What if the Classic Hits station that played the most Canadian-content music was in America?
For four hours on April 1, that station was SMG’s KKSR (Big 95.7) Tri-Cities, Washington. As part of an affectionate April Fools’ Day stunt, PD/morning man Will Bradley announced the station had been sold to “Maple Leaf Media Properties.” For the next four hours, Big 95.7 played only Canadian artists.
Sweepers declared Bradley to be “part of your morning poutine.” Temperatures were in Celsius. Traffic reports were in kilometers. There was an ad for the South of the Border music festival, featuring the Crash Test Dummies, Martha & The Muffins, and Boomtang Boys, whose ’90s hit “Squeeze Toy,” was the Canadian counterpart to, say, “Barbie Girl.”
I would go see that lineup, by the way. This column has been an ongoing champion of Canadian music and radio, but if you needed any reminder of its breadth and depth, Big 95.7 put together a pretty strong four hours, mostly from songs that had been international hits, beginning with Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night,” Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated,” and Bachman Turner Overdrive’s “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet.”
Here’s a stretch from later in the morning, starting at 7:10 a.m.:
- Drake, “In My Feelings”
- Loverboy, “Working for the Weekend”
- Zedd & Alessia Cara, “Stay”
- Honeymoon Suite, “Feel It Again”
- Shania Twain, “Man, I Feel Like a Woman”
- Jeff Healey Band, “Angel Eyes”
- Steppenwolf, “Born to Be Wild”
- Nelly Furtado, “Say It Right”
- Barenaked Ladies, “One Week”
- Chilliwack, “My Girl (Gone, Gone, Gone)”
- Glass Tiger, “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone)”
- Anne Murray, “Daydream Believer”
- Snow, “Informer”
- Corey Hart, “Never Surrender”
- Carly Rae Jepsen, “Call Me Maybe”
- Platinum Blonde, “Crying Over You” — the author’s request
- Rush, “Tom Sawyer”
- Alanis Morissette, “Ironic”
- Justin Bieber, “Baby”
The irony here, as Canadian broadcasters will be quick to tell you, is that Big 95.7 was not actually 100% Canadian content during this stretch. Hits by Bieber, Shawn Mendes, Celine Dion, Tate McRae, and the Zedd/Cara song, don’t meet the government formula for stations’ 35-40% Cancon requirements — a combination of Canadian artist, writers, or where the song was produced that has become increasingly hard to meet when songs are recorded on tour buses or written with seven collaborators.
For nearly the first 20 years of Cancon, there was almost no song by a Canadian artist that didn’t qualify. Canadian PDs were glad not to hold on to “Heartbeat, It’s a Lovebeat” by the DeFranco Family. That was the biggest exception until Bryan Adams’s “Everything I Do (I Do It for You)” became famously not-Cancon due to a technicality. Now, the two biggest songs at Canadian CHR by Canadian artists are Bieber’s “Yukon” and McRae’s “Tit for Tat” — neither of them Cancon.
Most of Drake’s hits are in fact Cancon, but Canadian PDs don’t always know right away, since it isn’t always apparent which combination of samples and co-writers qualify. Labels often service paperwork with new releases, while programmers have started having to keep copies of birth certificates for Canadian artists. Also, Classic Rock and Classic Hits stations sometimes have to prove again that songs long known to be Cancon for decades indeed are, now that auditors are encountering titles from long before their time.
What if an actual Canadian broadcaster had taken over Big 95.7? The test case has been WLYK Watertown, N.Y., operated by Rogers and now MBC and targeting Kingston, Ontario. Rogers’ CHR format played about 15% Canadian music–the amount that broadcasters say aligns with their audience–before playing a more regular Cancon load. On the current Wow 102.7, there’s very little. I’ve encountered only the Cancon that would show up on any U.S. Classic Hits station.
Canada’s broadcast regulator, the CRTC, held hearings on its broadcast regulations last September, including testimony from every major group. Stingray Radio president Steve Jones has since elaborated on his view of antiquated regulations that exacerbate radio’s “existential crisis” with regular Linked In postings. Among some of the key points:
- The 2025 Juno Record-of-the-Year winner is again a song that isn’t Cancon, Tate McRae’s “Sports Car.”
- Spotify and other DSPs take millions of dollars out of the country and aren’t subject to the same rules.
- The cultural protectionism of the ’70s that spawned Cancon regulations isn’t necessary in a time of worldwide stars.
MBC’s Jon Pole has done his own LinkedIn posting about the regulations. The Big 95.7 stunt did feature the Tragically Hip’s “Ahead By a Century.” Pole says he’s had listeners asking him not to play Canada’s rock heroes because their music has been so overexposed.
Radiodays North America, the industry convention scheduled for May 5-7 in Toronto, will begin with a keynote from CRTC Chair/CEO Vicky Eatrides, followed by a panel discussion featuring Jones, Eatrides and others. RDNA organizer Ross Davies was also one of the speaker “representing not the owners and C-suite, but the programmers who deal with these regulations every day.” (For a special Ross on Radio readers rate for RDNA registration, enter ROROFFER.)
I last addressed Cancon in this column on its 50th anniversary in 2021. Most of what I wrote then still applies, although some of the other CRTC rules referenced in that story have finally been overturned, including one that still required some stations to play 50% “non-hit” music.
At this fraught time in the US-Canadian relationship, mine might not be the opinion that matters to Canadian regulators and radio friends, but as a lifelong fan, it’s offered anyway. I do hope that the discussion leads to an adjustment of Cancon to 25% (on their own volition, most broadcasters say they would play about 15-20%) and the repatriation of all music by Bieber, McRae, and other Canadian hitmakers that radio put years of effort into developing.
Canadian-only hits are also a regular part of my weekly Big Hits Energy Spotify playlist for industry friends and anybody trying to keep up with new music. With Top 40 radio in particular suffering from a product shortage, pop music would be healthier if there was a deeper representation of Canadian artists here, something not currently fostered by 35-40% Cancon. How that might happen is a separate discussion, but Big 95.7’s stunt is a reminder that it’s worth having, because of what Canadian music has contributed.
