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So much for the blues on Ottawa airwaves.

After almost seven years, DAWG-FM, Canada’s first commercial radio station to specialize in the blues, will move online, while the station’s owners carve out a new space on the dial and rebrand as a mainstream rock station.

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Starting Friday, DAWG-FM will become Rebel and move a couple of notches, from 101.9 to 101.7, in hopes of improving the signal.

One of the few independently owned stations in the region, it’s been a challenge for DAWG to establish itself in Ottawa’s competitive radio market.

“For the last seven years, we’ve struggled with ratings and really getting traction with any kind of audience,” said the station’s co-owner Ed Torres, noting a divide between the rock and blues listeners. DAWG plays both styles of music.

“What we found was our blues listeners tune out when we play a rock song and our rock listeners don’t understand the new blues that we play,” he said. “It’s been a challenge holding an audience because it seems to go between the blues and rock. We’ve tried to tweak the format in both directions to see if we can get some traction in one format or another. But the nature of the way the licence was structured was that we had to play both.”