Frequency 1310 kHz (AM) | Branding 1310News First air date 1922 | |
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CIWW is a Canadian radio station, broadcasting at 1310 kHz AM in Ottawa, Ontario. Owned by Rogers Communications, CIWW is one of several Rogers-owned stations with a news/talk/sports format, in this case branded as 1310News. The station broadcasts with 50,000 watts from a transmitter site located at McKenna Casey Drive and Highway 416, with studios located at Thurston Drive and Conroy Road in Ottawa. CIWW is not a clear-channel station, but is the only station in Canada broadcasting on 1310 AM; it uses a daytime 2-tower directional antenna, and a nighttime 5-tower directional antenna. The nighttime signal is beamed mainly into Canada.
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History
The station was launched in 1922 by Dr. George Geldert, with the call sign CKCO. After changing frequencies a number of times (as most early AM radio stations in North America did), the station permanently adopted its current 1310 AM frequency in 1941. In 1945, CKCO became Ottawa's affiliate of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Dominion Network.
In 1949, the station was purchased by Southam, and changed its callsign to CKOY. The use of the CKCO call sign was in no way related to CKCO-TV in Kitchener, which signed on five years later.
In 1972, FM sister station CKBY-FM was launched. In 1978, after two failed attempts to sell the stations to Moffat Communications, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) approved their sale to Maclean-Hunter. The station adopted its current call sign (CIWW) in 1985, along with an Oldies format (at the time mostly music of the late 1950s to early 1970s.) The name used over the air was W1310, followed by Sunny 1310. In 1992 the station changed to the branding of Oldies 1310. In 1994 the stations became part of Rogers Radio when Rogers acquired Maclean-Hunter.
On October 12, 2010, the station announced it would be adopting an all-news radio format, to be branded 1310News, taking effect the following Monday, October 18, at 6:00 a.m. CIWW is the fourth Rogers station to adopt a 24-hour all-news format after CFTR Toronto, CKWX Vancouver, and CFFR Calgary; the company also owns four other stations that combine the all-news format (during morning and afternoon drive) with talk programming.
The final song played on the station in its oldies format, at 5:55 a.m. on October 18, 2010, was "Life Is a Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)", a song which rapidly recounts radio from the 1950s, '60s & '70s. This was followed at 5:58 a.m. by an announcement that the format change was taking effect. This now officially leaves Ottawa as the largest Canadian market with no AM music stations.
Rogers announced on November 5, 2013 that CIWW would begin carrying Sportsnet Radio programing from Toronto sister station CJCL for the bulk of its schedule. The station continues its all-news format during drive time hours; it also introduced a local late-morning general-interest talk show, Talk to the Hand, hosted by Ed Hand. The move was concurrent with layoffs at Rogers.
On November 24, 2014, 1310 News made a slight change to their schedule, which included morning news beginning a half-hour earlier at 5:00 AM, Talk to the Hand was renamed to The Ed Hand Show and is now 3 hours instead of 2, from 10 – 1 PM. Afternoon news, hosted by Mark Day (actor) and Lisa Best, now begins an hour earlier at 2pm but ends an hour earlier at 7pm. Prime Time Sports runs between 7 and 8pm.
On March 18, 2016, 1310NEWS named Mark Sutcliffe, a longtime Ottawa broadcaster as host of Ottawa Today, airing weekdays from 9 to 1 p.m.
On May 10, 2016, it was announced that former Ottawa News Anchor Carol Anne Meehan would be hosting The Carol Anne Meehan Show, which will air from 1 to 3 p.m.
1310News is the National Capital Region's home for radio broadcasts of the Toronto Blue Jays, which like the station is owned by Rogers Communications.