Oldies station celebrates new studio

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This article was published 24/04/2019 (2452 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg’s nostalgia radio station has cut the ribbon on a new, bigger and better home base.

“It started with $5,000,” Tom Dercola, 93.7 CJNU-FM board president, said Wednesday. “That was before we were even any place. That was just a dream, a vision.”

CJNU plays adult standards — Frank Sinatra, Anne Murray, Benny Goodman — and operates as a member-owned co-op and a non-profit. It is also the radio broadcast home of the Winnipeg Goldeyes baseball team.

The new studio in the concourse beneath 1 Lombard Place features a broadcasting studio, production studio, offices and meeting space — luxuries they haven’t always had, Dercola said.

CJNU got its start in the basement of retired broadcaster Garry Robertson’s house more than a decade ago. In 2008, it began broadcasting on 107.9 FM with a licence that required it to shut down at least once a month. In 2013, the station moved to 93.7 FM and was licensed to stay on air permanently.

The station has relocated several times, from the basement of a seniors centre to the second floor of a trucking company in the Inkster industrial park. “Which we happily shared with the mice,” said Bill Stewart, a CJNU radio host and its first president.

At the trucking company building, there was no production space, Dercola said. Staff had to read every spot and transition live to air (these are items most stations pre-produce).

CJNU’s most recent studio space was provided by the Winnipeg Foundation on the 13th floor of the Richardson Building. It moved into the new location downstairs, also provided by the Winnipeg Foundation, in December.

In fact, Hartley Richardson, president of James Richardson and Sons, and Rick Frost, executive director of the Winnipeg Foundation, were on hand to cut the ribbon on the new space.

Dercola said the new studio is far more accessible and far more visible to the public. The glass-walled broadcasting studio faces the hallway of the concourse.

Radio host Lyle Smordin said this accessibility recently allowed a listener to just wander in. Smordin convinced him to become a member (dues are $25 a year and allows a vote at any members meetings).

“People feel an ownership,” he said of the members. “They perceive that they own a part of the station and they develop a loyalty to it.”

The station has more than 1,000 members, Stewart said.

CJNU has four paid staff. About 95 volunteers host shows, answer phones and help keep the station on its feet.

geralyn.wichers@freepress.mb.ca