This year, Rogers is celebrating six decades of innovation, investment, and of making more possible for their customers, communities, and country.

So we’re going back to where it all started…with a radio station called 98.1 CHFI!

 

Darren & Mo start the celebration off with a look at what Toronto was like 60 years ago.

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CHFI Is Celebrating 60 Years With Rogers Radio

Originally Aired: February 5, 2020

 

To honour his late father’s legacy, in 1960, at the age of 27 Ted Rogers took out a loan and bet big to launch Canada’s first FM station at a time when AM radio dominated, and only 5% of listeners had FM receivers. With one bold move, Ted changed the communications landscape forever.

Ted’s father, Edward Samuel Rogers Sr., was the man who invented the world’s first plug-in radio and founded radio station CFRB in the 1927.  The family would lose the station to competitors after his death in 1937.

In 1960, with an $85,000 loan and a relentless drive, Ted Rogers bought Canada’s first FM station – CHFI – when only 5% of listeners had an FM receiver.

At the time, the airwaves were dominated by AM radio– so why would someone gamble on the new technology of Frequency Modulation (FM)?  Not one to follow the herd, Ted knew FM was superior technology and would deliver a richer and clearer listening experience…if he could just get the receivers into Canadian homes.

While Ted was in law school,Ted sold FM radio receivers for the lowest price on the market to get FM radios into homes. Within 5 years, Ted changed the Toronto radio market, growing FM from 5% to 2/3rdsby the end of 1962.

Father and son– inventor and innovator, scientist and salesman– laid the foundation and set the vision for what Rogers would become:  a proud, family-owned Canadian company that makes more possible for our customers.

To help celebrate, our good friend John Tory had a few anniversary wishes to share with us!