CKNW (AM)
Encyclopedia
CKNW owned by Corus Entertainment
, is the highest-rated talk radio
station in Vancouver
, British Columbia
, Canada
. It broadcasts on AM 980.
The station's content is based on news and current events. It features call-in shows with mostly Vancouver-based hosts.
station, the first in the region to provide hourly newscasts (between 6:00 a.m. and midnight
) and the first in the province to broadcast 24 hours a day, beginning in 1947.
In 1947, Rea purchased a half-interest in Port Alberni radio station CJAV
. Several personalities who started there would move to CKNW. These included Joe Chesney, who became morning show host until moving on to establish Langley
station CJJC (now CKST in Vancouver) in 1963, and Jim Robson
, who would provide play-by-play for the Vancouver Canucks
of the NHL
in 1970). On January 2, 1949, CKNW switched frequencies to 1320 AM and increased its power from 250 watts to 1000. It gained even more power, increasing to 5000 watts, on November 5, 1954.
and the Ballard family, who went on to form Western Broadcasting Company, which later became Western International Communications
(WIC). On November 17, 1958, the station switched to its present frequency of 980 AM. On February 22, 1960, its transmission power was increased to 10,000 watts, and it was further increased to 50,000 watts in 1965. On January 15, 1969, CKNW moved into larger studio space in a former Safeway
store in New Westminster. Parent company Western Broadcasting put FM sister station CFMI
on the air on March 22, 1970.
CKNW founder Bill Rea died on April 15, 1983 in Santa Barbara, California
at age 74. On October 3, 1983, the station began broadcasting in AM stereo
. On June 18, 1984, it became the flagship station of the Western Information Network, broadcasting programs via satellite to affiliate stations throughout British Columbia. In 1986, CKNW and CFMI moved from New Westminster to a new Vancouver studio on the Expo 86
site.
During the 1990s, CKNW made a gradual transition from the mixed format of news, sports, talk shows and MOR music it had adopted in the 1960s to full-time news, talk and sports. In 1996, CKNW and CFMI moved again to their current studios in the TD Tower
at Pacific Centre
in Downtown Vancouver.
In February 2001, Corus Entertainment launched an all-news sister station, NW2. This new station (CJNW AM730, formerly CKLG) was branded as "24 hour news radio, powered by CKNW." NW2 shared newsroom resources with CKNW, including several anchors and reporters. However, NW2 did not achieve broad appeal, and was shut down in May 2002.
Since 2001, CKNW has gone through two significant restructurings focused on reducing costs, which resulted in dozens of lay-offs. Several senior reporters have left CKNW for other opportunities. The cost-cutting decisions made by Corus, along with the increase in infomercials, has correspondingly resulted in CKNW suffering a steady erosion of its listening audience.
CKNW lost the BC Lions
CFL
broadcast rights to Team 1040 in 2004. The station had broadcast the games continuously since 1985. In 2006, CKNW lost the rights to broadcast Vancouver Canucks
games to Team 1040 after broadcasting every one of the club's games since 1970. The loss of the Canucks games may have resulted in the station losing nearly a third of their cumulative audience in the Fall ratings of 2006.
The station added a weekend morning show in March 2008 which follows a similar format to weekday mornings, but without traffic updates every ten minutes and news headlines at :15 and :45 (The Weekend Morning News with Jill Bennett).
Other talk-show hosts include Bill Good
and Michael Smyth (The Province
columnist) who broadcast during mid-day on CKNW and along the Corus Radio Network
in BC. In 2006, Charles Adler was added to the lineup, broadcasting the evening pre-recorded slot from Winnipeg
, Manitoba
. On weekends, Sean Leslie hosts CKNW's afternoon talk program (The Sean Leslie Show).
British Columbia Premier-designate
Christy Clark
hosted a long-running weekday talk show on the station, before returning to politics.
Guest talk-show hosts include Simi Sara and Michael Campbell (Global BC
's financial analyst).
CKNW also airs the syndicated program Coast to Coast AM
in the morning.
The station's traffic department provides extensive reports with traffic every 10 minutes on the 4's. Elaine Scollan does the AM Drive from the CKNW helicopter while Ryan Lidemark covers the PM shift up above.
Mark Madryga
is CKNW's weather forecaster whose reports can be heard during the morning news and The World Today. Global BC's Kristi Gordon is the substitute forecaster.
Additionally, Dan Russell's "Sportstalk" is the longest running sports talk show in Canada. Sportstalk Weekend is hosted by Rick Quinton.
CKNW also transmits a time signal
in the form of a single chime every half-hour, on the half-hour.
faulted CKNW for airing "potentially dangerous information" during the Dawson College shooting
. During the incident, CKNW had simulcast
content from its sister stations in Montreal
which included students speaking by cellphone from inside the school. A Vancouver man complained that the content could have told the gunman where the students were. The council said that as a result of modern technology reducing geographic distance as a barrier, CKNW had breached Section 10 (coverage of violent situations) of the broadcast code. The station broadcast the decision as required, but did not air an apology and the station manager said it was a "one-off situation" that would not affect CKNW's policies.
Corus Entertainment
Corus Entertainment Inc. is a publicly traded Canadian media and entertainment conglomerate.Corus is a leading Canadian specialty television and radio producer, with additional assets in pay television, advertising services, television broadcasting, children's book publishing and children's...
, is the highest-rated talk radio
Talk radio
Talk radio is a radio format containing discussion about topical issues. Most shows are regularly hosted by a single individual, and often feature interviews with a number of different guests. Talk radio typically includes an element of listener participation, usually by broadcasting live...
station in Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, Canada
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...
. It broadcasts on AM 980.
The station's content is based on news and current events. It features call-in shows with mostly Vancouver-based hosts.
History
CKNW began in New Westminster, BC, on August 15, 1944 at its original frequency of 1230 AM, under the ownership of Bill Rea's International Broadcasting Company. It was Vancouver's first country musicCountry music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
station, the first in the region to provide hourly newscasts (between 6:00 a.m. and midnight
Midnight
Midnight is the transition time period from one day to the next: the moment when the date changes. In the Roman time system, midnight was halfway between sunset and sunrise, varying according to the seasons....
) and the first in the province to broadcast 24 hours a day, beginning in 1947.
In 1947, Rea purchased a half-interest in Port Alberni radio station CJAV
CJAV-FM
CJAV-FM is a Canadian radio station, broadcasting from Port Alberni, British Columbia at 93.3 FM and owned by the Jim Pattison Group's Island Radio division.-History:...
. Several personalities who started there would move to CKNW. These included Joe Chesney, who became morning show host until moving on to establish Langley
Langley, British Columbia (district municipality)
The Township of Langley is a district municipality immediately east of the City of Surrey in southwestern British Columbia, Canada. It extends south from the Fraser River to the U.S. border, and west of the City of Abbotsford...
station CJJC (now CKST in Vancouver) in 1963, and Jim Robson
Jim Robson
Jim Robson was a radio and television broadcaster for the Vancouver Canucks from 1970 to 1999...
, who would provide play-by-play for the Vancouver Canucks
Vancouver Canucks
The Vancouver Canucks are a professional ice hockey team based in Vancouver, :British Columbia, Canada. They are members of the Northwest Division of the Western Conference of the National Hockey League . The Canucks play their home games at Rogers Arena, formerly known as General Motors Place,...
of the NHL
National Hockey League
The National Hockey League is an unincorporated not-for-profit association which operates a major professional ice hockey league of 30 franchised member clubs, of which 7 are currently located in Canada and 23 in the United States...
in 1970). On January 2, 1949, CKNW switched frequencies to 1320 AM and increased its power from 250 watts to 1000. It gained even more power, increasing to 5000 watts, on November 5, 1954.
WIC ownership
In February 1956, Bill Rea, experiencing health problems, sold CKNW to Frank GriffithsFrank Griffiths
Frank A. Griffiths was a Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada media mogul through his company, Western International Communications Ltd. ....
and the Ballard family, who went on to form Western Broadcasting Company, which later became Western International Communications
Western International Communications
WIC Western International Communications Ltd.The apparent occurrence of "RAS syndrome" here was in fact part of the company's legal name. was a Canadian media company that operated from 1982 to 2000, with operations including broadcast and specialty television, radio, and satellite distribution via...
(WIC). On November 17, 1958, the station switched to its present frequency of 980 AM. On February 22, 1960, its transmission power was increased to 10,000 watts, and it was further increased to 50,000 watts in 1965. On January 15, 1969, CKNW moved into larger studio space in a former Safeway
Safeway Inc.
Safeway Inc. , a Fortune 500 company, is North America's second largest supermarket chain after The Kroger Co., with, as of December 2010, 1,694 stores located throughout the western and central United States and western Canada. It also operates some stores in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Eastern...
store in New Westminster. Parent company Western Broadcasting put FM sister station CFMI
CFMI-FM
CFMI-FM is a Canadian radio station in the Metro Vancouver region of British Columbia. It broadcasts at 101.1 MHz on the FM band with an effective radiated power of 75,000 watts from a transmitter on Mount Seymour in the District of North Vancouver...
on the air on March 22, 1970.
CKNW founder Bill Rea died on April 15, 1983 in Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...
at age 74. On October 3, 1983, the station began broadcasting in AM stereo
STEREO
STEREO is a solar observation mission. Two nearly identical spacecraft were launched into orbits that cause them to respectively pull farther ahead of and fall gradually behind the Earth...
. On June 18, 1984, it became the flagship station of the Western Information Network, broadcasting programs via satellite to affiliate stations throughout British Columbia. In 1986, CKNW and CFMI moved from New Westminster to a new Vancouver studio on the Expo 86
Expo 86
The 1986 World Exposition on Transportation and Communication, or simply Expo '86, was a World's Fair held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from Friday, May 2 until Monday, October 13, 1986...
site.
During the 1990s, CKNW made a gradual transition from the mixed format of news, sports, talk shows and MOR music it had adopted in the 1960s to full-time news, talk and sports. In 1996, CKNW and CFMI moved again to their current studios in the TD Tower
TD Tower (Vancouver)
TD Tower is located at 700 West Georgia Street in Downtown Vancouver and is connected to part of the Pacific Centre shopping mall.The skyscraper stands at 127 m or 30 stories tall and was completed in 1972...
at Pacific Centre
Pacific Centre
Pacific Centre is a shopping mall located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is operated by Cadillac Fairview Corporation. Based on the number of stores, many of which are underground, it is the largest mall in Downtown Vancouver with over 100 stores and services...
in Downtown Vancouver.
Corus ownership
In 2000, both stations were purchased by Corus Entertainment as part of the splitting of WIC's broadcasting assets. Corus also acquired WIC's pay-TV assets; WIC's broadcast TV stations were purchased by Canwest.In February 2001, Corus Entertainment launched an all-news sister station, NW2. This new station (CJNW AM730, formerly CKLG) was branded as "24 hour news radio, powered by CKNW." NW2 shared newsroom resources with CKNW, including several anchors and reporters. However, NW2 did not achieve broad appeal, and was shut down in May 2002.
Since 2001, CKNW has gone through two significant restructurings focused on reducing costs, which resulted in dozens of lay-offs. Several senior reporters have left CKNW for other opportunities. The cost-cutting decisions made by Corus, along with the increase in infomercials, has correspondingly resulted in CKNW suffering a steady erosion of its listening audience.
CKNW lost the BC Lions
BC Lions
The BC Lions are a professional Canadian football team competing in the West Division of Canadian Football League . Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, the Lions play their home games at BC Place Stadium in Downtown Vancouver, having previously played at Empire Stadium in East Vancouver from 1954...
CFL
Canadian Football League
The Canadian Football League or CFL is a professional sports league located in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football, a form of gridiron football closely related to American football....
broadcast rights to Team 1040 in 2004. The station had broadcast the games continuously since 1985. In 2006, CKNW lost the rights to broadcast Vancouver Canucks
Vancouver Canucks
The Vancouver Canucks are a professional ice hockey team based in Vancouver, :British Columbia, Canada. They are members of the Northwest Division of the Western Conference of the National Hockey League . The Canucks play their home games at Rogers Arena, formerly known as General Motors Place,...
games to Team 1040 after broadcasting every one of the club's games since 1970. The loss of the Canucks games may have resulted in the station losing nearly a third of their cumulative audience in the Fall ratings of 2006.
Lineup
Morning and afternoon show hosts include Philip Till (The Morning News with Philip Till) and Jon McComb (The World Today). Both these programs follow a similar format and broadcast strictly on CKNW.The station added a weekend morning show in March 2008 which follows a similar format to weekday mornings, but without traffic updates every ten minutes and news headlines at :15 and :45 (The Weekend Morning News with Jill Bennett).
Other talk-show hosts include Bill Good
Bill Good
Bill Good is a Canadian television personality and CKNW radio talk show host. He formerly co-anchored the 6:00pm newscast on Vancouver's CIVT alongside Pamela Martin....
and Michael Smyth (The Province
The Province
The Province is a daily, tabloid format newspaper published in British Columbia by Postmedia. It has been a daily newspaper since 1898.According to a recent NADbank survey, The Provinces average weekday readership was 520,100, making it British Columbia's most read newspaper...
columnist) who broadcast during mid-day on CKNW and along the Corus Radio Network
Corus Entertainment
Corus Entertainment Inc. is a publicly traded Canadian media and entertainment conglomerate.Corus is a leading Canadian specialty television and radio producer, with additional assets in pay television, advertising services, television broadcasting, children's book publishing and children's...
in BC. In 2006, Charles Adler was added to the lineup, broadcasting the evening pre-recorded slot from Winnipeg
Winnipeg
Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...
, Manitoba
Manitoba
Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...
. On weekends, Sean Leslie hosts CKNW's afternoon talk program (The Sean Leslie Show).
British Columbia Premier-designate
Premier of British Columbia
The Premier of British Columbia is the first minister, head of government, and de facto chief executive for the Canadian province of British Columbia. Until the early 1970s the title Prime Minister of British Columbia was often used...
Christy Clark
Christy Clark
Christina Joan "Christy" Clark, MLA is a Canadian politician, the 35th and current Premier of British Columbia, Canada...
hosted a long-running weekday talk show on the station, before returning to politics.
Guest talk-show hosts include Simi Sara and Michael Campbell (Global BC
CHAN-TV
CHAN-DT is a television station in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, broadcasting over-the-air on digital channel 22, and available via cable providers in the area on channel 11. Owned by Shaw Communications as a part of its Shaw Media division, it is the West Coast flagship station of the...
's financial analyst).
CKNW also airs the syndicated program Coast to Coast AM
Coast to Coast AM
Coast to Coast AM is a North American late-night syndicated radio talk show that deals with a variety of topics, but most frequently ones that relate to either the paranormal or conspiracy theories. It was created by Art Bell and is distributed by Premiere Radio Networks. The program currently...
in the morning.
The station's traffic department provides extensive reports with traffic every 10 minutes on the 4's. Elaine Scollan does the AM Drive from the CKNW helicopter while Ryan Lidemark covers the PM shift up above.
Mark Madryga
Mark Madryga
Mark Madryga is a Canadian meteorologist. He is best known as an on-air personality for Global BC, and maintains television celebrity status in British Columbia.- Education :...
is CKNW's weather forecaster whose reports can be heard during the morning news and The World Today. Global BC's Kristi Gordon is the substitute forecaster.
Additionally, Dan Russell's "Sportstalk" is the longest running sports talk show in Canada. Sportstalk Weekend is hosted by Rick Quinton.
CKNW also transmits a time signal
Time signal
A time signal is a visible, audible, mechanical, or electronic signal used as a reference to determine the time of day.-Audible and visible time signals:...
in the form of a single chime every half-hour, on the half-hour.
Broadcast code violation
In 2007, the Canadian Broadcast Standards CouncilCanadian Broadcast Standards Council
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council is an independent, non-governmental organization created by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters to administer standards established by its members, Canada's private broadcasters....
faulted CKNW for airing "potentially dangerous information" during the Dawson College shooting
Dawson College shooting
The Dawson College shooting occurred on September 13, 2006 at Dawson College, a CEGEP in Westmount near downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The perpetrator, Kimveer Gill, began shooting outside the de Maisonneuve Boulevard entrance to the school, and moved towards the atrium by the cafeteria on the...
. During the incident, CKNW had simulcast
Simulcast
Simulcast, shorthand for "simultaneous broadcast", refers to programs or events broadcast across more than one medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at the same time. For example, Absolute Radio is simulcast on both AM and on satellite radio, and the BBC's Prom concerts are often...
content from its sister stations in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
which included students speaking by cellphone from inside the school. A Vancouver man complained that the content could have told the gunman where the students were. The council said that as a result of modern technology reducing geographic distance as a barrier, CKNW had breached Section 10 (coverage of violent situations) of the broadcast code. The station broadcast the decision as required, but did not air an apology and the station manager said it was a "one-off situation" that would not affect CKNW's policies.
External links
- CKNW
- CKNW history at Canadian Communications FoundationCanadian Communications FoundationThe Canadian Communications Foundation is a history of Canadian broadcasting for radio and television chronicles and documents. It also provides a history of radio and television stations, including networks, programs, broadcasters and many others....