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Our Storied Past
In the 1970's and 80's, CFCA carved out a significant audience niche for itself. The mature audience which CFCA attracted didn’t want to know about rock and roll and enjoyed popular classics and soft sounds by Andy Williams, Mantovani, Barbara Streisand, Frank Sinatra, and maybe a daringly aired song by a Pat Boone or Neil Diamond. On the FM dial, CFCA gathered a very large, but older, audience about its signal. CFCA was owned by Electrohome and lived on the upper floor of the CKCO TV building. Being part of a much larger TV operation meant that radio didn’t receive the detailed attention and planning that it would have had it stood alone. There were benefits to being part of the larger unit--- There was a larger staff base from which to draw for special productions and features. The drawbacks weighed equally as strongly. Staff, managers, everyone, became somewhat lackadaisical in the pursuit of Radio Broadcasting.
Enter the late 1980s/early 90s recession/near-depression and parent company Electrohome began bleeding severe red ink. Its operation had shrunk to a shadow of its former self. While TV still raked in money, the radio drain was felt to be too much to sustain---and more importantly, in the always-inflated market for radio station licenses, it was felt that several million dollars could be folded back into Electrohome coffers.
The news hit our staff in late 1992…the stations were on the market. Two investors from Hamilton had first crack and made their bid dependent upon a CRTC decision which was pending. The CRTC gave approval for a frequency switch for one of our competitors, one which would undercut what the Hamilton duo had in mind for CFCA. With no Plan B, they backed out, and the word ‘limbo’ was again the operative one in CKKW/CFCA radio.
CHUM Radio out of Toronto had started negotiations with Electrohome and it seems odd that CHUM wasn’t in at the beginning. Why Electrohome favored the Hamilton pair remains a mystery, especially considering that at the time of the sale, CKKW/CFCA’s general manager was an ex-executive at CHUM in Toronto, John Spragge.
CHUM’s purchase of the two stations was approved and for a year the chain operated them out of the CKCO building. New studios were built on King Street North near University Avenue in Waterloo. CFCA retained its more mature programming until the day of the studio switchover in mid 1995. The CFCA announcers did a ‘fond memories’ hour from the old site, then threw it over to an entirely new announce crew at the new Classic Rock 105.3 KOOL FM. The first song was the Stones’ Start Me Up.
Since the move to the Waterloo studios, KOOL FM’s programming has de-emphasized the classic rock to become an AC/Rock with just a touch of classic. Today's Hits Yesterday's Classics 105.3 Kool FM.
