CJYQ

Infobox Radio station
name = CJYQ


area = St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador
branding = Radio Newfoundland
slogan = Our Music, Our Heritage
airdate = October 25, 1950 as CJON
frequency = 930 kHz (AM)
format = Newfoundland Music
erp =
class =
owner = Newcap Broadcasting
callsign_meaning =
website = [http://www.radionewfoundland.ca/ Radio Newfoundland]

CJYQ, branded as Radio Newfoundland, is an AM radio station broadcasting at 930 kHz in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. It is owned by Newcap Broadcasting and plays predominantly Newfoundland music.

The station was launched in 1950 as CJON and was owned by the Newfoundland Broadcasting Company (Geoff Stirling and Don Jamieson), which launched CJON-TV in 1955. The company later launched additional AM stations throughout the province.

In 1977 Jamieson transferred his interest in Newfoundland Broadcasting to Stirling in exchange for the AM stations. As part of the deal, the stations changed call signs, in CJON's case to CJYQ. All the new call signs ended in "Q", so the group became known as the "Q Radio Network".

In 1983, Jamieson sold the stations to CHUM Limited. During CHUM's ownership, the Q Radio stations became oldies stations, while a new co-owned country music FM station, CKIX, was launched. In 1990, the stations were sold again to Newcap Broadcasting, which quickly converted the AM stations outside St. John's to country music (fed from CKIX). Two of the stations were closed soon after, while the others eventually converted to FM.

CJYQ, or "Classic Hits Q93" as it was known under Newcap, continued to be an apparently viable station until the late 1990s, when the station quietly dropped all but a bare minimum of announcers to read weather forecasts and the like. In 2000, when Newcap proposed to purchase the VOCM group, the longtime rival of CJYQ, it proposed to keep the latter station, which it would not have normally been entitled to do in a market the size of St. John's (where the maximum number of stations per ownership group is three). In exchange the station would air a greater amount of Canadian content than required (40% instead of 35%), of which at least half (or 20% overall) would have to be Newfoundland music.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) permitted this, and at noon on September 8, 2000, the station became "Radio Newfoundland". This may have caused some minor confusion as VOCM's AM stations had occasionally used that name for group branding in prior years. Since the changeover, CJYQ has in fact even exceeded its higher requirements, with almost 80% Newfoundland content.

The station has occasionally played station IDs recorded by Newfoundland musicians that opt to call the station "Radio Newfoundland and Labrador", as a result of the province's official name change in 2001. However, this is not a reflection of the station's actual brand, nor would it be accurate: the station's signal does not reach Labrador, and little if any of the station's programming or music originates there. (Newcap "does" own a separate "Radio Labrador" - however this station is part of the main VOCM/CFCB network, and plays a mix of adult contemporary music outside of network programming.)

References

[http://www.broadcasting-history.ca/listings_and_histories/radio/histories.php?id=712&historyID=272 Canadian Communications Foundation history]

External links

* [http://www.radionnewfoundland.ca/ Radio Newfoundland]
*RecnetCanada|CJYQ