The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 35

is if THURSDAY, AUGUST 18, 2011 BREAKING NEWS: VANCOUVERSUN.COM RADIO A new SONiC booms in Vancouver Rogers switches format from golden-oldies tunes to Top 40 BY JOHN MACKIE VANCOUVER SUN Listeners tuning into FUNFM for their oldies fix Wednesday morning were in for a bit of a shock. The station's owner, Rogers Radio, abruptly switched formats at 8:35 a.m. from '70s classic rock (such as Prism's Spaceship Superstar) to contemporary Top 40 (the first song played was LMFAO's Party Rock Anthem). The new format comes with a new name, SONiC 104.9FM. To introduce the format to listeners, the station will be playing 10,000 songs in a row, without any commercials.

Which should work out to about 28 days of ad-free music. Rogers has been quietly planning this for some time, so had a snazzy website and Facebook page up as soon as the new format hit the air. The station will also be taking its month-long dance party to a booth at the PNE. "It will be hard for you to tell me in the next six weeks that you haven't seen SONiC everywhere," said Geoff Poulton, a Rogers Radio vice-president who is general manager of the company's stations in British Columbia. "We're dancing to 10,000 songs in a row at the PNE.

You'll notice marketing is pretty heavy everywhere." The station already has a top 20 on its website, with Pitbull's Give Me Everything at number 1, Lady Gaga's The Edge of Glory at number 2, Katy Perry's Last Friday Night at 3, Party Rock Anthem at 4, and Britney Spears' I Wanna Go at 5. Poulton said the station's key demographic will be 18- to 34- year-old women, with a wider demographic of 18- to 49-yearold women. vancouversun.com GET UP TO THE MINUTE NEWS FROM B.C.'S LOCAL NEWS WEBSITE. BROADWAY MUSICAL! WINNER OF 6 TONY AWARDS! PATRICK STREET PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA BOOK BY CRAIG LUCAS MUSIC AND LYRICS BY ADAM GUETTEL ANNETTE ROTHSTEIN THEATRE EMBER 15TH OCTOBER 2011 TICKETS AT TICKETSTONIGHT.CA| 604-684-2787 For more information visit patrickstreetproductions.com PRODUCED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH TURNER ENTERTAINMENT CO. OWNER OF THE ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE "LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA" BASED ON THE NOVEL BY ELIZABETH SPENCER Patrimoine Kabrne PATRICK STREET CITY BRITISH COLUMBIA Bel Heritage canadien PRODUCTIONS Rothstein OF ARTS COUNCIL Theatre VANCOUVER WESTCOAST LIFE D7 "In Vancouver, I suppose you would argue The Beat would be our competition," said Poulton, who said that Rogers has similar Top 40 stations in Toronto (Kiss 92.5) and Edmonton (The Bounce).

"There are four contemporary hit music stations in Toronto, there's three in Edmonton and two, maybe three in Calgary. Vancouver had one pure Top 40, so we felt the format was big enough to handle a second in this market." Poulton also said that FUNFM's ratings were relatively low compared to a similar Rogers station, JACK-FM, so the decision was made to make a switch. The station at 104.9 on the FM dial is based in Chilliwack, although its studio is in Vancouver. It has experimented with several formats since Rogers took over a dozen years ago. "I think it's been seven different iterations since 1999," said Poulton.

"It was X-FM, then Clear-FM. There were different version of Clear-FM. Fred and Cathy came back on for a time, it became a jazz station for a bit, it was a soft AC station for a bit. Then it became 104 Greatest Hits of All Time in '08, FUN-FM in 09, and now SONiC in 2011." This may be the end of the line for the FUN name, which dates back to CFUN, Vancouver's Top 40 AM powerhouse in the 1960s. The legendary DJ Red Robinson is among the on-air personalities who were left unemployed by the format switch.

Robinson, 74, hopes to move to another station so he can continue his 57-year career. YOU ALREADY KNOW YOU'RE GONNA LOVE IT! BENNY ANDERSSON BJORN ULVAEUS' Littlestar MAMMA MIA: THE SMASH HIT MUSICAL THE BASED SONGS ON OF BROADWAY ACROSS CANADA VANCOUVER ON STAGE NOW THROUGH SUNDAY! TONIGHT TOMORROW 8PM SATURDAY 2PM 8PM SUNDAY 2PM QUEEN ELIZABETH THEATRE 855.985.5000 ticketmaster.ca THE VANCOUVER SUN BroadwayAcrossCanada.ca SERIOUSLY RESTCOAST.