Personalities: Pat Hurley

personalities: pat hurley

Please email corrections and additional information to us . Thanks to all who have contributed to this page, including Bill Dulmage, Wilma Blokhuis, Alan Cross, David Marsden and Don Berns.

Pat Hurley

Station Manager (1980 - ?)

Wilma Blokhuis says:

"Pat Hurley keeps coming out of retirement from time to time to head sales campaigns, mostly for sports-oriented broadcasts, radio and TV. He was interviewed for BTMP (Broadcast-Technology-Management-Production, formerly Broadcast+Technology or BT) for its February 98 issue. He joined CFNY and CHIC as general manager in 1980 and left when the station was sold to Selkirk for $4 instead of to him for $4. He's a little ticked, cuz the station was sold to Shaw, in his words, "for close to $20 million!" Actually, it was closer to $17 million . . . Now he's with the FAN."

Pat writes (December 2009):

Just thought you might be interested in this update.

Steve Macaulay was one of our sales reps at CFNY in 1980 when I arrived to take over as VP & GM. Steve has gone on to be VP.Sales for the Durham Group which owns KX 96, the Rock CKDO and Wave 94.7 in Hamilton.

He called me when his sales manager in Hamilton resigned after 7 years with the station. He left suddenly on a Friday so Steve needed someone to come in ASAP. I agreed to be Sales Manager and started in Hamilton at The Wave 94.7 the following Tuesday. I had been lured out of retirement for the 5th. time. I have been here since then and enjoy it immensely working with the sales team here.

You have to keep your mind working so it suits me well. I love radio sales and the future of local radio has never been brighter. The Wave 94.7 is now a 100,000 Watt station with listeners from Hamilton to Toronto. Because of it's Smooth Jazz format it has a huge audience through streaming on line. The signal is amazing.

Steve and I often share our experiences and memories of CFNY. The station had the best collection of great on-air personalities of any radio station bar none. That's what made it so popular.

Thanks to program consultants, there are few radio personalities on-air today because they said no one wants to hear talk, just the music. How wrong they are. I hope programmers realize that personalities build the audience and station loyalty, not just the music. I Pods provide all the music a person could want today but not the friendship of a friendly voice on the radio.

The spirit of radio will always live on.

Pat Hurley
Sales Manager
[email protected]