In 1938, Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC) was beaten to the honour of being the first program to air a hockey game on television. The second and third periods of a game in the Harringay arena in London, England, were aired on this day by the BBC. W2XBS New York aired a Rangers/Canadiens game on February 25, 1940. KTLA Los Angeles began airing Pacific Coast League games in November of 1946. Later in the 1946-47 NHL season, the New York Rangers home games were regularly aired on New York City television. Hockey Night in Canada televised its first game, experimentally on closed circuit television, in April 1952 at Maple Leaf Gardens. CBC executives, Imperial Oil and the MacLarens advertising agency were all extremely impressed with Foster Hewitt's play-by-play announcing. Foster had been calling HNIC games on radio since 1931. But it was Rene Lecavalier who actually called the first Hockey Night in Canada that was ever aired on television, on October 11, 1952, at the Montreal Forum. Foster was not up to calling a game in French, as the CBC required for this Canadiens/Red Wings game. But Foster was there on November 1, 1952, for the first English language game aired, with the Boston Bruins visiting the Toronto Maple Leafs.
In 1959, CFRN-AM Edmonton increased power to 10,000 watts from a new transmitter site six miles South of Winterburn. The move to 50,000 watts came only two years later. And the same site is used today, with one tall tower and one short tower.
In 1981, two country music FM stations were licensed to Edmonton. CHED DJ Bob McCord was granted a license for CISN-FM, with 100,000 watts on 103.9 MHz. The station signed on June 5, 1982. With a two month head start over CFCN-owned CJAX-FM, which signed on August 11th, CISN-FM never looked back. CJAX changed call letters to CKNG-FM in 1986, but it wasn't until the 1990s, as Power 92, that the station became successful. A Current Hits format targetted at youth lasted early into this century, when, after a few missteps, the station became JOE-FM, inspired by Jack-FM; today the station is The Chuck.
In 1996, two specialty FM licenses were issued in Calgary. Since both stations had applied for the same frequency, 88.9 MHz, one was assigned the frequency and the other had to propose a new frequency, significantly delaying its sign-on. The winner of the frequency was CJSI-FM, given 23,500 watts. CJSI called itself SHINE-FM Calgary and was owned by Touch Canada Broadcasting, which also owned CJCA Edmonton. Sources differ on who owned how much of Touch back in 1996, but Charles Allard Jr. and Allan Hunsperger were the major partners. At the time, Hunsperger hosted a weekly religious program on CHQR. Thomas Fung and Roger Charest got a license for an ethnic station, but not a frequency to run it on. CHKF-FM eventually signed on to 94.7 MHz, with 53,000 watts, but it took two years to get there.
In 2007, Astral Media's acquisition of Standard Radio was completed, making Astral the largest radio broadcaster in Canada. But, not for long, as Astral was acquired by Bell in 2013.
