grilled.cheese wrote:

This song isn't suitable for Roger Ashby's Oldies show nor a Toronto County music station.

Right. It's perfect for a brand new radio station in Toronto. Easy 1 OH......oh crap there's no room left on the Toronto radio dial for a brand new radio station. Never mind! 
 

mace wrote:

Actually, I think it is a rather relaxing and enjoyable tune.

I agree. Toronto needs a nice quiet relaxing radio station.
I miss being able to turn on my radio and hear soft instrumentals thinking..."I know that song!" as the song carries on without the lyrics in it's nice instrumental fashion.
Often either a classic top 40 or current top 40 with instrumentals replacing the lyrics.
CKQT was the last station that I really enjoyed. The original CJEZ was okay, but CKQT just seemed to be so much better. 
 

All through the 60's and most of the 70's, the "Beautiful" Music format ruled on FM. In addition to CKQT, you had monster signalled CHFI and CKDS, CHRE, CJOY, CHAY and WJYE. I think the last of the so-called Elevator Music stations, CKOT in Tillsonburg, disappeared when Rogers re-branded them in 2018.

When I saw this thread I went rummaging through my tapes b/c I remembered that I had some CKOT on tape. Anyway I found the tape from the early 1990's. Sampled a small bit from CFCA Kitchener and CKOT:

CFCA and CKOT

Fitz wrote:

When I saw this thread I went rummaging through my tapes b/c I remembered that I had some CKOT on tape. Anyway I found the tape from the early 1990's. Sampled a small bit from CFCA Kitchener and CKOT:

CFCA and CKOT

The CFCA clip was Ken Sylvester doing "Beat of the Bands", their Saturday night big band show.  Ken was an interesting fellow.  He even did a show and wrote and voiced lots of interesting local history bits for the noon news program on CKMS at the University of Waterloo a few years earlier.  He was even a mall santa during christmas time.

A lot of the shows in the evenings were voicetracked.  Among them, morning stalwart Fred Merritt would prepare a voicetrack for other shift on the station which started at 11:00 P.M. which featured music by, and I quote directly from him, "The strings, The Singers, and The Orchestra".
 

Fitz wrote:

The CFCA clip was Ken Sylvester doing "Beat of the Bands", their Saturday night big band show.  Ken was an interesting fellow.  He even did a show and wrote and voiced lots of interesting local history bits for the noon news program on CKMS at the University of Waterloo a few years earlier.  He was even a mall santa during christmas time.

A lot of the shows in the evenings were voicetracked.  Among them, morning stalwart Fred Merritt would prepare a voicetrack for other shift on the station which started at 11:00 P.M. which featured music by, and I quote directly from him, "The strings, The Singers, and The Orchestra".
 

Ah, CFCA, 'An Experience to Remember' was their tagline for many years.  What a great easy listening / beautiful music station it was. I believe Fred's evening program was called "Night Flight" from 11:00 pm to 1:00 am. Before that show I think they did some classical stuff. They played quite a variety of music. 

I think CFCA had a lot of dedicated listeners with the beautiful music format. In the early 2000's they changed format and ownership. Many of the announcers left the station with some re-surfacing on CKWR FM 98.5 a local community station. Fred Merritt being among them. For a while they re-created the CFCA sound through the day albeit on a much less powerful station signal wise. That seemed to continue for a few years. The format must have had some success or CKWR would not have continued with it for so long. 

CFCA became Kool FM with a rather banal assortment of cookie-cutter music for the younger demographic. Last time I checked seemed to be broadcasting the Virgin format whatever that is. CFCA today is certainly not "An Experience to Remember" All dates quoted are very approximate.

The only thing wrong with a CERB song is if it makes more than $5,000 (Net? Gross? No one's sure), the CRA wants you to give the money back! 

As far as CFCA is concerned, at some point in 1969, they were calling themselves this::

The closest there is now is Jewel Radio to that kind of format and perhaps the Smooth Jazz Wave.fm hamilton 

Last edited by markow202 (December 14, 2020 3:50 pm)