History of CHNO
The station began broadcasting on June 24, 1947 on AM 1440. It was a bilingual radio station, airing programming in both English and French, and was an affiliate of both CBC Radio's Dominion Network and Radio-Canada. It was operated by Sudbury Broadcasting, a company owned by F. Baxter Ricard, and was the first bilingual radio station in Canada outside of Quebec. On November 9, 1954, CHNO moved to AM 900.
In 1957, Ricard opened CFBR on AM 550 as a full-time French-language station, and CHNO switched to full-time English. The licensing of CFBR, which took over the Radio-Canada affiliation from CHNO, made Ricard the first commercial broadcaster in Canada licensed to operate two AM radio stations in the same city. On December 31, 1969, CFBR and CHNO swapped frequencies, CHNO moving to 550 and CFBR taking over the 900 slot. On May 14, 1976, the CRTC denied an application by Sudbury Broadcasting Co. Ltd. to change CHNO's frequency from 550 kHz to 570 kHz.
In 1980, Ricard launched a new FM station CJMX. That same year, CHNO received approval to increase daytime power from 10,000 watts to 50,000 watts with the nighttime power to remain at 10,000 watts and would remain on 550 kHz. Also in 1980, Ricard also became a major shareholder in Mid-Canada Communications. Sudbury Broadcasting continued to operate independently, although it was eventually merged into Mid-Canada Radio in 1985. In 1990, Mid-Canada sold the stations to Pelmorex. Following this sale, CFBR adopted the new call letters CHYC.
In the 1970s and 1980s, CHNO was Northern Ontario's most listened-to and most influential radio station, broadcasting a Top 40 format branded as "55 CHNO", "Rock Radio CHNO 55", "Sudbury's Best Rock", and "Sudbury's Hit Music Leader, NO55" (pronounced "N-oh fifty-five"). However, the 1990 launch of CJRQ ended CHNO's dominance, and in July 1992, CHNO flipped to an oldies format as "Oldies 55". After struggling through a variety of formats, including classic rock as "AM 55 The Crusher" in 1994, country and talk radio in 1995 and 1996, the station reverted back to oldies in 1997. Former program director Scott Jackson, now the manager of CJLF-FM in Barrie, has stated that CHNO and CJMX were the most neglected stations in the entire Pelmorex corporate family during the time that he worked there, despite being the network's nominal flagships.
In 1998, Pelmorex sold CJMX to Telemedia. The following year, Pelmorex sold CHNO and CHYC to Haliburton Broadcasting Group.
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