Village Squire, 1976-03, Page 12r
Disc jockey Brian Elmsley works in the modern CKNX studio.
death of Doc. The official signing of papers by
Doc's son G. W. "Bud" Cruickshank and his
widow Mabel and brother John took place on
April 30.
When they heard the news of who was to be
the new owner, John Langridge recalls, the
staff was relieved. The association between
CKNX and CFPL had been so close over the
years that it seemed to be a natural step.
The new president Murray T. Brown, at the
time of the finalizing of the sale (for 51.3
million) said the new owners certainly didn't
intend to change CKNX into a satellite
station. They've been as good as their word,
Mr. Langridge says. In radio the CKNX
people have just carried on "doing our own
thing." The only real change has been in
television national advertising sales where
combined selling allowed more revenue for
the CKNX operation. Other than that, despite
what some people seem to think, Mr.
Langridge says, things have been carrying on
just as before.
Recent years have seen changes that have
been mostly technical. In 1968 the radio
station multiplied its power from 2500 to
10,000 watts. The television station switched
to colour.
But on the horizon is a whole new field for
the station to tackle. In May at a hearing in
Windsor, the CRTC will hear an application
from CKNX for an FM radio station to join the
present operation. Actually the FM proposal
has been on the books for a long time, back
before the station switched its television
operation to colour But the CRTC was
11, VILLAGE SQUIRE/MARCH 1976
re-evalutating its plans for FM programming
and took a long time doing it. This held up
preparation of the application. But the
application was made in writing last fall after
the commission finally set down its new rules
and CKNX revamped its original proposals.
While many commercial operators in the
big cities have howled about the new
regulations, John Langridge doesn't see any
problems for CKNX to meet them. What the
CRTC wants for FM, he says, is just a return
to the old format of broadcasting. In the old
days, there were definite programs on the
radio. With the advent of television radio had
to change and the change that came with the
car radio and the transistor radio was to a
kind of open ended programing with news
capsuled every hour and strung together with
music and comment. The CRTC wants a
return to special programming, not just a
turning of FM into a copy of AM.
CKNX, Mr. Langridge agrees, has also
been closer all along to this kind of
programming than city stations because of its
committment to coverage of the local scene.
Besides allowing a different kind of
coverage, an FM station for Wingham would
solve another problem. Under technical
requirements at present, CKNX has to
drastically reduce power at sundown each day
because radio station signals carry much
farther after dark and tend to jumble each
• other up. So the CKNX coverage shrinks after
dark by terrible proportions. The FM channel
would allow virtually the same daytime and
nighttime coverage area.
It would be fitting if the new station goes on
air as hoped before year end, 50 years after
Doc first stumbled into radio. Today there
were 80 people involved in the station and the
FM would raise that further, quite a way from
Doc's one man show. The Bureau of
Broadcast Measurements show some 80-
90,000 people listen to CKNX on an average
week, quite a jump from the handful of people
able to hear the early broadcasts. The modern
studios of CKNX radio and television are a
testimonial to that one man Doc Cruickshank
and to the fact that we can still in this country,
through intelligence, determination and hard
work (with a little luck and many good friends
thrown in) build something grand from a
small beginning. Thank God we have a few
Doc Cruickshanks around.
He113 Your
EEART
FUNDLJ
i