It’s hard to imagine that the now-defunct CKEY played such a huge role in Toronto radio history. But at one time, it claimed to be the #1 station in Toronto, it challenged CFRB for easy listening music supremacy, it was the first Top 40 challenger that took on CHUM, and it had one of the largest private newsrooms in all of Canada.
 
It was an amazing place that’s not often fondly remembered, But it should be. Back in 1946 and still on 580, it claimed to be #1 in Canada’s top market.
 

 It’s kind of ironic to think that it was once called CKCL, just one letter off of CJCL, and as far back as 1939, billed itself as “Canada’s Greatest Sports Station.” Little did they know it would become that again decades later. 
 

The legendary Jack Kent Cooke bought the station in 1944 for a record $500,000, the largest price ever paid for a Canadian radio outlet up until then. (Today it might be considered merely a down payment!) It immediately started making money when Cooke instituted a new kind of programming that no one else in town was trying. From Sept. 1949:
 

 Cooke was a master at promotion for as long as he owned the place, a trend CKEY had already started.
 




 It also acted as a de facto hotel – at least on one occasion in 1946:
 

 And it aired typical 1940s programming – er, well, religiously.
 

 As well as a sort of early version of “Let’s Make A Deal,” along with CKOC. I wonder if Monty Hall, who would briefly work at CHUM, had ever heard this.
 

 Sports was a big part of the place in the early days and became part of its plan to eventually start its own TV station.
 



 And while they were in fierce competition with arch rival CFRB, they were at least honourable about it, as this very strange moment from 1945 illustrates.
 

 CKEY was to boast a host of big names later in its existence. But one who was on the cusp of stardom was about to hit a Hollywood Bonanza.
 

 Unfortunately, his at-the-time not quite so famous name wasn’t above a misspelling.
 
Next week: CKEY flips formats, goes after CHUM and meets an ignoble end.