It wouldn’t be morning in Owen Sound without the voice of Diana Meder.
by Roger Klein
Her friendly voice has been riding the airwaves over Southern Georgian Bay for decades, delivering reliable news and weather reports, along with stories that reflect the community back at itself.
Diana Meder’s day begins long before she steps in front of the microphone at 6 a.m. with her co-host Ted Easton on 92.3 FM in Owen Sound.
“I grab my Timmy’s and I’m here between 3:30 and 4 a.m. In the winter, it’s about 3:30,” says Meder, as she describes her diligent routine of gathering the latest news and weather before writing the stories of the day.
“Compile it all together into seven newscasts, all delivered live, every single newscast, because things change on a dime, especially on a snow day. You can’t pre-record that,” she explains.
Meder’s broadcast career started at Niagara College shortly after impressing her high school Canadian literature teacher with her poetry reading. “I still didn’t know what I wanted to do. So I wrote down everything I was good at and everything I liked, and they all led to broadcasting,” Meder recalls.
Her very first job was writing and reading the news at 97.7 HTZ FM in St. Catharines. “There was no bus to get from Welland to St. Catharines at 3 in the morning, so I took a cab and the cab cost me 10 dollars more than I got paid,” she chuckles. “That’s what you did to get started in the business.”
After that, Meder’s easy manner graced the airwaves on multiple frequencies from Barrie to Kitchener, and then Belleville, before she settled in Owen Sound with her partner and co-host Bob Wallace.
“That’s what makes us go, that’s what drives us, it’s the community helping the community, getting messages out about the community,” Meder muses.
Listeners truly embraced Bob and Diana’s broadcasting chemistry on the pair’s daily morning show, first on Mix 106.5 and then on 92.3 The Dock. Their personal lives suddenly became public in September 2017
when Wallace discovered he had leukemia and then died of a heart attack. Meder says the community helped her through the grief.
“It was a very enlightening experience for me and many of our listeners and friends who helped me get through it. Coming back to work after six weeks was daunting, but it was the listeners who gave me a reason to return. They reached out for weeks afterwards through emails and phone calls, especially after hearing me well up a bit on the air when we talked about Bob. I feel like we all went through it together—me, the listeners and my co-workers,” Meder reflects.
The broadcaster and the community are now inseparable in many ways, and ever true to her trade, Meder continues to engage with listeners in the region with her early morning routine.
At the same time, the radio landscape continues to evolve around her. Her home station CJOS-FM, originally known as the 92.3 The Dock, was renamed Grey Bruce’s Bounce 92.3 in 2017 when Bell Media acquired Larche Communications. The name will change again to Zoomer Radio 92.3 when ZoomerMedia assumes ownership of the frequency and the radiostation in the coming months.
While the names change, the frequency stays the same and the veteran broadcaster knows that the spirit of radio rests in the community it serves.
“That’s what makes us go, that’s what drives us, it’s the community helping the community, getting messages out about the community,” Meder muses. “We just raised over $55,000 for the local oncology department at the Owen Sound Hospital. Well, that was us and the community working together. We couldn’t do it without them.”
