CJBQ Radio is a gem and a rarity in the realm of radio stations, retired sports director Jack Miller reported to the September presentation of the Hastings County Historical Society Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n
At a time when almost all AM stations have either closed down or become part of a chain, the local station retains record listening audiences and continues to be operated by the same Morton family after 80 years. This in itself is the secret of much of its success, Miller contended. Added to that is the long service of so many of its staff members, past and present, starting with its first full-time employee, sports editor Jack Devine. He went on to mention other prominent station personalities over the years, Phil Flagler, Hammy MacDonald, Tom Hookings and supremely talented pianist Jimmy Corradi.<\/p>\n
He reviewed how the station began in a converted house on Victoria Avenue, then later moved to a new-build on Bridge Street where it shared space with The Intelligencer.<\/p>\n
He talked about the relationship between Intelligencer reporters and BQ reporters, quipping that they always sensed that in spite of friendly association, the newspaper reporters were assessed as \u201csmug.\u201d<\/p>\n
The station\u2019s achievements began with its low signal strength frequency of 1230, attracting many listeners. Later a new signal complex created a much stronger signal at the current 800 frequency. For major events, the station not only sent one or two representatives but the entire staff to events at Montreal for the Expos launch, Toronto and even Vancouver.<\/p>\n
There are few, if any other AM stations in North America that can rival; CJBQ\u2019s faithful listening audience and continued independent ownership.<\/p>\n
He traced his own career from a beginning at Cornwall to an offer to join the Belleville station at the tender age of 20 compared to long-time staffers and he remained for 50 years.<\/p>\n
His presentation was well received by a generous audience.<\/p>\n
(This writer proudly admits that he began his work as a journalist at CJBQ in the late 1950s before switching later to newspapering.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CJBQ Radio is a gem and a rarity in the realm of radio stations, retired sports director Jack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":898643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[311018,310709,49,48,311019,75,341],"class_list":["post-898642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-311018","tag-belleville-intelligencer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-category-belleville-region-news","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}