CKLG Goes On-Air (1955)

CKLG UNIQUE ON COAST – Vancouver Sun, Feb. 2, 1955
Music and Polls Top Fare From North Shore Station
Music, middle of the road, popular and classical — and public opinion polls will make Vancouver’s newest radio station, CKLG, unique on the coast.
Bob Bowman, manager of the station which goes on the air Thursday, has drawn up his program schedule in “blocks” instead of standard 15 minute pieces.
From opening at 6 a.m. until 9 a.m., “The Lions Den” will be broadcast over the 1,000-watt voice of the North Shore, 1070 kilocycles. –The Lions Den– will be composed of news and music.
Then, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., request music will be interspersed with news broadcasts and public opinion polls.
“We’ll ask a question on a topical subject and during the day will broadcast the public’s opinion on it as shown by telephoned responses to the station,” Bowman said.
Also promised –no extremes– in music.
“There will be no blaring trumpets or soggy ballads,” Bowman said. “We’ll feature familiar tunes and current hit parade favorites.”
And every night too, from 9:05 to 10 p.m., the station will broadcast its symphonic concert hour.
CKLG — LG for Lions Gate — opens its $250,000 one-floor building after nine years of effort.
First application for a license was rejected in 1946. Since then, the management has kept plugging until the license was finally granted last May.
Originally scheduled to go on the air in early December, it was plagued by technical troubles which constantly kept deferring opening date.
Now everything is cleared up, says Bowman, a veteran broadcaster who started out as a newspaperman, and the transmitters at the foot of Mount Seymour on Keith Road are all set to give Greater Vancouver and especially the North Shore its fifth radio station.
That transmitter, wholly automatic and fully controlled from the broadcasting studios, is not the only modern thing about the new station, either.
Bowman describes it as a high-fidelity radio station, with 15,000 cycle turntables and pick-up arms.
Small, thin television microphones are standard equipment at the new studio.
Many of the station’s staff are already familiar figures at the coast.
There’s footballer Al Stoddard, the sports director. Rudy Hartman, the program manager, who started at CJAT in Trail in 1939.
Glen Jamieson, son of a long-time Vancouver music critic, is an announcer.
Hal Francis, Peter Kosick and John Sharpe, the news editor, are also well-known city radio personalities.