CFRC

History

CFRC remained a CBC station for several years however, with a weak signal and with commercial limitations placed on it by the university (such as a ban on advertising for patent medicine), the Whig-Standard sought its own station and, in 1942, launched CKWS 960 (now an FM station), at which time CKWS acquired CFRC's CBC affiliation and its commercial license. In exchange for CKWS carrying some programming from the university, CFRC agreed not to compete commercially with CKWS for ten years and to only engage in broadcasts that filled the university's educational mandate. The station reverted to an experimental outlet for the university's Electrical Engineering Department until 1945 when it resumed programming on a limited basis as part of the Summer Radio Institute - a training program for broadcasters run with the CBC - and thereafter broadcasting non-commercial radio plays by the Queen's Drama Guild. Since the station originally began broadcasting, CFRC periodically changed frequencies until it settled on 1490 AM on March 29, 1941. In 1954, CFRC-FM began broadcasting at 91.9 MHz on the FM dial to simulcast the programming of CFRC 1490. In 1957, the university appointed Margaret Angus as its first director of radio and students formed the CFRC Radio Club to produce programming and operate the station under her supervision as a fully fledged campus radio station. In 1986, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approved Radio Queen's application to change CFRC-FM's frequency from 91.9 MHz to its current FM frequency, 101.9 MHz. In 1990 the AM frequency went dark and all CFRC programming moved to the FM frequency (which had been broadcasting separate programming since 1970) and a new stereo transmitter.