Re: 25 cycle power - my father recalled when he lived in Toronto's High Park neighbourhood, the trucks parked on the street with men converting each household's appliances to operate at 60Hz. This would be around 1955. He recalled that you could notice the light flicker when run on 25 cycles.

If interested in electricity generation and distribution, this website below will be an interesting read on how the migration was handled. Along with 25Hz, there was even a 66 2/3Hz frequency standard in Ontario back at that time. The 60Hz conversion project wrapped up in 1959 in Leaside, after starting in 1949.

https://www.lifebynumbers.ca/history/the-rise-and-fall-of-25-cycle-hz-electricity-in-ontario/

As for the delay of television arriving in Canada, I would speculate it had more to do with the technical standard that Canada was going to adopt (likely a no-brainer, but still). Britain had a standarized public television broadcasting system in 1937, before the US did, using the Marconi-EMI 405 line monochrome standard. The NTSC monochrome standard came along later in 1941, later tweaked to accept colour in 1953.

As a sidenote, if you are interested in E-Skip, the film clip below shows BBC TV being received at the RCA's research labs in 1938 at Long Island, NY. The image is pretty soft, but anyone who has DX'd in an E-Skip event will recognize the selective fading and multipath. This is possibly the first TV E-Skip capture ever received. I could only imagine how exciting that must have been for those on the receiving end, watching TV from thousands of miles away on what was then known as the Ultra Short-Wave band (around 40MHz). I recall reading that decades later, 405 line BBC TV was received in Australia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kk0ytK_nqA

Being that carrying out work on the Lord's day is a sin, I don't expect it will be back on air until at least Monday!

Yes. As a young teen I would be in the back seat with my radio-cassette and recording what I heard on FM along the way. Ditto for hotel rooms. Was surprised to hear stations that sounded just like Rock 102. Little did I know at the time that it was a syndicated format. Most interesting were plane trips, listening to FM stations fade in and out within minutes. This was before some airlines banned the use of radios onboard. And yes, I always had the window seat.

 

NW wrote:

Fitz wrote:

mace wrote:

One thing I have noticed. The stations in Dothan,Ala, Pittsburgh, Ks and New Orleans that were received in the GTA recently are all 100,000 watt blowtorches. Are lower powered FM's, like our Toronto stations affected by e-skip as well? Grand Rapids, Mi has two monster signals that likely make it down south when e-skip conditions arise. 93.7 WBCT [320k] and 105.7 WSRW 265K. Although the latter might be less likely. I can't recall getting e-skip above CHUM FM.

Pretty sure I was getting Latin stations from Florida on 106.7 and 107.5. A few other stations at 107.5 as well. Don't think there's a clear ID on those unfortunately.
 

Around 1 p.m. yesterday in North York I had WXDJ-Fort Lauderdale on 106.7 (matching up to their webstream) and on 107.5 it was WAMR-fm Miami with the "Amor" slogan.
 

I also caught both of those spanish stations, except I heard them Saturday around 10:30am. There was a brief and sudden opening and they faded before I could get an ID. They were then replaced with stations from central Florida. Both of those faded by 10:45am. Also heard something country-like on 104.1.

This evening, I heard WJCT Jacksonville on 89.9. So far this season, the E-openings I've stumbled upon have been weak.

He wasn't an RB listener. On the way home, he listened to CKEY, I recall. Then CKDS Hamilton for lite dinner music.

I haven't listened since they stopped playing Rush and Iron Maiden. Yuppie-pop and nice sweaters were not my forte. Mind you, it was a smart business decision, as they were fighting for the same diminishing audience as Q107. No doubt, that mid 80's format change made for a happy day for the folks at Q.

mace wrote:

He sounds a lot like my dad. My dad would always ask me You still prefer that to music? All the radios in my parent's home had only two knobs.CFRB  and off. All my friends parents had that type of radio too,

My mother's kitchen radio was the same, though OFF also meant "dad's home".
 

On the topic of CKTB, this is worth a watch:
Seniors radio: Station ditches ‘god awful’ 90s music for an untapped market

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVMZ6NCSOQM

From a CTV W5 program that aired in 1991, this features a seniors program for radio, led by Don Hildebrand (age 59) that was running on 610 CKTB at that time. It had an opening from Wally Crouter. The musical selections were very traditional.

He states at the end of the clip that rock and roll is "god awful noise with a drug culture hooked onto it". His musical horizon extended from 1910 to 1955.

Ironically, the CKTB studio overlooks the 97-7 Hits FM studio in the St Catherines white house of rock. I'm doubtful the host at 97-7 ever got a friendly wave from this group.

Don passed away in 1997.
https://ckco-history.com/in-memory/don-hildebrand/

CING 95.3, as well as CITS-DT and CHCH-DT are off air as of posting. I noticed CING off air about 45 min ago while driving. Hope it's only a power issue and not a failure on the tower.

Well over a dozen re-entries this week sitting on the UK's Official Singles Chart. Even a Jackson 5 single:

https://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-chart/
 

Possibly one of the best products Sony never made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AyVh1_vWYQ
A new product feature report from The Onion. You will need to be logged into YouTube to view it.

Radiowiz wrote:

I'm not sure if 2 LIVE CREW's Me so horny was banned, but it sure was funny when CFTR's Jesse & Gene decided to replace the song with Me so hungry!  

 

I remember 680 playing it back in the day, so no.

Phil Donahue did an episode on the group, centered around the push to ban their music at the time. He also had them perform. The audience reaction is what you might expect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iViMrXn5IIs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Sjwi61HWss
 

Yes, it's there now. I heard the HD "hash" this morning over East FM. East no longer has a useable signal where I am. I tried CKLH on an HD table radio (Sangean HDR-18 with whip antenna) and it's marginal - it barely locks. I was able to see the 3 HD programmes on the display. HD2 has nothing and HD3 has JOY.

I can't ever recall in a missing person's case where the surname wasn't also given. Today, on the 7pm news on 680, on announcing she had been found, they didn't even use her first name. Is this the media trying to self-police itself or, have the police requested that her name no longer be used?

I guess the question becomes how many are listening to SW these days to continue to justify the cost to operate the SW transmissions. Having WWV so close by doesn't help matters. WWV was going to shutter aparently in 2018 but there were howls of protest. It would of had a broad impact, as some consumer clocks make use of the VLF 60kHz WWVB time signal to synchronize with. As well, BBC is switching off its Radio 4 LW transmissions on June 27th. Again, so few now listening to LW in Europe these days to justify its upkeep and running costs. A number of European LW services have closed in recent years due to high electricity costs and declining listenership.