For at least a couple of years now, I've been living with a chronic neuro-immune illness that has symptoms similar to those of long COVID, and Gill is definitely experiencing much of what I, a former broadcaster currently freelancing/self-employed, go through on the daily. The struggle is very real, and there are better days and worse days symptom-wise, but I don't give in or give up.

I'm currently awaiting word on a potential long-term contract with one media company that operates in southern Ontario, and I'm hoping that this illness doesn't get in the way of this remote/WFH position. Below is a shot of my current workstation, with most of the equipment funded by a Starter Company Plus grant. And yes, that's a wheelchair at the desk... I use a power-assisted manual 'chair to help with my mobility outside the home.

Here's hoping that I can continue to work at least part-time from this little office/studio and not be held back by a chronic illness.

The transmitter site was razed over the weekend; an Algonquin College radio prof confirmed it on Facebook Saturday.

Radiowiz wrote:

& Where are the Christmas music channels?? 

"Holiday Favourites" is ch. 342 on Cogeco... pulled it up Saturday while putting up our Christmas tree.  Not sure where it would be on Rogers, Eastlink etc.

BowmanvilleBob wrote:

"Mes amis, I am but a poor, humble man worth only $1.8 billion. I had to layoff staff to keep my stations on the air. It is all the fault of the dastardly CBC, which dares to produce shows that people actually enjoy watching. Mon dieu! Quelle horreur!"

En tabarnak de câlisse, osti!

mic'em wrote:

This entire thread is shit. Lots of political forums, why don't you guys go to one. 

Hear hear!

One of my first stations straight out of college was Cornwall's CJUL 1220 "The Jewel", an AM 740-like standards/oldies station which used the former CJSS(AM) transmission facilities; the site was left intact after CJSS moved to 101.9 FM. What I did on CJUL was a bit minimal compared to the two FMs in the building, CJSS, and CFLG 104.5.

CJUL went dark in 2010, with CFLG and CJSS ramping up their local news coverage.

MJ Vancouver wrote:

On YouTube I’ve seen a mixture within the same program during that period, on both sides of the border. There’s a clip on YouTube of CKVR’s year in review from 1976, which itself was broadcast in colour, but some of the news film presented from that year was in black and white.

CHEX in Peterborough was also still shooting news footage on B&W film into the late 1970s, but unlike CKVR, which used 16mm colour film as late as 1984, CHEX's news department skipped colour film and went straight to 3/4" colour videotape. It was around '84 that 'VR adopted Sony's Betacam cameras and VTRs for ENG/EFP.

Let's not talk politics, please.

mic'em wrote:

There has been a Christian based FM broadcasting out of Barrie for at least 15 years, likely more. They have a repeater in Owen Sound also if I recall correctly. In the early days of their tenure, they aired spoken word shows that also were on the Buffalo station, of which I don't remember the call letters, as well as music. I don't know if that is still the practice. 

The Barrie station would be Life 100.3 (CJLF), which launched in 1999 and also has rebroadcasters in Peterborough and Huntsville.

I had first heard of CHCR during my Grade 12 co-op placement at Peterborough's Trent Radio in 2000-2001, when that station's founding father, the late John K. Muir, was involved with the "Full Moon Over Killaloe" audio art camp. Last week, I went to Killaloe, the birthplace of the Beavertail, and began assisting CHCR with some technical and regulatory matters, and although they've had a number of people near and far step up programming-wise in response to the above-mentioned CJOH report and an article in the locally-owned Eganville Leader newspaper, the station needs funding more than anything. Occasional pancake breakfasts in the community have helped CHCR with its fairly low operating costs, but there are some capital things that will need to wait - additional microphones in the studio (the current console can handle as many as three), a dedicated OTA logging computer, and a new machine to run the OpenBroadcaster solution which will enable AlertReady emergency alerting on CHCR.

Station management have also considered a pitch to the Township of Killaloe, Hagarty & Richards, for the municipality to join forces with CHCR to disseminate local emergency information, and also assist with obtaining UPSs and a generator to keep the station on the air during extended power outages. While I was at the station, some good news came through on the phone - there is some serious interest from the nearby Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation at Golden Lake in partnering with CHCR. This would give the local Indigenous community a broadcast voice, and also potentially bring some much-needed funding to the station.

Still, the more funds that CHCR can raise, the better, and if you happen to have some funds and/or hardware (esp. computers and mics) that you could donate to the station, contact them via their website, chcr.org, or send me a message.

During my time at Mix 97 in Belleville in the early 2000s, the news director at the time always messed up whenever U.S. defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld came up in his afternoon newscasts - the long-time ND pronounced it "Rums-Field". I was in the studio with Mix's then-afternoon host, the late Joey Martin, who heard the ND butcher Rumsfeld, and yelled off-air "IT'S RUMSFELD!!!"

RadioActive wrote:

102.1 CFNY: "Song title + artist." (On the morning I checked this out, there was a weird text that followed the record info. It read: “C27A + Sunday +08/20/23 +15151.” I have no idea what that last part is supposed to mean.

"C27A" might be the hexadecimal "PI" code for the call letters CFNY. I programmed RDS encoders for several stations, and each station had its own unique code, calculated using a special spreadsheet which, if I remember correctly, was provided by the Communications Research Centre.

I often pass through this area on the way to and from places like Belleville, Napanee and Kingston, and the tower from which this TVO signal originates is right on Highway 41, at the top of a hill on the south edge of Bon Echo Provincial Park.

The producer had also documented, on YouTube, some of the last years of Global's Bancroft-licensed channel 2 transmitter at Vennachar, not far from Bon Echo; that signal was one of Global's "original six" transmitters from 1974, and it signed off around this time last year. A Facebook post shows that the Bancroft transmitter itself was the same model, an RCA TT-25FL, from start to end, but with some Larcan components installed in the late '80s to enable stereo audio transmission on channel 2.

On Vin Scully's call of Gibson's homer - "high fly ball into right field, she is GONE!"

Some other favourites of mine are Cheek's "Touch 'em all, Joe!", Chris Cuthbert on Sid's "Golden Goal", Rick Jeanneret's "May Day! May Day!", and Joe Bowen's "DOWN GOES BROWN!"

Talking about RJ, a CD was released years ago with some of his most famous calls, and the whole thing is on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zdi8whWn_I

mace wrote:

Canadian stations get simsubbed as well. In Toronto, for most of the broadcast day the CKCO signal is replaced by CFTO.

During my college years in Belleville, Kingston's CKWS and Peterborough's CHEX were both on the local Cogeco system, and 'WS would show up on both channels, except during local newscasts and any other non-simultaneous programming, such as TV Bingo.