Radio VCC

 

1320 CHQM-AM was founded in 1959. They were not the original frequency to occupy that channel, that was CKNW. That station originally broadcast on the frequency of 1230 kHz, then moved to 1320 kHz in 1949, and then to 980 kHz in 1958. CHQM moved back to 1320 in 1973 hence the logo above. They kept those calls until 1994 when it changed to CHMB. The station broadcast "Overseas Chinese Voice" which in reality was brokered ethnic programming and what their financial reporting called "background music service." [SOURCE] 

What started me down this path was a cassette tape that looked like a radio show. I had thought for some time that Vancouver Community College had a carrier current radio station in the 1970s. I keep lists of that sort of thing. Books like the gas pipe networks are great but are few and of limited scope.  it turns out I was mistaken. Vancouver Community College, founded in 1965 has never had a radio station of any kind so far as I can tell.  

 

But the cassette tape was the first time I thought I had evidence. On the cover, side by side are the Vancouver Community College and Q1320 logos. 1320 isn't a carrier current radio station. The station and connection are real. The station still exists today, still broadcasting on 1320 MHz at 50,000 watts as CHMB despite the sunset of AM radio in Canada. It is actually one of the last AM radio stations in all of Canada. 

VCC has no connection to the UBC student radio station CITR, or even Cooperative radio (aka Co-op Radio) on 102.7 aka CFRO. First licensed in 1974, they signed on in 1975, broadcasting on 102.7 FM. But then in 2012 They swapped frequencies with CKPK and moved to 100.5. This is why I initially confused the two stations based on an entry in the book Secret Vancouver  by Alison Appelbe. It published in 2003, but all data ages out I suppose. Inside the cassette is some text that explains everything. It's a little lengthy but I've quoting the whole thing.

"ON Q is a joint project between radio station CHQM and the Vancouver Community College Music Department. The Q broadcasting system  has been established since 1959 and is a leader in the easy-listening format, and in business background music.

In the summer of 1988, the station recognized the need for corporate assistance in the training and development of talented young musicians in Canada. Since that time CHQM has donated funds towards scholarships for deserving music students at Vancouver Community College, and also encouraged the production and promotion of this recording. It is a partnership the College gratefully acknowledges and hopes to continue for some time. 

The Vancouver Community College Music Department opened in September of 1974 as an alternative to the traditional approach to music education. The school has over the past fifteen years become a leader in college music programs in Canada, recognizing and addressing the need for practical performance training in classical, jazz and commercial music. The program offers maximum flexibility to both part-time and full-time students, giving them the opportunity to learn, experience and perform a more complete spectrum of music than is possible in most other music schools.

 The "Soundwave" program has developed a reputation for a high calibre of performance and leadership in vocal jazz. the ensemble is formed annually from a select group of students who look for an extremely challenging experience in vocal jazz. The program has been at the forefront of the vocal jazz movement since it's inception. 

Over the years, the ensemble has performed with Diane Schurr, John Denver, the Hi-LOs, Mark Murphy, and many other well-known performers.

These students have represented Vancouver Community College at music festivals throughout the world. The mandate of the Soundwave program is to strive for musical excellence and help in the growth of the vocal jazz movement. "

But that's it. Soundwave is not a radio program. It's the name of the vocal jazz ensemble. The text even calls it a "program" but they don't mean a radio program. It only refers to to the educational program. That is still it's name today, alongside other ensemble groups at VCC such as VCC Concert Choir, Madrigal Singers, Orchestra, New Music Ensemble, Gamelan Ensemble, Korean Ensemble, Latin Jazz Ensemble and Latin Percussion Ensemble. The course Directed Ensemble awards one credit for the course.

The "ON Q" project name, visible on the tape is surely derived from the company name Q Broadcasting Ltd, the owning entity of CHQM. [LINK] I found one studio picture from 1973 here. CHQM and VCC do not appear to have a sponsorship program any longer.

3,000 Posts

 

Welcome to my three thousandth post. This blog began in April 30th, 2005. As of this date, that works out to 20 years or 7,317 days. (That works out to a post approximately every 2.4 days.) I knew by the fall of 2024 that I was on track to hit 3,000 posts this Spring. So I have been pondering the meaning of this endeavor.  But, it's been a strange ride and I've met some good folks along the way. To everyone who made time for my questions, left a comment or even shared research; I can only say thank you.

I wish I had something wise and sage to say; some observation I could deliver with gravitas on the nature of writing. If I do, it is simply this: We are what we do. Writing of any kind is a self-perpetuating activity. I write because I am a writer. Because I am a writer, I write. It's a circular observation that lacks a  rhetorical conclusion but I don't think anyone is asking for one.  

If I ever stopped writing it would irrevocably change what I am. At the moment I can't imagine what that would be like. Kurt Vonnegut's knew about this and at the beginning of his 1962 novel, Mother Night he wrote: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

WMOP - The First Underwater Broadcast

It's harder to do pretty much everything underwater. I read once that the first under water photograph was taken in 1899 by pioneer Louis Marie Auguste Boutan. It seems very early but light passes through water more easily than people or electronics. But that obstacle didn't dissuade WMOP, they liked a challenge.

In 1956 radio station 900 WMOP-AM set up a studio underwater, 15 feet below the surface of Florida's Silver Springs and broadcast for 13 hours and 15 minutes.  The tiny studio was only 8 x 8 feet and contained two microphones, a record player, and a telephone line. According to the coverage the hardest part of the process was getting the equipment into the studio without damaging it. Each item had to be plastic bagged separately to get moved.

 

On Thursday August 30th, 1956 somehow Station Manager Jim Kirk, and Program Manager E. Vernon Arnette shimmed into the tank at 6:00 AM and stayed in there until sign off at 7:15 PM. Other members of the staff did their specialty programs from inside the tank including: News Director Ed Sherer, Program Director Gene Turner, and country DJ Nervous Ned Needham. Station owner Ben Letson wisely stayed outside the tank. 

You might know the DJ name Nervous Ned Needham. He was one of the prescient DJs who in 1955 foresaw the future career of Elvis Presley. He's quoted in multiple books on the King. Needham was with WMOP for 4 years and went to Nashville to DJ at WENO for 3 months and missed home. He came back to WHYS in Ocala in January of 1958. He told Cashbox that he missed the weekend midget auto racing and the Florida sunshine. The 1959 radio yearbook notes that they had 7½ hours of "negro" programming at that time.I do suspect Needham was connected to that nascent rock n' roll programming.

 900 WMOP-AM was based on Ocala, FL; founded in 1953  operating at 1,000 watts. The owner was A.B. (Ben) Letson and it was located at 311 Robertson Bldg in Ocala, FL.  The building no longer stands but it was at the intersection of Main Street and Silver Springs Boulevard. Main street no longer exists under that name, I think it became 301. 

Back in 1953, the only other local station at the time was WTMC on 1290.  The engineer at the time was Lloyd H. Lutz.  It's worth noting that Vernon Arnette later was owned WTMC from 1974 through 1980. That station retired the WTMC call letters in 1999 and became WCFI, but ultimately signed off in 2004.  Similarly Station Manager Jim Kirk, aka "Country Jim" owned WMOP from 1953 till 1993 and WFUZ for a bit. He had previously been an announcer at WCNH-AM in Quincy, FL. Jim was Mayor of Ocala for three terms in the 1960s and 1970s. News Director Ed Sherer, was also an announcer on WTMC but he was more of a newspaper man. In 1965 he moved to Ohio to become a staff writer at the Star Banner.

 

As stunts go broadcasting underwater was wildly successful. Nobody drowned and they got a lot of press. WMOP advertised the stunt in advance in the August issue of Billboard. And when nobody drowned, the stunt was reported by Telephony magazine, Broadcast, Florida Newspaper News, SESAC magazine, Life magazine, and Radio Electronics among others.  It got them more press than their mobile broadcasting studio, though there seem to be a lot of postcards of it.

Radio Protein Fan

According to internet lore, Google thinks this sticker says "Radio Protein Fan."  Whomever got that answer from Google translate turned it into a meme. The text is Japanese. The radio is a Sony ICR-4800. I just saw one go on email for about $100. If that seems steep for a Shortwave / Medium wave receiver you're right. They used to list around $30 to $50 bucks. This might be meme-based inflation. So let's explore that meme. There aren't a lot of radio memes. 

The text reads "ラジオたんぱ推薦" in romanized Japanese that's  "Rajio Tanpa Suisen." The word Suisen means is recommended or endorsed. So the text reads Recommended by Radio Tanpa. That station is also called Radio Nikkei. As a media group, Nikkei is active in newspaper publishing, television, online news radio. More here. 

Radio Nikkei's roots run deep. The parent company can trace it's origin to a the Chugai Bukka Shimpo This grew into the "The Nikkei" the premier business newspaper of Japan. Today it broadcasts on 6.055 MH and it's sister station Radio Nikkei 2 on 6.115 MHz.

Radio Nikkei is a shortwave station in Japan founded in 1954, as you would imagine almost all programming is in Japanese. Back in the 1950s, it was called the Nihon Shortwave Broadcasting Co., or  NSB. (hence that image above) That name was still appearing in Shortwave guides as late as 1980. A 1968 Area Handbook for Japan by Frederic Chaffee briefly described the programming in that era:

"...and the Nihon Broadcasting Company, which has one shortwave station in Tokyo and another in Sapporo offering news, weather, and music for Japan's neighbors, the fishing fleet at sea, and a small domestic audience interested in shortwave listening."

It's supposed to be targeted a demographic of middle-aged businessmen. If you were imagining that the US equivalent is Bloomberg Radio you'd be way off.  Today the programming of Radio Nikkei is an inexplicable mix of poetry, jazz, dance music, news, horse racing coverage and both western and Japanese pop music. You can read the schedule here. 

Colwyn Bay Wireless College

 

For several years now I've been seeing folks selling ads snipped from magazines and newspapers. It's a little problematic to have the content removed from it's source material. The same complaint exists in archeology. The artifact is interesting by itself, but without context it loses some meaning. I don't know where this ad came from originally. But I have found others similar to it from the 1930s. I found a google site that fills in some of the blanks. That website reports that the college was established in 1920 and operated until 1971, which disagrees slightly with other sources. 

Even more interesting is that the school, which more likely operated from 1923 to 1973, has it's own alumni facebook page. That in turn revealed that a few alum even published books! But inexplicably many students, even those writing about the town of Colwyn Bay ignore the topic. Many touch on it briefly, the book A-Z of Colwyn Bay by Graham Roberts has a few sentences it under the section about Coleg Llandrillo Menai. The Colwyn Bay heritage website at least has some great pictures.

In Wireless world, September, 1922 there were a few ads for wireless radio supplies sold by the Wireless College. A college-operated mail order business is a little unusual, but typically what they're selling is diplomas. This was a whole host of wireless equipment: valves, enclosures, tubes, batteries, insulators etc. The book Wireless, the Crucial Decade: History of the British Wireless Industry by Gordon Bussey briefly mentions these Colwyn Bay Wireless College wireless kits but not a word about the school. The book Colwyn Bay at War From Old Photographs by Graham Roberts does address the school at some length.

"The college building was at the far end of the East Parade; the college and the Parade have now been demolished to make way for the A55 and a plaque in a car park now commemorates the work done by the College in training radio operators..."

The Roberts book picks a different year for it's start, dating it back to 1918 as founded by Gordon Scott Whale as the "North Wales Wireless College" but that he moved it to Colwyn Bay in 1923.Whale converted an 8-gabled 3 story home called "Olive House" into the college. Gordon was born in 1893 so he would have been 25 years old when he founded the school and 30 years old when it moved to Colwyn Bay.

Gordon Whale joined the IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers) in 1926, and had previously trained at the Direct Spanish Telegraph Company and worked for Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company. A 1937 article also added the acronyms AMIRE, and MAAAS to his resume, that specifies Associate Member, Institution of Electrical Engineers. MAAS probably stands for Member, American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. Though that makes little sense for a British private school teacher, it was founded in 1780 and is possible. Radio Pictorial magazine wrote up his two colleges in 1938 and added a third acronym: FRSA, which is Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. 

I've not seen a book with specified which Marconi station Whale worked at. The Journal of the Royal Society of Arts mentioned in his obituary that he worked at both the Wales and Ireland stations. The station in Wales was Carnavon. Construction started in 1914, and it sent it's first messages in 1918. It was located on a mountain, Cefn Du, and used the call letters MUU. But in Ireland Marconi operated three different stations, of them Clifden seems the most likely, though Crookhaven was open as early as 1902. 

As the school grew, Whale hired Charles Oliver as a tutor in 1926, then Harry Nelson in 1930. Volume 15, 1925, of the magazine "The Child" contained a list of Schools and educational institutions which included some extra details on Colwyn Bay and a short description:

"The North Bay Wireless College, Colwyn Bay, Students 15-23 years of age rapidly trained for lucrative appointments in the Wireless and Cable Services. College Stands in 5½ acres of grounds overlooking sea, and is 400 feet above sea level..."

Somehow in 1937 Gordon opened a second wireless college in Calmore, Southhampton. The building was originally called Loperwood Manor. It planned for 50 students on a 16 acre property. By 1938 it had expanded to handle 100 students and they bought another 40 acres of land. It closed in 1940 due to the hostilities of WWI. Being on the English Channel, 30,000 bombs were dropped on Southhampton just in 1940.

In 1937 Practical Wireless Magazine wrote an article about a visit by Sir Ambrose Fleming. Yes, the one who invented the vacuum tube.  That article is the only image of Whale I've found. Whale had retired in 1935 from Colwyn Bay, but returned in 1940 for the war effort. In 1944 The Electrician magazine reported that a group of privately owned British wireless schools had decided to form The National Association of Wireless Colleges. The chairman was B. G. Morton or the Manchester Wireless College and the honorary Secretary was Mr. Gordon Whale. Strangely I have never found another reference to the National Association of Wireless Colleges. Perhaps it was not at long lived as the Colwyn Bay Wireless College. 

Harry Nelson retired in July 1966 after 36 years at the college. Gordon Scott Whale died that year at the age of 72. Wireless World noted in their obituary that Gordon died on January 9th onboard the RMS Andes. Some of their marketing from that year has survived which reads "Be well away when winter chills in January - March 1966." The retrofitted cruise liner went to Barbados that Spring. His son Neville had already succeeded him as principle of the college. Neville kept the school running another 7 years until it closed in 1973. The former college building was demolished for the A55 when it was split into dual lanes in the 1980s.