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Video: late '90s radio ownership changes in Ottawa
Recently found this YouTube clip containing a report from CBOT Ottawa and their "Newsday" local newscast circa 1999, talking about the near-simultaneous purchases of three radio stations in the capital. First up is CHUM's acquisition of Rawlco's CFGO 1200 ("The Team") and CJMJ-FM 100.3 ("Majic 100"), and how those two stations were moved out of their Carling Avenue building (now home of Canadian Blood Services) and squeezed into the now-former 580 CFRA/CKKL-FM 93.9 ("Kool FM") studios at Walkley & Conroy, not far from the current Rogers cluster on Thurston Drive.
Next is the sale of locally-owned CHEZ 106.1 to Rogers... CHEZ and its Smiths Falls-licensed sister at 101.1 had been in a newer studio facility in the Byward Market, maybe a block or two from what's now Bell's facility, the former Market Mall, and it appears that even in '99, the station had not yet adopted PC-based automation - instead of conventional cart machines, it looks like CHEZ had digital decks that handled audio on 3.5" floppies or magneto-optical disks.
The "Newsday" package starts at the 6:55 mark, but the first part of the clip is a 1981-vintage segment from Canada AM, with the great Norm Perry. Check it out below.
Last edited by Forward Power (December 30, 2021 11:13 am)
- Tomas Barlow
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Re: Video: late '90s radio ownership changes in Ottawa
The Chum stations only made limited use of automation at the time also. They had highschool and college kids running syndicated countdowns on weekends rather than using automation.
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Re: Video: late '90s radio ownership changes in Ottawa
Tomas Barlow wrote:
The Chum stations only made limited use of automation at the time also. They had highschool and college kids running syndicated countdowns on weekends rather than using automation.
Correct! Even after those stations moved to the "MarketMediaMall" in 2000, the FMs were still playing music and syndicated stuff off of CDs, while the Scott Studios automation computers were mostly only used for imaging and commercials. Voice tracks were recorded on MiniDiscs, and weather etc. from the CFRA reporters was played from a Broadcast News I-NES machine perched on top of a station's huge Studer console.
In 2006, I had visited a college classmate who was then on 93.9 during the "BOB FM" era, just prior to CTV taking over, and when he showed me around the building one evening, 100.3 was rolling John Tesh. Music was still played from a stack of three Denon CD players, and I think the Tesh tracks were on the Scott box. On BOB, they had an operator, probably straight out of Algonquin College, shuffling CDs and playing VTs from a Denon MiniDisc player.
It was likely not long after that, somewhere in the CTV years, that CJMJ and CKKL eliminated the round-the-clock ops and began storing everything on their automation machines.
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