Alan Cross
Encyclopedia
Alan Cross is a Canadian
radio broadcaster and a writer on music. Alan’s obsession with music began at age six when his grandmother gave him a transistor radio—an old Lloyds—which spawned an all-consuming fascination with things that came over airwaves. A few years later, his uncle—who moonlighted by services jukeboxes—kick started his record collection by dumping a box of old 7-inch singles on him one Sunday afternoon. Alan was hooked.
In 1980, Alan got his start CKUW at the University of Winnipeg, which, at the time, was a closed-circuit station. The broadcast range was limited to one hallway and one cafeteria.
After graduating, Alan ended up at CJRL in Kenora, a 1,000 watt AM station that broadcast to the people and wildlife of Northwestern Ontario. From there, it was on to KX-96/Brandon and Q94-FM/Winnipeg before he ended up at CFNY (renamed The Edge) in October 1986.
After fifteen years as a CFNY/Edge in a variety of announcer gigs, Alan moved to program director at Y95 in Hamilton, overseeing, in part, a frequency change which made the station Y108. In 2004, Alan started a four year stint as the station’s Program Director (where he was named Canada’s Program Director of the year in 2005, 2006 and 2008).
He then became Senior Program Director for Corus Interactive, the online arm of Corus Radio. His last project with Corus was as Head Curator of ExploreMusic, a truly unique online and on-air feature dedicated to music discovery.
Oh, and that radio show. The Ongoing History of New Music debuted in February 1993 and since then it’s…well, it's taken on a life of its own. There have been over 700 one-hour episodes making it the longest-running music documentary in Canada and one of the longest in North America—if not the world!
If you’re into reading, Alan has a weekly national newspaper column in the Metro commuter paper, four published reference works on alt-rock, and four audio books, The Alan Cross Guide to Alternative Rock.
What else? There was ExploreMusic-TV on Bite-TV and Aux. The inflight audio programming he did for Air Canada for year. The various TV guest appearances. The official biographies he wrote for rock bands. Appearances in dozens of documentaries. The magazine articles. The narrations. The speaking gigs and lecture series. Jeezus, no wonder he doesn’t have kids.
There’s more planned, too. Watch www.alancross.ca
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
radio broadcaster and a writer on music. Alan’s obsession with music began at age six when his grandmother gave him a transistor radio—an old Lloyds—which spawned an all-consuming fascination with things that came over airwaves. A few years later, his uncle—who moonlighted by services jukeboxes—kick started his record collection by dumping a box of old 7-inch singles on him one Sunday afternoon. Alan was hooked.
In 1980, Alan got his start CKUW at the University of Winnipeg, which, at the time, was a closed-circuit station. The broadcast range was limited to one hallway and one cafeteria.
After graduating, Alan ended up at CJRL in Kenora, a 1,000 watt AM station that broadcast to the people and wildlife of Northwestern Ontario. From there, it was on to KX-96/Brandon and Q94-FM/Winnipeg before he ended up at CFNY (renamed The Edge) in October 1986.
After fifteen years as a CFNY/Edge in a variety of announcer gigs, Alan moved to program director at Y95 in Hamilton, overseeing, in part, a frequency change which made the station Y108. In 2004, Alan started a four year stint as the station’s Program Director (where he was named Canada’s Program Director of the year in 2005, 2006 and 2008).
He then became Senior Program Director for Corus Interactive, the online arm of Corus Radio. His last project with Corus was as Head Curator of ExploreMusic, a truly unique online and on-air feature dedicated to music discovery.
Oh, and that radio show. The Ongoing History of New Music debuted in February 1993 and since then it’s…well, it's taken on a life of its own. There have been over 700 one-hour episodes making it the longest-running music documentary in Canada and one of the longest in North America—if not the world!
If you’re into reading, Alan has a weekly national newspaper column in the Metro commuter paper, four published reference works on alt-rock, and four audio books, The Alan Cross Guide to Alternative Rock.
What else? There was ExploreMusic-TV on Bite-TV and Aux. The inflight audio programming he did for Air Canada for year. The various TV guest appearances. The official biographies he wrote for rock bands. Appearances in dozens of documentaries. The magazine articles. The narrations. The speaking gigs and lecture series. Jeezus, no wonder he doesn’t have kids.
There’s more planned, too. Watch www.alancross.ca
Books
- The Alternative Music Almanac (1995)
- The Making of Pretty Hate Machine and The Downward Spiral (1996)
- Over the Edge: The Revolution and Evolution of New Rock (1997)
- 20th Century Rock and Roll: Alternative Rock (2000)