City North Bay, Ontario Slogan Today's Best Country First air date 1967 (FM)
1996 (AM) | Branding Country 600 Frequency 600 kHz (AM) Format country/news/sports | |
CKAT is a Canadian radio station, broadcasting at 600 AM in North Bay, Ontario. The station, owned by Rogers Communications, airs a country music, news and sports format.
The station originally launched in 1967 at 93.7 FM, and was acquired by Northern Broadcasting, the owners of CFCH.
In 1979, CKAT adopted a country music format and moved to 101.9 FM. In 1980, CKAT and CFCH were sold to Telemedia.
In 1996, Telemedia swapped the stations in a move similar to its 1990 switch involving CKSO and CIGM in Sudbury. CKAT took over CFCH's AM frequency, and CFCH moved to the FM station and adopted the new callsign CKFX.
In 2002, Telemedia sold the stations to Standard Broadcasting, who shortly sold them to Rogers.
In fall 2005, CKAT and CIGM underwent a format change, with country music cut back (although not entirely eliminated) in favour of increased news and sports programming. Since the change, both stations used the following slogans such as "Today's Country", "News Leader" and "Sports Leader".
The station's general manager is Peter McKeown, a former morning man for many years on CHUR and CKAT.
In 2009, CKAT's sister station CIGM in Sudbury (under the ownership of Rogers Media) was acquired by Newcap Radio and then converted the station to the FM dial. CKAT is currently one of the last high-powered commercial AM radio stations operating in Northern Ontario.
On July 2, 2013, at 3:00 pm, Rogers dropped the AM 600 CKAT branding with slogan "North Bay's News Leader/Today's Country" and rebranded CKAT as Country 600, "Today's Best Country".