Thursday, June 15, 2023

CFUN City



Long ago, before drag queens replaced clowns in the classroom, when Ronald McDonald ambiguity had as much right to our imaginations as RuPaul certainty does today, our teachers shared lessons in the democratic process using whatever was at hand. For my Grade Six self (1973-1974), it was debating the merits of one Top-40 AM music station versus another's.

CFUN was located at 1410 on the AM dial, CKLG at 730. CFUN was slightly softer than CKLG, though both played similar content -- similar enough that only the order of their Top-10s differed. Until a few years ago, if someone named me a song that was big in the mid-1970s, I could tell you if it was a CFUN song or a CKLG song. 10CC's "I'm Not in Love" (1975) is a CFUN song, Sweet's "The Ballroom Blitz" (1974) a CKLG song.

Yesterday I heard that Bell Media dropped both the 1410 and 1040 spots on the AM dial, along with a few thousand jobs across the country. It has been decades since CFUN's Top-40 format left the airwaves (just a couple days ago I drove by its old, now demolished building near 4th Avenue and Burrard), but that only makes it harder. A grave without a cairn. 

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