Expansion, Rifts and Competition

advised Walter Burke to apply for a new licence. He did, and was granted the call letters CHCK. Unfortunately Walter Burke was no technician. He could operate the transmitter but he did not understand technical matters beyond a certain point and needed someone with that ability to keep the station on the air.

A radio station is its hardware such as the transmitter, the studio and its equipment, the real estate, and all the administration and talent that goes along with it. The call letters of a station such as CFCY, CHCK, CFRB etc., are merely the government’s official designation of that station. The station on Upper Hillsborough Street which had for- merly been designated CFCY, now became CHCK when Mr. Burke, on Walter Hyndman’s advice, applied for and was granted a new licence. From 1928, the call letters CFCY officially designated Dad’s new 100 watt station on Kent street. Charlottetown from that point onward had two official commercial broadcasting stations.

When Mr. Burke applied for another commercial licence, Dad was asked by Ottawa if he had any objections. Convinced Mr. Burke wished nothing more than to do his Wednesday evening program of sacred and classical music and to broadcast church services on Sundays, he responded that he had no objections whatsoever.

Another factor, however, entered into the situation. James A. Gesner, Dad’s chief competitor in the retail radio business offered to take Dad’s place to do the technical work on the transmitter in order to keep it on the air and to make the business arrangements as Mr. Burke was busy at Carter & Co. Although there is no actual written proof, I have learned that there was a small, silent coterie of political and busi- ness friends in the background allied to Jim Gesner. When Gesner entered the scene, the stew was on the stove—a stew given its flavour by the ingredients of a dash of politics, the personalities of the com- petitors, the business element itself, and, not to mention of course, the amusing distractions it provided for the neighbouring downtown mer- chants and sometimes for the listeners. The combatants, like most men When they get stubborn and squabble, acted many times like schoolboys giving the competition that evolved between them a humourous side to it.

Charlottetown then just wasn’t big enough to support two commer- cial stations; and besides that, broadcasting in Canada was under review. The Aird Commission was holding meetings throughout the country. The Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission network was soon to

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