It was on this day in 1940 when Owen Sound’s oldest radio station took to the airwaves.
Back when Glen Miller, Bing Crosby and Doris Day were the artists of the day, CFOS began operating on March 1st.
2025 marks the station’s 85th year.
When CFOS first opened, it was located in the Kilbourn building (now the basement of Pizza Pizza) in the area of 2nd Avenue East and 9th Street East in downtown Owen Sound, not far from its current location across which it moved to in 1949 across the street from the Roxy Theatre.
It was first owned by Howard Fleming of the Owen Sound Sun Times, and he and Charles McTavish got the station up and running.
With a staff of about seven people. Its first manager was Ralph Snelgrove, and Bill Hawkins, who would later own the station was also on staff at the start.
In its early years, CFOS wasn’t on the air all day. It was on in the morning, and then later in the day. It signed off at 9 p.m., and according to former announcer John Christie, it signed off with the national anthem and God Save the Queen.
“I started part- time in 1967 when I was in grade 11 and then went full-time when I graduated in 68,” says Christie, who published a book about CFOS back on its 75th anniversary called “Sound Success; 75 Years of CFOS.”
“My First full-time shift was the entry level evenings and you were everything in the station from about 7 o’clock on. You had to be pretty versatile on that night shift,” says Christie.
He explains, “You were program host for the various music shows, you were staffing the newsroom and CBC was part of CFOS programming in those days. It was an affiliate and so we carried CBC programming from 9 o’clock onward but you still had to do the station breaks and the local newscasts and so on. It was a pretty demanding shift. Nothing automatic in those days, we had to cue all the records, we had to get the tapes ready on reel to reel, get your stack of carts of all set and plugged in ready to go. There was as much physical labour as vocal labour probably in it at the time.”
When Christie started, it was around the time when Neil Diamond had his first big hit. He recalls, “The Supremes were big. Of, course we had the standards, Perry Como was around, Doris Day, Barbara Streisand was coming into her own. There were a lot of big named people we hear about today even, that were getting their stride back then.”
The company has grown since then, and CFOS found its niche. “Back when I started CFOS was the only game in town and they were everybody’s radio station with varied programming, and now of course there’s specialization where it’s an oldies format plus the information and it’s been very successful,” says Christie.
Now in 24 hour operation, the station’s current owner Douglas Caldwell bought 100 per cent of CFOS in October of 1985 and what was then Grey and Bruce Broadcasting Co. was renamed Bayshore Broadcasting. The company has grown to include nine stations from Goderich to Gravenhurst, all owned by Caldwell.
Ross Kentner, whose career spanned 57 years at CFOS from working in the newsroom to general manager, remembers, “CFOS was 21 years old and I was 19 years old when I was hired as an announcer on May 1st, 1961. Everybody else was older than me and some of the staff had been here for years. Don’t get me wrong, we had a ton of fun but nothing could top the stories that we heard about the early years when people like Don Daynard who became the toast of Toronto radio did such outrageous things here.”
Kentner says, “It seemed to me that I’d missed the really exciting days of radio. Fortunately, time proved me wrong.”
Looking back, Kentner says, “I was privileged to be mentored by Bill Hawkins who himself had been influenced by Howard Fleming who published the Owen Sound Sun Times and was instrumental in establishing Victoria and Grey Trust and Northern Business college among other industries in Owen Sound.”
“CFOS was licensed and launched in a big hurry so that Grey Bruce residents would have access to breaking news from the fronts in the Second World War. CFOS began to grow when a Kitchener station needed our cooperation to improve its signal by moving to 570 on the dial, an adjacent channel and they financed improvements to CFOS 560. They also gave us the 1490 frequency to improve our signal service in Port Elgin,” says Kentner.
“Soon after, we applied successfully for an FM station today’s 106.5. It was followed by a second FM Country 93. We also flipped the Port Elgin repeater to a standalone FM. Another wave of FM applications came when we capitalized on the fact that the CRTC really wasn’t very pleased with the direction the FM band was taking. In particular, most FMs were like a juke box with little news and especially local news. That was the main strength of CFOS. So we started applying for FM licenses with a promise to deliver strong local news and programming. As a result of that formula Bayshore Broadcasting was successful in winning FM licenses in Wasaga Beach, Goderich, Orillia, Shelburne and Muskoka. The Port Elgin FM also won a repeater in Tobermory and most recently, CFOS itself was awarded an FM licence.”
He adds, “Over the years, some of the best known broadcasters in Canada and the United States cut their teeth at CFOS. I’m especially proud of Heather Hiscox at CBC, Janis Mackey Frayer at CTV and Cheryl Hickey at of the old Entertainment tonight, and also John Roberts of Fox News channel. He’s also an alumnus.”
Meanwhile, looking back on CFOS’ 85 years on the air so far, John Christie says, “I think the most important ingredient in a radio station has to be its people. That applies to the listener, without whom the last 85 years would not have been possible. Dedicated people past and present who put the station on the air with flair and especially, I fondly remember the people made CFOS their life’s work, Bill Hawkins, Russ Tomlinson, Lawrence Phillips, Betty Watson, Leanne Barfoot, Ross Kentner, Ron Wray — they all devoted their entire working lives to the enterprise which is CFOS.”
Kentner says of CFOS turning 85, “It doesn’t surprise me, because CFOS was a great station to start with and it continued to be over the years. It had a very, very loyal audience, which is so important.”
