Broadcast History - June 8

[jon]

In 1951, as the QSL card below confirms, CKOM Saskatoon first signed on. On 1340 KHz with 250 watts. Mr. Maxwell, my high school Chemistry teacher, used to tell me stories about all the troubles associated with first getting the station on the air, such as land prices that mysteriously doubled as soon as the farmer discovered it would be used for a radio transmitter site. He worked with the original owner of CKOM, Robert Hosie, who retired in 1985, just after selling the station to Rawlco. Bob passed away on January 30, 2003. Over the years, the station moved to 1420, 1250 and finally its current home of 650 KHz in 1985. From 2000-2002, the station had the CINT call letters.



In 1996, Pat Burns died at age 75 and was inducted into the CAB Broadcast Hall of Fame later that same year. Although born in Montreal, Pat broke into radio at the BBC covering the world hockey championship in London in 1949. His arrival in Vancouver, at CKLG, saw his radio work overshadowed by his political activities. He became a North Vancouver alderman and ran for the CCF in Vancouver-Burrard. It was at CJOR, beginning in 1962, that his Hot Line program ("Burns on-line. Go ahead!") gained immediate attention, not just for his controversial style, but also for his ability to feature high profile and famous guests on his show. Shortly after a 1965 series of programs from Selma, Alabama, covering Martin Luther King's civil rights work, he was fired during a period when the Board of Broadcast Governors (BBG, predecessor of the CRTC) was receiving numerous complaints about Pat's Hot Line show. The BBG refused to renew CJOR's license until there was an agreement to sell the station to new owners. Pat returned briefly to newspaper reporting, but soon was on the air in Montreal before moving back to Vancouver, and continued to work well into the 1990s.