In 1988, CKST St. Albert (Edmonton suburb) was sold by Balsa Broadcasting Limited Partnership to Balsa Broadcasting Corporation. Sounds like a simple name change, but it actually was the turning point for the station. The new owners were eight partners, many with past broadcast experience, who invested the money, time and expertise to make the station a success, first as an Oldies AM station, later as Adult Contemporary FM station that effectively took over the Music at Work audience that CKRA-FM had created when it was first K-Lite. The first step was the new "1070 Gold, Edmonton's Magic" branding, with a call letter change to CHMG, with the MG short for "Magic". Next came a move from 1070 KHz to 1200 and a power increase from 10,000 to 25,000 watts. The branding changed to simply "MG" with a red MG British sports cars seen on billboards all over Edmonton. The station moved to FM in 1994 as CFMG, quickly adopting the "Easy Rock" monikor that was later branded into smaller markets with automated operations. For a brief period, then-owner Standard Radio successfully parlayed a well-staffed Toronto Easy Rock (CJEZ-FM) into #1 ratings in the early 2000s.
In 1999, Ian Clark died. He started at CKMO Vancouver in 1934, moving to CKFC Vancouver, where he stayed until 1940, when he moved to Kamloops to be an announcer at CFJC-AM. He later became station manager and then owner. In 1957, he founded CFCR-TV Kamloops, later renamed CFJC-TV, one of North America's first small market TV operations. He added seven rebroadcast transmitters in the Thompson-Cariboo region. In 1963, he began Kamloops first FM station, CFFM-FM which became CIFM-FM, adding eight rebroadcast transmitters to increase the station's reach. His CCF bio, with a couple of photos, is at http://broadcasting-history.ca/personalities/clark-ian.
In 2002, CJCI-FM was born at 12 noon, to celebrate the 35th anniversary of CJCI-AM Prince George (see 1970 above). It was an AM to FM switch for the station, which already owned CIRX-FM, with CJCI-FM on 97.3 MHz with 12,000 watts, combining Modern Country with Southern Rock as The Wolf.
