New station 105.9 The Region provides local news for York Region
105.9 FM is an independent radio station that offers local news, traffic and weather for York Region, a suburb of Toronto. The station has brought in some recognizable names, including Jim Lang, former host of the morning show on Sportsnet 590 The FAN, and Howard Glassman, also known as Humble Howard.
By Tamara Baluja, Associate Editor
York Region, a suburb of Toronto, has a new independent radio station that started airing local news, traffic and weather programming in December. The station, 105.9 FM The Region, will celebrate its official launch on Feb. 5.
It has brought in some recognizable names, including Jim Lang, former host of the morning show on Sportsnet 590 The FAN, and Howard Glassman, also known as Humble Howard.
“There was a real gap in the market,” Mike Atom, the programming director and the host of the afternoon drive show, told J-Source. “And we got a sense of that during the ice storm, when we were giving our listeners the updates on when power will be back in our area. No one else was covering York Region the way we were.”
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The station broadcasts a five-minute news package every hour at the top of the hour in English and then switches to South Asian and Cantonese programming at 7 and 9 p.m. on weekdays. It also airs local programming on the weekend in Mandarin, Cantonese, Tamil, Urdu, Punjabi and Arabic.
Left to right: Jim Lang, Kiran Patel-Shah, Mike Atom, Martha O’Neill
The station has about 20 staff, including hosts Kiran Patel-Shah and Martha O’Neill and news director Mark Holmes, who has previously worked at CTV’s assignment desk in Toronto.
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Tamara Baluja is an award-winning journalist with CBC Vancouver and the 2018 Michener-Deacon fellow for journalism education. She was the associate editor for J-Source from 2013-2014.