The Southern Ontario/WNY Radio-TV Forum » CKNT is on the air!

July 10, 2018 5:27 am

RadioActive wrote:
When I asked the woman who answers that phone number given on air if they had a full staff - this was on June 19th - she admitted they hadn't hired everybody and were still looking at resumes. I got the impression they had almost no staff and when I asked her how they could possibly sign on by Canada Day (which she told me was the target date) she insisted they would be ready

If she was with CKNT (rather than a contract answering service) she would have connected you with an officer or principal qualified to deal with such questions.

navaidstech · July 10, 2018 7:38 am

RadioActive wrote:
When I asked the woman who answers that phone number given on air if they had a full staff - this was on June 19th - she admitted they hadn't hired everybody and were still looking at resumes.

I got the impression they had almost no staff and when I asked her how they could possibly sign on by Canada Day (which she told me was the target date) she insisted they would be ready.

Meanwhile, the testing continues. And continues. And continues. They're testing all right - our patience!

We are tentatively planning to be doing some testing this Thursday (July 12th) sometime from 10AM - 1PM. Expect the transmitter go off the air for a while... not sure if there will be any tones transmitted as of yet.

RadioActive · July 10, 2018 7:45 am

Do you have an official sign-on date?

navaidstech · July 10, 2018 6:17 pm

RadioActive wrote:
Do you have an official sign-on date?

I don't work for the radio station...I work WITH the radio station to ensure its signal doesn't affect any of my stuff at the airport. The guys I work with are engineers and installers from another company that built the transmitter site. I doubt that even they will know when and if the station will go live. I'll ask though.

Last edited by navaidstech (July 10, 2018 6:17 pm)

RadioActive · July 24, 2018 8:22 am

It's now been more than a month since this post was originally made about a signal finally being up and running. And yet they're STILL "testing."

I wonder when - if ever - regular programming will finally start? They've had seven years to get ready for this. I think if they've "tested" for this long, they should be ready to take their on air exam already.

markow202 · July 24, 2018 12:15 pm

And their testing consists of clips of some pre-recorded life "brainwashing" sessions about anything and everything.

July 24, 2018 5:50 pm

Jack Berkovitz, Frank Leo, Howard Levitt, Christine McGoo and Lior Samfiru are said to be monitoring this thread carefully and will not be able to resist becoming sponsors of CKNT programming now that the word is out that there has been a record 78 . . . no 79 posts in anticipation of its formal launch
'

cGrant · July 24, 2018 6:36 pm

geo wrote:
the word is out that there has been a record 78 . . . no 79 posts in anticipation of its formal launch

Despite your usual sarcasm, I tend to agree in this specific instance. I absolutely cannot believe the "interest" <those were air-quotes> in this particular "station". I filed it in the garbage bin a while ago, along with the usual Frank DeWhatever fanboy, fish 'n chips crapola.

Call me Ms. Cynical.

p.s.: What the hell does "Tommy Tommy of all Tommy's" mean? And, thank you "Tommy" for delaying the 5:00 newscast all the way to 5:04. (I thought GNR 640 was trying to be a "real" station.)

markow202 · July 24, 2018 6:43 pm

Still testing. Actually its not even "testing" anymore - its just random clips of what sound like a conference

What would this fine station disturb at the airport signal wise? Would it actually manage to delay a flight? LOL

markow202 · July 31, 2018 1:41 pm

Still nothing happening just some weird spa music lately.

navaidstech · September 5, 2018 12:36 am

Looks like they're fully operational calling themselves "SSAUGA 960"

I'm noticing some of their programming is still overmodulated and they should really pay attention to regular station identification, especially at night.

radiokid · September 5, 2018 9:47 am

I agree.... The processing needs some work, huge.. When it's quiet, it falls off to nothing... And when it's loud it's distorting. The content is one thing, but if you can't hear it, you are wasting your time. You don't need the top of the line equipment to do this...

Dale Patterson · September 5, 2018 10:13 am

Listened to them a little bit yesterday afternoon. They don't seem to have a format, just a couple of hosts talking. It didn't make for compelling listening, but maybe this was still "test" mode.

navaidstech · September 9, 2018 11:22 am

radiokid wrote:
I agree.... The processing needs some work, huge.. When it's quiet, it falls off to nothing... And when it's loud it's distorting. The content is one thing, but if you can't hear it, you are wasting your time. You don't need the top of the line equipment to do this...

Let's not forget overmodulation can cause co-channel interference, so they better get their stuff checked or have their heads slapped by the DOC.
I'll listen to it on the way to/from work sometimes. The programming seems the same - bunch of prerecorded health stuff which almost sounds like an infomercial. The station idents are thrown in willy-nilly, normally you'd expect them at half and even hours.
Looks like they're trying but with this sort of programming they're wasting their time, money and a frequency slot. Things might change a bit once Steelheads start playing but who knows? Last thing this town needs is a radio version of Cable 10 Mississauga, which I'm sure attracts huge viewership. LOL.

Muffaraw Joe · September 9, 2018 1:02 pm

I was in the car today (In North York) and I didn't hear a thing...not a peep, plus are they even streaming? Is the website up? I don't think so...this is a bit bush league...

C-Can't
K-Keep
N-Nothing on air
T-Today and tomorrow...(for too long)

markow202 · September 10, 2018 1:08 pm

I saw on their facebook page they had a radio "tent" setup somewhere in Misssauga at a park promoting the station so thats a start.

Saul · September 10, 2018 6:48 pm

Maybe all of this suggests opportunity for the right person/people to step in and (for a fee or stake in the business) guide it towards some degree of success. The only caveat is that the party that owns the outfit needs to be willing to open up their baby to your influence. I did this once, knowing the party didn't have a business plan, and when I tried to steer them towards one, and specific operating practices, they resisted. Their magazine - as was the case here - was too wedded to their ego. I had a sense this might be the case, so my investment was my time, and I ensured I was paid in stages, so when it ended a couple months in it didn't really matter to me save that I didn't really land a potentially very decent client. Lots of radio and business talent on this board - go for it!

navaidstech · October 7, 2018 4:35 pm

Listened to CKNT a couple of days ago on the way from Hamilton at around 5 PM... after about an hour, my ears started to bleed.

Boy... for a radio station, this outfit needs A LOT of work. They have this radio show running from 4 to 7 PM, all spoken stuff with phone calls and such. The audio is a complete disaster - it is either too loud or too soft. There is quite a bit of clipping and over-modulating. I'm no fan of commercials but whoever is advertising on this radio station should get their money back - the background music obliterates the spoken parts of the commercial so you have no idea what the commercial is all about. Same happens with some of the music being played where the lyrics are barely audible yet the accompanying music comes through just fine. It's almost as if you fed the hot leads of left and right channels of your stereo into a speaker - lyrics are common to both channels and will cancel out, while music will come through since the different instruments are distributed between the two channels (ie. drums being predominantly on one side, bass on the other, etc)
So one of the guests on the show was Ravi, who was referred to as a "radio wave technical expert".... I had to laugh - maybe Ravi should have a listen to the actual broadcast and help them fix this mess.

I'm still questioning their station identification etiquette. Every so often they transmit "This is Sauga 960" and not once is the station callsign ever mentioned. As a ham, I have to identify myself every 10 minutes with a full callsign and I would like to think that a radio station, since it is transmitting continuously, should identify itself at least once every 30 minutes..... but that's just me.

RadioAaron · October 7, 2018 5:07 pm

navaidstech wrote:
As a ham, I have to identify myself every 10 minutes with a full callsign and I would like to think that a radio station, since it is transmitting continuously, should identify itself at least once every 30 minutes..... but that's just me.

Industry Canada requires it once per hour, but it's not really enforced.

And the effect you're describing the the music washing out the v/o or the vocals is phase reversal (exactly like the home stereo speaker setup you described).

navaidstech · October 7, 2018 6:54 pm

Not quite phase reversal...
Two signals of the same phase and frequency fed to a speaker will produce a voltage difference of 0, thus canceling them out.

RadioAaron · October 7, 2018 7:24 pm

Thanks for the clarification

RadioPaulPA · October 15, 2018 9:41 pm

Here's a bit of CKNT 960 as heard on October 15, 2018 in Ridgway, Pennsylvania about 150-160 miles away from the transmitter.

Here they are at 915am with the bumper music going into a break and a commercial:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ok6KX9K49Ar6b87YyMyJhVm0M9M92Yxr/view?usp=sharing

Here at 919am, is an ad for a mayor, leading back into the talk program:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lGIkBFJyrnVAwCYyEdYVR67TXcXfR1nF/view?usp=sharing

Tecsun PL880, 300 foot longwire and signal preamp.