An early demonstration of radio by Lee DeForest took place in Winnipeg in April 1910, with extensive amateur and experimental interest after that date. Regularly scheduled broadcasting did not begin until the spring of 1922, when Lynn Salton established a private station with the call sign CKZC. Both Winnipeg daily newspapers developed their own radio stations in 1922, notably providing coverage of the 1922 Provincial election. However, the stations were found to be expensive to operate. In January 1923, the newspapers agreed to get out of the broadcasting business in favor of the government-owned station. The station first signed on March 13, 1923 as CKY, owned and operated by the Manitoba Telephone System,with a transmitter power of 500 watts at a frequency of 665 kHz. It became a partial affiliate of the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission in 1933, and was purchased outright by the CBC in 1948. The station adopted its current call sign a few months after the CBC purchase, and the CKY call sign was reassigned to a new commercial radio station in 1949. CBW was part of the Trans-Canada Network, which was the main CBC radio network, while CKRC carried programming from the Dominion Network between January 1, 1944 and 1962. The transmitter was originally located in Carman. On February 3, 1952, a small plane with 3 passengers struck the Carman tower, due to heavy fog. None of the passengers survived. Three tower workers were killed when the tower collapsed during efforts to replace a missing guy wire. On July 29, 1992, CBW was authorized to decrease its night-time power from 50,000 watts to 46,000 watts and relocate the transmitter from Carman to a new site near Springstein. On October 15, 1993, CBW began broadcasting from the new site, which was 30 miles closer to Winnipeg than the old site. CBW moved from the 3rd floor of the Telephone Building on Portage Avenue East to its current location on Portage Avenue, broadcasting from the new location for the first time on July 5, 1953. The opening officially occurred on September 25, 1953. Over the next week, the station held open house tours of the station. The building cost $1 million to construct and was state of the art at the time. Today, CBW shares this same location with CBW-FM and CBWT-DT. On March 16, 2006, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approved an application by the CBC for a "nested" FM rebroadcaster in Winnipeg as a simulcast of CBW. The station had long been plagued by poor coverage in portions of Winnipeg itself, and the FM repeater was intended to improve reception in these areas. CBW-1-FM 89.3 operates from a transmitter atop MTS Bell Place Main, and has an effective radiated power of 2,800 watts. The call sign CBW was previously used by the CBC Radio station in Windsor, Ontario in 1937-38 until it was shut down. When it was revived in 1950, the Windsor CBC outlet became CBE.
Local programming
CBW's local programs are Information Radio in the morning, Radio Noon and Up to Speed in the afternoon; The Weekend Morning Show runs on Saturdays and Sundays, and the arts and culture show Manitoba Scene at 5:00 p.m. on Saturdays in addition to North Country programming weekdays at 7:30 a.m. and 12 p.m. CT. CBWK-FMThompson and its rebroadcasters also air programming from the CBC Manitoba studio in Winnipeg.
