City Brampton, Ontario Branding AM530 First air date 1953 | Broadcast area Greater Toronto Area Frequency 530 kHz (AM) Format multilingual | |
CIAO is a Canadian radio station, broadcasting at 530 AM in Brampton, Ontario. The station, owned by Evanov Communications, broadcasts a multilingual programming format. CIAO's studios are located on Dundas Street West in the Eatonville neighbourhood of Toronto, while its transmitter is located near Hornby.
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History
The station was launched in 1953 as AM 1090 CFJB, a daytimer owned by broadcaster Fen Job. Job was killed in a car crash in 1956, and the station was sold by his estate to CHIC Ltd. in 1959, adopting the new callsign CHIC the following year. In 1961, the owners also launched CHIC-FM on 102.1 MHz.
In 1964, CHIC became a full-time broadcaster, moving to AM 790. From 1966 to 1969 it operated as an "all-girl" format using the slogan "CHIC - Where The Girls Are" in which only female announcers appeared as deejays. Regular newscasts and some other features continued to be voiced by men. The format was abandoned in 1970.
In 1977, CHIC-FM adopted the new callsign CFNY.
In 1979, the stations' owner went into receivership. The stations were subsequently acquired by Civitas Corp., the owner of CJMS in Montreal. Civitas became Mutual Communications in 1980, and CHIC adopted the new callsign CKMW. Mutual subsequently sold CKMW to Patrick Hurley, who incorporated as CKMW Radio Ltd., in 1983; CFNY was sold to Selkirk Communications.
As CKMW, the AM station adopted its current multilingual format, and ownership of CKMW Radio was transferred to Evanov in 1985.
The station adopted its current callsign in 1987, and moved to its current frequency in 1991 after CJFT in Fort Erie converted to the FM band. CIAO is one of a handful of commercial radio stations in North America broadcasting on 530 kHz, normally reserved for low-powered Travellers' Information Stationsin the USA, operating at 10 Watts of power.
Programming
CIAO's programming is primarily South Asian (Hindi and Punjabi) with some Bosnian, Bulgarian, Caribbean, Croatian, Filipino, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Somali and Spanish programming in the evenings and on weekends.