1970s: How CKLW Radio Dominated American Music – From Canada

Abstract

The radio and music industries have a symbiotic relationship: record label teams convince station managers to play certain songs that attract an audience to sell to advertisers while increasing music sales. This article shows how one Canadian station used geography and a disruptive format to have an outsized influence on the American music business in the 1970s. CKLW also provided a conduit to the U.S. market for Canadian musicians it was required to play. But an effort to continue that success as an FM station was stymied by Canadian regulators.The Detroit River is part of the U.S.-Canada border, with Detroit on the north side and Windsor, Ontario on the south side. It took a dozen years after radio came to Detroit for Windsor to get its first radio station, when a group of business owners put what would become CKLW on the air in 1932 (Canadian Communications Foundation, n.d.b). Little did they know that their investment would later be one of the most controversial and significant stations in the history of radio in both Canada and the United States. When Broadcasting magazine published a detailed look at Detroit's radio market in 1949, it listed CKLW among the market's eight AM stations, "CKLW has been functioning in two countries ever since (its founding) and is a prime example of the international cooperation and amity between Canada and the U.S.". CKLW accompanied the article with a display ad promoting its new, 50,000-watt signal. Rock Comes to CKLWTwenty years after its founding, an American firm took part ownership of CKLW AM-FM-TV. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Board of Governors, Canada's broadcast regulator at the time, approved the purchase of a 33% controlling interest in the stations by RKO