OUT OF THIN AIR

station under the name of Island Radio Company. The Island Radio was the name of a bona fide business and it was required as such to secure a commercial broadcasting licence.

During the first few months of the partnership, major alterations were made to the station. With all the increased activity the Burke household was being disrupted. So, in order to get the transmitter out of the living-room, one of the girls’ bedrooms was commandeered and the transmitter was moved up to the second floor. Jim Gesner, Dad’s retail radio competitor, was hired to weld a metal frame. Not only was the station given its own room, but a special entrance to it cut in the side of the house. All this fully involved the efforts of both my father and Walter Burke.

At this time Dad was working on the old 10AS to increase its power. In a letter to the government, dated September 14, 1925, he states “. . .our present power is very small 20 watts. It will be some months before power is increased to 100.”

The power of the transmitter never reached 100 watts, but shortly after this letter was written, Dad had increased it to 50 watts. The time and expense of rebuilding the original 10AS transmitter was borne by Dad.

For a month after the first CFCY licence was granted, the govern- ment hounded the partners for broadcasting schedules. Memos went back and forth from the District Office of Marine to the head office in Ottawa:

“We are concerned CFCY is not advising the Department of its plans and schedules...”

“Sorry, Island Radio does not acknowledge requests to send schedules etc...”

The reason the station was delinquent in sending in plans and sched- ules is simply because they were constantly in the process of being made. Broadcasting in those days was pretty well a hit and miss affair. It was learn as you go on a shoestring. The larger stations like the Canadian National, or those later stations in Montreal or Toronto with large staffs and lots of financial backing could provide regularly scheduled programs, but the small rural operators could not. Most of them had switched from amateur to professional overnight. During the first few months operating within their new status, they were doing exactly as Dad was doing: setting up, remodelling and expanding. And most of them, like Dad and Walter Burke, were broke.

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