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!
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