The world’s – 1st ‘commercial’ broadcaster closes after 90 years
Martin Melhuish
It was just another news item documenting the fate of a couple more broadcast outlets in this country, but there was more to one of those closure notices than meets the eye… or the ear. On January 29, Corus closed its Montréal radio station AM940, which at the time was dispensing “Your news. Your views.†to a Montréal audience that was increasingly demonstrating that they didn’t give a monkey’s for the regurgitation of either. For those who care about Canada’s broadcasting heritage, this was a historic moment. For those who remember some of the legendary personalities who ruled the local airwaves during the station’s glory years, it brought a rush of memories of larger-than-life commentators and jocks like rock ‘n’ roll deejay Dave Boxer, newsman Gord Sinclair, morning show stalwarts like Ted Blackman and Al Boliska and sportscasters Dick Irvin, Jr. and John Robertson.AM940 can trace its lineage back to the Guglielmo Marconi station XWA (Experimental Wireless Apparatus) which received its experimental license, the first issued in Canada, in September of 1919. Marconi had previously made his historic transatlantic wireless connection between Newfoundland and Cornwall, England in 1901 and the following year set up a Canadian government licensed wireless telegraphy station at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. He had acquired the patents relating to voice transmission from Canada’s Reginald Fessenden, the “Father of AM Radio,†in 1914.
XWA launched on December 1, 1919 from the top floor of the Marconi factory at 173 William Street, just east of Peel, in Montréal. Regularly scheduled programming on the station began on May 20, 1920, which not only made it the first radio station in Canada but also the first commercial broadcaster in the world. Radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh has made a similar claim of being the first, as have a number of other U.S. stations, but history indicates that KDKA made its first broadcast on November 2, 1920 and, even on that night when it broadcast the U.S. presidential returns, the station was reportedly still unlicensed and still using the experimental call sign of 8ZZ.
On November 4, 1920, XWA’s call letters became CFCF, its derivative generally reported as the acronym for “Canada’s First, Canada’s Finest.†After a number of frequency changes, CFCF found a six decade-long home at 600 kHz in 1933 and even spent some time as an affiliate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Dominion Network from 1944 to 1962. The call letters were changed to CIQC in September of 1991 at which time it spent a couple of years as a country station before becoming a News/Talk outlet in 1993. CIQC moved to 940 kHz and, on December 14, 1999, changed its call letters to CINW to reflect its all-news format. In September 2005, the station added a little talk to its news programming and then on July 1, 2008 music returned to the station as it adopted a “greatest hits†oldies format. On January 29, 2010 at 7:02 a.m. EST, the station went quiet after 90 years on the air. Reportedly, former listeners can now hear CJGX (Yorkton, Saskatchewan) and WGRP (Greenville, Pennsylvania) at 940 on the Montréal radio dial when the atmospherics are right.
