CJSW Celebrates 30 Years on FM

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CJSW Celebrates 30 Years on FM

Postby jon » Wed Jan 14, 2015 9:59 am

Beloved campus and community institution CJSW celebrates 30 years on FM dial
Mike Bell, Calgary Herald
Published on: January 14, 2015
Last Updated: January 14, 2015 4:26 AM MST

Let’s call it a quiet, somewhat reserved celebration for an institution that has made a helluva lotta noise over its lifetime.

No, there’ll be no huge bash at CJSW this Thursday, no party with dignitaries, returning notables and champagne toasts. Nor will there be any block parties with big-name bands shutting down the downtown. Perhaps some on-air mentions and few pops in the offices, and that’s about it.

Which is fitting, really, because that’s exactly how beloved and irreplaceable Calgary’s campus and community radio station first signed onto the city’s FM airwaves 30 years this week. Ish.

For while Jan. 15, 1985 is considered the official arrival at 90.9 on the dial for the University of Calgary-based signal — according to lore and Wiki entry, the first song broadcast was Talking Heads’ Once In A Lifetime — it’s actual appearance was probably a week sooner and with nothing resembling fanfare.

“We were supposed to start broadcasting on January 15, but we wanted to test the signal and we wanted to get it going,” says Grant Burns, who, as station manager at the time, was responsible for the CRTC application that would take the station from the campus and dorm rooms to the city at large.

“And one morning I get a call. I’m not an early riser … I was probably in bed at 8:30 or 9 in the morning, and I get a phone call from our engineer, Tex … and he says, ‘Burns. Get up. Turn on your f — king radio. We’re on the air.’

“So I turned it on (and) whoever was on the morning on that morning, I think it was jazz, was on. It was just some jazz song. It wasn’t Once In A Lifetime, it was whatever was on the air.”

Which is, come to think of it, an apt description for CJSW then and now: Whatever is on the air. Which is anything and everything — from punk, metal and pop to jazz, noise, blues, folk and world; from local bands to international acts on the rise or forever fringe; and from spoken word to shows that cater to many of the city’s cultural communities.

It remains one of the last bastions of genuine weirdness, a world where alternative isn’t a buzz word or a marketing plan but a very real, and very encouraged trait among the 250 volunteers and six full-time staff members that power it to 20,000-or-so Calgarians at any given time. And that listenership, as weird, wonderful and diverse as the programming itself, is so appreciative of its existence that, last year alone, it pledged $250,000 during the station’s annual funding drive to keep it on the air and to even help boost its reach by taking it from 4,000 to 18,000 watts.

That’s an impressive feat today, more so when, again, you look at those early days of the station, when the U of C’s campus was as conservative as the city at large.

“We were philosophy students, art students, we dressed strangely … ,” says Burns of the dozen or so students who populated the “club house/frat house” that was in the bowels of MacEwan Hall at the time.

Yet, still, with the guidance of other campus stations from across the country, they were able to increase their funding, gain autonomy from the Student’s Union, involve other elements of the community, get that licence from the CRTC and head it down the path to what it now is today.

No longer the young ’n’ snotty upstart, it’s an established, professional and important part of the landscape, and one of the most successful stations of its kind in all of North America,

“It’s 30 years old, it’s acting like a 30-year-old,” Burns says. “It’s graduated, it’s got a good job, it’s being responsible, it’s improving. It’s gone through its ups and downs over the years but it’s really got to a nice place.”

Figuratively and literally. Five years ago, the station moved into multi-million dollar new digs upstairs in the MacEwan Student Centre, which feature offices, several state-of-the-art production studios, a recording studio for live sessions by local and touring bands, an extensive record and CD library, and an on-air booth with a view of the campus.

It’s in the offices where current station manager Myke Atkinson is overseeing operations, such as the planning for the fittingly sensible manner in which to celebrate the 30th FM anniversary, which, among other smaller projects for later in the year, will include a commemorative magazine covering the three decades of history.

“We have all of this ‘stuff,’ but because we make radio, we make it, it floats out and then it’s gone,” Atkinson says. “We want to capture some of that … pull it all together and have a nice companion for what 30 years on FM has been, in a visual sense.”

And, he says, it’s important to do so considering where CJSW is at now is probably as fleeting as what’s broadcast from its studios. In the 14 years he’s been involved with the station, even in the three that he’s been in charge, he’s already seen incredible growth, in both the reach and influence, as well as the on-air product, for lack of a better term.

“I don’t think the process will ever be done,” he says, noting the role in the community — artistic and other — that the station plays, and how it now approaches things a little more professionally, has graduated from being the insular “cool kid” club house, and is all the better for it.

“With time, as we grow, I think we are getting better. There’s definitely going to be people that that’s not for — they want the sort of, like, punk rock, f — k the man vibe …

“But in terms of the listenability side I think that it gets better and better, it becomes more inclusive.”

That, he thinks, is a credit to the volunteers who, as they were when it began FM life, are responsible for much of the 24/7 broadcasting on the station. (Full disclosure: I had several shows on the air and wrote for the since-defunct program guide Vox during the ’90s.) The passion they bring, their knowledge of and ties to the community, and CJSW’s indifference to ratings and commerciality have provided a freedom that can be heard any time you switch it on.

“It’s the difference of making a commercial record versus a record that you want to make out of your heart,” Atkinson says. “We get to make the programming that we want to make out of heart rather than looking at numbers and making decisions on programming on that.”

That, perhaps, is one of the reasons Burns still continues his relationship with the now-matured — but not too mature — institution he helped birth 30 years ago.

But there’s one more that keeps him coming back almost every Friday afternoon to co-host with Kevin Brooker the drive-time show The Road Pops, which actually predates the FM sign-on by eight months. Ish.

“I think the best reason to keep doing it is it’s fun, I enjoy doing it,” Burns says, acknowledging that he still gets a lot of great feedback from people in the community, and thanks for what the station has done and continues to do.

“I guess on another level I’m very proud of CJSW and I like to stay involved with them … I’m very proud of what they’re doing.

For some pics and a video, see: http://calgaryherald.com/entertainment/ ... on-fm-dial
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