Radio Glendon - Recent History

Recent History

After Allerton's exit as manager, and throughout much of the 1990s, the station focused on broadcasting to its core audience, the students of Glendon College. One notable exception was Edward Beres, who as manager was able to expand the station's facilities to include a dedicated broadcast booth beside the student pub.

Due to the CRTC's 1994 denial, he also elected to add a second AM transmitter (on the same frequency), and moved one transmitter to each residence building.

During Ed Beres' term as manager he managed to recruit some very dedicated volunteers to carry on the station's day to day functions. New students would be attracted to the radio station, and its new and improved broadcast range into the residence buildings, cafeteria, and pub. Volunteers such as Richie Favalaro (now with major Toronto radio station CHUM-FM), Mike Glustien (now with Ottawa's CFGO) Mike Shering, David Taillefer, and Philip Godin took on the responsibilities of such tasks as the financial needs of the station, programming, music tracking, and recruiting of new student's as on-air DJs. Ed updated the broadcast equipment, and made the station more accessible for student clubs to use for special event planning.

Ed's successor as manager in 1995, Philip Godin, continued to create an accessible student radio station by promoting throughout the campus, hosting events for the new students during orientation week, and ensuring there was a regular broadcast schedule from 8 am to noon. Godin wanted to improve the infrastructure of the radio station from the ground up, to prove to the CRTC that CKRG could be capable of broadcasting on the FM frequency once again. As well as ensuring a solid broadcast schedule for students at Glendon, Godin also started a co-op training program at CKRG which allowed local high schools in the area to teach students the basics in radio broadcasting.

In 1998, the station manager Brad Crowe took a decisive step in building up the radio station's listenership, and purchased a 1 watt transmitter which was capable of broadcasting to the campus.

From 1998-2001, former Office Manager and transplant from CKLU in Sudbury, Ontario, Ryan LaFlamme continued Brad's work as Station Manager. Accomplishments included increasing volunteer number to over 85 undergraduate students and creating the first complete programing schedule in many years, obtaining an LPFM license, rebuilding the secondary production and interview room, finalizing the re-cataloguing of the music library, and restoring the 'vinyl vault' from storage for run down equipment. Ryan was responsible for training several of the future stations executive and Station Managers, including Seth Wotten.

Beginning in 2002, live streaming of radio broadcasts allowed a much wider audience access to the station. Student DJ's were encouraged to incorporate new technology into their broadcasts. Previously it was common to see a DJ carrying a record crate or CD suitcase for their shows, but the sight of laptops became more common. Several up-and-coming dance music DJ's also graced the broadcast booth, including a then-unknown Toronto trance DJ named Joyrider, and Jonathan Swayze, a successful electronica DJ.

In September 2004, the CRTC approved a licence for CKRG to broadcast on 89.9 FM, expiring August 31, 2011.

A website and message forum was created and the decision was made in 2010 to move streaming to the online website: www.radioglendon.ca. The broadcast stream that had run for 5 years prior was fairly weak, and the decision was made to discontinue the CKRG licence in light of improved internet technology and the impending expiration of the licence in 2011. The online station was up and running in 2010, but suffered much initial difficulty maintaining the quality of its online stream.