In 1949,
CHUB Nanaimo first hit the airwaves with 250 watts on 1570 KHz. Not a very wise frequency choice given that the most powerful of the Mexican border blasters, 250,000 watt
XERF-1570, had recently hit the airwaves just across the Mexican border from Del Rio, Texas, using
XERA's old transmitter site. After John Romulus Brinkley lost his medical license in 1930, he sold his Kansas radio station (KFKB) in 1931, and used the proceeds to build
XER, with 75,000 watts and a directional pattern intended to reach back to Kansas. He later hired the same engineers who built
WLW Cincinatti's 500,000 watt experimental transmitter, and the new station was assigned the XERA call letters. Sources disagree on the maximum power possible with that transmitter, with numbers quoted as high as two million watts. With Brinkley's death and the U.S. involvement in World War II, XERA died but was resurrected a few years after WWII ended with the Mexican government licensing XERF with
only 250,000 watts. And there is even some question as to how often they used the full 250KW. XERF is best known as the birth place of
Wolfman Jack, a personality created by DJ Robert Weston Smith specifically for his new Border Radio image.
In 1959,
Astronomy Today debuted on
CBC-TV at 3:30 p.m. on Sundays, for 30 minutes. Images were shown from the Dominion Astro-Physical Observatory in Victoria. And the lecturer was Professor F.A. Kaempffer from the University of British Columbia.
In 1976, many of Toronto TV and FM stations began testing transmitters from towers atop the newly-constructed
CN Tower. They began full-time service on May 31st, and we'll have full details then, in Today in Broadcast History.
