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CHR/Top 40
This essay, Coast To Coast With Canadian Top 40 Part IV: Edmonton to Vancouver, was written by Sean Ross for Radio-Info.com's CHR/Top 40 column.
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Coast To Coast With Canadian Top 40 Part IV: Edmonton to Vancouver
Read Part I: St. John’s to Ottawa and Part II: Toronto to Winnipeg and Part III: Saskatoon to Calgary
Okay, so we were supposed to finish up our virtual Canadian CHR roadtrip three weeks ago in time for Canadian Music Week. But I didn’t want to not acknowledge two of the country’s fiercest CHR markets—Edmonton and Vancouver. Edmonton has seen an already aggressive radio station attacked by the type of aggressive Churban that hasn’t launched in the U.S. for some time. In Vancouver, the station you may remember as Z95.3 is strong again in PPM after several years in the shadow of CFBT (The Beat).
This may seem like a familiar story by now. CHUM’s 91.7 The Bounce launched on the cusp of Top 40 and Hip-Hop, then mainstreamed. It still would have seemed pretty aggressive if rival CJNW hadn’t shown up. The Bounce, whose promotion this month is Beat The Bank, feels a little more pop and recurrent than it has in the past, although it also had an old-school Hip-Hop component when we heard them at Noon on Monday (5)
Jason Derulo, “In My Head”
Kris Allen, “Live Like We’re Dying”
Ol’ Dirty Bastard, “Got Your Money”
Black Eyed Peas, “Imma Be”
Kings Of Leon, “Use Somebody”
Lil Precious, “So Insane”
Adam Lambert, “Whatya Want From Me”
Lights, “Drive My Soul”
Notorious B.I.G., “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems”
Shawn Desman, “Shiver”
Pink, “Sober”
Divine Brown, “Sunglasses” (Canadian R&B star samples Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses At Night”)
There’s no way to tell quite how much of an impact this station is having, since it has been a holdout against Canada’s PPM measurement, the same way some Spanish-language broadcasters have done here. Hot 107 launched younger and more rhythmic than The Bounce. If you’re looking to hear new Canadian rhythmic pop—and there’s a lot of it right now—it’s the best place. But it’s also the station with Ryan Seacrest in middays. He was on duty when we heard them Monday at 12:45 p.m.:
Girlicious, “Over You” (Canadian female pop group that sold without proportionate airplay on their first project, but now has a radio hit)
Lady Gaga, “Alejandro”
Kevin Cossum f/Drake , “I Get Paper”
Dragonette, “Liar”
Travie Barker, “Millionaire”
Karl Wolf, “Hurting”
Rihanna, “Rude Boy”
Habe, “Homeground”
Dragonette, “Pick Up The Phone”
Aleesia, “Headlights”
New Boyz, “Tie Me Down”
This one-time Jerry Clifton client was, you guessed it, a Churban station that evolved to Top 40 after rival CKZZ (Z95.3) decided to go Hot AC. It was generally regarded as the most aggressive major-market Top 40 in Canada and one of the first to go to fast American-style turnover on the hits. Unlike Calgary and Edmonton, it has now been challenged from the adult side by a resurgent “Virgin 95.3,”
Here’s The Beat at 6:40 p.m. last Tuesday (9), leading into its “Top 7 At 7”;
Lady Gaga, “Paparazzi”
Carmen & Camille, “Boom Boom”
DJ Earworm, “United State Of Pop 2009”
Nelly Furtado, “Do It”
Kelly Clarkson, “All I Ever Wanted”
Christina Aguilera, “Not Myself Tonight” (No. 7)
Train, “Hey Soul Sister” (6)
Rihanna, “Rude Boy” (5)
Ke$ha, “Your Love Is My Drug” (4)
Young Money, “Bedrock” (3) Lady Antebellum, “Need You Now” (2)
Lady Gaga, “Telephone” (1) Faber Drive, “G-Get Up And Dance”
CKZZ (Virgin Radio 95.3) Vancouver
Like its Montreal and Toronto “Virgin” sisters, you sometimes think you have the Vancouver version figured out as a Mainstream Top 40 and then an ’80s or ’90s song shows up. Like its sisters, there’s also an emphasis on entertainment and personality. And Virgin is doing my favorite contest of the moment, “Track Attack,” essentially “Name That Tune” with a prize that decreases the longer it takes a listener to guess. Here’s the station at 1:10 p.m. on Tuesday (7):
Adam Lambert, “Whatya Want From Me”
Stereos, “Summer Girl” (Canadian teen punk from last year)
Shakira, “She Wolf”
U2, “Desire”
Lady Antebellum, “Need You Now”
Timbaland, “Morning After Dark”
Eve Avila, “Damned”
Hedley, “Perfect”
Taio Cruz, “Break Your Heart”
Bryan Adams, “Can’t Stop This Thing We Started”
Colbie Caillat, “Falling For You”
About the Writer
Sean Ross, one of the radio and music industry’s most widely respected writers and programming analysts, is the author of the newsletter Ross On Radio, an extension of his long-running column of the same name.
