Last Updated on: 3rd August 2017, 12:24 pm
Update:
For history and trivia’s sake, the last song played by CJCS as an AM only station was Thirsty Ears by the Powder Blues Band,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMFFOTqXc6Y
and the first on FM was Listen to the Music by the Doobie Brothers.
I haven’t gotten around to installing a decent recorder on this machine so I don’t have audio of the switch or the interview with Lloyd Robertson and Geoff Poulton (President of Vista Radio) that preceded it, but if someone else does and I find it I’ll be sure to tack it on here, make a separate post out of it or both. Come to think of it, if you have it, feel free to drop me a line. My finger slipped and I nearly wrote drop me a loin there. Please do not do that. Unless it’s pork. That would be nice of you.
Original post:
The approval was granted a couple of years ago, and now CJCS Stratford is finally set to become an FM station next month. They’re moving from 1240 AM to 107.1 FM starting August 3rd, although the 1240 signal will still be available for a few months while everyone adjusts.
107.1 is an interesting frequency choice. It shouldn’t be much of an issue for people in Stratford as long as they’re at home, but things could get interesting once they start driving around. Depending on where you go it may not take long for that signal to start getting stomped by Q107 in Toronto and possibly even 107.5 Dave FM from here in KW. I wonder if I’ll even be able to pull it in here at the house for that same reason. I hope I can, but I have my doubts. It would be nice to have another decent station to listen to, though.
Starting Aug. 3, listeners can tune in to 107.1 FM, which will run simultaneously with 1240 AM for about three months.
It will largely be the same station, said regional cluster manager Wendy Gray, with the same music, team and community focus.
“I want to be clear, we’re not changing very much,” said Gray. “We are not changing the format to a rock format. It’s going to stay the same music that they hear today on CJCS…they’re going to hear the same local news. They’re going to hear Eddie Matthews in the morning. They’re going to hear the agricultural report, the Stratford Warriors, the Blue Jays.”
Though the licence issued by the CRTC in 2015 noted the station would change from oldies to rock music, that’s since been rethought, said Gray.
“It’s taken a long time to get the approval, and in the interim, we (decided) ‘why fix what really isn’t broken?’”
The only other thing that’s changing is the name. They’re sticking with the CJCS call letters which is nice since they have nearly a century worth of history attached to them, but they’re also going to start calling it Juice FM. I don’t know what Juice has to do with old music, but it’s fine, I guess. I’m sure we’ll all get used to it in time, and it’s not like everyone who isn’t a young kid isn’t just going to call it CJCS anyway.
The switch happens at noon today.
And unless they’re not running any sort of test loop at all on 107.1 at the moment, that signal doesn’t have a hope of reaching Kitchener, at least not this part of it. Q107 is coming through loud and clear. Better than our local country station, as a matter of fact.