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CKSL was a Canadian radio station, broadcasting at 1410 AM in
London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
,
Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...
, Canada. The station aired a
comedy radio Radio comedy, or comedic radio programming, is a radio broadcast that may involve variety show, sitcom elements, sketches, and various types of comedy found in other media. It may also include more surreal or fantastic elements, as these can be con ...
format branded as ''Funny 1410''. The station broadcast with a power of 10,000
watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Wa ...
s from its transmitter site located on Scotland Drive in South London. The station's coverage area was directional to the north and south during the day, and towards the north at night to protect
WDOE WDOE is an AM/FM radio station located in Dunkirk, New York. It is owned by Alan Bishop and George Kimble, who also own sister station WBKX in Fredonia. The station operates on an AM frequency of 1410 kHz. On December 7, 2012, WDOE began si ...
in
Dunkirk, New York Dunkirk is a Administrative divisions of New York#City, city in Chautauqua County, New York, United States. It was settled around 1805 and incorporated in 1880. The population was 12,743 as of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. Dunkirk i ...
, located across
Lake Erie Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has t ...
from CKSL. CKSL was owned by
Bell Media Bell Media Inc. ( French: ) is a Canadian company formed by the amalgamation of several companies. Establishment (2011–13) On December 9, 2011, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan announced the sale of its majority stake in Maple Leaf Sports ...
, along with CJBX, CIQM and
CJBK CJBK is a Canadian radio station, broadcasting in London, Ontario, Canada, on the assigned frequency of 1290 kHz. The station, owned by Bell Media, has an antenna system input power of 10,000 watts, as a Class B station. CJBK's studios are locat ...
. The station was launched in June 1956 on AM 1290 (the current home of CJBK), and moved to its current frequency in 1964. The station later adopted a
Top 40 In the music industry, the Top 40 is the current, 40 most-popular songs in a particular genre. It is the best-selling or most frequently broadcast popular music. Record charts have traditionally consisted of a total of 40 songs. "Top 40" or " con ...
format, and subsequently changed to
news News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different Media (communication), media: word of mouth, printing, Mail, postal systems, broadcasting, Telecommunications, electronic communication, or through the tes ...
/
talk Talk may refer to: Communication * Communication, the encoding and decoding of exchanged messages between people * Conversation, interactive communication between two or more people * Lecture, an oral presentation intended to inform or instruct ...
in 1993 known as ''AM 1410''. It changed to an adult standards format under the same name in 1996, evolving into a soft adult contemporary format as ''AM 1410, The River'' in September 1997. In 2000, the station was acquired by
Telemedia Telemedia was a Canadian media company, which had holdings in radio, television and magazine publishing. The company was launched in 1968 by Philippe de Gaspé Beaubien, when he purchased CKAC in Montreal from Power Corporation of Canada. CK ...
, who changed it to an oldies format as "Oldies 1410" on December 1, 2000. Standard Broadcasting subsequently acquired Telemedia in 2002, and the format changed back to adult standards as ''AM 1410'' on February 16, 2004. By this point the station only broadcast live from 6-9 a.m. weekdays, with the rest of the time being automated. During the Oldies 1410 years, the station also broadcast various religious and ethnic programs in evenings, including
Radio Maryja Radio Maryja is a religious and political socially conservative Polish radio station. It was founded in Toruń, Poland, on 9 December 1991, by the Redemptorist Tadeusz Rydzyk. The name "Maryja" is a traditional Polish form of the name "Mary", ...
from Poland seven days a week from 8-9 p.m. Due in part to the location of its transmitter site in South London, CKSL has been dogged by low listenership. The municipal
landfill A landfill site, also known as a tip, dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump, or dumping ground, is a site for the disposal of waste materials. Landfill is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of the waste ...
site is located just south of the transmitter site, causing increasing deterioration of the signal as the landfill has grown over the years. CKSL applied to move to the FM dial at 102.3 MHz in 1999, but the license for 102.3 MHz was awarded to CHUM who subsequently launched
CHST-FM CHST-FM is a Canadian radio station, broadcasting at 102.3 FM in London, Ontario. The station uses the on-air brand and format ''Jack 102.3''. CHST broadcasts from the CFPL-TV tower in Southwest London. Due to CHST's low ERP relative to some Lo ...
. By 2016, CKSL had the lowest audience share in the London market, according to BBM Canada. In 2007
Astral Media Astral Media Inc. was a Canadian media conglomerate. It was Canada's largest radio broadcaster, with 84 radio stations in eight provinces. Astral was also a major player in premium and specialty television in Canada, with 23 specialty channels ...
took control of CKSL as a result of a takeover of Standard Radio. In fall 2009, CKSL moved back to an
oldies Oldies is a term for musical genres such as pop music, rock and roll, doo-wop, surf music (broadly characterized as classic rock and pop rock) from the second half of the 20th century, specifically from around the mid-1950s to the 1980s, as we ...
format, again using the "Oldies 1410" as its moniker. In November 2011, CKSL announced that it would change formats by January 2012 to become the first radio station in Canada devoted to comedy radio. The new format, "Funny 1410", consist of bits performed by major
stand-up Stand-up comedy is a comedic performance to a live audience in which the performer addresses the audience directly from the stage. The performer is known as a comedian, a comic or a stand-up. Stand-up comedy consists of one-liners, stories, ...
and improvisational comedians. The new format was originally programmed by Astral Media's syndication arm, but would later pick up its programming from the American 24/7 Comedy network, of which Astral (and later, Bell Media) was the authorised Canadian distributor. In early 2013, the station would add Astral's late night
Humble & Fred ''Humble & Fred'' is a Toronto-based Canadian podcast, featuring co-hosts "Humble" Howard Glassman and Fred Patterson. Available as a podcast since October 2011, the daily comedy-talk presentation was first launched over two decades earlier as ...
show."Humble And Fred Return To Radio Via Astral Media, CFRB". ''
Mediabase Mediabase is a music industry service that monitors radio station airplay in 180 US and Canadian markets. Mediabase publishes music charts and data based on the most played songs on terrestrial and satellite radio, and provides in-depth analytic ...
'', January 14, 2013.
It was a short time after this that Bell Media would acquire many of Astral's radio stations, including CKSL.


Announced closure of CKSL

On July 11, 2016,
Bell Media Bell Media Inc. ( French: ) is a Canadian company formed by the amalgamation of several companies. Establishment (2011–13) On December 9, 2011, the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan announced the sale of its majority stake in Maple Leaf Sports ...
applied to the
CRTC The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC; french: Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des télécommunications canadiennes, links=) is a public organization in Canada with mandate as a regulatory agency for broadcasti ...
for a request to terminate CKSL's broadcast license, citing severe deteriorating conditions at the transmitter site. A technical review was done at the location of CKSL's transmitter building and towers by Bell Media and its contractors, and they found that the AM array's broadcast towers posed a structural risk, as well as needing their aircraft warning lights to be repaired to bring it back up to proper building, safety and aircraft codes. The transmitter building was also found to have shifted off its foundation. The cost estimate to repair all these issues was in the $CAD 3 million range, and with CKSL's long-term ratings performance at dead last of the ten commercial radio stations serving the London area, and with little hope of that changing any time soon, coupled with the region's four per cent decline of advertising revenue in radio since 2013, the CRTC accepted Bell's request to shut down CKSL. The station was scheduled to cease operations on August 14, 2016, at midnight."London’s CKSL-AM Funny 1410 To Sign Off August 14"
''Broadcaster'', August 9, 2016.


References


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cksl Ksl Ksl Ksl Radio stations established in 1956 Radio stations disestablished in 2016 1956 establishments in Ontario 2016 disestablishments in Ontario Comedy radio stations in Canada KSL