♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Alan Cross: You had to be up on all your music all the time.

That was your job, you had to know all the songs on all the albums.

We had 20,000-25,000 records.

After throwing myself into this library, the feeling I got was, oh my God, where has all this music been in my life?

Ivar Hamilton: We were very much encouraged to be creative on the air, not only with what you played in the music, but in the way that you talked about the music.

Liz Janik: I didn't see being a woman as a handicap.

In fact, I had a really good all night DJ voice, and I was--depends who listened to me, I had brown hair, black hair, red hair, blonde hair.

David Marsden: To do what we do as DJs, as radio people, you have to believe that you have something to say that's important, you have something to play that's important.

Scot Turner: We were trusted to pick the music, and when you're playing a song and you're saying it on the air, it's not, "That's the Pretenders."

On CFNY, it was always from CFNY.

["The Spirit of Radio" by Rush] speaker: 102.1, the Spirit of Radio.

♪♪♪ Geddy Lee: Radio was a lifeline, and CFNY was a trigger point that inspired the song, "The Spirit of Radio."

Andy McCluskey: We began to break into North America when CFNY started playing us.

Peter Hook: The largest gig we ever played as New Order was in Toronto.

speaker: You're with the Spirit, CFNY.

Richard Barbieri: It was the first radio station where we got the sense that the DJs actually loved music.

♪ Invisible airwaves crackle with life ♪ ♪ Bright antennae bristle with the energy ♪♪ Steve Diggle: I thought, these guys are off the wall.

That's what gave it its magic.

♪ Emotional feedback on a timeless wavelength ♪ ♪ Bearing a gift beyond price, almost free ♪♪ Merck Mercuriadis: Those artists that define the eighties, CFNY, the Spirit of the Radio, played all those bands first.

Lol Tolhurst: Radio and records were the only ways of communication that we had other than playing it for people.

Deryck Whibley: For us, it was the station that we grew up with.

Steven Page: But if you get people who are passionate about the thing that they are presenting, and you put them all together in one place, that to me is what CFNY was all about.

Chris Sheppard: We're coming to you live, we're feeling good.

Steven: CFNY just changed the way I listen to music.

speaker: CFNY FM 102.1, the Spirit of Radio.

speaker: To be sunny and windy for the rest of the day, clear-- Ted Woloshyn: My first radio job was in Brampton, and I worked for CHIC Radio.

So I did the all-night show, and we had three turntables set up.

Two turntables would be for the AM, and the third turntable was CHIC FM, which eventually became CFNY, and so we would just throw in an album and let it play, and you couldn't hear for more than three blocks.

Pat Hurley: The towers were located on a farm outside of Brampton, and they simply took one of the towers and used it as the FM tower, 360, totally illegal.

We were at a bit of a disadvantage because we didn't have the signal strength.

Steve Macaulay: FM reception is all about line of sight.

It's different than AM, which bounces off the atmosphere, so they needed the height, and they didn't have that.

Liz: We had had a compromise signal in the early days which didn't hit East Toronto.

We went west of Toronto around the Golden Horseshoe, Hamilton, St.

Catharines, all the way down to Buffalo.

The first program director at the station was David Pritchard.

To hear David on the air, I had to run wire down my mother's clothesline in order to pull in the station.

speaker: Tune in to CFNY FM, the Only One, now 100,000 watts at stereo 102.1.

Darrin Pfeiffer: Growing up in Buffalo, my brother owned a really expensive Pioneer receiver.

He put the antenna on the roof, and on most days, CFNY came in a little sketchy, but it came in.

On a good day, it came in crystal clear.

Steven: Living in Scarborough, the reception wasn't great then, so you'd have to like, you could listen on weekends, and at night it came in better.

David: You know, we would get phone calls from people saying, "I'm listening, I hung a coat hanger out the window so I could hear you."

Gary Cormier: I came in with a huge gash on my arm, and my wife said, "What the f-- is that?"

And I said, I was trying to get up by the telephone pole to run a wire back to the house because I can't get CFNY.

Scot: You would extend the antenna out as far as you could, or some of us learned, you just pull the antenna right out, and you'd get a coat hanger.

You'd stretch it further than an antenna, and you would stick that, jam that into the top of the radio.

A little bit better in the car.

Pete Shelley: 1, 2, 3, 4!

["Ever Fallen in Love" by The Buzzcocks] ♪♪♪ ♪ You spurn my natural emotions ♪ ♪ You make me feel like dirt and I'm hurt ♪♪ Steve: It was in Toronto, so before the show, they said, "You've got to go to this radio station."

It was all a little bit amateur, but that was cool, you know?

It suited the music that was playing, as well.

I thought, "These guys are off the wall," you know?

It's all easygoing, and I think that's what gave it its magic, really, you know?

♪ Ever fallen in love with someone ♪ ♪ You shouldn't've fallen in love with?

♪♪ Jim Kerr: This little radio station that, if I remember right, was--wasn't it a wee bit out of town, 'cause I remember it was a bit of a schlep, but it was apart because, you know, the bigger radio stations in town, they weren't gonna let us through the door.

Stephen Mahon: I do remember going at Brampton right downtown with the old century homes.

There's Mrs.

Johnson, Mrs.

Jones, oh, a radio station.

Liz: The little yellow house had its own charm, shall we say.

We're basically a 1.5 story house that had been converted into a radio station.

Our studio was in a bedroom, our record library was in the closet.

Jim: Going in, you felt--it was like going into your mate's bedroom that had a record collection, and you were gonna sit and talk about music.

David: I have never ever in my entire life been anywhere as dirty inside as the little yellow house.

It was just filthy.

Chris Russel: They didn't put up a subfloor, and what happened down the line when they were playing albums in the control room, and somebody was walking too heavily on the floor, it'd make the needle skip on the records.

David: One of the nights I'm there, and I'm hearing the record is skipping.

Oh my god, there's a mouse on the turntable, it's going around, and every time it gets to the arm, the arm goes like that.

♪ I can boogie ♪ ♪ Boogie woogie all night long ♪♪ Scot: 1977, disco was everywhere.

As a part-time job, I was working for this mobile DJ company, and they'd send you out to these different clubs, and they're all discos.

And I was fiddling on with the radio on my way there, and I came across something on the radio that kind of cut through, and it's one of those moments, and it truly happens, at least to me, and you hear this from people, where the hair just stands up on your arms and the back of your neck.

And I'm listening going, "What is this?"

And as I found out later, it was a song called "Television" by a group called Japan.

["Television" by Japan] Richard: Just arrived in Toronto and driving from the airport, we're being played on the radio, "Television."

We couldn't believe that was being played on the radio.

Scot: My first reaction is, I'd never--what is this s--, I've never heard this before, and then discovered it was a station called CFNY.

Ivar: We were one of the few stations out there that was playing a lot of imports.

For all of the great bands that kind of broke out and became really big, CFNY would play them first, and also go deep on records too, right?

Steve: The musical landscape was getting a bit barren.

You know, it's all the progressive bands, and it was kind of alright for a while, you know, singing about mushrooms in the sky and stuff like that, you know?

And, but they ran their course, you know, and I'm coming up to 20 years old, and I'm thinking, what happened to three minute songs, and people smashing their guitars like The Who, and telling the audience to f-- off, you know?

Ivar: Spent six weeks over in the UK, and I discovered a whole bunch of music that wasn't really big here, but had an impact there, and came back in the fall of '77 with mountains of punk records.

♪ White riot, I want a riot ♪ ♪ White riot, a riot of my own ♪ ♪ White riot, I want a riot ♪ ♪ White riot, a riot of my own ♪♪ Steve: There's a nucleus of five bands, yeah.

There was obviously the Pistols, The Clash, The Jam, The Damned, and the Buzzcocks.

Howie Klein: There was something that was being offered to people that wasn't like a bunch of rich rock stars coming out and, you know, showing off their skills that they had honed over 20 years, and the barrier between the stage and the audience was very, very minimal.

It wasn't like they are lecturing you.

Joe Strummer: Give it all we got, that's all.

It's as simple as that, and like, everybody's used to paying $8 and getting half measures, and like, going home satisfied.

Well, in England, they gave up being satisfied three years ago.

Deryck: Punk rock for me started with the Sex Pistols.

For some reason, I'd never had that feeling from music.

From the second that it started, there was just something that was like all of a sudden alive inside of me.

Liz: I was like Bambi in the woods when it came to punk music, but I came to appreciate punk because what punk actually did was tell the truth.

Steve: CFNY, they'd been playing our songs, but some of the other radio stations weren't kind of quite sure, you know, in the States and stuff.

You know, it's still early days in a way, but that's--CFNY did, you know?

Gary Topp: We did the Stranglers at the Horseshoe in '78, their first tour.

They brought their own PA.

We were about 500 people over capacity in the Horseshoe.

We had 1000 people in the place.

There were so many people in the place that the--this, the PA, which was a pretty hefty PA, was muffled by all the people in there.

Alan: In many cases, what would happen is that a London band or an English band or an Irish band would come to Toronto and launch their career to North America from here, simply because there were places to play and there was a radio station willing to play their music.

David: If you were listening to Ivar doing a show, it was pretty much full punk.

It was up to the individual, and it was up to the audience to like or hate it.

High risk in the world of radio, I don't think it could be done today.

["Picture My Face" by Teenage Head] Stephen: They played our demo tape.

Before we ever made a record, our manager at the time must have known they were gonna play it, they pulled the car over, they played one song on the radio.

Jim: You know, we were all excited about punk, and for about that whole summer, it felt that punk's the be all and end all, there'll be nothing after punk, and this is it, but it soon became clear that as fantastic as punk was, the limitations involved with punk music were, you know, just angst was never gonna be enough.

["I Travel" by Simple Minds] ♪♪♪ Richard: There were bands like Magazine and Ultravox, Simple Minds.

They were making these kind of really interesting albums using electronics, but also still retaining the edgy kind of guitars from the punk scene, so it became a kind of a new wave, I suppose.

♪ Cities, buildings falling down ♪ ♪ Ideal homes falling down ♪♪ Jim: But I had this record that changed everything, "I Feel Love" by Donna Summer, and I hear this sound that I've never heard in my life.

I remember saying, "What is that sound," and Charlie said, "It's a secret, son.

They're synthesizers."

And I remember thinking, we gotta get our hands on a synthesizer.

Of course, Andy McCluskey and Paul would've been doing the same in Liverpool, and Phil Oakey I'm sure in Sheffield, Cabaret Voltaire.

They were all hearing the same records and thinking the same thing, that if we wanted to make music, we're gonna have to add other colors to our palette.

♪ Europe has a language problem ♪ ♪ They go talk, talk, talk, talk, talking on ♪♪ Jim: This is the thing, this is the thing that will give us all the colors.

Daniel Richler: The new wave, as it came out of England at the time, and indeed the contemporaneous music in the States, cared a lot about lyrics.

If you think about Talking Heads, it's pretty heady stuff that they were singing, in fact.

David Byrne: The name of this band is Talking Heads.

Lorraine Segato: When Talking Heads came through town, that was a very critical moment, I think, in terms of really feeling this intersection of new wave and alternate groove.

♪ I can't seem to face up to the facts ♪♪ Lorraine: Because of OCAD and the art school, you had a lot of the new wave bands that were coming to Queen Street.

Jon King: There were some places where you knew people were on what was happening, and Toronto was one of those places.

♪ Psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est?

♪ ♪ Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa, better ♪♪ Doug McClement: The fans were somewhat outcasts at their high school or at their college for liking this type of music.

They dressed a little differently, they--you'd see the same 500 kids at all the shows.

♪ They might curse me, they might call me Sambo ♪♪ speaker: One of the English bands who have gained much success in Toronto over the past three years is the English Beat.

Considered simply a good dance band, they recently returned to Toronto's concert hall.

♪ Yes, I've seen you go to work in your big car ♪ ♪ Yes, you're fat and can afford to be tasteless ♪ ♪ You're a big shot ♪♪ Gary: I remember doing the Beat a couple of times at the concert hall, and all of a sudden the walls would start sweating.

There'd be water coming down, and it wasn't like that before they went on.

It was just everybody, the fever pitch, everybody jumping up and down and dancing and having such a great time.

Merck: The benchmarks for the biggest gigs were always in Canada.

♪ Ameri, Ameri, Ameri, Ameri, American ♪♪ Merck: I was the marketing director for Virgin when Virgin opened in Canada.

For Simple Mind, we did the concert hall, and then we did multiple nights at Massey Hall, and then we did Maple Leaf Gardens.

None of that would have been possible without the Spirit of Radio.

["The American" by Simple Minds] Jim: We met people there that we became friends with.

I remember going to people's houses after those gigs at the Massey Hall.

You socialize, other places you drifted through.

Gary: We had a great scene, and we were lucky because Toronto is kind of related to New York, and very related to Britain, so it worked really well.

We had a lot of people in Toronto knew what was going on in those two cities.

Merck: When I started going to Brampton and seeing a guy called Ivar Hamilton in this odd little house, we were all kind of, you know, misfits.

Right, we all had one thing in common, which is that we love music.

You had this community of people that came together, and you know, if you think about Toronto as a sort of microcosm, it was very much like London, right, in the sense that CFNY was its version of the BBC.

You're gonna hear whoever is next, right, and that's exactly what CFNY was.

["The Spirit of Radio" by Rush] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ speaker: With what your lyrics are saying to me, when I hear lyrics off the "Signals" album, I relate to them emotionally now, where before you were more observant.

speaker: There's a pulse that runs through almost every song that relates to a present sort of reality, and you know, a present situation that, you know, that maybe we all have gone through at some point, you know, in the growing up stage, or in the stage that we find ourselves at now, but there's a real sort of link to today.

speaker: CFNY FM 102.1, the Spirit of Radio.

David: The Spirit of Radio to me simply means love, caring a lot about music and artists, having the freedom to say whatever you want and be whomever you want, and hope that in the process, the listeners learn all those things, and then they take them and spread them to their world.

That's it.

Alan: The first time I heard the phrase "The Spirit of Radio" was in January of 1980.

Now, in my group, we were all nerds, so we were all Rush fans, and I had just bought the new Rush record, which was "Permanent Waves," and the first thing that comes out of the speakers is Alex Lifeson playing this weird arpeggio, and it's a song called "Spirit of Radio," and I pull out the liner notes, start looking at the lyrics, and you go down to the bottom and it says, "Inspired by The Spirit of Radio, Toronto, alive and well so far."

Steven: I don't think I realized that the song was about the radio station until a couple of years of being a passionate fan of the station.

I always just--I must have assumed that the station's ID was about the song.

David: I was driving around in my car in Brampton one day, but I was thinking about, I think--we need a slogan, we need a slogan, we need a slogan, and the "spirit" word came to me.

I don't know, I don't know why, I don't know how, and I thought, "The Spirit of Radio."

I went immediately back to the station, we put up a sign in the control room: "After you say the calls, say this."

Lorraine: For me, the Spirit of Radio is sort of the combination of all things emotional, physical, spiritual, everything that comes into play when you feel seen by the music that you're listening to.

You know, the Spirit of Radio is the spirit of what moves you.

Steven: You know, I think about songs of my own that talk about music, song like "Brian Wilson," for example.

That is a song about the power of listening to music to transport you, to comfort you, whatever else, and I think that's what the Spirit of Radio is.

Jim Cuddy: The Spirit of Radio to me was this feeling like you were getting away with something.

Liz: The right to be who you were, the right to be an individual.

No matter how freaky or how boring you were, you could be you, and we shared--and we tolerated other people's differences, and we tolerated other people's music.

Beverly Hills: It totally consumed everyone.

We were all on the same page, and I think we were all in the same mood.

"Live" Earl Jive: But if you went to the clubs, for instance, or any other events that the radio station was putting on, you get to see other people that are like you, that enjoy this, and there's a much greater sincerity to the music that was played on the Spirit of Radio.

Benjamin Kowalewicz: You're gathering everyone together and saying that it's okay, and this is--check this out and turn this up, because this is gonna mean something to you, and it's gonna change you.

Liz: One night I'm listening to the radio station, and Rush is doing an interview, and they're talking about what inspired them to write the song, "The Spirit of Radio."

Geddy: Neil was listening to CFNY a lot when he was driving home after the sessions.

He started reeling back in his mind about what radio used to mean to us.

It should be an expression of whoever is sitting in the seat, and what their tastes and what their interests are, and with a view to edify and educate the listening audience.

Liz: They tell the story how they're driving through the Ontario countryside, and they come to the top of the escarpment that circles around Hamilton, and at the moment they're at the top of the escarpment, I started playing Genesis, "Watcher of the Skies," and this is one of the cool things about the Spirit of Radio, so many synchronicities.

And so, he's listening to the lyrics, and he's thinking about the radio station, and that's when he decided to write the song, because there's something special about the way that station connects.

♪ Lit up with anticipation ♪ ♪ We arrive at the launching site ♪ ♪ The sky is still dark, nearing dawn ♪ ♪ On the Florida coastline ♪♪ Merck: You only need to listen to "Permanent Waves" or in fact, to "Signals" which comes after it to realize what the influence of the music that CFNY was playing had on Rush, one of the greatest bands in the world.

♪ The air is charged... ♪♪ Ivar: They were spending a lot of time listening to CFNY when they were in the studio on their songwriting process, and so when that record was coming, I recall Neil Peart got in his car and drove it up to CFNY, and we had it before anybody else, and the--and he said, "We made this record for you."

And, very heartening, and I recall that quite vividly, and a number of years later, when the band were going into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and you know, Neil's a pretty private guy, but I do recall saying to him, "Thank you for doing that way back when."

It's something I would never, never forget.

[thundering] [thundering] Behind the scenes at CFNY, there was a lot of things going on that put us in a real bad way, and so what was being built as an amazing outlet for new music, and just music in general, stood a very good chance of going out of business altogether.

Steve: The Allen brothers had owned the station at the time, and when I first got into sales, I got to go down to--it was All-Can Holdings was the head office, and I had to swear to secrecy that I was not to repeat to any staff back in the old yellow house how nice it was at All-Can Holdings's head office, you know, with antiques, curio cabinets.

Jim "JR" Reid: Their father, he owned a series of movie theaters, and when he died, he left a lot of money to the Allen brothers, but he never liked Harry, he only liked Leslie, so Leslie got most of the money.

Chris: Occasionally, Leslie would go to Switzerland, and one day I said, "What's he doing in Switzerland?"

He said, oh, he's visiting with Chuck.

I said, "Chuck, who?"

He said, "Charlie Chaplin."

♪♪♪ The Allen brothers owned the Canadian distribution rights to the Chaplin films.

Daniel: I was talking to one of the Allen brothers, and behind him, he had a stack of film cans, and he proudly pointed behind and said, "This is Charlie Chaplin's lost works."

I was in awe.

♪♪♪ [music slows down] Mary Curtis: The stock certificates that they had were duplicates, and they didn't have the rights to the Charlie Chaplin movies which they were selling abroad, so the whole thing came crashing down.

Pat: Harry and his brother went to jail, you know, for fraud.

Mary: I had to go to the Securities Commission and give a statement because some of it was floating through the books of CFNY.

Ivar: When that sort of came to light legally, all of a sudden the radio station went into receivership, and it was pretty unprecedented at the time because no--at that point, there had been very few instances of radio stations shutting down or going out of business, but that was the reality of CFNY at the time.

Fred Patterson: They told me that they really appreciated the job I was doing, but just know that any given morning, I could arrive to lock doors.

It may literally be shut down.

David: The station is now under the control of the CRTC, and I found out that seven people, seven groups had applied to take the license as their own.

So I went on the air, and I asked the people if they like what we do, please support us.

Right now, I'm going to ask for your help.

And if you like what we're doing on the radio, and you want it to stay, then you've got to organize together.

I'm going to give you some ideas.

We're going to start with petitions, not a couple of thousand names.

We're not going for anything small here this time, folks.

Five hundred thousand, that's the number, can you help?

What we have to do now is convince other people that there's more of us than they ever thought possible.

Every high school that I know of in the GTA area, there were kids setting up tables in the hallways and getting students to sign to agree that we don't want to lose this.

Ivar: Eventually, a buyer, Civitas, a company out of out of Quebec, took over ownership of the radio station, and you know, David had a great deal of charm in dealing with them, and David convinced them they needed to continue to support the programming of CFNY.

David: And the ultimate is they said, okay, would you like to be the program director?

And I thought about all the program directors I've ever worked for, and I thought, oh, I don't wanna be that.

That's a horrible job.

They promised to let me--leave me alone, and I said, okay, I'll do it.

♪♪♪ Geddy: I went to see a DJ by the name of Dave Mickie when I was a kid.

Dave Mickie: Hi there, welcome to "Music Hop."

Today for the next 30, we are gonna swing and have a ball.

Geddy: He was doing a live broadcast at Toronto's Dufferin Drive-In, and he talked in a kind of affected, funny voice, and that was David Marsden, a celebrity at the Dufferin Drive-in.

"Geets" David Haydu: He was the original mile a minute, mouth talking jock.

He's the only, I believe, Canadian disc jockey that's in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Bruce Cockburn: I first knew of Dave Marsden when he was Dave Mickie, and I was a kid, you know?

He was like, you know, fast talking, kind of in your face character of a guy, and his persona at CFNY wasn't--he talked slower, but he was still in your face, and still really interesting.

David: I feel now when I look back on it that I may have been possessed, and then at some point around '69 or '70 I was exorcised out of that because now when I look back on that being Dave Mickie, it's as if I were talking about someone else.

I don't see it as being myself.

Gary: And as a teenager, I adored him on the radio.

I remember when he was on CKEY at 7 o'clock one weeknight hearing that he was going to premiere "Like a Rolling Stone" the first time on radio.

Ivar: You know, I would be getting on the school bus for school, and usually the lineup, we're waiting for the school bus.

It was like, did you hear what Marsden did last night?

Did you hear like all the stuff that he was doing?

He was the guy where you would hear things first, like, you know, and we're outside of CFNY.

He was like, you know, he--as I said, he was the first guy who ever played Rush on the radio.

He was the first guy to play "Dark Side of the Moon" on the radio, he played Genesis, "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway."

The most magical thing for me was seeing David do a show live, like seeing him, and the way he was able to speak to people, the way he was able to ad-lib, the way he was able to do free form radio like nobody else.

Cliff Cohen: A stereo shop that was on Bloor Street, they wanted David to be the remote host.

So literally, David would sit in a chair, and there must have been 15 to 20, say, 16 to 20 year olds sitting on the floor listening to David talk.

Yeah, like an apostle was sitting in front of them.

Jim: The first time we met Dave was at the house where we were asked to play on the patio, and he was--you know, obviously, in subsequent years we've met a lot of demigods from record companies, radio stations, this and--and as he came up, I thought, "Oh, this is the guy, right?"

Steven: The Mars Bar was, I mean, what a radio voice, but always like just--I guess just the spirit of eclecticism at CFNY, and you could always tell that you were gonna hear on his show, anything, you know, from Tom Robinson to Depeche Mode to The Jam, but it could be Genesis in there too.

He really embodied the spirit of what that Spirit in Radio was.

Pat: When I met David, at that time he was the music director, and David is very, very creative, as you know.

Alan: He would stay up till 4 o'clock in the morning doing an air check of an overnight person, and he would send you the following day a five or six page typewritten critique of what you did, right down to all these mixes and segues that you did.

David Hight: I asked him very distinctly, I remember this, "Is there anything I shouldn't play?

Anything you don't want me to play?"

And he said, "Well, I'm usually or often up at that time of the morning.

I'll be listening, if I hear anything I don't like or I think is inappropriate, I'll let you know."

I never heard from him.

Scott Eagleson: I think Marsden likes to invoke the theater of the mind and that experience of listening to music with a friend, of exploring something new, of belonging to something unique.

Leslie Kross: You could walk into his office, really not very happy.

Not only at the end of the meeting were you on your way out the door, doing what it was that he wanted you to do, but somehow he had convinced you that it was actually your idea in the first place, and it was quite a brilliant idea, and he would, you know, congratulate you on your--right, like?

And you'd about an hour later be like, hm.

Merck: He was a dictator, but he had faith in the people around him.

CFNY was very--in addition to the fact that it played great music, it was very entertaining as well, right?

And that's where I would say, you know, David really comes through, was that he put together a complete package.

But you know, he was in an era where you still weren't free to be yourself.

David was himself.

Cliff: In the early '80s, Toronto Free Theater were doing a play about AIDS, and at the time, that was a very, you know, touchy subject, right, to say the least.

And I remember, you know, "Would you," you know, "Would you, the radio station, be interested in partnering with us, supporting it, promoting it?"

David jumped right on it, he thought it was a great idea, supported it.

No other radio station would touch it at the time, so CFNY became the partner of it.

Gary: So much this city owes to David Marsden for turning us on to a whole different way of thinking and living.

Pat: Marsden calls me and said, "Did you hear what happened in Toronto," I said, "No."

He said, "They raided all the bathhouses," and we started to get calls from listeners who were there and described what happened, and the police came in bashing down the doors and so on and so forth.

David: And they arrested 260 people.

Pat Hurley says, "I want to do an editorial about this," and I didn't know which side he was on.

I didn't know whether he was on the police side or the gay guys' side.

I'd been fired once or twice because people thought I was gay, and I said to him something like, "Can I read the script first?"

And I read the script.

It was Pat Hurley's editorial.

Holy f--, he's on my side.

That was when I--first time in my entire career, or life for that matter, knew that I could be myself.

Knew that I could just be myself rather than hiding in, pardon the expression, hiding in a closet.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ David: After Civitas bought the station, once they owned CFNY, they were very quick to upgrade us, to give us budgets, all the rest of that.

Pat: In terms of an economic sense, these were good times, people starting to make good money.

There was so much development going on, and we hired other good people.

David: I knew that there was only one show that could win the mornings, and that it was Pete & Geets.

Pete Griffin: Put all those together--oh, is somebody at the door again, come on in, very busy here this morning.

speaker: Excuse me, Pete, Geets, it's really great to have you here at CFNY FM.

Word around town has it a couple of radio stations have come up with an unusual way of making bricks.

Edd Scorpio: Pete and Geets, best morning show ever.

Steven: Mornings growing up listening to Pete and Geets in the morning, and I can still like sing some of the stupid novelty songs that they would play.

I'm thinking of them now, they would have played like these Ivor Biggun and the Red Nosed Burglars songs, "Has Anybody Seen my C--" at 8 o'clock in the morning, but they did.

David: There are radio shows now in the morning that kind of do this similar idea.

There was something magic about Pete and Geets.

They were the first ones to do it.

They were solid, and it was all real.

They weren't doing jokes, they were just doing whatever they came up.

Pete: Fishing season is just around the corner.

I know you're anxious, have you got your license yet?

Geets: Yeah, I got my license, I got a wedding license, you know, so I'm going to be marrying some woman, and... Pete: No, no, you have to have a fishing license.

Geets: Fishing license?

Pete: Yeah, oh yes.

You have to go to the Department of Transport, and you have to take your reel with you, and your band, and you have to do a little fishing and pass a test.

Geets: What kind of test?

Pete: Well, you have to know how to... Geets: The test came back negative.

Pete: Never mind.

Geets: I got let go from CHUM.

I was working at Q107.

I was not only doing the on-air stuff, but I was also the engineer.

One day, Marsden said, "Would you guys ever work together again?"

And we said, "Well, there's no way I'm going back to CHUM," and Pete says, "Well, there's no way I'm going to Q," and Marsden said, "What about coming to CFNY?"

Fred: I read it in the paper one morning, I think in Gary Dunford's column, that CFNY had hired Pete and Geets, and I knew who they were from CHUM FM, so all of a sudden, I'm working with Pete and Geets on this radio station which would now be looked upon as sort of legit.

Geets: At CFNY, you could pick your own music and everything, and like, you know, that was unheard of because in radio, it was boss radio.

You play what the boss says.

Pat: The ratings started to climb.

It was time for us to find new accommodation.

The Rice Brothers in Brampton, developers, had built a new building on Kennedy Road.

So we started off with the new studios, Pete and Geets, and Geets says, you know, he was an engineer, so he supervised the whole thing, and basically put all the new studios in there.

Maie Pauts: CFNY was in a strip mall, like a plaza, and we were on the upper level, and below us was a club called Spanky's.

Andy: I always seem to remember the radio station seemed to be a bloody long way out of town.

Wasn't it out past the bloody airport?

Yeah, I remember the first time we went, we were like looking at Martin going, "There's a radio station here?

Looks like a mini mall to me."

♪♪♪ "Humble" Howard Glassman: When I walked into 83 Kennedy Road South, I was pretty sure I'd made a mistake.

I wasn't sure, like, that this was the actual building the radio station was in.

It didn't look like any radio station building I'd ever been in before.

Fred: I can counter that with 83 Kennedy Road South being a luxury to me, because a little yellow house had water running down the walls, and the newsroom was ill-equipped, and you had to bang the cart machines, and so when we moved into 83 Kennedy Road, that was luxury to me.

It was the best radio station I'd ever worked at.

Ivar: There were a lot of instances where we'd been expecting artists to be there, and they wouldn't show up, and we were wondering what was going on.

It's, maybe get a phone call, and said, "Hey, we're on Kennedy Road," and I'm like, "You're on Kennedy Road in Scarborough, right?"

And then they'd be like, "Yes," and I said, "Well, we're Kennedy Road in Brampton," so there were a few mix-ups here and there, but I have some great memories of--Tom Petty visited there in the early days, Robert Gordon was there, Chris Spedding, the Troggs, the reunited Troggs came into the radio station, Robert Smith from The Cure.

One Sunday afternoon when Ted Woloshyn was on the air, I had some production work to do or something.

I came in, and who was sitting in the studios?

They were having a great time, they had a big tub full of beer; was John Candy.

You know, considering it was Brampton, it was a, you know, a rotating door.

We got people there all the time, which was great, but we kind of knew we needed to get on the CN Tower so we could be heard by a lot more people.

♪♪♪ David: We knew that we wanted to have the power.

There were two applications done to go on the CN Tower.

The CRTC had said, "No, you can't go on the CN Tower.

You're licensed for Brampton."

I was coming back from the city wherever I did a meeting or whatever, and it just occurred to me, I thought, "Oh, my goodness."

So I went directly to Bill Hutton, and I said, "We have to--we must apply again."

And he said, "They always keep telling us you can't have it here, the city of Brampton."

I said, "That's my point."

Every day, thousands of Bramptonites get in their cars and drive into the city to work, and every afternoon they drive back.

They want to hear their Brampton station wherever they are, and if they're in Midtown Toronto.

We applied with that angle.

CRTC said, "Yeah, that makes a lot of sense," and they gave us the license.

♪♪♪ Mary: To go up against the CRTC to do something that drastic, to completely move from one location to infringe in another location, I mean, all the major radio stations, they didn't want us.

Geets: Marsden did this whole production of us going to the tower, and we pushed the magic button, and boom, all of a sudden we're clear.

It's a bell from the CN Tower.

Steve: And all of a sudden, I think the audience went from like quarter million listeners to half a million listeners instantly overnight because of the signal on the CN Tower.

And so, guess what, our 30-second advertising rate that was probably $25 or $30 at the time, all of a sudden now, it's $60.

Jim: We had a guy that came through town called the Incredible Spider-Man, and he was climbing up the outside of the CN Tower, and we mic'd him up, and he--you could hear his grunts and groans, and he said, "God, it's dirty out here," and you know, little comments live on the air as he got to the top, climbed over, came into the studio, had a little interview with him, it was great.

"Deadly Hedley" Jones: Once you get on the tower, wow, you could feel it.

The city woke up to alternative music.

♪♪♪ "All Nite Andre" Tilk: Any good radio station is a crossroads of the community.

"Captain Phil" Evans: The culture evolved with us, and in fact, sometimes we were leading the culture of the city.

Liz: We were actually a a focal point for Toronto's creative community, for Toronto's intellectual community, for Toronto's misfit community.

There was just so much synergy between us and the audience.

Actually getting goosebumps when I talk about it.

Andy: In a city the size of Toronto, if you give the alternative kids a home, they will flock to you, and they will be fiercely supportive because finally they found a family who understands them.

Clayton Peters: When you'd meet somebody else who was listening to CFNY, you could tell right away by what they were wearing, where we were, if we were in a club, and you felt an immediate kinship with them, and it didn't matter, you know, Black, white, brown, gay, straight, trans, all of that stuff was part of that scene at that time.

Everyone all felt a sense of ownership over CFNY.

It was like, well, that's mine.

♪ Beautiful girl, love your dress ♪ ♪ High school smiles, oh yes ♪ ♪ Beatiful girl, love your dress ♪ ♪ Where she is now, I can only guess ♪♪ Merck: The left of center music that we were making was becoming the mainstream, right, so a band like Culture Club was about to have wild success, Simple Minds were about to have wild success, OMD were about to have wild success, UB40 were about to have wild success.

If you look at this, it's, you know, completely in tune with the success of CFNY.

Ben: My first memories were very actively, like, listening from the second I woke up to the second I went to bed, the radio was always on.

Deryck: There weren't many places that people, a large group of people could hear your music, and radio was, you know, so important, and 102.1 to us was the station that we grew up with.

Darrin: I loved it all, I loved ska, I loved the Specials, I loved the electronic stuff, I liked the punk stuff.

Ben: It was creating this groundswell of like-minded individuals.

It was giving us a resource to tap from to be like, oh, that's cool.

Nicholas Picholas: There was no anywhere else you would be able to hear especially the uniqueness, and then, oh my God, are they playing the extended version, are they playing the one I like, you know what I mean, where it's five minutes instead of two minutes?

Stupid stuff like that so mattered to me.

Ivar: We were the first people to play "Blue Monday" by New Order, we were the first person to play "I Will Follow" by U2.

We presented U2 in this venue in 1980, and there was 80 people.

We were the first people to play Tears for Fears, Simple Minds, going right back to their very first independent record, and we would go deep on the whole Clash catalog and early Cure things.

Those were all, you know, first at CFNY.

Merck: Simple Minds, China Crisis, you know, OMD.

You know, Ivar played all those bands first, right?

Like, whatever--you know, people talk about KROQ in Los Angeles, but CFNY was there, right?

CFNY was just as exciting as KROQ was.

Ivar had better ears than anyone did.

Ben: I remember having a little boombox, and I'd sit there with my tape recorder, and I'd wait for songs that I wanted, and I'd record, not--I guess that's illegal, but I would sit there and listen just so I could hear those songs again and memorize them.

Emily Haines: The fine art of having, you know, your little--your stereo, and the radio on with record, play, pause, and just waiting till the commercial ended, and then getting that track.

I mean, it's a fine skill.

You can see I've still got it.

Andy: Now, this next song definitely falls into the category of a pop song.

["Enola Gay" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Andy: We began to break into North America when a certain Canadian radio station started playing us.

The first place we ever played in Toronto was the concert hall, the Masonic Temple, you know, which was almost as big as the places we were playing in Europe.

Now, down in the States, across the border, we were playing in tiny little s--hole clubs, you know, so we were like, "Something's going on here in Canada," and not only were we playing in Toronto, on that tour we also played in Hamilton and Kitchener, so the station was getting us into three towns in the same area.

Peter: I can absolutely categorically say that without the support of Canada, we would not have been able to do what we do.

The largest gig we ever played as New Order was in Toronto in a football stadium, 33,000 people.

Steven: Radio was the most dominant place to discover music, and it felt like--I mean, we use the word "curated" now, but it was that way.

It was like, well, if you like this, then you'll like this.

Merck: The gap between U2 playing Massey Hall on "The Unforgettable Fire," and doing what's arguably the earliest arena show at Maple Leaf Gardens only a few short months later, is all down to CFNY, right, and the Toronto fan base.

♪♪♪ Alan: David was very, very particular about flow, you know?

Bring it up, bring it down, bring it up, bring it down.

Have a period where everybody gets a chance to relax, and then bring the music up again.

And the trick was to make the segues seamless between each of the songs, and you would get air checked.

You would get critiqued by David and other people on staff.

Scott: There's a technique, gets the listener comfortable and familiar and excited with music that we know they love, and then introduces new music at just the right time to challenge them and take them somewhere else, and then bring them back with something else that's familiar.

Darrin: That's why CFNY meant so much to me because they would just change gears, but it all stayed within that lane, which is a wide lane, a wide alternative lane.

It's not so narrow as punk or metal or those other genres.

It's wide, going from New Order to Smiths.

It's not a stretch, but it--you gotta veer over a couple of lanes to get there.

Alan: One of the things that you wanted to be able to do is, we call it hitting the post.

Now, hitting a post involves talking over the introduction of a song before the vocals come in.

To do that in real time, with often no rehearsal, became a real point of pride.

Ben: It's kind of like a live show in the sense where if the crowd's giving you a lot of energy, you give that same energy back, and then it meets somewhere in the middle.

It's the same concept.

Nicholas: It was like a concert on the radio every day when a show happened.

It was special, you had to feel that.

David: If you're doing a 20 minute set, I have got to think that's one song.

EDM eventually figured that out.

If you go to a club and listen to a DJ, he or she, they're playing, you're dancing.

You think, "I didn't even hear the change."

♪♪♪ Hedley: The late '80s and '90s for about ten years, where Toronto club scene was maybe the biggest in the world, every two doors there was another club, and they were packed.

Scot: A track that was played on Hedley's show had huge influence, and Hedley would play some house tracks, hip hop that normally wouldn't be played on the radio station, but gave them huge exposure, and he did a lot for club music.

Liz: Another reason why the Buffalo marketplace loved us is because we did live clubs down in Buffalo.

David: I would go on a Friday night, I would go to all the different clubs, and I listened to all the different DJs, and I heard one.

I was just knocked out about the quality of his mixes and his knowledge of music, so I hired him, his name was Chris Sheppard.

Chris Sheppard: Sheppard in full effect, are you watching us in a pub?

Are you in your bathtub, and we're on your TV?

Are we on your radio, well, turn it up loud because it is, after all, Saturday night in the city.

We've got some acid house coming up, not the music.

Yes, the music, not the drugs.

And here we have a perfect example of some acid house where if we could just move on these shorts a bit, stand up on this little podium.

Here we see the smiley faces.

This represents the high that you receive from taking in the acid, not the drop.

Roger Powell: He had this great way of changing up the music and going from, you know, something that was very guitar to something that was very electronic, and could do that and really change the environment of a club.

Cliff Cohen: When that live to airs kicked off, you track it, our ratings started to grow, and we became competitive very quickly.

Alan: Chris Sheppard, I mean, listening to him on Saturday nights, whether he was in the studio, or later when he was doing a live to air from a club, that was an education in itself, not just for me, but for everybody that listened to Sheppard, because he would get these weird remixes, he would get these weird imports, and it was just like you never knew what he was going to play, or in later cases, what he was gonna say.

And I dare say that a lot of people got their essential music education from guys like Sheppard.

Chris: When we come back, we got a set of alternative videos that are surely gonna freak you out because you don't usually see them on TV, but this ain't TV, it's radio, baby.

Ivar: Shep was also a huge proponent of making The Cult a successful band, and--but he, he built a relationship with Ian Astbury, and when they were getting ready to record the follow-up, he was the one who told Ian Astbury to work with Rick Rubin, and he just said, look, Rubins can give you a sound like you guys really need, and you should work with him, and they had actually started recording that electric record, and they scrapped them all, all the original recordings and went with Rick Rubin, and that was because of Shep.

"Captain Phil" Evans: He's one in the line of great radio personalities.

He was personable, he was approachable, and he was also a star.

Cliff: That music and that scene was so cool, so dominant, so amazing to be a part of, people gravitated towards it.

Because of that, Chris was the face of the station.

You know, I mean, maybe some people don't want to hear that.

That's fine, but the fact is he was because where--everywhere we went, people would say to us, hey, what's Chris Sheppard like, what's he really like?

Roger: From a really early age when I first met him, 15 or something, he always was--had this incredible confidence and incredible savvy towards reading people.

You know, he was very successful in high school, and that seemed to be his thing.

His self-promotion is just incredible.

David: He said to me, "David, I've never been on the radio.

I don't know what to do."

And I said, do what you love.

You know, if you want to talk about those records going around faster than they are, the wheels of steel or whatever he invented, he went on, and of course he became super, superstar.

speaker: Hi, and welcome.

Last Monday night right here at the Royal York's Canadian Ballroom, there was a fabulous party.

The cause for the celebration was the fourth annual CFNY U-Know Awards.

Nine hundred people gathered together to honor the greats of the Canadian new music scene.

speaker: The U-Knows are the People's Choice Awards.

Give the public a chance to make a statement on the future of Canada's music industry.

CFNY distributes ballots so that their listeners can vote for their favorite local homegrown talent, newcomer and established artists alike.

Lorraine: The award shows, it was the U-Knows, and then it became the CASBYs, very community oriented.

That was so important because the Junos were still giving awards to the folks that had been around for many, many years.

David: They were announcing all the people who were going to be nominated for a Juno, and one of the names they came up with was Long John Baldry.

They were introducing him as most promising vocal?

The man has a history that's huge.

The man has affected so many things in the world of music that we know and love, from Rod Stewart to Elton John.

They all got their start by this man, and they're saying most promising.

I've gotta do something, I really have to do something.

I think we should do an award show, but it'll be like the Junos, but it'll be smaller, it'll be more fun, and we're just going to call it the U-Knows.

Earl: David Marsden thought, well, the Junos don't represent what we're doing here, we're gonna have the U-Know Awards.

Beverly: Yeah, I remember the first U-Knows, we had Jim Carrey.

speaker: What made you come back to Toronto to host the U-Know Awards?

What made you accept their offer?

Jim Carrey: Well, I was interested in it because, actually the first time I was ever on radio doing any kind of an act was on CFNY.

David: The thing got so big that the record companies were calling me saying, "Can we get so and so on the show?

We will pay all expenses."

Paul Shaffer: To me, life without music would be life of emptiness.

Dave Thomas: Well, that's a great story, Paul, and thank you very much for coming on the show.

Paul: Nice to be here.

Totally my pleasure, Dave.

Dave: Ladies and gentlemen, my friend Paul Shaffer.

Paul: Oh, oh, oh, you broke my, oh... speaker: Please welcome six-time CASBY Award winner Bruce Cockburn.

Bruce: The attention that comes to an artist through things like that is always beneficial.

CFNY was pretty good to me in that respect.

They played my stuff a lot, and grateful for that.

speaker: I just wanted to congratulate you for having an award show that has become establishment enough that some people aren't showing up for it.

David: Well, hell.

I may not make it next year either.

I may not be able to afford the ticket.

speaker: The tour of 1987 is coming here.

A quarter of a million dollars dollar sight and sound sensation you have to see to believe!

The only show of its kind in North America will be here soon with an all-star lineup of CFNY artists and personalities.

This is the show that'll blow you away!

[audience shouting] Alan: The roadshow was something that was started in the early '80s by Ivar, and it became this fantastically popular thing, when really all we did was show up at a place, play videos, and had a couple of lights.

David: So he says to me, "I was thinking of doing record hops."

Record hops, that's something from the '50s.

Those record hops turned into the CFNY Video Roadshow.

Roger: The roadshow was like a traveling nightclub.

I think we were probably one of the first touring music video shows.

Ivar: We were probably at every single high school in the province, all the universities.

We were ahead of MTV.

You know, before they were out there, we went to video.

Roger: Yeah, the 9x12 screen, kids would just come in and just be amazed, you know?

Especially you go to a small town, and they're just, this is incredible.

Steven: That was like a big deal, to go down there and be with other kids from across Metro who wore skinny ties or dyed their hair or whatever else and danced to New Order.

Ivar: Fabulous way to connect with our listeners in a big way.

You know, not only promote the radio station, but also to find out about what they were into.

Like, it was, I mean, one of the things that I can honestly say didn't--happened because of people at high schools coming to us was the Violent Femmes.

We weren't playing the Violent Femmes at the time.

They were on our radar, but I kept coming back to the--you know, after the show, it's like, all these kids are asking for the Violent Femmes.

We'd also get them asking for Suicidal Tendencies.

They were all like these bands, like, we weren't playing, and it was like, these kids were coming to us and asking about that.

David: High school penetration was a secret because you went into their territory, and in those days, we were running around--Roger Powell and Martin were kind of the road crew, and we had to run around a five ton truck to keep all the equipment that we were carrying, it was nuts.

Ivar: When we were at Ontario Place, and I don't know what set it off, but it just ended up being the destination point.

It's what it--for what seemed like every teenager in Toronto to come out to the CFNY Video Roadshow at Ontario Place, and we were doing anywhere between 5000 to 7000 people every week, and I recall at the end of that particular year that our sales representative who set up the sponsorship, he goes, "I hate to tell you, the Roadshow's been canceled at Ontario Place," and I'm like, "Why?

We were drawing huge numbers."

He goes, "That's exactly why we're canceled.

They think--they feel that they can't control it."

Chris: Marty, Marty, we got--actually, we got Marty here.

Yo, Marty, Marty from the Video Roadshow.

The Roadshow can be booked.

Let's do a commercial about the Roadshow.

A lot of people say we look like brothers.

We kick the crap out of them when they say that.

But tell people how they can get the Video Roadshow, Marty.

Martin Streek: You can call me at CFNY at 453-7452 to book the all new FM 102 Video Roadshow day or night.

Ivar: Martin was the guy that I met almost every weekend.

We would go out and we would do the show, and then we would maybe stop and have some deed on the way home.

So he was a really important part of my education because, again, as the DJ or the VJ, the guy playing the videos in the Roadshow, he had a really good knowledge of what was in the library and what was hot, so he taught me an awful lot about being a CFNY person.

Maie: Martin has a way with a large crowd of making everyone feel welcome, like you're there as his special guest, and the CFNY Video Roadshow was no different.

He was so good with all those high school kids, and talking with them, and just making everybody feel like we're here for a good time for you, this is fun.

"Brother Bill" Neil Morrison: Just the perfect guy to have representing the radio station out in the public.

Nicholas: My first day at work was funny because Martin made it magical.

Martin goes, "Hey, bud," and I'm like, "What's going on?"

He goes, "You a new guy?"

And he goes, "I know you."

And I'm like, "I don't think so."

He goes, "Yeah, New Order, 'Temptation.'"

And I'm like, "What?"

And he goes, "Ah, CFNY Video Roadshow."

He remembered I came up and asked for a song from him a year before, and I'm like, who the hell remembers something like that?

That guy remembers.

Roger: Martin could disarm a crowd just with something, just with a look or, you know, he was such a great attention getter.

Ben: The thing with Martin is that he believed it, he lived it, it was part of his chemistry, it was the DNA of who he was, so it wasn't as if he was just playing the role, that was who he was.

♪ Oh, baby, you try ♪ ♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪♪ Jim: We put out this record, comes out in '87.

Our record company said, "You sold 5000 records," and we're like, "5000 records, that's fantastic."

That's bad, and there's only one radio station in the whole country that's playing your music, and that's this CFNY station.

Lorraine: We had a tremendous amount of support for bands like ours.

It really was embodying that idea of the independent spirit of radio, and the independent music movement.

Deryck: The first time I ever heard us on the radio was 102.1.

It was a huge thing for our career in Canada.

They were sort of the leaders, you know, in the country, so if you were able to do well on 102.1, the rest of the country would follow, so being on radio in general was, you know, it meant a lot to us.

Howie: The whole genesis of the Barenaked Ladies was--happened around CFNY, bought from a tape.

The band all of a sudden had credibility in my mind, so which meant I was gonna listen to those songs more than one time and see what was good about those songs because if CFNY was playing it, it was meaningful to me.

Steven: They had the competition for the modern music search, this competition to support local talent.

Howard: We had a con--this, it was a Spirit contest of some kind, and CFNY, they gave the Barenaked Ladies an amount of money one year to fund the album "Gordon."

Earl: Barenaked Ladies won the $50,000, so they made "Gordon" with that money.

Alan: I think we gave them a million dollars.

Phil: That was $100,000.

Howard: I think it was $50,000, I don't know why I think of that.

Steven: We got $100,000 to make our own record.

Jim: CFNY would have been the sole radio station supporting these independent acts, and we were part of it too.

We were at the first candidate picnic.

It was the first gathering of a whole bunch of musicians that had records and were being recognized, and that was the beginning of Canadians starting to want to see their own musicians.

They wanted to hear their own stories.

Kneale Mann: It was me, Alan Cross, Scot Turner, Phil Evans, and our ops guy, Earl Veal.

And Phil said, "We should do something on July 1st," and it lasted 15 years.

♪ You know, I see 'em on the TV ♪ ♪ Hear it on the radio ♪ ♪ Gonna twist, gonna stomp with you ♪ ♪ Do the wobble and the watusi too ♪♪ Deryck: The crowd was amazing, I remember thinking, ah, I just wanna play this festival one day.

Like, I'll feel like if we could just get there--it felt so far away, maybe never even possible.

♪ Can shut your mouth, but you still have a say ♪ ♪ You just don't care for tomorrow, today ♪♪ Ben: I don't know, it's just, there's something really beautiful and and very Canadian, that there's something very unique about it, just--that just feels right, you know?

Like, you can see a guy like Jim Cuddy, and then you could see, you know, Luke from the Dirty Nils.

It's a cool, very special thing to be part of, you know?

Jim: Those concerts at Molson Park were obviously extremely successful.

An amazing moment to be part of where there was a whole bunch of Canadian bands that were selling records and were part of this gigantic festival.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Alan: In 1988, things began to change when we were in this limbo between being owned by Selkirk and Maclean-Hunter.

It was during that time that management, who is in charge of looking after us during this period, decided that we were going to go more in a top 40 vein.

speaker: Toronto's alternative radio station CFNY has announced that it is going to go more mainstream.

Ivar: There started to be some meddling from the sales department, and it was like, well, we need to grow the station by X amount in revenue and listeners, and in order to do that, we need to start playing hit records from the Billboard chart.

Neil: There was one guy named Jim Fonger who just was put in charge to make sure that the cost per share of that radio station was at its maximum point so they could get maximum dollars for the shareholders to sell it.

speaker: We're still gonna play more of your music, we're still gonna be more dedicated to Canadian talent both from a monetary standpoint and from an on-air standpoint than any other station in Toronto.

We're the only radio station that has a full-time person dedicated to the development of Canadian content.

Jim Fonger: As operations manager, I was still under 30.

It was a good fit for me because what I had the opportunity to come in to do was to help a radio station and really bolster its revenue.

David: Modern Rock in Toronto, FM 102.

Liz: It was heartbreaking because people who are coming into positions of authority did not understand the audience.

Scot: There's always pressure, you need more ratings, you need more money.

These executives entering these board meetings, there's no level to the idiocy of things that are presented and discussed.

Chris: It's Sheppard coming to you and feeling good, I might add.

Kool Moe Dee before that with the most requested video, "Wild Wild West."

Jim: So what we modeled the format change off of was what was happening on Saturday nights with Chris Sheppard.

What Chris would do is he kind of did his own thing, which was a lot of the alternative music, but he also mixed in a lot of the current pop music.

But before we really went, you know, to make that format change, David was still with us, and certainly based on his values and what he thought should happen on the station, might not have been going in exactly the direction that he thought, so he said, you know what, I think I need to step aside, and if you're gonna take the station in new directions, then you're probably, you know, better to do that without me.

David: The people behind the radio station thought that they had to keep up with the teenagers rather than grow with the family that started with us, and after 11 years, I realized that I didn't think I had any more to put into it.

I didn't think, and I--so I spoke to Bill Hutton about it, and Bill said, "You got to stay one more year so we can organize what we're going to do," but I just felt I had no more to put in.

I just really felt empty.

Leslie: Oh my God, I cried.

I do have the note that he left on the kitchen counter.

So he had come in and he didn't want to--he couldn't do good, big goodbyes, and all--like, it was just too uncomfortable, so he had come in, he cleaned out his office, took the rest of his stuff, and he left the note on the counter for everybody.

He said, "It's been a gas."

David: I'll see you later, bye bye.

speaker: Bye!

David: Good night, everybody, and thank you for being there on CFNY.

I'm the Mars Bar.

♪ On the day I went away ♪ ♪ Goodbye was all I had to say ♪ Alan: At that point, the idea of selecting your own music, the idea of carefully crafted segues, carefully put together mixes went out the window.

You got a list of songs that you were gonna play, and you had to play them in that order.

I will say that the staff did not really take that kind of direction well.

Neil: You had the people down one end of the hallway that were the Spirit of Radio people that were the heart and soul of this radio station, and you had a management company down the other end of the hallway that just saw dollar signs.

Phil: It was civil war, undeclared civil war.

Ivar: When those changes were starting to come, it was just like, I'm like, I can't do this anymore, right?

I just was like, I need to get out.

I just wasn't, I just--my heart just wasn't into it.

I wasn't gonna do it.

Neil: I remember Ivar Hamilton with an album of one of these mainstream rock bands, and he came into Kneale Mann and myself, our studio, took the vinyl out and said, "This is what I f--ing think of," insert band here, and he threw it on the floor and he smashed it, and I think he was gone a week later.

speaker: FM 102. speaker: Can you explain why you're playing George Michael?

speaker: Seriously, that is the most revolting thing I have ever heard.

speaker: I was in shock, like, I was drinking a can of pop.

I spat it out all over the desk at work.

speaker: Oh, ho, ho!

speaker: This the first time I ever heard George Michael, are you guys serious?

speaker: We're serious.

speaker: What's next, Madonna and Michael Jackson?

speaker: Probably.

Jim: I certainly don't look at it as a mistake.

I think we were actually able to walk the line of doing something really innovative.

I mean, it was an innovative format, not only in the Toronto marketplace, but it was now a unique format in North America.

Ivar: People were immediately just like, "What the -- happened to our radio station?"

And people say, you know, "My radio station," that they loved the radio station.

They loved CFNY for what it was, and they were so unique, so it was a real shock for a lot of people.

Scot: It's not like people haven't heard Madonna and haven't heard Def Leppard, but when you hear it, and then, you know, everybody looks at, you know, and they look at the frequency, and it's 102.1, and then they're looking at their speakers, and it's like, "What, what, what's going on?"

So there's a huge confusion.

Alan: I remember thinking, when I play press play, and this song goes out over the radio, that phone is gonna melt down, and it did.

The audience lost their collective s-- on us, they lost their minds.

That was the beginning of a grassroots rebellion by the listenership to what management had us playing on the air.

Neil: Larry Bates, they called him the Spirit because he was fighting to keep the Spirit of Radio alive.

I remember that he had gone to the CRTC hearings, which was the first time I believe at the time a member of the public had gone to these meetings, to these hearings to voice his displeasure over the station's format and pending format change.

Scot: I don't know if he had an idea of how big that was going to be, the campaign, how much it gathered momentum.

Dani Elwell: It's not very often that you have listeners fight for what they're listening to or for.

Alan: There were protests, there were letters to the CRTC, it was incredible.

Fred: And then there was an ownership change again, and part of their commitment to the CRTC was, "We will go back to the old CFNY."

The Spirit was coming back, that's all there was to it.

♪♪♪ Alan: It was considered to be a victory by the audience, by the fans, by the true Spirit of Radio, which were the people who listened to the radio station.

They saved the station from what it could have been, and when we finally gave up on this pretense of us being a hybrid alternative top 40 radio station, there were drinks, there were celebrations.

There was a sense that we stuck to our guns, we stuck it to the man, and we won.

["The Spirit of Radio" by Rush] ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ Begin the day with a friendly voice ♪ ♪ A companion, unobtrusive ♪ ♪ Plays that song that's so elusive ♪ ♪ And the magic music makes your morning mood ♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ Off on your way, hit the open road ♪ ♪ There is magic at your fingers ♪ ♪ For the spirit ever lingers ♪ ♪ Undemanding contact in your happy solitude ♪♪ ♪♪♪ David: It was just a moment in time.

It was a moment that was supposed to happen, so we made it happen.

Alan: Okay.

♪♪♪ Ivar: If we're gonna tell the story of the Spirit of Radio, we have to go back to ground zero, Brampton, Ontario.

All the car dealerships are gone that used to be there way back in the day, and some of the infamous clubs like the Brampton Hotel, and the Sword and Shield.

We called them beer and a fight places.

Alan: Oh, Brampton's changed an awful lot on... speaker: You have reached your destination.

Ivar: Hey, Scot!

Scot: Hey, everybody.

Alan: Hey, good to see you, hey, Scot.

Scot: Do you want to start that whole thing over again?

Ivar: Yeah.

Alan: Test, test, check, checkity-check.

Scot: All right, one.

Alan: One clap, one clap!

Ivar: One clap.

Alan: One!

Scot: This is why we never got into film, go.

Alan: Yes!

Alan: When are we gonna start shooting for real?

Ivar: Oh, you just dropped your mic--or I dropped it, or is that me?

I think it's me.

Alan: All right, let's have a look.

Oh, here, this is not little, and it's not yellow, and it is certainly not a house.

Scot: I've always wanted to see this.

Alan: Yeah, well, it's not what we were expecting.

Alan: So Scot and I never worked at the little yellow house.

Scot: No, I never did.

Alan: Ivar was the only one of this group who actually had a job at this site.

Ivar: Yeah, I started here in '77, right out of high school.

My first couple of weeks in radio college at Humber, came here as an intern, and I was the guy like "High Fidelity," worked--the guys who worked at the record shop, I just kept showing up and never left, and I finally got a job here full time.

Scot: It's kind of still yellow, sort of.

Alan: Well, this really was the ground zero of the Spirit of Radio, yes?

So, you know, maybe, shouldn't this be commemorated in some way?

Ivar: I absolutely believe it should.

Alan: All right, and, well, how would we do that?

Okay, we'll stop here.

Okay, do it again.

Shouldn't we maybe commemorate this place as ground zero for the Spirit of Radio?

This is the side of the little yellow--oh, Ivar, get out of there.

Alan: All right, this commemorates the site of the little yellow house, the place where the legend of CFNY... [laughter] began.

♪ We're Progressive FM ♪ ♪ You can't call us mainstream ♪ ♪ The only real radio versus the big machine ♪ ♪ Those little whispers start to shake the floor ♪ ♪ And the noise can be heard from the corporate doors ♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ Excuse me for mentioning, but there's people here ♪ ♪ And people out there with people ears ♪ ♪ I'm looking for a record and talking on the phone ♪ ♪ And I ain't your average radio clone ♪ ♪ I'm an FM jock and I play them as I see ♪ ♪ There ain't no strings pulling on me ♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ NY is my station, we're the only one ♪ ♪ We don't make much money, but we sure have fun ♪ ♪ We won't play a record just because it's a hit ♪ ♪ But we love new wave and those punk girls' t--s ♪ ♪ Stop the surveys and computerized sweeps ♪ ♪ Shove the Billboard charts in the back seat ♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ We get free records and tickets to the shows ♪ ♪ Just a couple of perks for working on the radio ♪ ♪ Working on the radio ♪ ♪ Working on the radio ♪ ♪ I'm working on the radio ♪ ♪ I'm working on the radio ♪ ♪ I'm working on the radio ♪ ♪ I'm working on the radio ♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ Working on the radio ♪ ♪ Yeah, I'm working on the radio ♪ ♪ Yeah, I'm working on the radio ♪ ♪ I'm working on the radio ♪♪