For the second time, Stingray Radio has taken Flow off the airwaves at 93.5 FM. But this time, the historic Black radio station will live on in Toronto.
In a rare double-rebrand on February 14, 93.5 relaunched as Today Radio while Flow moved down the dial, taking over what used to be G98-7 FM. The station is now known as “The All New” Flow 98.7.
“It’s a little unusual we’d license a brand in the same market we’ve previously used it, but we felt it was better to keep the Flow brand alive than just to let it go, even if it strengthens one of our competitors,” says Steve Jones, SVP of brands and content at Stingray, in an interview with NOW.
Two stations with intertwined histories
It’s the latest dizzying shift in the legacy of what was once Canada’s first Black-owned commercial radio station.
Flow 93.5 was launched by Denham Jolly and his company Milestone Radio in 2001 after a decade-long campaign to bring a Black-owned station to serve Toronto’s Black community in an authentic way, which was missing from Canadian radio.
The station sold to CHUM Radio in 2010 and then shifted ownership multiple times over the next decade between CTVglobemedia, Bell Media, Newcap and Stingray. It shifted formats multiple times within hip-hop and R&B, briefly rebranding as the throwback station The Move in 2016 before eventually coming back as Flow in 2019.
With Flow no longer Black-owned, Jamaican-Canadian broadcaster Fitzroy Gordon and a team that included a few Flow veterans launched G98.7 in 2011 as an urban adult contemporary station. After Gordon’s death in 2019, the station went into receivership and was put up for sale.
There was a popular petition and multiple letters of support from prominent politicians to keep the station Black-owned, but none of the 14 bids were from Black buyers and the station eventually sold to CINA Radio Group, which previously served the country’s Indo-Pakistani community.
Those two intertwined histories are now coming together as the team behind G98.7 takes over Flow.
What does this mean for Flow and G98.7?
“[Stingray Radio] approached me with the opportunity to continue the legacy of the brand Flow,” says Gary Gunter, the general manager of the new Flow and formerly G98.7. “They knew we were both in the same lane, and that we could take over that powerful brand.”
Gunter is originally from Chicago and has worked with “urban” stations in some of the continent’s biggest radio companies: iHeartRadio, Urban One and Clear Channel, among others. He took the helm in September to “take G98.7 to the next level.” He says this rebranding is the best way to do it.
As part of the deal, the former G98 takes complete ownership of the Flow brand, its name, intellectual property, social media accounts and equity. What they don’t get is the talent. All of the DJs and hosts at the former Flow were laid off last week.
Gunter says he has “had talks” with a few of the former personalities, including Ricochet, who was a central figure in the former Flow’s return to playing contemporary local hip-hop.
But many of the former G98.7 DJs are still onboard at the new Flow. Their shows have all been rebranded to fit the new station identity, with shows like Morning Flava hosted by Red & Jay Martin, The Traffic Flow with Spex the Boss and the Quiet Flow with Geena Lee.
That latter show is probably the biggest link from G to Flow, with the mix of slow R&B, soul and “cool-down music” serving a slightly older audience. G’s demographics tended to skew older than Flow’s (average listener being around 40 vs. 32 years old) and they hope this will help them get a bit younger.
As for music, the new Flow takes the former slogan of “Toronto’s hip-hop” and turns it into “Toronto’s hip-hop and R&B.” For those worried that leaves out the soca, reggae, Afrobeat and other Black and diasporic sounds rarely played on other stations, Gunter says they will not abandon that music and content. They’ll still be playing a wide array of genres, though filtered through the hip-hop and R&B lens.
“It’s predominately hip-hop targeted music, but it will be a diverse musical collage of hip-hop from different genres,” he says. “It might be African hip-hop, Caribbean hip-hop, it might have some reggae or soca. It’s all those things, but in the hip-hop and R&B lane.”
The future of Flow
The importance of the original Flow was never just that it played hip-hop, admits Stingray’s Jones, but that it served the Black community in Toronto and had core community values that went beyond ratings. As hard as they tried to serve those, the post-Milestone owners could never quite replicate what made the original station so pivotal.
He says he fully realized that when the station syndicated the American show the Breakfast Club – arguably the most popular show in hip-hop radio – and it never resonated with the Flow audience.
“More than anything else, we walked away from that with an understanding that Flow is a uniquely Toronto radio station, not just a uniquely hip-hop station,” he says. “It’s a station that serves Black communities in Toronto, and that’s the area G lives in. They’re uniquely positioned to bring it back to its roots.”
But it was also a business decision. The ratings lagged behind other stations in the Stingray network, which has over 100 radio stations across Canada. But for the former G, Gunter says, the Flow brand offered a bigger, more diverse, less “niche” listenership and more brand recognition than what they could achieve under their own name.
That means, for all its twists and turns, Flow will continue to exist into the future.
“Flow has existed for 20 years now,” Gunter says. “And we want to get 20 more in.”
