Search

The Online Encyclopedia and Dictionary

 
     
 

Encyclopedia

Dictionary

Quotes

 

CFXJ

CFXJ-FM is a Canadian radio station in Toronto, Ontario, which uses the on-air brand Flow 93.5. It first aired in 2001 as Canada's first urban music station.

Milestone Radio , the station's owner, first applied to the CRTC for an urban music station in 1991, but were passed over in favour of a country music station. They applied again in 1997, and were passed over in favour of the city's existing Radio One station, which the CBC wanted to move to FM for technical reasons.

Both decisions sparked controversy in Toronto, as the CRTC's reasons for passing over an urban-format station (which Toronto did not have) in favour of existing radio services were widely believed to be racist in nature. The lack of an urban station also created immense difficulties for Canadian hip hop, reggae and R&B musicians, who had no radio outlets in Canada to play and promote their music.

As well, the 99.1 signal which was awarded to the CBC was believed to be the last available FM frequency in the city. However, in 1998, the CBC found that it was able to surrender two repeater transmitters outside of Toronto due to CBLA's superior coverage of the region. In 2000, the CRTC opened applications for new services on these two frequencies, and on Milestone's third application, the CRTC awarded the 93.5 frequency to the company.

CFXJ officially debuted on March 1, 2001 after airing as a testing signal for several days in February of that year.

Urban-format stations quickly followed in several other Canadian cities as well.

Since CFXJ's debut, many Canadian hip hop and R&B musicians -- including Nelly Furtado, k-os, Swollen Members and Jarvis Church, among others -- have made the types of significant career breakthroughs that often eluded Canadian urban musicians in the 1990s.

The contents of this article are licensed from Wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. How to see transparent copy