CFUN Is Back – Part I

It’s September 30, 1973, and the heritage #14CFUN call letters are coming back to 1900 West 4th Avenue!

Chuck McCoy remembers that day vividly:

“The night we changed radio in Vancouver is forever etched in my memory. CHUM’s purchase of CKVN earlier in 1973 coincided with my first Program Director job. With the advice, support and resources of the CHUM Group, we decided we needed a new format. Our Contemporary MOR format was treading water between two giant stations, ‘Top Dog’ CKNW and Top 40 CKLG.

Our new radio station would be Top 40, as it had once so successfully been in the past. A new format, a magical on-air team, playing all the right music, being gifted with a brilliant creative, production and promotion team still wouldn’t be enough to break through. I knew we needed something more; something big to make a statement and attract the attention of everybody in Vancouver.

The decision was made to first retrieve the old CFUN call letters from a small station in New Brunswick. I don’t know how the CHUM people did that and I never asked. But CHUM Group VP Fred Sherratt called me one day in the summer to say ‘You’ve got the call letters.’ So we had the format, the iconic CFUN call letters… and now we had to put it all together with an amazing promotion.”

Next: details on the “phrase that pays”, and we listen in on the FUN.