence and his interviews with some prominent music stars like John Oates, David Guetta, and Rob Halford. These interviews can be found on the Jeremy White Podcast. Check out his podcast sizzle reel. Here's the interview with John Oates! He also talks a bout his time in Edmonton at Virgin 104.9 which he readily admits was not his favourite move. In fact, moving overall seems overrated these days unless it's to Z100 or something in a large metropolis. We also flashed back to Ted Bird's episode and you can hear that here in its entirety.

When I started this podcast in 2016, it was as simple as uploading audio to Soundcloud. Then I saw what tech offered and I was hooked. Dynamic ad insertion opened up a world of possibilities as we could increase our ad inventory by selling spots tailored to regions. Ad tech has come a long way in the last few years, and I reached out to Bryan Barletta to give me a crash course in ad tech. He helps companies at their formative stages build up and effectively execute on their solutions in mobile rich media, digital/podcast attribution, and podcast monetization & data infrastructure. On the heels of me Sounding Off about radio diaries, some ideas about how to count and monetize your audio. Sign up for Bryan's newsletter here. Bryan also referenced his latest work which you can find here. It discusses transcription and context.

Last week on the Broadcast Dialogue: The Podcast, I was listening to Numeris CEO Neil McEneaney provide an annual update. I had to stop listening when he expressed confidence in the TV paper diary method for gathering listening consumption. Here is the full episode: This is 2020, but the exit plan for the paper diary should have started back in 2007 when the decision to bring PPM to Canada was made. No, I am not advocating for PPM in Kelowna, but radio and advertisers should have been on lookout for a comparable measurement system. Fast forward to 2020 and we are hanging on to this archaic methodology. The pandemic has expedited so much including the inevitable death of the diary. In this episode I sound off about how radio got here and what we should do next. I don't carry a donate button but if you find any of this useful, please send me what you can and I'll send you an invoice for a 9 minute consult.

I always have a strong sense about what's going on in P.E.I. Every morning I wake up and Corey Tremere's twitter account has all the latest from Prince Edward Island flowing. I'm two hours behind in the central time zone, so his midday show is my morning show. Ocean 100 has been the Island's #1 commercial radio station since it went on the air in 1974 at the 1190AM position. It then got a new address at 720AM in 1987, and a new frequency at Ocean 100.3FM in 2006. There's something wonderful about working at the radio station you grew up to, and Corey tells the story of how he started working in radio in Junior High, and worked his way up. In this episode, you will hear our very first guest from Prince Edward Island talk about how Canada's smallest province is coping with the pandemic, what lies ahead for radio in the future, and how the approach of local and social continues to pay off in the era of the smart phone. I might have mentioned that Corey is a great twitter follow. Also check out the episode page to find out more on Corey, and more on PEI on the Episode page. We made references to a few things that I didn't have time to clarify in the show. Corey spoke of the tragedy in Nova Scotia in which 22 people were murdered last spring. We have an episode we wrote about that tragedy that you can listen to here. Corey also tells a story of a very funny incident involving canned Pepsi coming to P.E.I. Hear him speak more on that below: By the way - even the Prime Minister knows that when you want to speak to Islanders, you go to Ocean 100.