CNRO was launched on February 27, 1924 as CKCH a Canadian National Railway radio network station, and adopted the CNRO call sign onJuly 16, 1924, in order to indicate its network affiliation. The station was the first to broadcast the time signal from the Dominion Observatory in Ottawa, doing so daily at 9 pm. It operated on 690 AM and later switched to 600. In 1933, the station was taken over by the CBC's predecessor, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission and became CRCO on 880 kHz. The call sign changed to CBO in 1937 when ownership was transferred to the CBC. Later frequency changes to 910 in 1941 and to 920 in 1977 were followed by a move to 91.5 FM in 1991. The call sign of the existing CBO-FM station was then changed to CBOQ-FM. From 1924, the station's studios were located on the sixth floor of the Château Laurier Hotel in downtown Ottawa, a legacy of its origins with the Canadian National Railway which had also owned the hotel. In 2004, the station left the Château Laurier, closing the oldest operating radio studios in Canada, and moved to the new CBC OttawaBroadcast Centre on Sparks Street as part of a consolidation of various Ottawa CBC facilities.
Local programming
The station's local programs are Ottawa Morning, hosted by Robyn Bresnahan and All in a Day in the afternoon. However, most of the relay transmitters air the Toronto-originated Ontario Morning in place of Ottawa Morning. Unlike most Radio One stations, which air provincewide morning programs on Saturdays and Sundays, the station also produces its own Saturday morning show, In Town and Out, although it airs Fresh Air, the provincewide weekend morning program for the rest of Ontario, on Sundays. In addition, CBO-FM produces the regional noon news and talk program Ontario Today, which airs on all CBC Radio One stations in Ontario including Toronto, and the national network program, The House. It also formerly produced Bandwidth, a music show which aired on all Radio One stations in Ontario outside of Toronto until 2014.
Transmitters
On November 9, 1989, CHEZ-FM Inc. was denied a licence to add a new FM transmitter at Carleton Place on 92.3 MHz to rebroadcast the programming of the CBC's English-language AM network CBO Ottawa. On July 5, 2010, the CBC applied to change CBOB-FM frequency from 106.5 to 91.9 MHz which received CRTC approval on November 10, 2010. On June 2, 2014, the CBC submitted an application to convert CBLI 1110 to 97.9 MHz. This application was approved on September 30, 2014. The callsign sign CBCD-FM-1 was chosen for the new FM transmitter to replace CBLI. On June 29, 2018, the CBC submitted an application to add a new Radio One FM transmitter at Belleville. The new transmitter will operate at 104.7 MHz with the proposed callsign CBO-FM-1. The CRTC approved the CBC's application on September 26, 2018.
AM rebroadcaster
CBOM is CBO-FM's only rebroadcaster outside Ontario and currently the last remaining AM transmitters to rebroadcast CBO-FM.
