Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Ingrid Schumacher: Toronto Mike'd #176

Episode Date: June 1, 2016

Mike chats with CHUM-FM's Ingrid Schumacher about her 39 years at the station, what's changed in the industry, her broadcast the night John Lennon was shot, Ticketmaster and why she loves radio.

Welcome to episode 176 of Toronto Mike, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a local independent brewery producing fresh craft beer. I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com and joining me this week is Chum FM DJ Ingrid Schumacher. Hello. Welcome, Ingrid. It's so nice to be here, Mike. Nice to meet you. I'll tell you right off the bat, you sound great on the microphone. Oh, well, thank you. That's a good thing I chose this way to make my living.

I don't think I had a choice. And it's funny, I just... Here I am dropping names, but Jeff Woods. Yeah. I was on the phone with him yesterday. Yes. Wonderful voice, right? Yeah, so I'm on the phone with him yesterday. Yes. Wonderful voice, right? Yeah. So I'm on the phone with him and he's telling me something because he's coming over Friday and I should be listening to what he's saying, but I actually didn't really hear it at first because I was sort of like, wow, this guy's got the greatest voice I think I've ever heard.

He really does. Yeah. So you have the female equivalent. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. So I won't hear anything you say today. I'll just keep repeating my answers to you, Mike. I'll say it twice. You'd think I say that a lot, but I don't think I've said that since May Potts was on. Yeah, May's a good friend of mine. So I'm glad to hear you say that. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. May's got, she spent time at Chum FM. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I know her from CFNY. Yes. And, you know, for me, May will always be associated

with CFNY because that's where she was when I first met her too. So I always think of her in conjunction with, you know, the former CFNY, what it used to be back then. The David Marsden.

Yeah. Back in those spirit of radio. Magical days, you know, so much great talent. But May, of course, spent time with us

at Chum FM as well. And that's where she and i became great friends and and we continue to be to this day so you both sound great so there you go wonderful and that brings us to the end of the lovely to be here you have no idea what what you're here you were you're just so nice you came to this guy's basement like did you even know i was recording this or did you think maybe no no I knew I knew it couldn't I knew it wasn't live because initially you and I had said you know two o'clock and then I said I had some I had some commitments I had some stuff I had to clean up at work and I wasn't going to

be here for two and you were like yeah no problem and I thought okay this guy it's not a live show this guy is going to be recording the show and if if I make a mistake, he will edit this out and it'll be perfect. No way. The mistakes are my favorite part. Yeah, sometimes they can be. I have a short list. So this is episode 176. And I have a short list of edits I've had to do post-production. And they're all for like, oh, I'm afraid I'll be sued or, oh, I'm afraid my severance will be cut off.

Those are the only two reasons. Oh, legal issues. Okay. I don't think I have anything like that hanging over my head. So I think we should be good. That's disappointing. I'm hoping for a good end. Sorry.

So welcome to the Toronto Mic Studios. Thank you. It's lovely to be here. And I've got some great like beer right in front of me, which is also wonderful. It's a great brewery. And you're bringing that home with you today. Oh, thank you. Really? It's like a parting gift. Yeah. See, I didn't even have, sometimes when I'm trying to get a guest to come over, I have to, if they're hesitant, I go, well, you'll leave with free beer. And then

that puts them over the edge. I didn't even need to use that card with you. You did not. I thought it was purely a prop, a studio prop. One person did think that. I won't't name names one person thought that it was like they were i said on the i say on the recording you know you take it home with you and at the end i said don't forget your beer and they thought it was just something i say about the prop like yes yes just to get great great lakes brewery yeah like a brand mention yes absolutely but hey thanks that's pretty cool i like it i would never lie about that okay uh you're we're gonna dive into your,

uh, great history at Chum FM. Oh boy. But since it, but just wanted to have a quick chat, like a really, uh, brief chat.

Cause, um, of course, Gord Downie has terminal brain cancer, which is terrible. Cause I'm a huge hip fan. Well, it's terrible cause he's a human being,

but you know, yeah. And, uh, the tickets went on sale like this week. No, last week for. Yesterday.

Yeah. What day is this? You know, I don't know, but I know the ticket. It's the first. Monday was. Yeah.

Yeah. There's a preset. Yeah. Right. Right. Right. So I had this big plan. I have two kids who are 14 and 12.

And I thought, you know, daddy's got to bring them to see his favorite band. Of course. Yeah. So I'm like, I have two kids who are 14 and 12 and I thought, you know, daddy's got to bring them to see his favorite band. Of course. Yeah. So I'm like, I have the, like me and a million other people have that presale password.

Yeah. So Monday at 10 AM I'm hammering away. Like I'm ready. I'm logged into Ticketmaster. I've done this before. I'm rocking. Forget it. Like after half an hour,

I, at some point I gave up on the three tickets and then the two tickets and then i decided i'll just keep trying to get one ticket yeah and then 90 minutes into the pre-sale i got one ticket for the friday show and i'm like well it'll be like a cathartic experience i'm gonna as a lifelong fan i'm gonna just go by myself and watch them for one last time like it'll be an emotional kind of thing it's going to be a great experience for you actually and I'm sorry that you're not able to take your kids with you

because that's a rite of passage I think dad's taking kids to shows mom's taking kids to shows but you're going to have a great time and you'll be the envy of many people who tried and tried and tried to get tickets sadly because of the ticketing situation in Canada,

sadly, it did not work out for a lot of dedicated Tragically Hip fans. That's okay. I wanted to ask you about your thoughts on that. So, you know, nowadays we have this, I find it to be a conflict of interest and something smells or something rotted in the state of Denmark that you have this StubHub owned by Ticketmaster where it seems to me, I don't know. I feel like there's ways where people are able to buy en masse bulk tickets right away, like seconds after they go on. And then they're on StubHub all marked up.

Just something smells here. What are your thoughts on this system? You know, look, Ticketmaster advertise with my radio station. So, you know, be careful. Well, I guess I do. But I refer to all of them as ticket gangsters, basically. That's, you know, there's not just something rotten. There's something quite nefarious going on, I think, when it comes to the sales of tickets.

Not just to music, but to sports and just about anything else. The regular person who is going to try and get Tragically Hip tickets, is it tomorrow? I think it's tomorrow, the general sale. It's going to be few and far between. And those are the fans. Those are the people. And the band hates this.

The band hates the fact that the real fans, the people who are buying the music, that are paying for concert tickets, that are following the band on their website and around the country or whatever, that these people are not going to be able to see them for what will very likely, sadly, be the band's final tour. So you've got corporate Canada basically buying these tickets. Right. And then marking it up for the wealthy amongst us who can afford, you know, hundreds of dollars. Yes. And a lot of these people don't even know that they're going yet because corporations

are buying up these tickets. And there are all sorts of clients or somebody, I don't even know who, who a few days beforehand, they'll say, hey, I've got some nice, educated tickets here. You're a decision maker at this company that does millions of dollars of business with us. Take you and your wife to see the hip tour.

The who? Yeah, they'll be like, oh, that sounds like fun. Yeah, I'll go. I'll see if I can get my wife to go. And then they may not show up. Or they'll go and then they got to leave like an hour in because they're worried about, you know, not getting me up, being able to get home on the Gardner. Right. Oh, that's the worst.

Oh, my God. Can you imagine on this tour leaving before the Encores? Can you imagine? People do it all the time. They do it at every event. They do it at every event. It's like the quest to get home, to get on the highway, to get to your precious car, to get home,

supersedes actually getting your final money's worth, which if you're a music fan, you never leave until they bring up the house lights. I'm going to bike to the show, first of all. So I'm not driving. I'm not taking transit. I'm going to bike, which is the best way to get down. Yeah, it sure is. Yeah, Pearl Jam is another band I really like. in transit i'm gonna bike which is the best way to get done yeah it sure is uh yeah the um these

pearl jam is another band i really like and they they went they wanted they wanted to sell tickets this is going back to the 90s but they wanted to cap it at 19 so it was affordable for their fans and because a ticket master that became impossible because they kept these certain bs service charges and all this stuff and pearl Pearl Jam tried their best. They went far. I remember they went pretty far. But at some point, because of the monopoly on venues that Ticketmaster has, you cannot do a safe and practical tour without Ticketmaster. Again, it's like a cartel.

They're gangsters. I'm sorry. There's no other way to really describe it. It's not business. Because, you know, I think we all understand business and capitalism and that sort of thing. This goes beyond that. This is the next chapter, an unsavory sort of chapter.

And it's happening all the time. The government, I think they mean well, but I'm not really sure that they know what to do about it. I don't really think there's much they can do, frankly. It's very sad. Very sad. I'm glad you got a ticket though, Mike. Well done. Yeah, no, I will definitely be there. And then, but of course, after I got the ticket,

which I thought was, let me turn off my phone. Somebody's calling. Maybe it's Jeff Woods. Dude, thanks. I can't even imitate. I was going to imitate Jeff Woods and I realized, why listen to me? Could I imitate Jeff Woods? I can't come in. Hey, Mike, I know we talked about friday and he sent me his book by the way uh it's just like yeah i got it upstairs and i have swag

yeah you get swag do you have a book have you written a book i have not written a book but if i do mike i'm gonna send it to you send it to me awesome so i know you from chum fm yeah you've been at chum fm i'm not trying to date you here. That's okay. You know, I've put in many fine years at Chum FM. I'm proud of every single one of them. Fine decades, I'd say. Yes, absolutely. I just celebrated my 39th anniversary with Chum Limited. I was not on the air at Chum FM when I first started there. I was doing traffic in the newsroom when I first started. Okay. So tell me, how did you get into Chum FM and then how did you get on the air?

Tell me the origin story. I'll tell you, some of it is still a mystery to me. And I'm getting to the bottom of it after all these years, but I'm not quite sure how it happened. I was in college. I was at Fanshawe College in London. So this is like 1977. Okay. And we're getting ready to graduate, the whole bunch of us green broadcasters, broadcaster wannabes, you know, we're all kids.

And we're sending out, okay, at the time, this really completely dates me, a tape. I don't mean a cassette tape. Like a reel. A reel-to-reel tape, okay? A little one with a two-minute air check of me on the college radio station. So I sent this thing out because, you know,

I just thought I was great which I was not definitely not. Did you sound like this back then? No I was 19 I sounded like this at 19 of course you did so did Jeff Woods he sounded brilliant when he was 19 too I'm sure

anyway Jeff and I don't even really know each other I have to say but maybe after this we'll get to know each other anyway I sent out this reel-to-reel tape, and I sent out a number of these across the country. And Chum was one of my favorite radio stations, and I knew about them, obviously, so I sent them. school came and went. I went back home to Sudbury and spent a couple of weeks there with my parents and then decided, and then someone in London called me actually at one of the radio stations in London and said, I don't really have anything for you on the air, but this is the thing for women. I have a receptionist job. Okay. A lot of us got into reception work instead of radio, actually, at the outset. Quick aside, because it's going to come up in a second if a question I have,

but I'm watching Vinyl right now, this HBO. Have you watched V have you watched vinyl yes okay so i'm watching it now and i'm only like five episodes in and i just like that whole scene or whatever in the 70s and everything and i know yeah you're right so this one girl is trying to get an a and r and she's she's the one who mick jagger's son is in a band it's not really mick jagger's son but it's the actor is mick jagger's son but okay so uh she's a receptionist and they won't promote her. And I noticed that's where the women seem to be. That's where women end up is behind the phone. In the 70s. Hello. Chum. Thank you for

calling Chum. Anyway, so I got hired actually by a radio station in London to be a receptionist because they felt they wanted to put me on the air. There was just no place to put me right at the moment. So they wanted me and I felt that was a nice, you know, that was a nice thing. So I said, yes, I will. I will be your receptionist. So I moved back to London. While I'm in London, like the weekend before I'm supposed to start

this job, chum, my parents call me first of all, and say, somebody from chum, somebody from the radio station called, they're looking for you. Should I give them your phone? Like this is all very pre cell phone. You know, my parents, I'm 19 are looking out for me. They don't know who this person is. It's called from chum. What is chum? What is what's that? Anyways, I'm joining something really, I'm getting it's like Ticketmaster. So no, so anyway, they they call me on like on Sunday and say, we've been looking for you. We want you to come in for an audition. And I'm thinking, oh, great. I'm going to be a DJ at Chum. And it's not a DJ at Chum. It's a traffic reporter for the newsroom on 1050 Chum. Oh, 1050. Yeah. So I think, oh, okay. So, so I called up, I called up one of my teachers at Fanshawe and I said, I don't know, I've been,

they've offered this thing. I'm not very excited. And the guy said, I don't know, I've been, they've offered this thing. I'm not very excited. And the guy said, are you crazy? It's chum. Go. So I did. I went like on a Monday. I auditioned and they said, okay, you're hired. So my buddies that drove me to Toronto basically went back to London without me. And I was like in Toronto in a hotel room. And you're going to do a traffic on, uh, on 10,

legendary. Okay. This ties in nicely. Cause, um, we're approaching next week. This week, June 6th,

I think is the 30th anniversary. Doing the math again. The 30th anniversary of when Chum AM, 10 50 Chum abandoned top 40. Yeah. It was like June 6th, 1986 or something. Was it? Is that when the sports thing happened?

No, no, no. They went to like Golden Oldies first. So they did Oldies for a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. And I have people who listen to this podcast know the guy from Mark Weisblot from At 1236 kind of talks a little.

Mark Weisblot has a great delivery. Yeah, yeah. And Ed from Retro Ontario. They're going to come over here next week and we're going to do an episode that just talks about sort of the death of Top 40 1050 Chum because it was a legendary station.

And the rise of Much Music at the same time. And we're going to do that episode next week just so people want to tune into that one. Yeah. After the Jeff Woods one. Yeah, after Jeff. Okay. So yeah, of course, that episode next week just so people want to tune into that one. Yeah. After the Jeff Woods one. Yeah, after Jeff. Okay.

So yeah, of course, Chum. So you're on the Legendary 1050 Chum. I'm doing a split shift. Okay. It's 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. It's 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. So the worst hours on the planet, pretty much. And the worst pay on the planet as well.

I find an apartment. I'm on trial, first of all, for three weeks. Okay. I'm just on a, just, they're checking me out. Test driving you. Test driving me as it were. So I get the job after three weeks. Fine. I find an apartment. One paycheck just barely covers my rent. I think actually about a paycheck and a quarter is my rent and the rest of it, I'm just eking out a craft dinner kind of existence. Right. But that, but a lot of us in radio, that's sort of how it was. So around that, so that was like May of 77. Through that summer, I grew sort of restless with the whole idea of doing traffic, because to me, that was just not what I wanted to do at all.

And they knew that I did not want to do this. I started trolling around actually for other work, because I thought, and this is going to be a dead end. I actually got an offer by, from at the time, Capitol Records to come in and do something for them. I don't even remember what it was, probably reception. I don't remember. Anyway, and I, so I let them know at CHUM that this was my situation. And they said, oh, well, hang on. We've got a guy on CHUM FM who's leaving. And we think maybe we'd like you to replace him. And that guy was Rick Moranis. Oh my goodness. Yeah. He's going to be coming up in this episode on 1050 because he had a Yes, completely. So he was on Shum FM at the time.

Right. And he wanted to get back into his comedy and stand up. I think he went to LA from there. I'm not really sure what Rick's story was there, but Rick trained me, got me proficient on the board at Chum FM. And that's where I started. That's amazing to be trained at Chum FM by Rick Moranis. By Rick Moranis. I know. I loved it. A quick Rick Moranis story is that his wife passed away, sadly. And then he literally decided, I'm going to raise my kids and I'm going to stop working. And I don't think, I'm pretty sure he hasn't done a movie since that decision.

And this is going back now. Well, he's written a book, has he not? He might have read a, I know, but I don't think he's been in a movie. I don't think he's done a movie since he made this decision. I'm not quite sure about, you know, the chronology of the film work that he's done, but I know he did take some time off when his wife passed away, yeah, for sure. Wow, that's crazy. So when you were doing the traffic at 10.50, were you Ingrid Schumacher?

Yeah. The reason I ask this is I had this as a question in my head. I'm watching vinyl, okay? The first episode, actually, so they're my head. I'm watching vinyl. Okay. Yeah. The first episode actually. So they're going to sell to this German company. Right. And they're in meetings with the Germans. Yeah.

And it's 1973. And I guess so now what the war ends in 45. So you're going almost 30 years now. Yeah. But the anti-German sentiment is still real there. Like they're Krauts and Nazis. And there's a, I just. So you never were asked. Nobody ever suggested, hey, you know, so many radio people at that time were like making up these fake names.

You know, and maybe if I had been doing a shift on 1050 Chum, that maybe would have come up because there were a lot of people using pseudonyms on 1050 Chum. You know, all those, you know, Terry Steele and Scott Carpenter and like a lot of these guys. This was not their name. Although Roger Ashby's name is really Roger Ashby. Do you know he Terry Steele and Scott Carpenter and like a lot of these guys, this was not their name. Although Roger Ashby's name is really Roger Ashby. Do you know he's been here? Roger, yep. Roger has been here episode 126. I love Roger.

We have worked together for, you know, decades now. Roger and I were fast friends. But anyway, yeah, no, maybe if I had a shift at 1050 Chum on the air, you know, as a jock, that would have been a different thing but no no one ever suggested that no one ever just i just wondered like uh because english schumacher sounds uh sounds coming from uh berlin yeah i know and i'm you know and i'm from sudbury

completely different yeah you shouldn't you should have a different accent yeah exactly yeah i can slip into that sometimes maybe after i drink all this great light beer that i've got here that's right so okay so what year again was that is it that you actually went to chem fm september 1977 wow yeah so that's so that's pretty cool i think that that's pretty cool that's cool the rick moranis story is is worth the price yeah yeah like him does that come up a lot in like uh like if anything rick moranis comes up be it whatever does it just a natural for you to say well you know he trained me like does that anecdote at parties maybe i did that back then i think i was a little overwhelmed

by the whole experience i wasn't exactly you know and also he wasn't rick moranis yeah like you have to like no wait till he becomes like yes it wasn't until after like ghostb or, I don't know, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids or something. And he did a lot of SCTV stuff, of course, and that's when it kind of started for him in Canada, I think, on a national scale. But no, I wasn't pulling that out at parties. Not that I can recall, but I think it's a pretty cool thing. It's almost like a... I would never shut up, but if that was me, I'd be like, hey, you like Bob and Doug McKenzie? Well, let me tell you something.

I know. I got a little story for you. So are you the longest? You must be. Because I know Ashby was at 1050 and he comes over in like 85 or something. So you must be the longest serving. Yes.

On Shum FM. Yes. Can you name someone else in the market like who has been at the same station for longer? Anybody? You know, I don't... Have you ever had this like in the shower or something? I don't know.

No, I haven't really thought about that. Maybe, you mean people who are still on the air now? Yes, still on the air now. Still on the air right now. Because there are people who were on the air for a very, very long time at their station. But active broadcasters... I don't know.

How long has John Derringer been at QN07? Not nearly. Because he went to Montreal and he went to Fan 590 and then he came back. He's been all over the place. Yeah, he's probably younger than I am too. He took over for some guy named Howard Stern, I think. That guy. That guy. I don't know. There may not be anyone else in

Toronto who has been crazy enough to stay at the same job. No, you're the queen. It's like, no, you'll have to kill me. I'm not leaving. So no, that's a terrible thing to say. But no, through a set of circumstances, Mike, it has just been, I just keep hanging in. And I think there were various times in my career, make no mistake, where it was suggested that perhaps I should take a job elsewhere. It happened on at least one occasion where my current program, not the current program director I have now, but the director I had at the time said to me, so-and-so who was a PD at

our Vancouver property is interested in you. You should give him a call. And I thought, you're trying to get rid of me. And you can't, you can't, this isn't, this is not what you do. So that's not nice. So I just ignored it. And I went, yeah, that's nice. Give Chamatham credit because, you know, if Marilyn has been there since like the mid 80s

and Rick Hodge, not Rick Hodge, I was going to say, there's my first mess up. But Rick Hodge was there before you. He was there for a long time. Until he left of his own volition, as they say. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. By the way, okay.

So you, and we're going to get to this, but you're a Bell Media company, right? Oh, yes. Rick is on like Niagara's Easy Rock, which is a Bell Media company. There's this guy, Darren B. Lamb, up in quits. And then I guess when he was legally allowed to be at a competitor, he pops up at the main competitor alongside Aaron Davis. So do you have any insight into what I think is something they might want to do is if they're going to have a three-person booth, why not slide Rick back? You know, I don't. First of all, well, a number of reasons, I would say.

The first reason is that Rick's main interest and thrust, I think, is sports. And we don't do, we're not real heavy on sports on Chum FM. But Easy Rock's not heavy on sports. Does he not talk, see, I don't hear him, so I don't know what he does exactly. I don't hear him in a minute. I don't hear him, so I don't know what he does exactly. And I know that the aim for the target audience for Chum FM is certainly younger than I am. Probably younger than you are, Mike, if you can believe it. Definitely. But as I said to Roger, if Roger, who's, I think he's 104 years old now, is that correct? Roger kind of supersedes any rule when it comes to that because he's Roger Ashby.

He's been at the radio station for so long. People love him and it doesn't really matter. Roger could be 104. He's not. He acts young, right? And people wouldn't care. And when he has those moments where he doesn't act young, people love him even more. It's like, oh, I love you so much.

They have that ad that runs where they're in the waiting room, like Marilyn and Rick, I've got to stop, Roger Ashby and Marilyn are sitting in the waiting room. And Roger looks about 35, 36 years old in that ad. He's wearing like his khakis. Have you seen the one where they're in the backseat of somebody's car? Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's hilarious, really. But it's very much them. It's very much what they're like. Marilyn's always like, Roger, you shouldn't wear that shirt,

you know, and stuff. And it's quite funny. So I can't spread any rumors that Rick Hodge is coming back. No, no, I think, no, no. I'm fairly, I'm 100% certain that's not going to be happening. If anybody wants to hear my chat with Rick Hodge,

and I asked him if he had any regrets about leaving, episode 116. So Ashby is 126. Hodge is 116. Okay, I'm keeping track. Thank you. I got to take you back to a sad day. We started with some sad rock news with Gord Downie.

And we're going to return to more sad rock news, which is on December 8th, 1980. more sad rock news, which is on December 8th, 1980. That's the night that John Lennon was murdered in New York. Assassinated, if you will. You have to be a political leader to be assassinated? I have to

get my dictionary out. I think they speak of him, they speak of the gunman as his assassin. Do they not? Or do they just say gunman? What's the difference between murder and assassination? Isn't that you you're you're murdered because of your power or something i don't know maybe uh maybe i should have a dictionary on this desk here but okay so he's he's killed and uh okay so i found i found audio of you on the air at chum fm that night so you had a 2 a.m to 6 a.. shift the night John Lennon was shot.

And I'm going to play that now if that's cool. Okay, sure. Let's hear how that sounded. John Lennon, dead at the age of 40 in New York, shot in front of his apartment building by someone crazy. Screwball, as they are calling him. A local screwball. And we've had... Ingrid's been,

let me first say, Wilson says, good night. Not that it is, but I'll be back at 10 o'clock on Tuesday. And Ingrid Schumacher has been doing a little work here while I've been sitting playing records for you and taking listener calls. Ingrid's been doing a little investigating and has some words for New York, I guess. What the reports are in New York at this point, and this is basically come across WNEW FM in New York, there are about 400 people

in front of the Dakota, that building where John was shot last night. I guess that number will be rising tremendously as the early morning wears on. And at about 1.30 a.m., just about an hour ago now, John's body was taken away from Roosevelt Hospital in New York, taken to the morgue, and nothing as far as Yoko goes yet at this point. She left the hospital about 10 or 20 minutes after the wagon left with

John at about 1.30 or so, and there's no reports yet as to where she has gone or where she and Sean have gone. The reports that are coming out of New York City at this point say that there were five shots fired. There have been several stories running rampant about the man who shot John Lennon. There have been several stories running rampant about the man who shot John Lennon. This gentleman who called me said that the story that the people in New York were running were that a guy was flew in from Hawaii to do this deed. And apparently the security guard of the Dakota building had said that he had recognized this man and that he had been hanging around the apartment building itself, down around the ground, for the last few days or so.

This guy who actually... Who shot John Lennon. Ooh. This was a security guard who said, I have seen this guy. He has been hanging around here for the last few days. Hmm. I don't know if premeditation has gotten into the story before now. No, it hasn't really been mentioned.

That's the flavor of this, for sure, that someone was flown in from Hawaii to do this and had been hanging around the building for the last few days. That's more than premeditation. That's assassination. Wow. So do you remember that night? Oh, I do, because I'm not even certain that I was actually scheduled to come in and to work that evening. I do remember hearing about it. I was with some friends of mine, and we were listening to Chum FM, and Larry Wilson, who has also since passed away,

great broadcaster and great friend that he was, he was on the air between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., and I'm not really sure. I don't remember what time Lennon was gunned down. I don't remember what time exactly that happened. I think the news leaks late, like 9.30, 10 p.m. Okay, so it would have been right around the time that Larry was on the air. So I think we were at my friend's home and hearing this on the air and just being dumbfounded. And I, you know, because this is what, you know, these radio people are like, got on the TTC and came back to work, got on the all night bus, basically on Bloor Street and came back to work because I thought I got to be part of this on the air

because I'm a journalist. This was, you were a rock station. This is as big as it gets, a Beatle guy. Yeah, for sure. At 40 years old, a Beatles did. This is as big as it gets. A Beatle guy. Yeah, for sure. At 40 years old, a Beatle's dead. Yeah. Yeah. Completely. I remember this news, and I was quite young, and I remember, you know, a Beatle was shot

and killed. Like, this was, we were talking about this in the schoolyard. Like, yeah. Yeah. Big deal. Major moment. But then I went, I don't usually do the two and a half minute clip like that, but I actually could listen to that whole thing.

Like, I got, I get mesmerized, like, mesmerized hearing it play out in real time as it happens. Yeah, we didn't even have his name yet, Mark David Chapman's name or anything, any of the details at that point. And back then, I guess, what are your sources back then? Is somebody watching CBS News or something? No, it would have been before all of those. I mean, there may well have been some television coverage, and I'm sure there was, but that was

long before we had television stations in our studios, and there wasn't that kind of concentrated news coverage like there is now, and there was nothing like that. So I'm sure that some television stations were covering things. I may have received some information, but back then, so this is 1980, it was a teletype machine. Is that like a telex machine? Is that a telex machine or is that different? Yeah, I guess so. And it was at the back of our control room, at the back down the hall, because it was noisy. We couldn't have it in the control room because it was very loud.

And it went off randomly, of course. You couldn't put a mute on it was noisy. We couldn't have it in the control room because it was very loud and it went off randomly, of course. You couldn't put a mute on it or anything. And so I think we were probably just... And that's like the wire, right? When they talk about, oh, I got this from the wire. So it would have been coming from AP or any number of other news providers

in that day. And you would subscribe to that service and they would just send you things as they learned. It would just be coming through all the time. It's kind of like the internet, except it was all on paper. Right. Just a little, yeah, a one-way street. Yes. The, I guess I wondered in terms of emotions, like, is that the most emotional broadcast you ever had to do? Like, is there anything that tops that? Like going on the air the night John Lennon was shot? I think, well, and also you can hear the nervousness in my voice. I'm young. I'm green. I don't, I don't really, I'm not one of the senior

announcers by any chance, by any stretch at all on the radio station, either from a news standpoint or just among the announcers. I'm not the morning person, Peter Griffin. I don't even know who was doing mornings at the time, but I'm not any of those people. I'm like doing overnights and weekends. So I'm not an authority on anything broadcasting for sure. And I'm not an authority on John Lennon, although I'm part of the generation, which I guess made me some sort of authority. And I was there. I was there. I think that's key. You were willing to work the two to six. I know. I got on the all night bus and I went back to CHUM. And I can see like before the internet, obviously before the internet, before CNN,

if I were, you know, older at that time, I think my, my, where I would go would be to, there were, I guess there were only a couple of like rock stations in the city. There's like, I guess it's Q107 was a rock station and and and chum fm was a rock station well by the way we'll get into this because i think it's i think most people will be surprised to hear that chum fm was like spinning like a van halen track or whatever like i just lately like i think this would be surprising to people so we're going to talk about that but uh and before i proceed i just want to play us that you in 1980, but I have another Ingrid sound check. Just so people can hear how you sounded when

you were nervous and breaking sad news to the people. Here's a little more Ingrid from back in the day. Where is this from? I want to say 1980. You'll tell me, actually, but I think it's 1980. Okie dokie. We've had lots of calls. People wondering what's going on tonight in Toronto. Thank you, Katie. downstairs drastic measures at the edge tonight cinema face at the gas works malcolm tomlinson is at the isabella tonight harbinger at the nickelodeon louise lambert at hotel california

crimes of passion at the jarvis duke and the ducktails at ollie's up here at the port sam and dave at the clubhouse tavern babe at the rondon zon at spats the imps at the knob hill the royals at djs zero one at the queensbury arms brian plumber at DJ's, Zero One at the Queensbury Arms, Brian Plummer at Tony's, Oliver Heaviside at the New Shamrock, Hellfield at the Mississauga Bell, and the Reactors are at the Cactus Restaurant. Outside, the City Ken Tobias at the Richmond Inn, Rendezvous at the Riverside in Oakville,

Rough Trade at Bannister's in Hamilton, the Grotty Beats at McMaster University, and Gato at Uncle Sam's in Niagara Falls. Wow. And if you can't find anything to do after all those things, then don't do anything. See if I care. Stay at home and listen to me.

Okay, 8.32 right now in Toronto. This is the new LP that the Eagles have just released. It's a dive, no, it's a live set, a two-record live set, and it's simply titled Eagles Live. And this is the one that Joe Walsh wrote a few years ago now and had kind of a hit with and he's put this on the live lp as well life's been good from chum fm okay so we should be able to date that pretty easily just by figuring out when that eagles live album came out okay because

obviously they just come out so yeah you're probably right. Around 1980, something like that. Wow. Most of those venues... It was very compressed, that track. Yeah, but most of those venues are gone, I'd say. I don't recognize a lot of those venues. This city had so much. My husband at the time was a musician, and he was playing everywhere,

and he wasn't the only one. There were lots and lots of bars and lots of bands and everybody was playing and making money cactus restaurant oh well there you go somebody was playing by the way gato i think is still playing that club tonight i think that's awesome no i don't know i know god of it is actually still out there sort of doing a little bit of he was working at he was playing at the lampton inn i bike by it every day it's a heritage site on dundas i know it yeah so i guess still they refurbished it like they fixed it up and he was playing there recently yeah well you know god love him i'm so glad and you know

carol pope was was in toronto not long ago she did a she did a show some where at young dundas square maybe i don't even remember yeah but you, a lot of these people, some of them are still playing. Many of them are not. Very few of those bars exist anymore. But there was a lot of live music in our city back then. There still is. There's still live music all over the place. But wow, there was a real, it was a real happening. It was a real cultural thing. Since you mentioned you have an ex-husband who is a musician, may I proceed to ask a question about this? Sure. So, okay. I heard a story that your ex-husband had to make a choice.

This is the story I heard. Apparently, he was working for Canada Post. Yeah. And he was worried he should get a good pension with Canada Post. He didn't want to lose this pension. This is the story I heard. And he decided to quit the band he was with and that the band he was with was Blue Rodeo. Right. Is that all factual? No,

that's correct. I mean, I think it was, you know, I think it was a little bit more than that for Cleve, for my husband. You know, he, you know, first of all, he's a very rock solid individual. He's very traditional in some ways. Great musician, great drummer, but traditional. And so, yes, he had a wife. He had two small children. We had a mortgage. We had bills. I wasn't making a lot of money.

He wasn't making a lot of money. Although Canada Post, you know, it was pretty much a job for life if you got in there at a certain time, which he did. He got in there like mid-70s, I'm going to say, at the time when they were, you know, paying very well. The routes were his, he was a letter carrier, so his route was manageable. He loved to be outside every day, got great benefits, vacation, and yes, pension for life with medical and all of this stuff. It's not something to be taken lightly. Yeah, you don't risk, you don't gamble with that. If you have two kids and a mortgage, I can see you're right. Maybe it would have been different if he

were, if my husband were, if he was one of the principal songwriters for Blue Rodeo or, you know, if he was Jim or Greg, that might have been something that you would have gone, what? But he was basically a part of the band, but a side musician in a lot of regards in terms of the money that he was making. So, yeah, there's some notoriety there, but notoriety doesn't pay the mortgage.

You have to sell a lot of albums in this country to actually make any money. Sure. And you have to be a songwriter. And you don't know, you don't know at the time that you're going to be selling out Massey Hall. Like you don't know. That wouldn't have mattered to him.

If someone had said to him, you know, yeah, but Cleve, uh, this might be happening. You know, he,

I'm sure because I'm sure that people were saying that to him and he was like, Nope. I'm, you know, I've done it for a few years. He already had made what I think he believes were great sacrifices in terms of time away from his family. When Blue Rodeo were away on tour, you know, my kids and I were going back and forth to the airport, taking daddy to the airport,

picking daddy up from the airport a lot. And our kids were little, you know, they were like four and one or something. And it's a hard thing, first of all, for me to be, you know, raising kids sort of on my own for two, three weeks stretches, and then he'd be home for a few days and then gone again. So that was because I was working too. So that's tough. But you know, it was no, it wasn't the family life that he envisioned that we envisioned when we decided to be a family, you know, so. So I, you know, I fully understood it at the time, I respected his decision, I was in favor of his decision and and i i don't really think that after all these years i'll ask him the next

time i see him we have we have a good you know relationship these days but i i will ask him the next time i see him if he's ever if he's had any regrets and i'm pretty sure he's gonna say what no cool yeah i had to ask but that was when i heard that story i'm like wow because that's my mom's favorite band. Really? Blue Rodeo. Aw. There you go.

They're still a great band. They're doing a big benefit for Fort McMurray, actually, with the Sadies and I think Dallas Green. And I think that's coming up fairly soon, actually, over in Alberta. And I did take my mom to see Blue Rodeo at Massey Hall. And fantastic show. Was my husband still with the band at the time? No, I don't think so. No, he was gone. Long gone. Yeah. But a fantastic show. That's for sure. Okay. So let's talk about Chum FM for a moment.

You're the Chum FM expert, longest serving. Oh, yes. I am the authority on Chum FM. People today know, you know, they know Chum FM is a good place to go if you want to hear, I don't know, Kelly Clarkson or Justin Timberlake. Justin Bieber is going to get a lot of airplay there. You're going to hear a lot of fun, good, wholesome pop or whatever. Yeah, top 40. With a little R&B flavor, I guess, in there. Well, not much. I would say it's pretty top 40 these days.

Would you play a Rihanna track? Oh, yeah. Okay, we play Rihanna. That's a little favorite. Mostly her gold, though. Her newest stuff came in a little too heavy for most of our...

Oh, so like the Drake track doesn't get played? The older Drake track? Like the new one, Work. No. No. You know, no. I think, you know,

Rihanna's a fine line, for sure, for a lot of our listeners. Some of her older stuff, when she first came out, first couple of albums, I think resonates pretty well with our listeners. Well, like Umbrella or whatever it was. Yeah. And you know, all that kind of stuff. The more pop music from her. Okay. But we heard you were playing some Joe Walsh, yeah, Life's Been Good, which great track, by the way, great track. But I mean, I was listening to a lot of you from the early

80s and I would hear like you'd be playing like Van Halen, like I said, like a heavy Van Hal great track. But I mean, I was listening to a lot of you from the early 80s, and I would hear like you'd be playing like Van Halen, like I said, like a heavy Van Halen track. And then what I think would be news to some people listening is that, you know, if they're younger, is that Chum FM wasn't always like kind of your pop kind of safe station or whatever. Like they used to be a rock station. Yeah, they weren't always that. We weren't always the radio station that maybe your mom and dad listened to.

You know, we were kind of the radio station that maybe your mom and dad listened to. We were kind of the radio station in town. And we played all that current stuff, a lot of rock music, and I don't know, Supertramp, Bob Seger, you name it, we played them. So that was sort of our thing with kids. And those of us who were on the air were all about the same age as our target audience, somewhere between 20 and 25. So we were all kind of a good fit. Right. And so I'm going to play an ad from 84. This is only 30 seconds, but here's a Chum FM ad from 1984.

Chum FM is Toronto's ultimate rock. Out of one speaker. Toronto's ultimate rock is non-stop. On Chum FM. 104 Chum FM. 104 Chum FM. Nonstop. Up to 59 minutes of nonstop rock an hour. Toronto's ultimate rock.

Chum FM. That's very funny. Yes, I remember being Toronto's ultimate rock, and that was before the.5. That was like 104 Chum FM. So much confusion when people went to 104.1 and couldn't find you. There's a point.

So then back then, if you were looking for a rock tune, you might toggle between Q107 and 104.5. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. That was about it. And so that's, and I'm sorry about the one side of the speaker nonsense. Sometimes when you take these YouTube clips and you try to convert them, I know it's sometimes... Yeah, it's okay. No, that was pretty cool to listen to, actually. I don't know if I've

ever heard that since those days. Yeah, Toronto's ultimate rock. Yes. And then at some point, according to my sources, at some point in 1984, you guys kind of switched to adult contemporary. And I'm going to play an ad in a minute from 1988. But when you're on the air there and you're, you know, I'm sure you're into the music you're playing, possibly. Maybe I'm putting words in your mouth.

So did you dig the music you were playing? Sure, absolutely. And then when they decide to change it up on you, because you're an employee there and you're on the air, and they say, okay, now we are adult contemporary. Like, how does Ingrid respond to that? Like, I mean, obviously, what can you do? But do you like personally, do you wish you were still playing some of the cooler tunes? Well, I mean, I got into radio because I love music for sure. So that it would have had some slight effect on me. But basically, Mike, I got into the business because I love the business. So, you know, I love the idea of formats and, you know, strategy and charts and how we're going to figure out what listeners want. And I still love all that stuff. I still, I'm really, you know,

into it. So, you know, to connect with listeners and so the music is wonderful and it's a big part of it, obviously, but I'm going to just play whatever they want me to play, frankly. And so the music is wonderful. And it's a big part of it, obviously, but I'm going to just play whatever they want me to play, frankly. And I'm still that way today. Because now, of course, it's so many more years later. And I am not the age of our target audience. I'm older than that. But I still like a lot of the music we play. I don't like all of it. But I do like a lot of the music we play. But I'm more into not just the music, but the whole thing because it's like a big thing. So if they said, okay, hey, we're flipping over to music of your life or whatever. I'm fine with that.

Whatever they want me to play is cool. Big band era. As long as I can, you know, there's great music from all eras and from all cultures. And if they came to me and said no we're going world music well i won't know very much about it but i'll learn pretty how about if 104.5 went all all drake all the time you know i i like drake because he's a local boy i don't know a lot about his music but but i think he's a cool guy so sure why not hey i think it's a great idea so i'm gonna just play this water for me yes you're. Sorry, I should have told you that earlier.

I just didn't know. I didn't want to be presumptuous. Some crack a beer. I'm not going to crack a beer. Some do that tonight when they're at home and not driving. Oh, my goodness. And it's Wednesday, so that's a school night. I won't be drinking any beer tonight.

But thank you. I appreciate the water. Okay, you drink the water, and I'll play an ad from 1988. Okay. Shum FM. Roger Ashby here. Good morning. Traffic update from Maryland. The low routes around the city include eastbound Gardner. Rick Ashby here. Good morning. Traffic update from Maryland.

Slow routes around the city include eastbound Gardner. Rick Hodge, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning, Roger. You're listening to more than 35 minutes of nonstop rock. Guaranteed. Shum FM, and it's Rick Ringer here. We're heading home together. And this is the great music of This is Dan Michaels and the Shum FM jet flying soon.

Cool. We continue now with the music from Lights Out and Chum FM. Who's that chick at the end there? Lights Out. Yeah, that sounded pretty good. Mike, do you have any recollection of Lights Out at all? It reminds me of like Venus Flytrap show on WKRP. It was very kind of ethereal and moody.

Do you like candles for that one? Yeah, you could. Absolutely. You know, for sure. It was all that kind of, you know, Wyndham Hill music. And oh my gosh, it was so weird for us. It was such a departure. They didn't know what to do in that time slot. It was like 10 to midnight. Sure. They didn't know what to do in the time slot. It was like, let's try this. It's like, you want to do this? Yeah, sure. Fine. And I was so tired because I had little kids

at home. I'm like getting up, you know, at all hours with little kids and then I've got to stay awake till 2am. But you record, it sounds like you're recording from a hot bath with candles around the room. Well, I'm glad that that's the way it sounded. I was probably falling asleep on the board, you know, and having to extinguish candles that were, you know, getting too close to my hair. Did you ever watch WKRP in Cincinnati? Of course. Every radio person knows WKRP, just like we all know vinyl. Every record industry person watches it. But nothing, it's not actually like that.

That's all I know about radio, by the way. Vinyl is not very realistic either, I got to tell you, because I have watched about as many episodes as you. But I know, because Mick Jagger was a consultant on that. Oh, for heaven's sakes. I know. You know, that whole show is so over the top.

There's so much yelling, and there's so much violence, and drugs, and maybe that's how it was in New York. Was there a lot of coke at Chum FM back in the day? Lines of coke? Well, not that I remember. I really don't remember those days being like that. Everybody was struggling just to kind of, it was like, wow, do you have a smoke? Do you have any smokes?

Coke was not. Bum a dart. Yeah, exactly. Do you have any players? Do you have an export A? Okay, so at that point, of course, Roger, Rick and Marilyn are in full effect and you're doing the adult contemporary. And then I don't even know these terms. You're the strategist. But in 1990, they change it to hot adult contemporary. Is that different than, is that like hot means they added

maybe a little, maybe a little edgier? I think it was probably a little bit more. Yeah, it was a little edgier. It was a little bit more top 40 and maybe a bit younger. And you're going to help me out with in the mid 2000s. So only, I don't know, 10 years ago, you'd make another change. Now it's rhythmic hot AC. Well, I think we started to add a lot of, you know, hip hop and R&B and stuff. We're starting to make great inroads on charts, right? You know, I don't know, Beastie Boys, maybe Run DMC. There were a lot of acts that were all of a sudden getting attention, you know, by the

record industry and on radio. So I think, you know, I think the idea was, oh, we need to incorporate a little bit of that. But mid-2000s. Yeah, well. Because you're going back to like mid-80s. Well, yeah. Beastie Boys and Run DMC.

Yeah, no, I know. But, you know, Chum FM has never, maybe we were at one time, but these days our mandate is not to be a trend-setting radio station. We're not the edge, you know, or edgy that way. I don't think the edge is either anymore. Maybe not. I don't know. I don't listen to a lot of radio, frankly.

So, you know, I don't really know what anybody else is doing much. But I hear little bits of here and there. And, you know, I hear Maureen Holloway sometimes because I'm a fan. I like her. The Mo Show. Yes. And I don't like the name of that show, if I can just say that, Maureen. You can say that.

But I think she's pretty cool and I think she's a great broadcaster. So I, you know, that. And I hear May once in a while, but, you know, May and I are on the air at the same time. So we can only hear each other when somebody's on vacation or something. And then I also listen. I hear Michelle Butterly sometimes as well over at CHFI, because again, she and I are friends because we used to work together at CHUM. So, oh yeah, years ago, Michelle and I would call each other and go, I'm playing, I'm playing 98 Degrees. What

are you playing? And she'd go, oh, I'm playing, you know, The Cars. I hate this song. Do you hate your song? Oh yeah, I hate this song. Okay, what are you doing on Friday? Oh, I don't know. You want to get together? It was like that. That's great. Yeah. That's great. There are a lot of women on the air at Chum FM, which I think is, I think if you looked at radio... You know, and they would not have done that a number of years ago.

I tell you, when I first started at Chum FM, they probably thought, okay, we have a woman and that's all we need. Like a token woman, right? A token woman. Like we have our token woman. We got her out of the reception pool and we brought her in and she's on Shum FM. And that's all we need. And if we have any other women on the air, they're going to be doing traffic, you know, busy on the Don Valley Parkway traffic.

Or they're going to be doing, we used to have a news show on Shum FM called In Toronto, which was an amazing news show. Great. Like a magazine article show, like 60 Minutes type thing. Right, right. And there were women contributors on that show as well, some great journalists. But aside from that, there weren't any other women on the air until, I don't know, when that changed. Maryland, I guess. Maryland comes in like 80, mid-80s or whatever. Mid-80s, yeah. We had a number of other women that were there every once in a

while, like that kind of came in and then left and came in and left and came in and left. Because I've been there so long, I hardly remember, actually. So for the record, like right now, like regular daytime shifts at Chum FM, you've got Marilyn Dennis, you've got yourself, Ingrid Schumacher, you've got Ashley Greco and Meredith Shaw. I know, it's crazy. It's the opposite of what some of us have come to think of radio, that it's male-dominated and you have a token woman and then you... I know, I know. Is it courageous? I don't know. I think it's,

I applaud our program director, David Corey and making that decision. I think for him, it wasn't about, Oh, I'm going to, I'm going to find a woman for this position. I'm going to find a man I'm going to find for him. It's always been, I need to find the perfect person, regardless of, you know, what sex they are. And I need that person to be on the radio. And that's what I'm looking for. Cool. So, you know, he found that in Ashley for our afternoon drive. And it's been a great success.

You know, she's really good at what she does. And Meredith, who's a musician, actually, and a model, you know, already had those irons in the fire. And when David discovered her, you know, David's involved in music quite a lot, my program director. So I don't know if he came across Meredith that way. But I remember him coming down and telling me, oh, there's this woman and I'd like you to train her to potentially do evenings for us. To be her Rick Moranis. Yes. Yoda.

And Meredith came in and she was wonderful. She still is. She's a delight. And gorgeous. Oh, sold. I'm going to have to ask her. You're going to stop hiring models. You sold me.

I'm going to have to ask her to come on Toronto Mike now. She's great. Are you kidding? She's like, you know, she sings. She models. She's on Shum FM. No, I'm sold. I'm going to reach out.

And if she doesn't respond, I'm going to drop your name and say Ingrid. I know. I know. She's great. You'll love her. You, uh, so you mentioned you don't have a preference with what songs you play because you love the gig and just the music and that's cool. So what about like, okay, so since you got to Shum, there's been one, at least two different ownership changes. So are those smooth transitions or do you notice any corporate changes? Like, I guess, okay. So you had,

of course, Alan waters and the chum limited, like that's the founders, I guess the chum limited that, and that's the owners until 2007. You'll tell me if I'm wrong. Could you get the page? that's correct.

And then CTV globe media. That's a mouthful. I always thought that was a mouthful that buys chum FM in 2007, but only for a few years because then Bell Media... Gobbles them up. Gobbles them up in 2010. Yeah. So these are smooth transitions or is it different styles of management? Like how is it?

Totally different styles of management. And also the other major thing. So the first sale, of course, was heartbreaking for most of us because we were a family. It was a radio station family, you know, because we were under the Waters family tree. That's what they say. And it was a very personal experience working for that family. It really was. You know, Christmas parties, lavish, beautiful, generous Christmas parties where we all got

cab slips to come and go. And the family, the Waters family were lined up like in a receiving line, like at a wedding where they'd know they'd come and you'd have to shake everyone's hand when you came in and Mr. and Mrs. Waters would be there wishing you a Merry Christmas. And they'd know my husband's name and they'd wish him a Merry Christmas and they'd ask about the kids. And, you know, it was that kind of a thing right and beautiful uh family just wonderful so you know things things change and it's business it's a radio business and i think when when mr waters

passed away that there were some definitely some changes that that happened right after that happened uh yes the business chum itself was sold was over by CTV Globe Media, which at the time was also Globe and Mail, was in our little family for a little while, and CTV certainly. And then Bell Media came in and went, well, we want CTV. We're getting rid of the Globe and Mail. You folks can go. But we're keeping all this radio stuff as well. We don't know anything about radio necessarily, but we're keen to learn because we think there might be some money to be made here. So they took us over and to answer your question, Mike, yeah, that's a big difference for us. Plus we moved, right? In 2008, no, nine, we moved from 1331 Yonge Street, the home of 1050 Chum and Chum FM. We moved into the Much Music building, which was very cool. As a downtown person myself, I live downtown and I thought, hey, this is kind of nice. I can ride my bike to work,

which is nice. I like living close to my job. But it was very different for us. We were all of a sudden in a little, we were in a corner of a major building that involved a lot of stuff, a lot of TV, a lot of culture. Well, that's the thing, right? Because Bell Media does lots of stuff. Big, yeah. And we felt a little bit like we'd been swallowed by a whale. So our stance these days, I think, is that most of us have come to terms with business and how things are operated. We just try and do our job, our jobs collectively, the best way we know how, within the corporate structure, and still make it feel like chum, you know, still make it feel like home for us. And there aren't a lot of us left.

Well, that's why it's nice to have people like you and Roger and Marilyn around to kind of tie back. It's like there's some continuum there. Absolutely. Absolutely. And there are people behind the scenes as well that have also been there for a good long while with us. The people behind the scenes never get the props or the mentions. No, and they should because they're the ones, you know, they're the oarsmen, you know. They're keeping that boat going a lot of times. So they're a wonderful crew. Hey, what happened? Remind me, what happened to that 1050 sign? The iconic 1050 chum sign outside the Davisville and Young?

iconic 1050 chum sign outside the Davisville and Young. You mean the radio one 1050 chum? Yeah. It's up in our building, Mike. Okay. That's okay. They took it down. You can slap me when I ask those stupid questions. Mike, it's up at the building.

I'll do the sound effect. So they took it down and they cleaned it and put in new bulbs. Okay. And all that kind of stuff. So it's up there. Yeah. And then they brought it down and they said, you know, we know you're moving and that it's up there. Refurbished it. Yeah. And then they brought it down and they said, I gotta open my eyes.

They said, you know, we know you're moving and that it's hard, but we brought the sign. The sign is at the corner. It doesn't flash like it used to on Yonge Street,

but. Those bulbs are expensive. Cause you know, and we were bothering neighbors with the flashing. It was like, oh, please,

I'm trying to sleep. I asked because. Turn off that dumb light. Yeah, I could see that. I just, it's like that dumb light. Yeah, I could see that. I just, it's like that episode of Seinfeld when the winner came, right? Yes, this is exactly what it was.

The chicken place or something like that? Kenny Rogers? Kenny Rogers Roasters. Yes. I mean, it's fabulous. Oh, Kenny. That was us. My mom, by the way, before Blue Rodeo,

I think her favorite act was Kenny Rogers. So it all comes full circle here. It really is. And I asked about the sign, the 1050 sign, and I should have known that. I'm stupid. But because the Sam sign is in the news this week because it's coming back.

So the Sam sign, when Ryerson bought the Sam the Record Man, apparently that's coming back now. I'm glad to hear that. I'm glad. We need our signs. Toronto, we like our old signs. We need our old stuff, basically. You know, there is.

So we can rename this. Rogers Center can be Skydome again, right? Well, you know, yeah. I know there's a little rivalry, not you personally, but... You know, yes. No, I mean, you know, competition aside, I think that, you know, that's corporate. That's sort of how corporate, the corporate world works, you know. And we were talking about Ticketmaster earlier and see, we've come full circle.

It's a... Corporations. Nothing is as... So industry changes. Okay. So if you're around in 1980 and you were, and now you're around in 2016, what's the biggest change? Like, I always wondered, can you talk as much as you used to?

Do you have as much freedom? No, no, no, no. Like, what is the biggest changes in this industry? No, we used to talk a lot. In fact, we used to talk so much that I would be very stressed about what I was going to say. You know, I thought, oh, gee, I've got two minutes to fill. What am I going to say? Like this, where I make you talk for an hour. Then this is fine because I'm having a conversation with you. But on the radio, you're just by yourself. And I'm not, unless I'm, you know, interacting with a listener or

something on the phone, I'm just by myself. So to actually speak by yourself for two or three minutes, unless you're reading copy, is very difficult for me anyway, because that's not how I came up. I understand that for talk radio folk, they do it all the time. And I know a lot of those people who work upstairs from us at News Talk 1010, and they're very good at it. You know, Jim Richards and Ryan Doyle, those guys are great. But, you know, that's not what we do. That's not our thing. So now, you know, my boss is basically usually saying, he likes to say 30 seconds, 45 seconds. I do go over that from time to time.

He doesn't question me too often on it. Once in a while, he'll go, you know, that was a little long. But do you miss, I know you said it was kind of nerve wracking because you have to think of what you're going to say, but I don't miss it? I don't. I don't really. You know, I get to do things like this. I get to speak to you. That's where you can get your words in. Exactly. And I convey the things that maybe I want to. And plus, there are other ways for me to convey my Ingrid-ness. I can do Twitter, Facebook, you know, Instagram, text, whatever, you know. So

there are other outlets for me too, if I've got a bigger thing that I want to talk about. Like today, I really wanted to address the fact that 15,000 people in Fort McMurray were going back to either their home or what remained of their home to look through the rubble to see if there was anything they could salvage. And to me, that's a heartbreaking story. And these are our, you know, brothers and sisters in Alberta that are going through this. It's a horrendous thing. It's going to last many, many more months, of course.

It's not over now. So I wanted to address that, but I wasn't sure exactly if I wanted to do it on the air, because I had other things I wanted to talk about on the air. So I kind of have to figure out, okay, that one I'm going to put on Facebook because then I can spend a little time with it, put up a picture and maybe interact with people who are going to comment. Right. That's a great, great outlet. Cool. So yeah, it all works. And what about, for the record, because I've had David Marsden on a show, for example, and there was a time when he, well, most of his career actually, where he played what he wanted to play.

Yeah. But most radio people, and of course now no chance, but even back in the early 80s, most radio people didn't get to play what they wanted to. CFNY accepted. They had a different rule set or whatever. So were you ever able to choose what you played? Within certain guidelines, yes. When I first started at Shum FM, we had a system. Do you know what a grease pencil is? No. So it's like a pencil that's waxy, and they come in all different colors. Well, they used to sell them. Maybe they don't anymore. Anyway, we had a binder of all of the music that we played on Shum FM.

And the music was in categories. And they were categorized by color. So the blues were maybe all Canadian. And maybe the greens were kind of gold, you know, the last five years or something. And reds were current, you know. So how our format at the time was set up was red, green, blue, yellow, red, green. And so we, you could choose which of the greens you wanted to play. And when you played it, you circled the time. So one through 24 was there. And if it was

10 a.m., you circled the 10 so that the person on after you would know, oh, she just played that at 10 a.m. That's how we figured out the, you figured out the separation. And that's how we did it. Now, I may have only had seven or eight songs in the green category. There might've been 30. I don't quite remember. So we did have that choice. You had a little, you could pick from a pool. Yeah. That didn't last very long. I think that was the first couple of years. And then after that, it was like, nah, we're picking the music now. That's similar to... You guys suck. In the Marsden era, which we mentioned in 102.1, they had a similar system, a bit more than 7 to 30, though. They had a lot more, but they had, I can't remember now,

a dot system. Scott Turner explained it quite well, and Alan Cross. And yeah, they had like a dot system and they could play within this, but they had a large catalog and they had some leeway in what they could play. But that's all just so long gone now. Because people don't listen to radio like they used to. They don't listen to radio for hours and hours on end. And they're kind of like in their apartment and they're listening to Chum FM for hours. And you had to play different songs all the time because somebody could be listening for hours and a lot of your listeners were, and wouldn't want to repeat anything heavens but now people listen for like you know oh five minutes in the car six minutes i heard you in the grocery store i was at the dentist i heard

you you know 10 minutes here right five minutes there and so you know they want to hear the new adele right like they do and it's like you know uh can you play the new adele oh no i just played it like 20 minutes ago oh but don't worry it's coming up in eight more but it up again. So, you know, we do have listeners who listen to us all day, Mike. And, you know, they're, they're listening to us at work or whatever. And they're the ones who, they're faithful, and I love them. But they're the often the people who will complain that, you know, they, you may only go, oh, man, you play the same songs over and over. And, you know, that's just sort of how the nature, that's the nature of the beast these days, you know, and as far as picking music, Mike, I always, I always put it

together like with a store. Okay. So the people who work in the store don't actually stock the store. They don't actually create. That's a good point. I used to work in a store. So, okay. So what, what store did you, what store did you work for? Well, it was Food City. Okay. So, and I bet you anything And I bet you anything, you didn't choose any of the food that they were selling there. You are correct. So, you know, I don't choose any of the music that Chum FM plays. I just come in and sell that music to you, right? To make it a great grocery store experience. And that's what your job was, right? Yeah. And to mop the floor when they drop the eggs.

You know, and I mop the floor too. And sometimes it's because there's somebody's upset about something with me or with the radio station or whatever. Or sometimes we've made a mistake or sometimes something crashes on the air. And so there's some mopping that we have to do too. I have to do mopping if,, and not Chum FM specifically, but if a station, a competitor, were to fire a beloved DJ, I get the broken eggs on torontomic.com. Is that right?

Yeah, because I'll write about it and then when people Google it, I'll be one or two and they'll come over and leave a comment. I'll never listen to your station again. I can't believe you named the popular DJ who was fired. It happens all the time. You know, we had a fair number of people who have been upset with us over the years

when certain people leave because radio personalities become part of your family and your life to a certain degree, especially the people who have been on the air for a long time. So, you know, the thing that a lot of people forget, though, or they just don't think about maybe is that we all, you know, at the end of the day, I have my own personal career to think about and my own job and my own paycheck and my own happiness. Bottom line is the most important thing. So if the day comes where my current situation no longer fulfills that for me, then I, then I have to, then it's time for me to go.

Right. And as hard as that will be for me and maybe listeners, I don't know. But this isn't something you're, like right now you're happy and you're... You know, I'm cool right now. Everything's fine. You know, I like my job and I think they like me. So basically... The truth is they can't afford the severance now.

They can't afford the severance. So they basically just wait for my contract to expire and then they'll show me the door. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, we're all signed up with contracts. It makes it easier for them. They can just kind of go. If they have a brain in their head, they'll renew that. We're not resigning you.

So, you know, I fully expect that that's going to happen one of these days. Hopefully it'll happen in a mutual sort of setting where we'll both feel like that's the right time. Well, I'm about to ask Jeff Woods about this because very popular, great on-air persona. fairly recently like last year i think got a uh goodbye from uh chorus yeah and he you know and uh my first question is going to be to him my first question to him is going to be is that because you were making too much money because no other uh to a fan there's no other reason like He didn't fit.

He had too much rock integrity. And I don't know Jeff's story at all. I only know him, and I don't know him personally, so I only know him as a broadcaster as maybe many of your podcast listeners do as well. But there's always a backstory. It may not have been a good fit for a lot of different reasons, and money may have been one of those things. Make no mistake, in a corporate world, which we are all part of now,

corporate entities, the people way, way upstairs, do look at pay salaries and they do go, hmm, how can we save money? And one of the first things they do is look at salaries, the upper salaries and go, can we do without this person? So that may have happened. I don't know. I know it's happened in our industry before where they go, you know, if we get rid of that person and hire someone to make half of what that person makes, or better yet, let's hire someone on a contract or part time and pay them by the shift so we don't have to pay benefits or insurance or anything for them. That's a cheaper way for the business to run. Yep.

Right? I don't like it. I don't like it. That's not... There's not much to like there, to be fair. I don't... No? Who likes it? Maybe Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. Maybe. Who's the guy who's sitting going... I think he likes it excellent excellent no one can see our hand movements nobody it's radio oh my god can you people not see me

i'm doing my mr burns excellent yeah no you know that's a sad part of our business but it's not just our business you know that's sort of how it goes if you're not part of if you're kind of not working out for whatever reason, you're gone. Did you know that the Q guys back in the late 80s, not know them, but did you know they were referring to your station as Scum FM? No. I just want you to know that. I thought you should know that. No, I didn't know that actually. Isn't that funny? Yeah, we beat you in the ratings like over and over and over again, back then and now.

Yeah, I don't know. You know what? That kind of stuff means like nothing to me, zero to me. Because I know that basically the people that work over there, work at any other radio station in our great country, basically we're all doing the same stuff. You know, we all got into radio because we love communicating with people. We love music and we love being a part of something big like this. And this is why you do your podcast, Mike. You're a communicator. And so it's the greatest job in the world.

I said this morning to somebody in our control room, actually. I was playing a song. I'm not going to tell you which one it was. And I said out loud, if I have to play this thing, but then I, you know, but then I checked myself and I'd said, well, it's better than working in a sock factory. It is much better than that. Nothing against people who have to work in a sock factory, but you know, we don't work in a sock factory. It's a very lovely job. Was it a One Direction song? No, no, no, it was not. I don't even think I played them on my show today. I'm disappointed.

Okay, last question. I want you to tell me a little bit about this back-in-the-day brunch. So you're still doing back-in-the-day? I was wrong about the sign, so now I have to do it. No, no, no, I'm still doing the brunch. Still doing the brunch. So when is it? When is it?

It's on Sunday mornings, 9 to 11 on Shum FM and across the country on various Bell Media stations. But you don't do that live. You pre-tape it? No, I pre-tape it. So your daily show, Monday to Friday, is live? Completely. I know because you came straight from it. And the brunch show is...

The brunch show, I don't pick the music for the brunch show. I have kind of maybe final clearance with what we play on the brunch show if in other words if there are things that I don't want to play or there's something that I think we should play oh you're like veto power yeah you know to a point

and it's not this sort of you know I'm not heavy-handed about it but I will go into our music director's office or my boss's office and say you know I don't really want to play this song or I think we should play this song why aren't we playing this song and then either the music director or my program director will say, well, here's the reason, you know, and sometimes that makes sense to me. And sometimes it doesn't. And I'll continue

to soldier on in my fight. Does he wave this? Look at the test studies we've done. And he waves a piece of paper. Just go away, little girl. Go back downstairs. If you saw the test. Just why have all the strategy right here. You don't know anything about anything. The people want more Meghan Trainor. The people want Meghan Trainor. Go away. I lied about that being my last question.

And I don't know about any of that stuff. But the back in the day brunch at least allows me to play some music that is a little bit older, like I am. And it allows me to kind of talk a little bit more as well because it's broken up, you know, formatically a little bit different. And it allows me to kind of talk a little bit more as well, because it's broken up,

you know, formatically a little bit different. And it goes across the country, which I quite like as well. So like in Vancouver, is Vancouver one of the markets? I think Vancouver might be one of the markets. I'm, you know, I don't know. I don't know. It's one of those things when you're in a corporate environment, Mike, and you try to ask a question. First of all, it takes about six weeks before you find the right person to ask. Oh, yeah. You just Google it. Okay. Where the hell is my show? Where is it back? Maybe that's what I should do. Where the heck can I hear back in the day?

In my own building, trying to find that sort of information is like, well, let me see if I can email that to you. And then weeks later, you know, well, I found a partial list. Where's the whole list? Who's listening to this show? That's funny. It is. So I basically just record it every week and I send it off with kisses. And that's it. I hope you folks enjoy it. What matters is we get it in Toronto.

Yeah. And, you know, we didn't, that wasn't always the case. When I first started doing the Back in the Day brunch, it used to be called the lost 80s actually when i first started doing the lost 80s then the back in the day brunch it did not air in toronto so i would tell my friends about this cool show that i was recording and they all thought i was making it up it's like ingrid's on about some show she's doing and she's not she's gone crazy she's not she's loopy so anyway so now we run it so the proof is there on the air Sunday mornings. All right.

Now my real final question. What is Ingrid Schumacher's favorite music? Like if you're going to listen to something tonight just for yourself, what are you listening to? Boy, oh boy. I go all over the place because Chum FM has been all over the map. And I have other interests. Mike, I like other stuff aside from radio. But music. You still love music. Mike, I like other stuff aside from radio. But music, though.

You still love music. Yes, I do. But I love, I attend opera at least twice a year. I'm impressed. You're cultured. And I, when I was a kid, I danced for years and years. So I know a lot. My daughter dances.

See? Ballet? Ballet and some, I think, something called acro jazz. Oh, okay. Sort of a jazz fusion. And some, one third thing, I don't know, some competitive dance team she's on. And it's great. It's great for, you know, women, for young girls and for boys to actually do anything

that's physical like that. But dance is, is anyway, I did that for a long time. So I know a lot about classical music because that's what we dance to. And I know opera because I, I attend regularly. My family's in Northern Ontario. So there's a bit of country music up there. And so I do appreciate some country music as well. I like Top 40 music because I'm exposed to a lot of it. And so, you know, I mean, I think that Alessia Cara is awesome. So, you know, there's a lot of music, all kinds of music that I like. I love Danny Michelle.

I don't know if you like Danny Michelle or not. You should get him for your podcast. He's from Guelph. He's a musician. I wasn't sure if it was a guy or a girl at first. Danny, Danny Michelle. So it's a guy. He's from Guelph.

He's got a huge following in Toronto and he's awesome. So I've been listening to his music a lot. And Meredith Shaw is a fantastic musician. Meredith is amazing. She's a great musician. She probably knows Danny Michelle, actually. So who else would I listen to?

I like David Gray. Do you know David Gray? Love David Gray. This Year's Love, is that the guy? This Year's Love. Yeah, I guess. You know, it's funny. I don't resonate with his hits as much.

That's the only song I think I know of David Gray. He's pretty awesome. I love him. I don't know. I hits as much. That's the only song I think I know. Okay. He's, he's pretty awesome. I love him. Okay. Um, I don't know. I listened to all kinds of stuff, you know,

play me some music and I'm going to listen to it. And you know, I may not love it and want to go out and purchase it or, or download it or whatever. But, and then basically I just kind of get into my garden and not listen to any music, but I will listen to your podcasts.

Will you, will you listen to this episode? What are we? 176. For sure. I don't know if I'll listen to your podcasts. Will you? Will you listen to this episode? What are we? 176. Well, I don't know if I'll listen to mine, but I'm going to listen to other episodes. I'm going to listen to this just to make sure I didn't say um or ah too many times.

That's what I say. Oh, you can edit that out in post. Never. I would never. And that brings us to the end of our 176th show. You can follow me on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike.

And Ingrid, please tell me, what is your Twitter handle? At Ingrid Chum FM. At Ingrid Chum FM. If you ever leave that place, you're going to have to change your Twitter handle. That's okay. I will. It's okay. This has been a pleasure. A pleasure to meet your Twitter handle. That's okay. I will. It's okay. This has been a pleasure.

A pleasure to meet you, Mike. No, thank you very much. Enjoy that beer and I'm going to come after Meredith Shaw next. Please do. See you all next week. Andrew Miller and wander around and drink some goodness from a tin Cause my UI check has just come in Ah, where you been?

Because everything is kind of rosy and green Yeah, the wind is cold But the sky is so warm It's me today