MicroChexx: 1050 CHUM Toronto, First Day as Gold-Based AC | June 6, 1986

1050 Toronto CHUM TSN

What follows is all that could be salvaged from two sides of a C-60 cassette featuring music from the first day of the then-new AC format at 1050 CHUM. We don’t feature the music on this website, but endeavor to bring you as much of the radio station’s imaging, the ‘sound between the records’, so to speak.

What happened here is, the person who recorded this obviously was recording for the music, and in a twist of opposites of what we do at airchexx, cut out all the format items in between these songs, except for the two instances you hear in this under one minute recording.

Wikipedia has a page dedicated to 1050 CHUM. The format change to this is explained as follows:

By the mid-1980s, CHUM had lost ground in the Toronto ratings to competitor Top 40 station CFTR and FM-based music stations. On June 6, 1986, at 3 PM, after the playing of Starship’s “We Built This City”, CHUM dropped its Top 40 format for a gold-based adult contemporary format (“Favourites of Yesterday and Today”). The first song after the relaunch was “Beginnings” by Chicago. The change also discontinued the CHUM Chart, which ended the week of June 14, 1986 with Madonna’s “Live to Tell” as the final Number 1 song.

What is not explained, and we’d enjoy hearing from our Canadian friends who know, is whether this format had jocks or was this ‘uninterrupted music’ just for the format day. Please comment below.



Aircheck #1,270 since May 2, 2002