Details On The Fox 104.3's Saturday-Sunday On-Air Schedule!!

Today on the SMS, we're outlining the weekend schedule on The Fox 104.3 FM, which is quite different than what listeners to CJQM will be accustomed to from Monday-Friday! Remember, there is no "Shows" tab on the station's website yet, but the schedule is more or less verbatim to what you'll hear on Q92 in Sudbury and their sister stations in North Bay, Timmins, and Kingston. After spending much of Saturday mornings on autoplay music rotation, the first scheduled program of the day is This Year In Rock, which airs from 11:00 AM-12:00 PM with a re-airing from 6:00-7:00 PM. Hosted by Adam Kane of 92.1 CITI in Winnipeg, he looks at ten notable rock songs from a given calendar year, while he also outlines historical events and milestones from the year in question, often with a Canadian slant. The local premiere episode from January 11th was on 1976, while this Saturday's episode focused on 1978.

This show is roughly comparable in purpose to the syndicated Time Warp with Bill St. James on Sault Michigan's Rock 101, though Time Warp is four hours long and has more of a sonic collage of audio clips beyond just songs (also, the two shows do not conflict, as Time Warp runs on Saturdays from 6:00-10:00 AM). I like hearing more modern tunes than what This Year In Rock has focused on so far, but classic rock fans should be into it, and Adam's trivia and facts add some spice! From 12:00-6:00 PM on Saturdays, you'll hear Dan Koo (the Country 104.3 holdover in the 2:00-6:00 PM weekday timeslot) back in the booth, and after the This Year In Rock replay at 6:00 PM, the last scheduled program on Saturdays from 7:00-9:00 PM is The Biggs & Barr Show with Pastey Jamie, the Ottawa-based zoo crew show heard on The Fox weeknights from 6:00-8:00. Less unique programming, but there's lots to enjoy for rock fans!

For the record, Biggs & Barr were followed on Saturday the 11th by the syndicated Greg Beharrell Show from 9:00 PM-2:00 AM, but Greg's show has not visibly resurfaced on the former Q104 since that night. If you liked what you heard on the first three nights after the format change, or are curious as to how Greg is on air, click here to find his current affiliates!

Lastly for the regular schedule on The Fox 104.3 is the biggest diversion of all, as Sundays there are Classic Rock Sundays! From 6:00 AM until midnight, CJQM and their sister rock stations devote 18 consecutive hours to music almost entirely from the 1960s-1980s, which will please classic rock fans and former The Bear listeners to no end! In terms of scheduled programming, Sunday's first show (from 9:00 AM-12:00 PM) is the Church Of Rock, which is hosted by Cosmo Grant out of CHEZ 106 in Ottawa. This program is loosely themed around being an actual Sunday church service, with Cosmo's "sermons" being trivia and context on certain songs. Informative program with a good range of classics, and I even heard a couple of 1950s songs on air during the Church of Rock! Note that the show's first hour does run opposite the last hour of The Chop Shop with Steve Black on Rock 101, in case you're planning what to hear.

From 12:00-8:00 PM on Classic Rock Sundays, DJs are in the booth, with the first being "Big" Kris Bawden (a.k.a. BK) until 4:00 PM. BK isn't otherwise an on-air personality on The Fox or Q92, but he is also out of CHEZ in Ottawa. The Fox's weekday afternoon DJ Lew MacDonald takes over from 4:00-8:00, and he is definitely well tuned to classic rock, as he also hosts the Classic Rock Lunch from 12:00-1:00 PM on weekdays. The last scheduled program of the weekend is the Sunday Night Vinyl Series, which airs at 8:00 PM and seems to have a somewhat variable end time. Each week, host Howard Manshein (also out of CITI in Winnipeg) plays a notable rock album in full, from front to back, while adding trivia and context before and afterwards, as well as at the midpoint when the vinyl would be flipped over from side A to side B (nice touch!) For the local premiere episode, the album played was Rush's "Moving Pictures".

Last night's album was Van Halen's 1978 self-titled debut, and if you noticed that both albums were by the band who was spotlighted with their very own "week" of coverage and extra songs played on air, you're not alone! I don't know whether the Sunday Night Vinyl Series selection is made prior to or as a result of what band gets the weekly focus, but keep that in mind going forward! It does go head to head with the second hour of the modern hard rock-focused hardDrive with Lou Brutus on Rock 101, so make note of that as well. Beyond the possibility of the Sunday Night Vinyl Series album being post-1989, I did catch at least one instance of a 1990s song being played during Classic Rock Sunday (Colin James' 1990 hit "Just Came Back" was definitely played one week ago), so the 1960s-1980s focus isn't 100% ironclad. Personally speaking, I honestly prefer The Fox's general rotation to Classic Rock Sundays, but there are still lots of good tunes then!

Myself, I do want to hear modern stuff along with older songs, but 18 hours of classic rock will have a lot of appeal for many listeners, especially with the Canadian content factor. If you want songs from the 1990s or this millennium though, you'll have to tune in before 6:00 AM Sundays, or wait until Monday. Barring future programming changes or hosts/DJs coming & going, this concludes our look at The Fox 104.3's on-air schedule, so hopefully this helps give a better look at what you're hearing on Sault Ontario's new rock station, and whether you're all-in on The Fox or if you like bopping between it and Rock 101 or any other stations as songs/shows dictate, enjoy this new variety on the local dial! Thanks everyone!

The Fox 104.3 FM: First Details On Sault Ontario's New Rock Radio Station!!

Alright, it's time to finally dive into the local radio bombshell from Thursday afternoon on the SMS, now that I have spent a few days listening in, so let's begin: Sault Ontario has its own rock radio station on the FM dial! At 2:00 PM on Thursday, Rogers Radio suddenly switched the format of Country 104.3 (née Q104) to mainstream rock, giving the Sault Ste. Marie market two fully local rock stations for the first time since Classic Rock: The Bear left 97.9 FM fifteen years ago, and suddenly giving the Sault Michigan-based Rock 101 some direct competition. CJQM is now airing as The Fox 104.3 FM, with the name coming from their sister station The Fox 101.9 in North Bay (whose call sign is CKFX, hence "The Fox"). Of course, Rogers likes having their stations sharing similar branding and playlists, so The Fox looks and sounds very similar to not just the North Bay station, but also Q92 in Sudbury and Timmins, with only minor variations in the playlist and on-air talent, but with local commercials, bumpers, and inserts.

This is also how Kiss 100.5 operates, and how Country 104.3 did until Thursday. One imagines that the local staff at CJQM opted to take on The Fox name rather than go the Q92 route because everyone in the Soo associates Q104 with country music. If you hadn't listened to much of Rogers Radio's local stations before now, 104.3 FM and Kiss 100.5 are both locally based out of 642 Great Northern Road, and The Fox has inherited one of the best FM radio signals in the market, with both FCCData and Radio-Locator showing a wider coverage range than Rock 101 (which already has a good reach). The on-air presentation may share a lot with Q92 and North Bay, but many bumpers directly reference Sault Ontario, and in many respects, Canada in general, with "great Canadian moments" heard often between songs and commercials. Note that the station frequency is usually said on air without saying "point" (as in "one oh four three"), unlike how Country 104.3 did it.

It's also worth noting that they're openly calling The Fox "the Sault's rock station" in bumpers, even though Rock 101 has been doing that for years, and it's in their logo! As far as I know, The Fox hasn't directly referenced Sault Michigan/the EUP at all from what I've heard on air, but this does open up the door for Yooper listeners to be exposed to more Canadian music, and that's a key setlist difference for the new station! Per the CRTC, CJQM must play 30% domestic content. Last night, I recorded both Rock 101 and The Fox from 12:33 AM (when The Hair Scare ended on 101) to 6:00 AM (when Classic Rock Sunday began on 104) to get a playlist sampling of the two stations, and while I won't give away that big of a chunk of what The Fox is airing, I can tell you that in that span of time, they played 79 songs, 25 of which were by Canadian artists. There was a stretch where eight songs weren't by Canadian acts, but four of the next six were.

Meanwhile, Rock 101 played 76 songs in that span, of which only seven were by Canadian artists (remember, there's no Cancon laws in Michigan), but there was a spell where five out of thirteen songs were Canadian. In that near 5½ hour span, just four songs (AC/DC's "Highway To Hell", Everclear's "Santa Monica", Three Days Grace's "Mayday", and The Tragically Hip's "Courage") were played on both 101 and 104. Seventeen acts cropped up on both stations while playing different songs. Of course, personal tastes are extremely subjective, so what you prefer to listen to will vary, but there's suddenly a much wider rock radio variety, which is definitely welcomed! In terms of time period for songs in general rotation, at least overnight, Rock 101 actually led The Fox in terms of new songs (fourteen from the 2020s compared to six on The Fox), while the former Q104 was more inclined to play 1990s and 2000s songs by a count of 39-26.

No radio station has a perfect rotation for everyone, but I do like a lot of what I've heard from The Fox in the last few days, particularly the general rotation on weekdays and Saturdays (Sunday is largely classic rock-focused but we'll touch on the individual programs in an upcoming post). The Cancon selection alone will appeal to a lot of people, and for a market that has always been kinda funny for awareness of domestic rock bands who do better in markets not on the US border, having this exposure and airtime will only help get ears on them and build fans! For better or worse, you likely aren't hearing The Headstones, Big Sugar, Arkells, or Sloan on Rock 101. I also found that Rogers isn't as liable to edit down songs, so we got the full "Killing In The Name" and "Epic" here, where 101 often airs shortened versions. Regardless, I'll like the ability to hop from signal to signal when a song I dislike comes on, so I'll like having both 101 and 104 as presets!

Rest assured, while I am glad that Sault Ontario has a domestic rock station of its own, and we don't necessarily have to gamble on fringe Northern Michigan stations to pick up here as an alternative, I do feel for fans of Country 104.3 who miss that station, a staple of the local FM dial for decades. I never wanted to get a Sault Ontario rock station at the expense of another one. A reason wasn't publically given for the format change, for the record, though Rogers must have seen something concerning with listenership or ad revenue. While we still have Country 105 (WMKD 105.5 in nearby Pickford, Michigan), that station's coverage area is smaller and isn't beholden to Cancon rules, so this may hurt local exposure to domestic country music. After the format switch, Rogers/The Fox did recommend that listeners tune in online to Country 600 in North Bay, which is very similar to what we got in the Soo by default (albeit still on AM there).

If you want the same playlist and miss Robin & PJ and them, tune in to Country 600 on their website or on applications like Seekr (Rogers' new radio application) and TuneIn. If you're curious, the closest Ontario-based country station to the Soo now is Country 103 in Little Current, 3+ hours east of here (Sudbury has Pure Country 91.7, which is owned by Bell). We'll have more on The Fox in an upcoming post, particularly the schedule of on-air programs, but enjoy our new rock station and the variety that it affords! Tune into 104.3 FM to see what's up at the former Q104 as it begins this new era, and we'll have more on the site soon! Thanks everyone!