Leslie might be a bit uncomfortable with this. In one of his recent fill-in talks show appearances he commented that the station keeps him chained to the stone wall in the legislature basement between assignments.

They just keep taking the hits after losing those Canucks rights. I guess they think they have the market? CKWX looks like an attractive employment option....instead of this crap they should drop the Mojo radio format and concentrate on keeping CKNW as good as possible - they should watch out - Rogers and CHUM will start eating away at their market share faster than they think

What was it Frosty used to call them? Ah yes, "Corus weasels." Not surprised they poured the Kool-Aid for Berner, though. He was getting odder and odder.

Looks like CKNW may be at its end. With the loss of the Canucks, and other things, the station is certainly losing its appeal.

Anyone here remember "Talk to The Premier" with
Bill VanderZalm? That was a riot.

Then there was Uncle Raife. But to much on the
farmed fish issue.

But what about Shortie and Tom Larscheid? Guess they will go to Team 1040.

So what's left? Joy Metcalfe who is so sweet and syrupy, she's enough to give anyone sugar diabetes. Gushes over the same people over and over again.

WX isn't attractive at all, they pay nothing. But it's amazing to see corus run this station into the ground.
Soon their ratings will reflect it, you can't run forever on reputation.

CKNW will soon basically just be newsreaders rewriting CKWX newscasts...its a shame

I hear some good reporters, like Leanne Yuzwa, were dismissed as part of this exercise. Too bad there couldn't be a ruthless purge at CBC to dismiss all the Liberal propagandists, ... like Vic Adophia, Pri Ramu, Katherine Gretzinger, Duncan McCue, Ian Hannomansing, and on and on.

If there is any appetite out there for a proper news/talk station, it would be in the mold of what NW was when Rafe was on fire but with a more modern flair. Center right, but with programs that appealed.

Younger and hipper, with more irascable guests and exchanges.

If anyone at NW finds a relatively young guy who's a cross between Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh, they'll have a show for twenty years minimum. Christy is too polarizing and she's not that hot, unless she's standing next to you holding a glass of scotch. And Bill Good's done. Forever boring and longwinded.

WX is no threat, and losing the Canucks means little in the long run--particularly since the team will tank this year and next.

"If there is any appetite out there for a proper news/talk station, it would be in the mold of what NW was when Rafe was on fire but with a more modern flair. Center right, but with programs that appealed."

True enough. Appeal to a wide audience and the advertising sponsors will be banging on the door
with their fists wanting to get the best available radio spots.

"If anyone at NW finds a relatively young guy who's a cross between Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh, they'll have a show for twenty years minimum. Christy is too polarizing and she's not that hot, unless she's standing next to you holding a glass of scotch. And Bill Good's done. Forever boring and longwinded"

Rush Limbaugh is over rated. He's a cardiac case waiting to happen, also a wimp. Howard Stern is fried. Needs a haircut. But has a face suitable
for radio.

There was no one better than Uncle Raife (before
he went nuts over fish farms).

Christy is too wimpy on subjects outside of politics. Wants the publicity. Christy is better
looking now than she was before. She was previously fat. Too tied to the Martinites though.

Bill Good is boring. Not creative. Should have
kept to sports on the CBC. Bill is also wishy-washy.

Bring back Peter Warren and David Brenner.

CKNW needs an overhaul. The station is definately
losing it. If they keep up with what they're doing over there at 'NW, we'll lose a legend.

"Centre right, but younger and hipper"

That's not possible. "Hip and Right of centre" don't go together.
What the station needs to do is focus on GOOD journalism and a get some talk shows that fill the entire spectrum, but with outspoken hosts. Not more of the Bill "I don't take a stand on anything" Good, variety.
If you had right and left wing hosts, even on the same show, it'd be great.
Sadly, corus has no desrire to do that. They are trying to coast on CKNW's rep as long as possible.
But, the listeners will clue in eventually and shut them off.

The mighty NW is no more and it seems CORUS management have proven to be idiots. First the sham lawsuit and firing of Rafe Mair (hey guys, farmed fish are about as good as BSE infected meat), then Casper Milquetoast, Bill Good (Is he pandering for an Order of Canada?) proves he is not Rafe, as he can never ask a hard question of anyone.

Berner and Warren were small time wannabes, who could never understand local politics. Arrogance and rudeness have there price.

Talk Radio on NW is dead, as dead as honest reporting by the news room.

Will CORUS sell? Maybe, but not until they destroy the station. The present management are idiots, just remeber they banned Red Robinson from the station!

Sorry, no tears from me, let's just hope that the end comes swiftly and painlessly! As for me, I stopped listening to NW when Rafe left and the newsroom reporting false news stories.

The politicans must be rubbing their hands with glee with the loss of another public forum that gave power to the people.

Berner & Warren are no longer at CKNW because they actually dared to not always follow the party line at the station. Berner was best.

Has anyone ever experienced the grilling one gets from Good's producer? I have been questionned up and down and around the block on an issue to the point of silliness. If one actually tells the truth; if what is on your mind is contrary to the Campbell govt.'s line of malarky - you will wait & wait & wait . . . . Good has become a paid promotional ad for the Campbell crew. Yik!

It seemed somewhat odd to have Ms. Clarke on taking Good's show the next morning after the charges re: Basi et al.

Somethig is wrong with this whole picture folks! Wakey, wakey NW. Karma has its own laws!

The first one they should have fired ie ADLER!!What a nut case he is!!Berner and Warren were good and not afraid to tell it like it is.They have made so many mistakes in the past, in firing Fanny Kieffer, and Rafe Mair, etc. remember the good old days of Jack Webster, and Vic Waters.I suppose they are afraid of lawsuits.After all WE DON'T REALLY HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN CANADA ANYMORE.It's the buck that counts.Bill Good is a plastic rich boy puppet!! Ge rid of MOJO!!

Sock it to them, Beatrice! Jack Webster was superb! He had more wit in his little finger than Good could muster up in a life time.

"Bill Good is a plastic rich boy puppet!!" You have a way with words. I like your spunk. Bring it on.

Trouble with NW is that CORUS, head office in Alberta, doesn't understand BC types. They want dollar a hoolar types, instead of intelligent debate. Maybe Rafe went overboard on fish farms, but Campbell & Co. have deluded themselves with voodoo science. Fish farms are destroying natual fish stocks, fish stocks that feed the food chain! And the damned fools are allowing more to be built. (Did you know that BSE infected cattle have been rendered into fish food!!!)

I was banned from NW for merely pointing out one of Bill's favoured guests deliberately lied on the program. Should have been a big news item - nada!

CORUS doesn't want to offend advertisers and by all accounts, advertising dollars are getting scarce on NW.

I guess it will take another year of NW drivel before it NW is sold off or allowed to become an infrommercial station.

The top dog is now a cur!

"The radio business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free,and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

-Hunter S. Thompson

It wasn't until 1996 that the rot really began to creep in.

That was the year that CKNW moved from its longtime location at 8th & McBride in New Westminster to its current home in the TD Tower at the corner of Granville and Georgia in Vancouver.

The first major casuality of the move was veteran afternoon drive announcer Rick Honey. A talented broadcaster whose career at 'NW spanned more than twenty years, Honey was terminated in order to make way for Philip Till who at that time had been hosting an early evening talkshow on the station.

In an attempt to placate him, Honey was offered some vague position working in the station's promotion department, but - as Rick said during his last 'NW broadcast - he was not interested in a job "washing ( then General Manager ) Rod Gunn's car."

But it wasn't until 1999 when WIC ( Western International Communications, parent company of CKNW ) was sold to the Shaw family and became a part of Corus Entertainment that things started to take a turn for the worse.

In May of that year, Corus moved in and began its first burst of spring cleaning.

The hatchetman brought in for the occasion was Doug Rutherford. Nineteen people were turfed, many of whom who had worked for the station for more than thirty years. Among them was the legendary Jack Cullen.

It was truly astounding to watch while Jack - who had brought so much enjoyment to three generations of Vancouverites - was unceremoniously given the boot without so much as a handshake or a thank you for his years of service.

CKNW should have given Jack the retirement party to end all retirement parties, but under its new corporate agenda it was not to be.

Any last vestige of humanity that the company possessed at this time fell by the wayside.

Jack died a couple of years later; most of the people who work at CKNW today probably never met him - maybe don't even know his name or who he was - but I can tell you this: Vancouver radio will never see his like again.

In 2000, the downward spiral for the once proud Top Dog continued unabated.

In a series of programming blunders,'NW program director Tom Plasteras fired Sportstalk host Dan Russell because of Russell's constant criticism of then-Vancouver Canucks General Manager Brian Burke and the Canucks organization.

Burke snapped his fingers.

Plasteras danced.

Don Taylor was hired by Plasteras to replace Russell.

After only a few months Taylor quit, unable to handle the cesspool-like atmosphere that was then permeating the Black Tower.

Sportstalk ratings tanked.

Plasteras then had to crawl back to Dan Russell and beg him to come back. Russell agreed, and returned after he was handed a pay increase more than double his previous salary.

Plasteras' bungling on this one decision alone cost Corus several hundred thousand dollars.

But it wasn't the only costly mistake he's made. Many more were to follow.

To placate a still-furious Brian Burke, Plasteras then threw him a bone by giving Burke's unqualified wife Jennifer Mather a job as a talkshow host.

Unbeknownst to Plasteras, Mather was pregnant and two months later she took her maternity leave - at Corus' expense of course.

Burke and Mather had a good laugh at Plasteras' stupidity.

The next fiasco came shortly after his mis-handling of another magic Corus moment: the dismissal of longtime morning talkshow host Rafe Mair.

More about that later.

In the year 2000 With CFOX and LG-73 added to the festering Corus stew - there were now four radio stations broadcasting from the Black Tower. Although CFOX was chugging along under its own steam, LG-73 was flat-lining.

Plasteras and crew came up with a plan.

Why not go head-to-head with the Rogers-owned CKWX News 1130 and start a twenty-four hour news operation?

So NW2 ( as it was now known, laughingly powered by CKNW ) was launched on February 1, 2001 to great fanfare.

Bad idea.

WX was already firmly entrenched as a reliable 24-news operation and had a several year head-start on NW2.

NW2 brought nothing new to the table and cheaped out on everything. The on-air staff consisted of a lot of part-timers and unpaid BCIT interns. The station sounded unprofessional and amateurish.

They didn't spend a dime on promotion.

Listeners were non-existent.

Just over a year later Corus pulled the plug, despite assurances to staff that they would give the station a minimum of three years to find its audience.

Nine full-time and 15 part-time employees were dismissed as a result.

Lou Del Gobbo, general manager of Corus Vancouver, said the all-news format "appeared to be the right strategy at the time, but did not meet performance expectations."

As he searched for something to replace the failed NW2, Plasteras' creative bankruptcy hit a new low.

MOJO Radio, "Talk Radio for Guys" was launched in August 2002.

"The new format has taken off in Toronto," said Del Gobbo. This is innovative, provocative radio and we know Vancouver will embrace it."

Sadly, Vancouver failed to embrace it and Corus was forced to abort the format in February, 2004, throwing a bunch more people out of work in the process.

Plasteras racked his brain, searching for a way out of his latest dilemma.

Then it hit him.

Vancouver already had one all-sports radio station that it couldn't support; why not give it another?

Once again Plasteras was convinced he had a winner.

In a repeat performance of what Corus tried to do when it went after News 1130, this time it set its sights on grabbing a share of TEAM-1040's miniscule audience.

But as with NEWS 1130, Team had a three year headstart on the fledgling MOJO.

Searching the globe to find someone with the skill-set to carry out his vision, Plasteras head-hunted copywriter Crosby McWilliam from CKNW's traffic department and quickly promoted him to the position of MOJO Radio's assistant program director.

Now he had someone to blame when it all went horribly wrong - which of course - it soon did.

In a story published in the Vancouver Courier in April 2005 McWilliam had this to say about the format flip:

"Talk radio for guys had its challenges and ultimately we decided that the upside wasn't worth the challenges we were facing so we decided to re-evaluate."

Oh really?

Was that before or after you and Plasteras abruptly cancelled the only show on MOJO that was garnering any ratings - The Tom Leykis Show - and ran away like little girls because one listener complained about it to the CRTC?

March of that year proved to be a tough month for the MOJO braintrust.

TEAM 1040 outbid MOJO for the radio broadcast rights to B.C. Lions football, rights that sister station CKNW had held for years. Sure, the Lions decision to go with The TEAM probably came down to money, but the fact that TEAM-1040 ?was viewed as a more reliable operation than the wobbly MOJO doubtless factored into their decision too.

The whole debacle proved to be just another in a long series of fumbles for Plasteras and Co.

There was the disgraceful mis-handling of Rafe Mair's abrupt dismissal after a twenty year career as a top-rated CKNW talkshow host in 2003; all of it based on the dubious allegations of a disgruntled underling who is no longer employed by the company.

Plasteras' stammering on-air prepared statement announcing that Rafe had been fired was comical. It must have been a proud moment in his career.

There's so much more to talk about in the Plasteras oeuvre:

- His introduction of info-mercials as a permanent part of NW programming.

- The cancelling of live programming on CKNW between midnight and 5 am.

- The syndicated Winnipeg-based Adler On-Line, hosted by Charles Adler, one of the biggest blowhards in the history of Canadian radio. A twit of the highest-order; Adler is a bombastic, egotistical walking gasbag.

- The loss of longtime morning man Frosty Forst in August. Forced retirement? Possibly.

- His decision to replace Frosty with the terminally dull Philip Till. Not a radio man.

- The recent departures of the few remaining survivors of the Shaw takeover in 1999: Yvonne Eamor, John Ashbridge, Ted Field, and, a couple of weeks ago, the only real talkshow host that 'NW had left; Peter Warren.

- The loss of the Canucks broadcast rights to TEAM 1040.

Plasteras and his ilk have systematically stripped this once great radio station of its heart and soul. What took a team of visionary broadcasters over fifty years to build has been virtually destroyed by Lou Del Gobbo, Tom Plasteras and the supremely talentless Ian Koenigsfest in just under ten.

But don't look for the bleeding to stop anytime soon.

General Manager Del Gobbo was replaced by J.J. Johnston in February. His first major move? Firing a dozen more people two days ago.

With this triumvirate of dunces still calling the shots at the Black Tower, things can only get worse.

The timeline on the history page of CKNWs website stops at 1998 which leads me to believe that nothing memorable happened at the station after that year; at least nothing that the-powers-that-be want to boast about.

So here's to Bill Rea, Bob Hutton, Jack Kyle, Jack Cullen, Frosty Forst, Hal Davis, Ted Smith, Dick Abbott, Paul Preston, Ron Bremner, Jack Braverman, Pat McPherson, John McKitrick, Maury Hesketh, Ted Wendland, Rick Honey, Jack Webster, Ed Murphy, Art Findlay, Gary Bannerman, Ed Murphy, Dave McCormick, Leigh McKay, Erm Fiorillo, Earle Bradford, John Ashbridge, Al Davidson, John Plul, Bill Hughes, Gerry Davies, Warren Barker, George Garrett, Norm Grohman, Jim Robson, Wayne Cox, Lee Powell and all of the other talented people who laboured at CKNW over the years.

These are the people who made CKNW great.

Yes, CKNW, the same radio station that Plasteras and Co. now seem intent on annihilating.

It makes me laugh out loud every time I hear Plasteras describe himself as a programmer.

Tom Plasteras will never be a programmer.

To be a program director requires vision, knowledge of the business, and an ability to empathize with and manage people.

These are skills that he does not possess and likely never will. And the same goes for Koenigsfest and McDonald.

How many more talented broadcasters will have to fall victim to this nest of vipers before anything changes?

Since the bloodletting began in 1999, at least fifty people who worked for CKNW, MOJO Radio, or one of its other short-lived offshoots have lost their jobs because of the incompetent Tom Plasteras and his gang of idiots.

When will one - just one of these so-called management types be forced to walk the plank?

Who knows? Maybe never.

That long, lonely plastic stretch of hallway that leads from the reception area on the 20th floor of the TD Tower to Plasteras' office should be officially designated the Trail of Tears.

Turns out Hunter S. Thompson was right.

It is to weep.