Rock Radio Scrapbook

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Subject: THE FAN IS BORN
Station: CJCL Toronto
Date: September 4, 1992
Time: 7:30/14:48

(Photo credit/Canadian Communications Foundation)

One can imagine the ghost of Foster Hewitt looking down and smiling on the day CJCL became Canada's first all-sports station as "The Fan." We think that Hewitt, the legendary hockey broadcaster who died in 1985, would have enjoyed the thought of the station he founded and owned for so many years going all-sports.

One of Canada's most beloved and enduring figures, Hewitt did Canada's second play-by-play broadcast on Toronto's CFCA in 1923 (Pete Parker was first.) Hewitt became the Toronto Maple Leafs play-by-play man in 1927 and founded his own station, CKFH, in 1951. In 1952, Hewitt did the first TV broadcast of a hockey game in Canada on CBC's "Hockey Night in Canada." He left hockey broadcasting in the 1960s, only to come out of retirement to announce the Canada-Soviet Summit Series for television in 1972.

Maple Leaf hockey was a mainstay at CKFH for most of its 30-year history (CHUM carried the Leafs Sunday night away games during the 1964-65 season). The Maple Leaf tradition on 1430 continued after Hewitt sold the station to Telemedia in 1981 and the calls switched to CJCL (the now-defunct CKO network had the Leaf radio rights for a time in the 1980s.)

By 1992, CJCL was programming about half sports and half music. Encouraged by the success of all-sports stations in the U.S., CJCL decided to take the plunge and become Canada's first 24-hour sports station on Sept. 4, 1992.

We have two airchecks from the Fan's first day:

First, hear CJCL's end as a music station and the first moments of the Fan here. (7:30)

Then, hear the official launch of the Fan 1430 here. (14:48)

(The Kevin Waller Collection)

More goodbye airchecks here!

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