Astral Media Country 820 CHAM Hamilton ON will flip to Comedy “Funny 820” on Tuesday.
The flip will take place at 8:20am as the station cedes the Country audience in the market to Durham Radio’s “KX 94.7” CHKX. In the Spring BBM ratings, CHAM registered a 1.5 share to CHKX’s 4.1. That was down from a 2.0 prior to 94.7’s format change in 2011.
Astral Media owns the exclusive Canadian rights to the 24/7 Comedy network. Its programming is heard on “Funny 1410” CKSL London and in overnights on News/Talk 1010 CFRB Toronto. We reported last December that Astral had registered the Funny820.com domain for CHAM as well as domains for five additional stations.
CHAM, which operates with 50kW daytime and 10kW nights puts a full market signal over Toronto as well.
MattParker 
George Greene 
Joseph
Do you have ratings for 95.3? They switched from Country to classic hits a few years ago.
All Canadian ratings going back to 2005 are available on the BBM’s website here: http://www.bbm.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=88&Itemid=71
95.3 CING registered a 5.6 share this spring, which places it second in Hamilton (but doesn’t include any of the Toronto based signals).
Apparently, comedy is the latest bandwagon for industry lemmings to jump on – the hottest thing since “Jack.”
Only thing is, bet comedy will be a much shorter-lived format than Jack. There are actually a # of stations still using the Jack format today….10 years after its debut in Vancouver. 10 years from now, there will likely be little or no stations in a comedy format.
Is this the same format that Clear Channel just purchased??