MJ Vancouver wrote:

 
Had 99.1 been taken up by someone else after the demise of CKO, I suspect CBL would never have vacated 740, as any FM station they would've migrated to would have to have been much lower power and more repeaters would have been needed to fill in the coverage gaps than what they already needed to add (e.g. Paris, Wingham). 

CBL's main complaint was about interference in downtown Toronto, particularly along streetcar lines, so they would have needed an FM signal in Toronto anyway, even if it was at lower power than 99.1. Would they have kept 740 for the rest of south central Ontario or gone for more FM repeaters elsewhere? 

My guess is they would have put CBL on 90.3 where CJBC-FM ended up and CJBC-FM's repeater in Paris would have been used for CBLA. The current CBLA has 12 repeaters so having a 13th would not have been a big deal. And CBC would have have gotten 91.9 (where CHIN-AM landed its repeater), 92.5 (which went to KISS-FM), 93.5 (Flow), or 98.7 (G98.7) for CJBC-FM instead, and maybe added a few more repeaters than CJBC-FM ended up using at 90.3. 

But still, CBC has kept AM transmitters in Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Regina, Winnipeg, and Sydney all with nested FM rebroadcasters in the cities themslves (and with the FM frequency given more prominance than AM in the station's logo and branding) so they might have kept 740 if they figured it was cheaper than adding a few additional FM transmitters either for CBLA or CJBC-FM. 

Last edited by Hansa (March 26, 2021 3:25 pm)

Radiowiz wrote:

With all the cuts Bell recently made, why not just relaunch CFRB as CKO radio 1010 Toronto, along with all their other talk stations.  They have a good head start on the idea here in Ontario with all that non local talk during the day & Evening already.

Too costly for Bell. If they wanted to seriously compete with CFTR they'd have to actually pay someone to go out and gather news.