In 1976, CFTR Toronto issued its first Top 30 chart. It appeared in The Toronto Star. The station would go on to provide the first serious competition that CHUM had seen since CKFH. CFTR continued the battle until June 1, 1993, when the station aired "The CFTR Story", a Top 500 countdown from the past 25 years. After repeated airing, at 6:00 a.m. on June 7th, 680 News was born, quickly becoming Canada's most successful All News radio station, and actually making some money for owner Ted Rogers, Jr., who had named the station after his father in 1971; the TR in the call letters stood for Ted Rogers. The station had originally been launched in 1962, in the only known case of an FM station launching an AM sister station. CHFI-FM launched CHFI-AM as a 50,000 watt daytime-only simulcast of CHFI-FM. It took years of negotiations and applications, but by the coming of Top 40 in 1976, CFTR was on 680 KHz full-time with 25,000 watts. It took 13 towers to create the required pattern. That, too, must be some kind of Canadian record.
In 2008, Jackson Armstrong passed away at his home in North Carolina. Born John C. Larsh, Big Jack and his pet Gorilla, an on-air alter-ego, was also a well-known part of Canadian Radio, thanks to a stint at CHUM in the late 1960s. There are several sites that remember him better than I can here, including our own:
- http://www.radiowest.ca/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3185
- http://www.reelradio.com/jackarmstrong
- http://user.pa.net/~ejjeff/13qarmstrong.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Jack_Armstrong
