Larry announced it yesterday via Twitter:
Some news to share. Excited to be named National Director of AM Radio for Corus Entertainment.
I’m excited to work with the best Talk programming teams in Canada on truly legendary stations @CKNW @680CJOB @630CHED @770CHQR @am640 @AM900CHML @AM980News @AM730Traffic @880Edmonton
PSR congratulates Larry on the promotion. He’d been in charge of programming on NW and All-Traffic AM 730 since 2016. And he won’t have to move .. he’ll be able to remain in Vancouver.
Gifford’s biography on the Global News site tells of a major health challenge he’s been dealing with:
Gifford was diagnosed with Young Onset Parkinson’s Disease in August 2017. In September 2018, he launched the podcast “When Life Gives You Parkinson’s” which details his journey with the disease as a guy in his mid-40’s with a family and a career. The show was named among the Best of 2018 by Apple Podcasts.
Gifford is a board member of the Pacific Parkinson’s Research Institute, The CKNW Kids’ Fund and serves as a member of the Michael J. Fox Foundation Patient Council.
The CKNW Listener and the Station itself for that matter would be much better off if the new National Director was promoted straight to Toronto.
NW would then have a new Local YVR PD appointed to be in charge here .
The sooner the better .
Wouldn’t it be good to see the infomercial programming gone and the return of a full-fledged news department?
Mr Gifford has made his mark on NW. Under his guidance NW no longer has a news dept or a sports dept. He crafted the art of creating his own content by reporting content on one show as new news on following shows. The news that is reported often is a compilation of so called experts that NW has oncall for comments . Davidoff is one of the worst. Various pollsters. Realtors.
You have to wonder if they even have a news crew that leaves the building. The only live stuff comes from Surrey.
We came back from nice cruise in Sept with no frustration listening to NW (which we have listened to regularly forever). Upon return we decided not to tune into NW anymore, and we haven’t. Sooooo nice! Sad that we don’t have a decent news talk radio program to listen to anymore. No NW is the new norm for us! Thanks Larry G.