The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor Saturday mornings in northern Manitoba just won't be the same without the rumble of bingo balls and numbered squares neatly spread out on the kitchen table. Rotary Radio Bingo will broadcast its final game this March as a financial crunch forces the demise of a nearly four-decade-old institution. '(Card) sales have just dropped so much,' said Wayne Fraser, chair of the Rotary Club of Flin Flon fundraiser. 'We're down right now to probably half of what we were three or four years ago, and we're just not making money anymore.' Fraser said the bingo _ heard on the Arctic Radio Network of CFAR-590 in Flin Flon, CJ-1240 in The Pas and 610-CHTM in Thompson _ has struggled in recent years even as expenses were slashed. 'It's been at least four or five years that we've been cutting the meat off the bone and now we're down to the bone,' he said. Whereas the Rotary Club had been selling some 6,000 bingo cards per week a decade ago, fewer than 600 are now being purchased. Fraser chalks that up to a host of factors, including a competing radio bingo on NCI, the availability of other forms of gambling and the apparent lack of young people picking up dabbers. With the writing on the wall, he recently made a motion that the club shut down the bingo once its current stock of cards runs out around late March. It passed unanimously. As someone who has faithfully dabbed cards in front of her radio for 28 years, Joanne Skeavington was caught off guard by the decision. 'Shocked' 'I'm kind of shocked. It's a disappointment,' said the long-time Flin Flonner. 'I know it will be missed a lot in the community.' The radio bingo tradition began in 1974 when the Rotary Club borrowed the concept from two previous organizing groups. Flin Flonners first played bingo over the airwaves two years earlier, in 1972, when CFAR became the only station outside Winnipeg to pick up the Royal Winnipeg Ballet radio bingo. See 'They...' on pg. 3 Continued from pg. 1 Less than two years later, the ballet company, dissatisfied with revenues from the fundraiser, turned it over to the Rotary Clubs of Manitoba, which only kept the program for about six months. A few months went by before Flin Flon Rotarian Jack Gordon purchased time on CFAR to hold his own bingo to raise money for his daughter's run at the Queen Mermaid crown. The success was surprising, prompting Gordon to recommend that his club, eager for a new revenue stream, host its own radio bingo program each week. Rotary Radio Bingo was born. Broadcast live from CFAR by Rotary members, it didn't take long for the program to establish a loyal base of listeners. 'A lot of people have been playing this bingo for 30 or 40 years, and they like their Saturday morning with coffee and bingo,' said Fraser, who has chaired the fundraiser for nearly a quarter-century. Yet even before the Rotarians' recent decision, the faithfulness of core players wasn't always enough to keep the bingo in the black. Indeed competition from growing gaming opportunities very nearly spelled a permanent blackout for Rotary Radio Bingo around 2000. 'We came extremely close to shutting it down,' said Fraser. 'Sales had dropped to the point where there was one run where we went half a year and lost money on every game, and you just can't run a business that way.' New structure In a desperate move, the club introduced a new prize structure. The $10,000 prize cap was abolished, replaced with a system that saw the jackpot rise by $1,000 each week until it was won. Some longtime players balked. Though the prizes went up dramatically _ one jackpot awarded in 2004 totaled $94,000 _ the odds of winning were no longer as great as they once were. Nevertheless, the move paid dividends and most likely rescued the program from cancelation _ until now. Bingo players are notorious for taking their game seriously, but that doesn't mean Rotary Radio Bingo hasn't been without humour and the occasional goof-up over the years. During one broadcast, after just four numbers had been called, Fraser attempted to liven things up. He spontaneously announced that players with a straight bingo _ a vertical or horizontal line _ would be treated to a free bucket of chicken. 'I didn't think there was a chance anybody had a straight bingo already,' he recalled with a laugh. 'The phone rang off the hook for half an hour. We gave away over 25 buckets of chicken. My fellow callers that day didn't much like me.' In another instance, the program was in Cranberry Portage for a special outdoor broadcast. Rather than moving their electric bingo machine from Flin Flon, they used a hand-cranked raffle cage. Rumble Without the familiar background rumble of the electric machine, some listeners thought the bingo had gone off the air every time the Rotarians stopped talking. 'We didn't use that again,' said Fraser. Since hitting the airwaves, the bingo has dished out over $2 million in prizes to listeners in Flin Flon-Creighton and The Pas, and more recently Thompson. At the same time, Rotarians have used bingo revenues of over $1 million for a host of Flin Flon area projects, from the Rotary Court seniors complex to upgrades at Camp Whitney. Along the way, those half-hour broadcasts became something more than a game. They became a part of northern culture. 'I think because we broadcast at 11 o'clock on a Saturday morning, it's become a social event,' said Rotarian Doug O'Brien. 'You have groups of ladies get together to have coffee and play bingo. People have gotten into the habit of playing it at a specific time every week, and it's just part of their life.' Today, with an estimated audience 300 to 400 listeners, Rotary Radio Bingo will continue to add a few thrills to Saturday mornings for several more weeks. The final game broadcast will be the 1,961st edition. By then the bingo will have eaten up enough airtime to fill about 41 consecutive days. Fraser holds out no hope the bingo will one day be resurrected. Instead he hopes he and other Rotarians who work on the bingo can dedicate their energies to new fundraising efforts. In the same vein, Skeavington will have to find something new to occupy her Saturday mornings. Though the most she has ever won was a case of Pepsi, she will sorely miss what she calls her 'Saturday morning ritual.' 'It's just part of Flin Flon,' she said.
