CHTO-AM

On April 4, the CRTC approved an application by Canadian Hellenic Toronto Radio Inc. for a new commercial ethnic AM radio station in Toronto. The new station would direct its programming primarily to the Toronto area’s Greek-speaking community and would also provide ethnic programming in Armenian, Romanian, Serbian and Bulgarian, as well as in English. The station would broadcast on 1690 kHz with a transmitter power of 1000 watts, day and night. Canadian Hellenic is controlled by its sole shareholder, Mrs. Vassiliki Maniatakos. Since 1966, Canadian Hellenic had provided a closed circuit specialty audio programming service (known as CHCR-FM) to the Greek-speaking community in the Toronto area. The service was distributed by cable and financed solely by advertising. Before cable distribution, CHCR-FM was made available via an SCMO service from CKFM-FM 99.9. Canadian Hellenic stated that all of the programming broadcast by the proposed AM station would be ethnic programming, and that 88% of the programming would be in third languages, that is, languages other than English, French or a language of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada. The applicant proposed to serve a minimum of five cultural groups in a minimum of six languages during each broadcast week. The primary focus of the new station would be to provide an over-the-air radio service to the Greek-speaking community in the eastern portion of the Toronto area, including Markham, with 70% of its programming in Greek. Canadian Hellenic stated that a minimum of 120 of the 126 hours of the broadcast week would be devoted to local programming produced by the applicant using members of the cultural groups to be served. Spoken word programming would make up about 45% of the schedule. In addition to spoken word programs that would appeal to its general audience, such as a daily newsmagazine program, the station would offer an educational program for children and programming of specific interest to women. Greek-language newscasts would be offered at midday seven days a week. Canadian Hellenic proposed to devote approximately 55% of the programming aired in each broadcast week to music. At least 80% of all musical selections would be drawn from content subcategory 33 (world beat and international music). The applicant indicated that it would establish a programming advisory board consisting of community leaders to provide advice about programming and how to serve each of the target groups.
CHTO 1690 was hoping to be on the air by the end of the year. This never happened because of technical issues.

CHTO began broadcasting in September. The distribution of CHCR-FM on cable came to an end.

On November 5, the CRTC approved the application by Canadian Hellenic Toronto Radio Inc. to change the authorized contours of the ethnic commercial radio station CHTO by increasing the daytime transmitter power from 1,000 watts to 3,000 watts. All other technical parameters would remain unchanged. According to the licensee, the proposed changes would result in better signal quality within its licensed area and, more specifically, for its listeners located in Mississauga and Brampton who were currently experiencing poor signal reception. 

On August 17, the CRTC administratively renewed the licence of CHTO to August 31, 2013.

The CRTC approved a change to the effective control of Canadian Hellenic Toronto Radio Inc. from Mrs. Vassiliki Maniatakos to Mr. John Maniatakos, following the death of Mrs. Maniatakos in August 2010. Canadian Hellenic was the licensee of CHTO Toronto.

On September 23, the CRTC approved a change in authorized contours for CHTO by increasing the daytime transmitter power from 3,000 to 6,000 watts. 

On September 1, the CRTC approved CHTO’s application to add an AM rebroadcasting transmitter in Mississauga. It would serve additional listeners in the Greater Toronto Area, namely in Brampton, Etobicoke and Mississauga. The transmitter would operate at 1490 kHz with a daytime transmitter power of 23 watts and a night-time transmitter power of 770 watts.

In August, CHTO received an extension from the CRTC to September 1, 2019, to get CHTO-AM-1 1490 on the air in Mississauga.