Some memories, thoughts on 95 years of broadcasting to city, district by CHAB
The 95th anniversary of CHAB brought my first year in Moose Jaw to mind.
Fifty-one years ago when I arrived at the Times-Herald, listening to the radio news was a priority. In Medicine Hat where I had reported for the daily newspaper, the local radio CHAT beat us to a lot of the news. News director Stan Weiler knew everybody in the community and regularly beat us.
Back in 1966, the CHAB news department actually relied on the latest Times-Herald edition for afternoon news. If the paper was late, CHAB had a scarcity of local news.
Along came Reg Nieszner and that copying changed a lot as the one-man news department toiled and cultivated sources. Reg and I became friends. At times, both of us with our wives would chase accidents together on weekends.
Today’s enhanced CHAB news department does a great job of gathering the community news. Years later I discovered Reg offered a lot of tips to that green upstart girl reporter, the one who married me.
CHAB spawned some interesting characters. Scoop Lewry, who was MP for one term and mayor for countless terms, reported for CHAB standing in a bath tub in the Grant Hall Hotel while reading the news.
Scoop earned his nickname by breaking secret stories from city council like the rats in Union Hospital. The council meeting was secret but Scoop listened through a transom above the door.
Way before becoming the city’s most illustrious mayor, Scoop was the only news reporter in Moose Jaw. During the Second World War he reported for CHAB, the Times-Herald, and LeaderPost bureau. Three months after arriving here, I managed to get home for Christmas. The first thing my maternal grandmother asked was: “Does Cy Knight still do the Mailbag?”
I was blown away. Until the late 1940s, she lived on a Saskatchewan farm near Schuler, Alberta some 250 miles away. She was interested to know I had met Cy. CHAB has been a big part of the community all these years, although there were some dark days in the 1970s and 1980s when the music format shifted from country/pop to rock.
Along with the shift came a new format to news. Stories were about the same length as the 140 charac- ters on Twitter. And reporters were supposed to link each item with some humour or interesting comment. Most attempts fell flat. Cy Knight and the Joy for Joyner programs were cancelled.
Many of us switched the dial for years to CKRM in Regina.
A Tugaske rancher told me one day in the 1990s that CHAB had changed format and I changed the dial back.
CHAB has thrived since, with a policy of hiring and building local talent.
Advertising revenues have been a mainstay for CHAB as with all media.
I recall talking to Ted Joyner, owner of Joyner’s Department Store, in Moose Jaw sometime in the 1980s. His family had always run an ad every day in the Times-Herald and sponsored the daily Joy for Joyner radio program. That day he told me he was only running an ad in the Times-Herald twice a week. Around that time Joy for Joyner was cancelled and fewer radio ads ran for his store.
When he closed his store, saying his customers were too old, I wondered how many younger customers he would’ve had if he had kept investing in advertising like his father and grandfather.