Museum of RADIO in British Columbia

CKNW ad from The Vancouver Sun March 5, 1957 Click for full size ad.

From newspaper archives, some 1950’s print ads for various BC Radio Stations.

CJIB 940 Vernon December 2, 1950

CKMO 1410 Vancouver December 5, 1950

CKNW 1320 New Westminster December 7, 1950

CHUB 1570 Nanaimo March 1, 1954

1963
City & Country Radio Ltd. (Joe Chesney) opened CJJC 850 Langley on January 19. The station offered a country music format with 1,000 watts of power.

1969
On November 5, City and Country Radio Ltd. was authorized to establish studios for CJJC at the Dell Shopping Centre, White Rock Shopping Centre, Guildford Town Centre, Haney, BC.

1970
On December 15, CJJC was given approval to move from 850 kHz with power of 1,000 (two directional patterns) to 800 kHz with 10,000 watts (two directional patterns), with a minor change in the antenna location.

1975
In June, CJJC moved from 850 to 800 kHz and increased its power to10,000 watts.

1977
CJJC rehired 23 of 32 staff members who were given notice by owner Joe Chesney on New Year’s Eve. At that time, the entire staff was given 30 days notice as the station was suffering financial problems.

City & Country Radio Ltd. was authorized to transfer all of the shares in CJJC Radio Ltd. to a company controlled by J.E. Chesney and Ernie Mykyte.

1978
Mykyte obtained 100% of CJJC with the purchase of the 50% held by Chesney.

PAYNE, Bruce Gordon

Born 12 April 1946

Died 24 March 2011

Bruce was born in Scotland and was very proud of his heritage. He spent his school years in Nanaimo but always considered the Cowichan Valley his home. Bruce started his broadcasting career in Nanaimo when he was 17. He worked at many different radio and TV stations throughout the province and finished his career at CHEK TV.

Another major part of his life was spent in serving the community. He was a councillor for both the City of Duncan and the Municipality of North Cowichan but was most proud of his work with the BC Forest Museum and helping to get bus service established in the valley.

Ron might want to speak to this. Takes you back, my friend.

Frank Thompson, News Director at KJR, 1969-1974, died Saturday at the age of 85. Thompson’s career started in 1957 at San Diego’s Mighty 690 – a rock station. From there, he moved to KOGO middays 10-2. Later, KFMB and also KDAY/Los Angeles, before moving to KJR. He died in Surrey. No further details available.

Frank Thompson working for LG News in 1975 with George Wilson of the CBC. Interviewing….or being interviewed by a very young Prince of York, Andrew at the Bayshore Inn.

Frank Thompson – Announced station break, “This is CFGP, Grande Prairie, the Voice of the Mighty Peace.” 1945; Lorne Greene School of Broadcasting Toronto 1949; CJVI Victoria 1950-53; KFMB San Diego CA 1953; California border station XEAK The Mighty 690 Tijuana late 1950s; remote broadcasts KOGO San Diego 1960-67; KDAY Santa Monica CA & weekends KABC Los Angeles (introduced 12 year old Tom Irwin who later became Shotgun Tom Kelly at KRTH-FM Los Angeles) 1967-68; KJR Millionaire then News Director/voiceovers KJR Seattle 1969-74; news/voiceovers CKLG Vancouver 1974; freelance to retirement 1998; currently resides in Surrey BC

Thanks to Gord Lansdell and the fine website www.vancouverbroadcasters.com

Big Daddy – Dave McCormick

After high school and a stint at UBC including working on the campus station, he became part of local radio history at CFUN. “They weren’t very old; they weren’t a rocker yet. The station was all over the place in those days. I turned it around and started rocking a little bit there and got some ratings and in the summer of 1960 a whole bunch of us turned that station into a rock ‘n’ roll station. Brian Lord, Brian Forst, Al Jordan and myself. We were the Good Guys at 1410. We were a really fun radio station, you ask anybody who remembers. I had 100,000 members in a thing called the Hi-Fi Club.”

1955: Feb. 14: CKMO 1410 becomes C-FUN when Dave showed up the new call letters were relatively new and no one had capitalized on them. CKMO had been a big station since 1928.

 10 thousand people rushed to get 28oo seat at Vancouver Theatre to hear Burns

Patrick “Pat” Burns (April 16, 1921 – June 8, 1996) was a radio talk show host and newspaper reporter. He was born in Montreal, Quebec, but began his radio career in England with the BBC as a sports reporter covering the world hockey championships in London in 1949.

After working for a time as a news/sports reporter for the Vancouver Province, he worked as the News/Sports Director for CKLG in Vancouver from 1955 to 1963. On May 13, 1963 the “Burns Hot Line” made its debut on CJOR in Vancouver which earned him recognition as one of Canadian radio’s most fascinating and dynamic radio personalities.

In 1965, Pat hosted a series of programs from Selma, Alabama, where Martin Luther King was helping to change the United States forever. He was fired a short while after those historic broadcasts. His dismissal was widely protested* but the decision stood, and Pat returned briefly to newspaper reporting before joining CKGM in Montreal later in the decade. The “Burns Hot Line” returned to the air for a while between 1969 and 1976 after which he did news and commentary.

In 1996 Pat Burns was inducted into the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame following his death earlier that year in Vancouver.

Thousands of people showed up at the QE Theatre to see and hear Pat Burns after his firing – pictures above show news coverage of that day. Traffic was tied up in the area for hours.