CJOY-AM

A commercial radio licence was issued to Wally Slatter. He started in radio as a juvenile actor in 1934. In 1945, on his return from the Royal Canadian Air Force (after 3 years), he joined the sales staff of Radio Representatives Ltd., a company headed by his father.

The CBC Board approved the transfer of the Guelph radio licence from W.O. Slatter & F.T. Metcalf to CJOY Ltd.

CJOY opened on June 14. It was Guelph’s first and only radio station. Many well known radio artists from Toronto and New York joined with local artists and announcers to celebrate the event. A station tour was held, followed by cocktails. In the evening, the Royal City Pipe Band welcomed guests at the Odeon Theatre. The Reverand J.E. todd conducted the official opening. Gordie Tapp was emcee. Talent included Lorne Green, a 16 piece orchestra under Lou Snider, with soloists Bert Niosi and Morris London, Percy Faith, and others. Overall program production was by Jack Slatter.

CJOY broadcast on a frequency of 1450 kHz with 250 watts power, non-directional The transmitter and single tower were located at Lot 10, Concession 1, Division E, Guelph Township, Wellington County. 

Some of the staff: Lloyd Dafoe (chief announcer), Carl Banas (operator), Bert Cobb (chief engineer), Wally Slatter (manager), Fred Metcalf (sales manager). Slatter and Metcalf co-managed CJOY.

CJOY became a member of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters.

Announcer Howard Manning left CJOY for CKEY Toronto.

Hugh Bowman was sports director. Ronald Kerr was a technician.

CJOY was producing a series of dramas in the program “Accent On Danger”. Late in the year, one of the broadcasts was “The Plotters”, featuring Rod Coneybeare (writer, director and actor) and actors Cameron Langford, Betty Kefalas and Kaye Knights.

CJOY received approval to operate a 100 watt emergency transmitter.

CJOY was added to the Community Broadcast Services group which also included CKNX Wingham, CFOS Owen Sound, CKBB Barrie, and CFOR Orillia. The 14 month old group produced and promoted live talent programs, and had been working on a schedule of some three shows originated by each member station weekly. Each show was taped and circulated to the other member stations. CJOY had already been contributing programs for a few months.

Cam Langford was an announcer at CJOY. 

Alan Hodge was news editor.

CJOY was an independent station with no network affiliation. Ownership of CJOY Limited: W. O. Slatter 49.9%, Mrs. N. D. Slatter 0.1%, F. T. Metcalf 50.0%.

Wally Slater was president of the company and Fred Metcalf was CJOY’s manager. 

Edna Slatter, wife of the late Jack Slatter, was now associated with her son Wally, at CJOY. 

According to Elliott-Haynes CJOY reached a total of 47,592 adult listeners every day.

On April 1, CJOY moved to 1460 kHz with 10,000 watts day and 5,000 watts night (full-time) from a new site on the south half of Lot 13, Concession 5, Puslinch Township, Wellington County, using four 164′ (overall height) towers. The station had originally proposed to move to 1430 kHz with 5,000 watts but it was decided that 1460 kHz would provide a better service. Print ads promoted the fact that CJOY was operating with 10,000 watts. 

Print Ad: Radio C-JOY In Ontario’s Golden Triangle (Guelph-Kitchener-Waterloo-Galt) – now with 10,000 watts. (RCA transmitter)

J.A. “Jack” Jackson was appointed C-JOY station manager. He had managed area and national sales and had been with the station since 1955. Clifford Muir was named area sales manager. Jackson would continue to direct national sales. Don Leblanc was program manager. 

Fred Napoli and Tony Parsons left CJOY for CHML Hamilton.

W. O. Slater was president of CJOY Ltd. F. T. Metcalf was CJOY’s general manager while J. A. Jackson was station manager.

Jack A. Jackson died on April 2 at age 49. He joined the station in 1955 as sales manager and was promoted to GM in 1960.

On July 26, CJOY-AM and FM received approval to move studios and offices from 50 Wyndham Street to 75 Speedvale Avenue East.

CJOY Ltd. (Guelph) bought into CFTJ Cambridge.

CJOY applied for permission to increase power from 10,000 watts day / 5,000 watts night, using a new antenna site. The application was cancelled due to skywave signal concerns.

A 3,600 square foot addition was added to the studio-office building for CKLA-FM. FM operations were moved into their own section, with 1,800 square feet for studios and control rooms. The same amount of space on the lower floor was set aside for sales, accounting and engineering. The move allowed CJOY to expand into the space that had been occupied by CKLA, with a re-organized record library and a second production control room.

CJOY received approval to increase night-time power to 10,000 watts from 5,000 watts.

CJOY increased power to 10,000 watts full-time, using four towers at the existing antenna site. A new Harris MW-10A transmitter was also used. CJOY was a class 2 DA-2 10,000 watt station using four 180 foot towers in a dog-leg configuration. 

The CJOY transmitter site was rebuilt and updated to include the transmitter and antenna for CKLA-FM. Work began in the fall of 1980 to rebuild the existing 20 year old AM transmitter site. This involved a new phasor, ATUs, AM transmitter, and one new 410 foot tower. CKLA was moved to the site to take advantage of the added tower height. 

On July 31 at about 3:00 a.m., the STL tower at the CJOY and CKLA studios was hit by lightning. The stations lost about 95% of the equipment that contained C-MOS devices. It took technicians over two weeks to restore things to normal.

Randy Steinman joined from CFTJ Cambridge to do sports.

Randy Steinman (sports) left for CFCO Chatham.

Norm McColl was heard on CJOY.

On April 14, the CRTC approved the sale of CJOY Ltd. (CJOY-AM and CKLA-FM) by Fred Metcalf and Wally Slatter to Kawartha Broadcasting Co. Ltd. of Peterborough. Kawartha was owned by Paul Desmarais and Claude Pratte, who had applied to transfer their broadcast holdings to Power Corp., of which Desmarais was president.

Craig Fox joined CJOY as a part-time announcer. 

Guus Hazelaar was operations manager and news director at CJOY.

Craig Fox left for Hamilton’s CHAM.

Power Corp. of Canada reorganized its radio and television assets. They would now be held in the new wholly-owned subsidiary, Power Broadcasting Inc. PBI would be based in Montreal. Andre Desmarais was named chairman and chief executive officer of the new unit. Peter Kruyt was president. Before now, Power’s seven AM, four FM and three TV stations were held by a number of subsidiaries in Ontario and Quebec.

Mark Bowden was named general sales manager for CJOY and CKLA-FM.

CKLA-FM changed call letters to CIMJ-FM. 

Pat St. John, based in Guelph, was named a regional manager for Power Broadcasting.

Dave Hannah and Neil Clemens hosted the morning show. Wayne Moore was on the air in mid-days and Larry Mellott did afternoons. Stacey Thompson joined CJOY.

Paul Osborne was appointed operations manager and Neill Clemens was named news director for CJOY and CIMJ-FM.

Wally Slatter, co-founder of CJOY, passed away on June 2.

Stacey Thompson left for CKNX in Wingham.

Fred Metcalf, co-founder of CJOY died February 15 at the age of 74. He was also the founder of the first cable TV system in Canada…Neighborhood TV in Guelph, in 1952. He sold his twenty cable operations to Maclean Hunter Ltd. in 1967 and then ran that company (as president) between 1977 and 1984. Metcalf was also the founding president of the Canadian Cable Television Association.

Corus Radio Company purchased the stations of Power Broadcasting, which included CJOY and CIMJ-FM. The CRTC approved the purchase on March 24th. Corus took control of the stations on April 13.

Dave Hannah and Neil Clemens hosted the morning show. Wayne Moore did mid-days and Larry Mellott was on the air in afternoon drive. 

On January 23, the CRTC turned down CJOY’s application to move its Gold/Oldies format to the FM band. At the same time, the Commission denied applications by Blackburn Radio Inc., Frank Torres and Guelph Broadcasting Corp. for a new FM station in the Guelph market. 

On January 28, the CRTC again denied the request by 591989 B.C. Ltd. to convert CJOY from the AM to the FM band. Approval of the application would require an exception to the common ownership policy, and the Commission did not consider that an exception was warranted in this case.

The Commission received an application by 591989 B.C. Ltd., a corporation ultimately controlled by Corus Entertainment Inc., to convert the English-language commercial radio programming undertaking CJOY Guelph from the AM to the FM band. The new station would operate at 95.7 MHz with an average effective radiated power of 9,500 watts. The applicant indicated that it would continue to offer CJOY’s Oldies music format on the proposed FM station. The common ownership policy provides that, in markets (such as Guelph) with fewer than eight commercial radio stations operating in a given language, a person may be permitted to own or control as many as three stations operating in that language, with a maximum of two stations in any one frequency band. In addition to AM station CJOY, Corus currently operates three FM stations whose 3 mV/m contours cover the Guelph market as defined by BBM Canada. These stations include CIMJ-FM Guelph and CJDV-FM in the adjacent city of Cambridge. Further, as a function of its strong signal, the 3 mV/m contour of the Corus station CING-FM Hamilton also enters the Guelph market. Thus, Corus already exceeded the three station limit for total AM and FM stations as well as the limit of two stations in any one frequency band set out in the common ownership policy. Approval of the current application would add a fourth Corus FM station to the market.’

There were a number of changes at Corus Entertainment related to its organization review to streamline decision-making and clarify roles and mandates. Among the changes: Reporting to Hal Blackadar, Executive Vice President and interim President of Corus Radio – Chris Sisam, VP/GM, Corus Radio, Southwestern Ontario (based in London, Sisam would be responsible for Corus Guelph, Corus Kitchener/Cambridge and London). Guus Hazelaar of Corus Guelph retired.

Robin Prebble left Corus Guelph late in the year to become News Director at CKLM-FM in Lloydminster.

James Robert Parker (known as Dale Parker) died at 61. Parker spent 32 years in broadcasting, 17 of them at CKOC/Klite Hamilton. He had at least two other stints in southern Ontario, CJOY Guelph and CKPC Brantford. At his passing, he was Program Director/Coordinator of Events for Brantford Minor Hockey.

Stu Holloway passed away at age 69. In 1967, he began a career in broadcasting at a number of stations in Southern Ontario, including CFTG Galt, CKTB and CHSC St. Catharines, CJOY Guelph and CBC Toronto. He became well known for his voicing of the famous phrase, “It’s worth the drive to Acton” (Olde Hide House). For 32 years he was the narrator of the CNE Air Show in Toronto.

Ron Fitzpatrick retired August 31. He had been operations manager at 1460 CJOY and Magic 106.1. Fitzpatrick celebrated his 50th anniversary in broadcasting in March of this year. Ron started in the business in 1966 at CFTJ Galt. From there, he went on to CKOX Woodstock, CFOR Orillia, CHEX Peterborough, CHLO St. Thomas and CKWS Kingston. He returned to CFTJ in 1981 and moved to Corus Guelph in 2003.

Neill Clemens retired from the CJOY newsroom in June…after 43 years. For the past 25 years he was news director and co-host of The Dave and Neill Morning Show.

Larry Mellott wrapped up a 50-year radio career in radio, signing off from his afternoon show at CJOY in the summer. Mellott’s career started at CHLO St. Thomas in 1970. He joined CJOY in December of 1974. Mellott went out west for a few years but returned to CJOY in 1988 as PD and announcer.