CBC Radio One celebrates 82nd year broadcasting across Sask.

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CBC Radio One celebrates 82nd year broadcasting across Sask.

Postby radiofan » Tue Aug 03, 2021 7:54 am

CBC Radio One celebrates 82nd year broadcasting across Sask. by revisting origin story
CBK-AM, CBC's pioneer western radio, opened in 1939 in Watrous.
Laura Sciarpelletti · CBC News · Posted: Aug 02, 2021 8:25 AM CT | Last Updated: August 2

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This week CBC Radio One is celebrating its 82nd year of broadcasting across Saskatchewan.

Everyone has an origin story. The story of CBC Radio One in Saskatchewan begins in the town of Watrous. There CBK-AM, CBC's pioneer western radio, opened in 1939.

When CBC looked to expand into Saskatchewan, it chose Watrous because the town's soil had impressive conductivity elements due to the Manitou Springs. The town is also a solid central location in the province. These two elements helped CBK's signal reach as far west as the Alberta Rockies, as far east as Winnipeg and as far south as Montana on a clear night.

A state of the art tower with an impressive 50,000 watt range and an art deco station building were built. The station officially launched on July 29, 1939.

The transmission tower was massive for its time, and the CBK building was said to impress many visitors, including a young Dwight Kornelsen.

Kornelsen was first given a tour of the station by one of then-technician Orin McIntosh's children.

"As kids they pretty much knew that building inside out. And I was just completely intrigued by everything. Just the scale of everything was so large. Like I was used to CB radios, which were the size of a small breadbox or cake pan. Well, here's a transmitter that fills an entire room," Kornelsen said.

From that moment on, Kornelsen fell in love with broadcasting technology and the Watrous CBK building. The art deco-styled building had a fallout shelter in 1964, large transmitters and a giant map on its floor. The map was cut out of linoleum into the floor and had every radio station in Canada at the time marked on it.

Read the full story here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatch ... Wd6cOKtG0Y
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music.
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