CFNY-FM
CFNY-FM is a radio station licensed to Brampton, Ontario. Owned by Corus Entertainment, the station broadcasts a modern rock format serving the Greater Toronto Area. Its studios are in downtown Toronto at Corus Quay on Toronto's Harbourfront, and its transmitter is located atop the CN Tower.
History
From CHIC to CFNY
The station commenced operations on August 8, 1960, as an FM rebroadcast of an AM station, CHIC. On September 21, 1962, two brothers, Leslie and Harry Allen Jr., agreed to purchase all shares of CHIC Radio Ltd. from S.W. Caldwell, Frank M. Early, F.J. Shouldice, John Fox, W.S. Martin, Frank W. Richardson, Garth H. Ketemer, G. Clare Burt, J.R. Jenkins and Gordon F. Keeble. The sale occurred on October 15 later that year and was subject to government approval. They began playing album rock music in the evenings while simulcasting the AM programming during the day. The nearby Humber College provided a steady stream of young employees, who were encouraged to play their own selections. Noted Canadian radio and television personality Vicki Gabereau was one of such employees. At this point in the station's existence, it operated under the call letters CHIC-FM, broadcasting about 30 hours per week, with a transmitter power of 857 watts ERP mono. This was enough to just service the town of Brampton.Until approximately 1975, the AM control room operator spun LPs from the third turntable in AM master control. Nonstop full play of each side of the LP was the norm - with just a break by the AM operator for ID and to flip the LP over. The music was picked by the AM operator prior to their shift. Some of those on air people were Dave Gordon, Mike Lynch, Steve Martak, Rich Elwood, Ted Woloshyn, Scott Cameron; any genre of music was open to airtime.
The style of the station was well received by listeners. In 1976, a new FM studio was built just up the road from the old studio in Brampton on a very limited budget. Engineers Mike Hargrave Pawson and Steve Martak built the new studio and a new transmitter site in Georgetown to increase the coverage from 857 watts to 100 kW ERP, thus able to cover much of the Greater Toronto Area.
In 1976, CHIC-FM officially became CFNY-FM. The phrases "Canada's First New Youth", "Canada Finds New Youth", and "Canada's Fresh New Youth" have often been cited as backronyms for the call sign. Staff employed to that point were fired in favour of hiring a new team and David Pritchard joined the station as CFNY's first program director. He had previously been a DJ at CHUM-FM, and under his guidance the station became more structured. It also began hosting specialty programs of reggae and blues music, and a popular, nationally syndicated Beatles show.
David Marsden, who had started as an announcer at the station, was selected as Pritchard's successor in 1978.
"The Spirit of Radio"
During Marsden's tenure as program director, the style of the station evolved into a sound which has been described as a more professional-sounding version of a campus radio station. At the time, alternative music was new and had not yet received wide exposure, but new wave and punk rock soon emerged as dominant forms of popular music—and so the station became known as one of the few commercial stations at the time which played alternative music.During this period, the station began using "The Spirit of Radio" as a promotional catchphrase. In turn, listeners of the station began to refer to CFNY as "The Spirit of Radio". Canadian band Rush was unable to obtain airplay on many radio stations other than CFNY early in their career; in 1979, the band wrote the song "The Spirit of Radio" about the station. Unable to mention CFNY directly for fear of alienating airplay on other stations, the band instead ensured the catalogue number for their album Permanent Waves was 1021, a nod to the station's 102.1 FM frequency.
While the fan base was loyal, the station struggled to grow its audience due to its small studio and low broadcasting power of only 679 watts. With only a small broadcast range, the station used unconventional promotional strategies in an attempt to grow the brand. CFNY would send DJs to host regular new wave dance parties, both to build a community amongst its fans and to supplement the station's limited advertising revenue through admission fees.
Turbulence and expansion
In 1979, the station's original owners were involved in court action unrelated to CFNY and forced to sell the station. In spite of its problems, CFNY garnered praise from its listeners and other broadcasters alike. Referring to its free-form format, the station was called "one of the last truly alternative radio stations in North America". When the new owners went bankrupt in 1979, the station received 6,200 letters and tens of thousands of names on a petition lobbying the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to "save real radio."With the Canadian economy in recession and interest rates high, the station's owners sold the station to media conglomerate Selkirk Communications. Selkirk moved the station's transmitter to the CN Tower in Toronto, thereby greatly increasing the broadcasting power and range of the station. By 1985, the station had reached new heights of popularity, capturing over 5.4% of the Toronto area listeners and becoming internationally famous for its music mix, due to its availability via satellite. By this time, the station's dance party tradition had evolved into a large video dance party, hosted by Martin Streek, who joined the station as a DJ and on-air personality in 1984. This event regularly toured throughout southern Ontario and expanded the station's influence well beyond its actual broadcast range. For a brief period, it was also available on satellite across North America, although this also led to the introduction of more "popular" music.
Through the early and mid-1980s, CFNY was well-respected for introducing new performers that other stations wouldn't play due to not being well-known names, including Canadian artists such as Martha and the Muffins, Rough Trade, Blue Rodeo, Jane Siberry, 54-40, Skinny Puppy, and Spoons.
CFNY also created Canada's first independent music awards, the U-Knows, the name of which was a pun on Canada's mainstream Juno Awards. In 1986, the station held a listener contest to rename the awards, which were re-dubbed the CASBY Awards, for "Canadian Artists Selected By You".
In 1987, after nine years in the position, David Marsden stepped down as program director. He was succeeded in the role by on-air personality Don Berns. Marsden moved to Vancouver, where he created and launched the variety series Pilot One for CBC Television and became program director of Coast 800.
One notable broadcast was their worldwide period of silence for John Lennon, followed by "Remember" for the recently slain singer. More than 500 radio stations, including one in each Canadian province and American state, plus one in Sydney, Australia played this Dream Network tribute broadcast.
Format change and listener rebellion
Late in 1988, management at CFNY ordered a change in format. After nearly 13 years of success and popular acclaim as a freestyle rock and alternative radio station, CFNY switched to a primarily Top 40 format and began to identify on-air as FM102. Alternative, which had supported the station for most of its history to that point, was relegated to weekends and late night programming.In December 1988, then assistant music director Kneale Mann chose to take on hosting the all-night show which remained free-formed. All the music was chosen by Mann and listeners. He hosted the show for the next two years. He came in second in a national competition for his work next to CBC’s Brave New Waves.
This dramatic shift in the daytime format would not be without consequences. Most significantly, the change sparked a rebellion in its fan base. The station's mid-day phone-in request show was inundated with requests for alternative songs. In support of their new policies and format, station management quickly attempted to put a stop to this by ordering that DJs were to refuse all such calls and fulfill only those requests which were for Top 40 music. Not just unpopular with the station's fan base, the new format also resulted in the dismissal or resignation of much of the on-air staff. Perhaps the most notable of these was the resignation of program director Don Berns after only two years in the role, in protest against station management's decisions.
In response, the more devoted of the station's listeners and fans began signing petitions, even going so far as to file an intervention with the CRTC to oppose the station's 1989 licence renewal. Certain radio analyst reports suggested that as many as 100,000 new listeners had been gained by the change, but this masked the fact that the market share dropped considerably, to 4.3%.
Revival, evolution, and beginning of the Edge
In the summer of 1989, Selkirk was acquired by Maclean-Hunter, which was committed to returning the station to an alternative format. Instead of reviving the old free-form programming, however, Maclean-Hunter hired Reiner Schwarz as program director, with a mandate to tweak the station's programming to create a more conventional modern rock station. In the same year, "Humble" Howard Glassman and Fred Patterson launched the station's new morning show, Humble & Fred, which would go on to receive wide acclaim.In the early 1990s, the station again became an important outlet for new Canadian music, with bands such as Barenaked Ladies, The Lowest of the Low, Rheostatics, and Sloan counting CFNY as their first major radio supporter. However, alternative rock was the dominant commercial genre by this time, so CFNY did not sound as distinctive compared to other radio stations as it once had.
Unfortunately it would also be some time before the changes were effective in resolving the staff morale problems born during the station's recent turbulent years. Schwarz was fired as program director in early 1992, but the most public manifestation of the station's morale woes came in August 1992 when DJ Dani Elwell resigned from the station by reading her résumé live over the air.
In June 1992, with the arrival of the new management team of Vince DiMaggio as general manager and Stewart Meyers as program director, sixteen staff were let go in one day. Those included Scot Turner, Don Berns, Kneale Mann, Jim Duff, and others.
But the 1990s were also a period of revival and sowing seeds of growth for the station. In addition to the growth of the Humble & Fred morning show, Jason Barr also joined the station at this time and would go on to become a significant contributor to CFNY.
A creation of program director Stewart Meyers, on-air personality Alan Cross launched a new feature on the station in 1993, The Ongoing History of New Music. The program chronicled all manner of history and trivia about the roots of rock music in a quasi-documentary style. Over time the feature would come to be one of the most recognizable and long-running shows on the station, being owned by the station until 2008 and continuing to air new segments up until May 2011, when Cross left the station for other opportunities; it was then revived in 2014 after he returned, and continues to air today.
The mid-1990s were another era of transition for CFNY as station owner Maclean-Hunter was acquired by Rogers Communications in 1994. CFNY was sold to competing telecommunications conglomerate Shaw Communications as a result of the acquisition. During this period, the station dropped its old branding and became 102.1 The Edge. For several years toward the end of the 1990s it was also referred to as Edge 102 before this was dropped in favour of the current usage. On May 1, 1996, the station finally moved from its old studio in Brampton to a new facility at Yonge-Dundas Square along with a street-level studio at 228 Yonge Street in downtown Toronto.
After only four years of ownership, Shaw Communications chose to spin off its radio holdings to Corus Entertainment in 1999. Corus remains CFNY's owner today.