CKSL

Dick Joseph in the CKSL 1410 control room as seen through the guest booth.

Guest Post: Dick Joseph – My First Adventure in the World of Radio

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Anyone who listened to London radio in the 80s knew Dick Joseph. Dicker Q and the Afternoon Zoo was a hugely popular show on CKSL 1410 from ’82-’87. Dick hosted the on air and live versions of Desperate and Dateless. To me, the overnight host, he was a mentor and colleague. Recently, I wrote about some radio memories that prompted Dick to send me the story of his first job in radio. Without further ado, I give you his story in his words.

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Guest Post: Dick Joseph – My First Adventure in the World of Radio Read More »

doodle of musical notes and a set of headphones plugged into a heart

Throwback Thursday – Giving Into Temptations

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Picture it: 1984. Or was it ’85. No matter. I was working as a “swing” host at all-hit-radio CKSL. Think CFTR but in London, Ontario. Swing means my shifts swung around the clock. There were a couple of overnights, an evening, an afternoon and fill-in shifts when necessary. The promotions department asked me to accompany a couple of contest winners to Detroit via limo, to see the Four Tops and The Temptations perform.  …

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Throwback Thursday: My Boss, My Brother

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My first radio job when I moved back to London 8 years ago was midday host on 1039-FM, a station with an identity crisis. Now it’s a country music station. Then, it was struggling to find a niche in a radio cluster that included the city’s top FM station, and another one that places in the top 5.  …

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Not So Funny

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Funny 1410 in London is shutting down in the coming months. The company I work for, Bell Media, got approval from the CRTC to revoke its license to operate the station. It’s just not viable anymore. Powering down its frequency brings an end to a legendary radio station, one that I was proud to call my radio home for a couple of years in the 1980s. No jobs will be lost because those jobs were lost years ago. To shut down 1410 it will only take powering down a computer.  …

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A Princely Visit

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Whenever someone mentions Prince, the following story comes to mind. And yesterday, when news of his death at 57 started burning up social media, it came back in vivid purple colour. It was the time Prince came to London, Ontario. In 1984, I was working at CKSL and so was Derek when his purpleness was spotted in the Forest City. As my friend Dan Brown writes, this was long before he lived in Toronto or had any ties to Canada.  …

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Throwback Thursday – All Hit Music Me

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When I was a kid, it was the height of cool to drop by a record store and pick up the CKOC street sheet to see that week’s top 40 songs. CKOC was Hamilton’s all-hit radio. If you were in Toronto, it was CFTR. Any top 40 radio station worth its 45s was putting out a little top 40 chart every week.

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