by Cam Tait
October 7, 2024
Don’t touch that dial has been coming out of radio stations for decades: a casual plea from disc jockeys and newscasters for the listener to keep listening.
But for me, those four words strike a bittersweet note. On Wednesday another set of words — a trio, this time — that has come off our tongues with ease, bringing almost every sound the English language, seamlessly together, to create a familiar phrase hundreds of thousands of northern Albertans have come to know. And love.
“Six-thirty CHED.”
Come on, say it with me, one time.
“Six-thirty CHED.”
That phrase is retiring Wednesday. Things? They change — especially in the radio industry, and, for that matter, the media business.
The 630 CHED — I’m counting down how many times I’ll be able to say and write it while they are, still, on the air — is moving to a different spot on the AM dial.
880 CHED.
This journalistic journey is not to point out why. Rather, it’s a couple of hundred words of personal gratitude of the big impact 630 CHED had on my life.
It began in the early 1970s with a small black-and-silver transistor radio. Like most young teenagers, 630 CHED had music we loved — Top 40.
But the music was just the opening verse to a lifelong love affair with radio.
I listened for the times the news was read … how many songs were played in a row … how many seconds the disc jockey was speaking, and so on.
