The CKNW Story: From Cowboy Station To Top Dog

From Grant Granger, bclocalnews.com

Typhoon Freda tore up the west coast of North America in October 1962 leaving a trail of devastation in its wake. It was a natural disaster that was a blessing for New Westminster’s radio station, 980 AM CKNW.

Although it had been broadcasting from two locations on Columbia Street for 18 years, it was not the top station in the market. Freda changed that.

Her huge winds knocked every radio station north of California off the air as she headed up the coast. Except for NW. Just a few weeks before, the station had bought a power unit from the air force that allowed its transmitter to keep on beaming its signal.

“Our radio station became the No. 1 station for emergencies and it never looked back,” says Bill Hughes, who was born and raised in New Westminster and was the station’s general manager and president.

New West resident and former NW newscaster John Ashbridge was working in Victoria at the time.

“As I listened, stations progressively were kicked off the air as it moved up the coast, but CKNW kept broadcasting,” recalls Ashbridge. “It’s been proven time after time that when a station is put out of operation during an emergency the public rarely goes back to the one they listened to before.”

Photo Caption: Bill Hughes, former program director with CKNW radio, with the original ‘roving’ microphone he used to interview bus passengers disembarking at the Royal Towers Hotel, which used to also serve as a Greyhound terminal. The mic was presented to him in honour of his 15,000th broadcast.

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