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Brian Antonson, the first manager of CJSF (CKSF in those days), remembers well the first broadcast back in '66 when “we turned on the amp, hit some music on the left turntable, and promptly scared the hell out of the unsuspecting students in the rotunda.” - photo by Scott McAlpine
Radio reunion seeks alumni
January 25, 2007
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The reunion, which will mark four years since the station started broadcasting on FM, is at 7 pm on Tuesday, Feb. 13, in the CJSF offices at SFU Burnaby. It will feature several speakers, an endless supply of great stories and laughs, refreshments and tours of CJSF's facilities.
Antonson, now associate dean of broadcast and media communications at BCIT, says the station has come along way since 1966 when it started broadcasting out of a janitor's closet under a staircase just west of the rotunda.
"We began with an old audio console once owned by Vancouver broadcasting legend Jack Cullen, one microphone, a couple of turntables, an amplifier that didn't work, and two speakers, one for the control room, one for our listeners," he recalls. "But that was enough to get us going. Someone fixed the amplifier so we could deliver sound. We borrowed a table and chair and set up a rudimentary control room and ran speaker wire out the door to a point inside the door leading to the rotunda.
"And on a misty morning of indeterminate date, we turned on the amp, hit some music on the left turntable, and promptly scared the hell out of the unsuspecting students in the rotunda."
Antonson eventually moved on to a career with CKNW in New Westminster and CJOB in Winnipeg before joining BCIT in 1977. He also managed CFVR in Abbotsford in the early '90s.
Over the years, he says, "I've kept an eye on the fortunes of my ‘wee bairn' as it has grown, blossomed, obtained an on-air license and become part of the fine fabric of Simon Fraser University and now the Lower Mainland."