CIAO (AM)

CIAO
City Brampton, Ontario
Broadcast area Greater Toronto Area
Branding AM530
Frequency 530 kHz (AM)
First air date 1953
Format multilingual
Power 1,000 watts day, 250 watts night
Callsign meaning Ciao (Italian for "hello" and "goodbye")
Former callsigns CFJB, CHIC, CKMW
Owner Evanov Communications
Website www.am530.ca

CIAO is a Canadian radio station, broadcasting at 530 AM in Brampton, Ontario. The station, owned by Evanov Communications, broadcasts a multilingual programming format. CIAO's studios are located on Dundas Street West in the Eatonville neighbourhood of Toronto, while its transmitter is located near Hornby.

History

The station was launched in 1953 as AM 1090 CFJB, a daytimer owned by broadcaster Fen Job. Job was killed in a car crash in 1956, and the station was sold by his estate to CHIC Ltd. in 1959, adopting the new callsign CHIC the following year. In 1961, the owners also launched CHIC-FM on 102.1 MHz.

In 1964, CHIC became a full-time broadcaster, moving to AM 790. In 1977, CHIC-FM adopted the new callsign CFNY.

In 1979, the stations' owner went into receivership. The stations were subsequently acquired by Civitas Corp., the owner of CJMS in Montreal. Civitas became Mutual Communications in 1980, and CHIC adopted the new callsign CKMW. Mutual subsequently sold CKMW to Patrick Hurley, who incorporated as CKMW Radio Ltd., in 1983; CFNY was sold to Selkirk Communications.

As CKMW, the AM station adopted its current multilingual format, and ownership of CKMW Radio was transferred to Evanov in 1985.

The station adopted its current callsign in 1987, and moved to its current frequency in 1991 after CJFT in Fort Erie converted to the FM band.[1] CIAO is one of a handful of commercial radio stations in North America broadcasting on 530 kHz, normally reserved for low-powered Travellers' Information Stations[2]in the USA, operating at 10 Watts of power.

Programming

CIAO's programming is primarily South Asian (Hindi and Punjabi) with some Bosnian, Bulgarian, Caribbean, Croatian, Filipino, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Somali and Spanish programming in the evenings and on weekends.

References

External links


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 6/6/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.