Today’s speaker was in actuality, a classification talk by a member of the Burlington North Club. As is usual with classification talks, they are often the most interesting talks that we are exposed to. Peter Thoem, who, when he isn’t poised with his pen in hand being a scribe, arranges for speakers at our club. After the meeting last Thursday he immediately sent out the following comment : “I thought today's speaker, Chris Byrne, was really interesting. Who knew that radio was such a dynamic business.” He used the example to enlist our club members to come forward and do a classification talk on what they are doing, whether at work or in retirement. Please help him out in this regard by offering to do a classification talk and allow us to get to know you better.
Besides Chris Byrne, our guests were Linda Colby – guest of Lesley Allison and Wiktor, our exchange student from Poland.
Next week is our 4 club Remembrance Day meeting on WEDNESDAY Nov 9th to be held at: Naval Veterans Association at 2444 Industrial St. in Burlington starting at 5.30 pm. The theme will be the liberation of The Netherlands. No meeting will be held on Thursday morning.
A few weeks ago Lesley Allison, our Membership Chair sent out a survey on membership and offered a draw from the 19 club members who provided their names (31 responded in total). Jamie Edwards provided a prize of $100 which was won by Dave Beckett and Nancy Brady won second prize.
Andrew Gaydon spoke briefly on our Poinsettia fundraiser and mentioned that he went into a strip mall and asked the store owners if he could put up one of our flyers in their store and received a great response. Nov 20th is the deadline for getting orders into him and the Committee.
Barb Hislop, our Communication Chair conducted an onsite survey with us, questioning our knowledge of various communiqués available to us as members.
Rick Howarth, spoke about a couple of speakers we had recently – namely Helen Morris of Christians Against Poverty and Tiffany Kummer who spoke about CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome). The latter speakers came out by bus from Hamilton to the Aldershot Go Station and then caught a taxi to the club. Afterward, they walked back to the Go Station. Both speakers gave impassioned talks about their respective subject and afterward we gave them the usual Certificate donating 120 doses of polio vaccine in their name. Rick feels, as do I that both agencies deserved more of a thank you than that from the club and Rick, through his acquaintance and friendship with the Cooper Brothers band who are playing at the Burlington performing Arts Centre on Nov 18th, donated two tickets to this event along with a meet and greet with the band backstage afterward. Funds raised were to be donated to Christians Against Poverty.
Enter onstage, our very own Sergeant at Arms, Rod Collard who did a fabulous job of auctioning off Rick’s two tickets (see Rod, I did pump you up – I say that as Rod likes to fine us scribes – he fined Anthony Ford-Jones for recording that Rod fines people simply for breathing). He was able to squeeze $200 from Rene Papin for the tickets.
Catherine Brady introduced Chris Byrnes, our speaker. Chris was born in New Zealand and mover to Canada in 1998. He started working in the radio business in New Zealand in 1977 and did almost every job there is in operating a radio station. There are 168 radio stations in little New Zealand and he wound up owning a group of them which he sold and moved to Canada.’
He started ByresMedia – a company devoted to serving and helping radio stations increase revenues, helping in CRTC applications for new stations, for power increases and for conversions from AM to FM. He also does consulting.
More people listen to radio in Canada than in the US. They listen to radio, primarily for the music – to listen to their favourite songs or to listen to new songs. HD radio is now available.
In 2013, he tried to bring a radio station to Burlington but after almost 3 years, the application was denied despite 184 letters to the CRTC of support (from the Mayor and other prominent residents) and only 3 letters against (from Hamilton radio stations).
He feels the building blocks of radio are – getting the music right; having the right program personalities and information – likeable, charming, not fake, entertaining, fun, interesting and humble; proper imaging – how the station is seen and perceived, and marketing/promotion.
He now owns a radio station in Woodstock, On. It is 104.7 Heart FM, CIHR are the call letters.
Kathleen O’Connor thanked Chris for his interesting presentation and presented the usual Certificate regarding Polio Plus.
