90 Years & Counting!
Today you can find the CKUA Radio Network played across 16 frequencies all across the province. You can even listen live online or on their new app. To believe that they once started on a $700 dollar budget and a 580 watt signal (built by W.W. Grant) seems utterly impossible but they did!
On November 21st, 1927 they created Canada's first public broadcaster with their first radio announcer, H.P. Brown. Working with the University of Alberta, they only broadcast during the academic year. Their programming consisted of historical dramas, formal courses and lectures, live sports broadcasting and of course, music. It wasn't until 1943, when they officially started airing year round.
In 1945 they moved from the University to downtown, under the operation of Alberta Government Telephones (AGT) after the university decided to sell CKUA's assets due to a lack of funding.
In 1948, CKUA-FM was born! The AM system was let go in February 2013, as the maintenance for this system was way to costly to keep up on repairs.
In 1955, CKUA moved to the Alberta Block on Jasper Avenue. They also changed their programming here. They went from mainstream to a more eclectic approach, also launching their talk shows.
On March 9, 1960, the radio signal was boosted from 1000 watts to a whopping 10'000 watts giving them reach to almost all parts of Alberta.
On March 31, 1974, the broadcast licenses were transferred from the University of Alberta to ACCESS (Alberta Educational Communications Corporation) becoming re-branded as ACCESS Radio CKUA.
1976 is when ACCESS expanded the FM system to 16 transmitters to give full coverage throughout Alberta while still hosting their 580 AM.
A partnership with the University of Athabasca started in 1980. This university has a distance learning program and the collaboration developed programs to supplement the courses.
Listen
Live
NOW