NorthEast Radio Watch Special: Adieu, CBL

[fybush@world.std.com (Scott D Fybush)]

*A week ago, 62 years of radio history came to a close in a small
white building at the end of a dead-end road in the tiny hamlet of
Hornby, Ontario.  

NERW was there as engineers pulled the plug on CBL (740), and this is
what we saw.

We arrived on Friday afternoon, June 18, the last day of regular
programming on the 740 frequency.  It had been 14 months since we
traveled to Toronto for the inauguration of CBL's replacement, CBLA on
99.1 FM.  When the FM signed on, the occasion was marked by a huge
open house at the CBC Broadcast Centre in downtown Toronto, complete
with fireworks, live broadcasts, studio tours, even souvenir
T-shirts.  

This time around, it was just us and the engineers -- a lot of
engineers, as it happened.  When we pulled up at the building on
Eighth Line Road, more than a half-dozen engineers were working on one
of CBL's two identical Continental 317 transmitters, trying to fix a
problem that was keeping that unit off the air.  The good news was
that retired engineer Rod Hillman had time to show us around the
facility.

The Hornby plant was built in 1937, when CBL (then at 840 kHz) became
the CBC's Toronto flagship station.  The 650-foot vertical tower at
the site was, for some years, the tallest structure in Canada, and the
transmitter site itself became a tourist attraction in the years
leading up to World War II.  As a result, the building was designed to
accomodate visitors, who watched the transmitter operators from a
viewing platform just inside the door to the transmitter room.

The Art Deco door and steel-railed platform are still there, but
today's visitor sees a different transmitter room.  The old console is
gone, as are the Northern Electric transmitters that once walled in
two sides of the room.  Today, there are the two Continentals for CBL
off to the left, two more identical transmitters for French-language
CJBC (860) straight ahead, and in front of CJBC, racks of equipment
for audio processing and transmitter monitoring.  Behind the rack is a
wall topped with several rows of glass block.  When this site was new,
Hillman tells us, the entire wall was glass.  

After taking some photos of the transmitter room, we head downstairs,
past the generator room, towards the basement.  That's where a Cold
War-era fallout shelter holds a small studio, and where the last words
to be uttered on CBL will be heard in just over a day's time.

Right now, though, we're headed back outside and out to the tower. The
current tower, Hillman tells us, was put up just a decade ago to
replace the 1937 stick.  The new tower is just 18" on each side, about
half the size of the old one (whose base still sits on the lawn
outside the transmitter building).  At its base sit not one, but
three, tuning buildings: the original, a later version that proved
unsatisfactory, and the current one, where the CBL and CJBC signals
are combined and sent out to the antenna -- at least for the moment.

Our tour completed, we drive away from Hornby listening to the CBL
signal, complete with frequent interruptions reminding us that CBC
Radio One will move to 99.1 FM for good in just a few hours.  Later
that night, we visit fellow aircheck collectors Russ Horton and Sam
Ward in nearby Georgetown, then head back to Hornby around 11:30 to
hear what will happen at midnight.

Midnight comes and goes with no change to the CBL signal -- but a few
minutes later, when the CBC hourly news ends and the FM side returns
to the second hour of "That Time of the Night," CBL slips into a
non-stop loop advising listeners where to tune on the FM dial to find
the Radio One signal.  Saddened, we pull out of the transmitter
driveway, out to Trafalgar Road, and over to Tim Horton's for donuts.

The next day, as the loop plays on, we distract ourselves by heading
into downtown Toronto and taking in a Blue Jays game.  From our seats
in the top deck of SkyDome, we note that in addition to being able to
hear the Jays game on four stations (CKGL 570, CJRN 710, CHAM 820, and
CHUM 1050), we can't hear the new CBLA FM signal very well.  That's
because we're looking right up at all the other FMs on the CN Tower,
while CBLA's directional signal emanates from First Canadian Place a
few blocks away.  CBL still comes in just fine, albeit with nothing
but that loop playing on and on.  The Jays win, 7-0.

After dinner, it's back out to Hornby, this time to find a transmitter
site full of people.  The CBC has invited all its current and former
transmitter engineers to be at Hornby for the occasion, and ten of
them are there.  The middle of the transmitter room now sports a table
filled with food and drink.  The time is almost at hand.

As the 1937 clock ticks off a half-hour remaining, engineer Tom Holden
and Philip Savage, of the CBC communications department, head
downstairs to the studio.  Meantime, we remain upstairs, telling
various CBC engineers just why it is that we can't hear 99.1 in
Rochester ("You see, we have this 50 kilowatt local FM on 98.9...").

With just a few minutes left, we go down to the studio, where Savage
sits waiting for the end.  The loop nears its end, plays again, and
finally Holden pots up the mic and Savage begins reading:

"This is CBC Radio One, broadcasting from the Hornby transmitter at
740 AM.  In the Toronto area, we now move to 99.1 FM, with additional
frequencies throughout Southern Ontario.  This transmitter has served
the community well since 1937, and at 740 AM since 1941.  This is the
end of an era in Canadian broadcasting history.  Signing off now from
CBL, adieu."

In the meantime, we've sprinted back upstairs, where Savage's
announcement is playing over the loudspeaker in the transmitter room.
As he reads the final "adieu," engineer Art Slade has his hand poised
on the "high voltage" button on transmitter 2.  

Slade is the veteran of the group, having worked at Hornby from 1956 
until 1990.  Around him, the engineers click their cameras as he
reaches for the button, presses it -- and 740 goes silent.

Once Savage and Holden have returned from the basement, the toasts
begin, to the new 99.1 and the departed 740.  The group of engineers
pose for photos in front of the equipment rack.  The list of those
attending is compiled, photocopied, and distributed with copies of the
script for the final announcement.  

As we prepare to leave, we see transmitter engineer Roberto Vissani
making the final entries in the CBL transmitter log, and this, too, is
dutifully photocopied and passed around to all in attendance.  We dub
a copy of the final moments (we were rolling tape in the car,
the only ones at the site to do so, it seems) and are presented with
two parting gifts: a tube from the site's junk bin, and the CD from
which that loop was playing all day.

It's a long drive back home to Rochester, made all the more strange by
the silence on 740.  There's DX there, strange stations from North
Carolina and Texas and Florida (and, who knows, Cambridge?) that were
usually buried under CBL -- but I'm not ready to tackle it yet, for
some reason.  

We reach the border crossing just after 2 in the morning, to find a
surly customs agent who barely bats an eyelid at our explanation of
the trip.  Perhaps he's been listening to the Sabres lose the Stanley
Cup just minutes before, or maybe he's always that way.  In any event,
we're waved through for the final 90 minutes of the drive.

Somewhere around Batavia, the last remnants of the 99.1 signal are
lost below the hash from WBBF in Rochester on 98.9.  When the sun
rises in Rochester the next morning, there'll be no listenable CBC
signal for the first time in 62 years.  

"The end of an era in Canadian broadcasting"?  Absolutely.  But it's
also the end of an era in upstate New York radio listening.  No longer
a local, the CBC is now a DX signal here, caught on the skywave from
Windsor or Moncton at night, or on FM from Kingston when the trops are
up, or on RealAudio with all those other distant, exotic outposts of
civilized radio -- but never again to be a local preset at the start
of the AM dial.

Adieu, indeed.

[This is the first of two special issues of NERW this weekend.  Sunday
night, list subscribers will receive a special look back at the NERW
trip to the Canadian Maritimes, Maine, and Quebec a year ago.  Also,
be sure to check in at the Boston Radio Archives sometime early next
week for an audio version of this report.  Find it at 
<http://www.bostonradio.org/radio/whatsnew.html> beginning Monday.
You'll need the latest RealAudio player to hear it.]

- ---------------------NorthEast Radio Watch------------------------
                     (c)1999  Scott Fybush

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