Broadcast History - December 8

[jon]

In 1945, CJAD Montreal signed on from studios in the Canadian Legion Building, taking its call letters from the initials of owner J. Arthur Dupont. The station has always been licensed to Canada/Mexico clear channel 800 KHz, beginning with 1000 watts, but increased to 50,000 watts day and 10,000 watts night in 1964. All four of its towers were toppled in a 1998 Ice Storm. CJAD initially took over CFMB's old 1410 KHz transmitter site, but poor coverage saw them move quickly to 990 KHz, taking over CKGM's 50,000 watt facility during a period when CKGM was treading water before a format change.

In 1993, CIBW-FM Drayton Valley was licensed as the community's first local radio station. The frequency was 92.9 MHz with 7400 watts. In 1997, CIBW was granted two additional licenses. A rebroadcaster: CHBW-FM-1 in Nordegg on 93.9 MHz with 120 watts. And CHBW-FM 94.5 MHz with 720 watts in Rocky Mountain House, simulcast with CIBW except for 15 hours of local programming per week. Jim Pattison purchased the three stations in 2003. CIBW's power was increased to 50,000 watts in 2009 to reduce interference from CFEX-FM in Calgary, which signed on to the same frequency in 2007.



In 2005 at 2:00 p.m., CHMC-FM Edmonton signed on as Magic 99, on 99.3 MHz with 100,000 watts from the CKUA-FM tower. The station had their full complement of on-air staff, both live and voice-tracked, but ran commercial-free for more than a month. Owner Rawlco had originally been given a license on April 5, 2004, but was denied the use of the requested frequency, 89.3 MHz. It took them more than a year to get an alternate frequency approved.