Fred Lynds (1912-1983)

Fred Lynds

Year Born:

1912

Year Died: 

1983

Year of Induction:

1986

Pioneer – Member of CAB Hall of Fame

Lynds, Fred (1912-1983)

Moncton-born, Fred Lynds was only 17 when, in 1929, he got a job as an announcer-operator at radio station CFBO (later CHSJ), Saint John, N.B. In 1936, he returned to Moncton to manage CKCW-AM which had gone on the air two years earlier. In 1943, he was station manager. 

In 1946,he accepted the Beaver community service award for his station. CKCW was so well thought of in its community that a service club offered to keep the station staffed with amateur announcers from its membership rather than see the station go off the air for want of help.
At the end of the year, Fred Lynds acquired control of the Moncton Broadcasting Co. Ltd. which operated the station. Lynds would continue to manage the station. He became President in 1947, and remained at the helm of the company as it entered the TV era in 1954 with CKCW-TV.

In 1956, after having served on the Board of Directors, he was elected President of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters. He later served on the Board and as President of the Television Bureau of Advertising.

In 1965, Fred A. Lynds was president of Moncton Broadcasting Ltd. and general manager of CKCW.

On March 28 1972, The Island Radio Broadcasting Co. Ltd. (owned by Jack Schoone & Irving Zucker’s Eastern Broadcasting Co. Ltd.) was given approval to purchase CKCW Radio from Moncton Broadcasting Limited.

Fred Lynds died in 1983

Fred Lynds was inducted posthumously into the CAB Broadcast Hall of Fame in 1986.

Written by J. Lyman Potts – April, 1996