Since this is probably the best chance that will ever arise to tell this story, I was directly behind Mike Vernon and his son when Green Day came to Calgary on the American Idiot tour. My friend and I were in Grade 9 or 10 and we sang along so hard to all the older songs and Vernon's son kept turning and looking at us like "how do you know these songs?" because he was young and only knew the songs from American Idiot.
My Chemical Romance opened and because it was the last stop of their first big tour their roadies just doused them with super soakers and silly string and kept setting off fireworks and bangs at the wrong times. Got to chat with Mike Vernon about this in what will likely be the only time I ever discuss an emo band with a Flames goaltender.
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not to mention
“The stations were pulled while live on air with no explanation, and many employees found [out] they lost their jobs via social media,”
just harsh, especially considering their profits.
As has been mentioned, that's pretty standard procedure when a radio station changes formats. It's been that way for decades (except the social media part -- there's usually an all-hands meeting to let everyone know they're fired).
Unfortunately, the broadcast industry is very bottom-line driven. If a station can make cuts that will save more money than they risk losing in lost viewers/listeners (advertising revenue), they'll do it.
That appears to be what happened here. Today, the former TSN stations in Vancouver and Winnipeg launched the "Funny" format that Bell has had in Calgary and Hamilton for a number of years. The former Hamilton TSN station became a Bloomberg BNN affiliate.
The ratings may drop with those changes, but the costs will be considerably lower because they basically have no locally produced content and everything can be run with a much smaller staff.
In Calgary, Funny 1060 is by-far the lowest-rated station in the market, with less than a 1% share of hours tuned. Second-last is Sportsnet 960 which had more than double Funny's share of listeners (keep in mind, the most-recent ratings were measured in the fall with no hockey being played -- 960 does better during the hockey season). Even still, there must be some value in the format if Bell has chosen to double the number of "Funny" stations across Canada.
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Turn up the good, turn down the suck!
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Just thought I'd throw this out there as I'm watching the TO/Montreal game but I wish that Sportsnet would get rid of Kyle Bukauskas. I hate that guy so much. I get the sense that he is trying to be a replacement for Ron MacLean.
I really hope MacLeans replacement is Amber. He's already a million times better.
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That green day concert at the dome during the American idiot tour was one of the weirdest experiences ever.
First half, all new American Idiot stuff, the whole arena was shrieking 8-12 year olds. Older people looked bored.
Second half, all old stuff from Dookie and Insomniac etc and the kids went silent and looked bored and all the 20-40 year olds went wild.
I’d never seen such a wide divide between fans before. It was hilarious.
Thread hijack.
I too was at that show. Arrived super early and was like 5th in line for floor seats so we spent the entire show pinned on the rail. Best show of my life. Had no idea what the rest of the stadium was doing as we don't really move or turn around haha.
My Chemical Romance was also pretty good. I kinda liked them at the time.
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That green day concert at the dome during the American idiot tour was one of the weirdest experiences ever.
First half, all new American Idiot stuff, the whole arena was shrieking 8-12 year olds. Older people looked bored.
Second half, all old stuff from Dookie and Insomniac etc and the kids went silent and looked bored and all the 20-40 year olds went wild.
I’d never seen such a wide divide between fans before. It was hilarious.
Offspring concerts were always funny because they had such a broad, but more/less even distribution of fan types (by attire at least): punks, preps, jocks, sluts, goths, nerds.
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That green day concert at the dome during the American idiot tour was one of the weirdest experiences ever.
First half, all new American Idiot stuff, the whole arena was shrieking 8-12 year olds. Older people looked bored.
Second half, all old stuff from Dookie and Insomniac etc and the kids went silent and looked bored and all the 20-40 year olds went wild.
I’d never seen such a wide divide between fans before. It was hilarious.
I worked a Blue Rodeo concert it was for one of their last few albums.
The band was 4 songs or so into the first half of the concert and Greg Keelor says something along the lines of "we have to play these, but after the intermission it is all old stuff'.
They can back out and torn the Westerner down, really good second half of the show.
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Captain James P. DeCOSTE, CD, 18 Sep 1993
I really hope MacLeans replacement is Amber. He's already a million times better.
I think Amber is great as well. If and when MacLean gets replaced I could see there being a big push towards a female host. I don't think they would pursue Cassie but I would love to see someone like Andi Petrillo being a front runner for the job. I'm not sure if Andi still has a contract with TSN. I know she does a lot of CBC Sports hosting.
Offspring concerts were always funny because they had such a broad, but more/less even distribution of fan types (by attire at least): punks, preps, jocks, sluts, goths, nerds.
That green day concert at the dome during the American idiot tour was one of the weirdest experiences ever.
First half, all new American Idiot stuff, the whole arena was shrieking 8-12 year olds. Older people looked bored.
Second half, all old stuff from Dookie and Insomniac etc and the kids went silent and looked bored and all the 20-40 year olds went wild.
I’d never seen such a wide divide between fans before. It was hilarious.
We had friends all over the Dome at this show and we were pretty unanimous in the feeling of the night. We were completely blown away by thousands of screaming teenagers during American Idiot songs for our "90's band", it was really cool.
But in everyone's view that we were with everyone was in on the American Idiot stuff, definitely no "boredom" of older fans waiting for older songs. Do you remember how massive American Idiot was at the time? When a band you love that peaked earlier suddenly has a major resurgence, your response generally isn't "meh, get to the old stuff".
Every Green Day fan I knew at the time (and it was a lot) was as into American Idiot as any new fan, and it showed at that concert.
It was a really neat experience, probably top 3 concert for me, and My Chemical Romance was great, too.
I've definitely seen Swollen Members in concert but I didn't think that was where. I remember being at a Simple Plan show with the same group of people and the one I had a crush on was an Avril fans as well. Maybe the Gob/Simple Plan overlap was Warped Tour? Or the Coke Stage even? Swollen Members at an Avril Lavigne concert would also be weird, but that isn't what I'm remembering.
My mom saved all the crap in my room from back then so there's probably a ticket stub or something I can dig up.
