CHNO-FM - Big Daddy Arrives

Big Daddy Arrives

At 12:00 AM on January 1, 2006, with little or no warning, the station flipped to a variety hits format of 1980s, 1990s and current rock and pop music as "Big Daddy 103.9", ending another era of Top 40 music in the Sudbury market. The stations slogan during the Big Daddy period was "Playing Anything". Prior to the change to variety hits, the very last song played on the old Top 40 format as Z103 was "Lose Yourself" by Eminem. After the flip, the first song of the new variety hits format was "Start Me Up", by the Rolling Stones. General manager Darlene Palmer said the station wanted to offer Sudbury "music you can dance to, sing to, date to, divorce to." Some promotional bumpers for the station feature a stiff-voiced character representing "Big Daddy" himself. The stiff-voiced character was replaced by a new one around the middle of 2008.

In the first quarter BBM ratings for 2006, CHNO's first ratings book under the Big Daddy format, the station regained the #1 status in the Sudbury market for the first time since 1990. However, the move was controversial with some of the station's prior listeners, and in July 2006, just seven months after flipping CHNO to the adult hits format, Newcap applied to the CRTC for a new contemporary hit radio station in the Sudbury market. In the application, Newcap stated that its market research found that a contemporary hit radio station could only be profitable in the market as one station within an ownership cluster, and not as a standalone entity. However, the application was denied by the CRTC on July 12, 2007.

The denial of the proposed contemporary hit radio station also became controversial, in part because the station that was licensed, CICS-FM, duplicated the format of an existing station in the market, Rogers' CIGM. In July 2008, however, Newcap announced a deal to acquire CIGM from Rogers in exchange for CFDR in Halifax. Both CIGM and CFDR were the sole remaining AM stations in their respective markets, and in both cases the current owner already had the maximum permitted number of FM stations in the applicable market, whereas the acquirer only had a single FM station. Both companies applied to move the stations to FM as part of the trade. This deal was approved on November 24, 2008.

On June 25, 2009, Newcap received approval from the CRTC to increase CHNO-FM's effected radiated power from 11,000 watts to 100,000 watts, to increase the station's antenna height and to relocate the transmitter. On August 17, 2009, the station increased their power to 100,000 watts the same day CHNO-FM's sister station CIGM-FM began on-air tests at 93.5 FM.