A Brief History of CKWS-TV
Television's advent, after the first transmission that combined picture and sound, January 13, 1928 at Schnectady, New York, had become an enchantment in the public mind. General Electric engineers had broadcast video and its sounds. Moving pictures of a man smoking a cigarette and commenting on it, together with another playing a ukulele, where sent from the lab to screens 3 inches by 3 inches being watched in three nearby homes. An industry that conquered time and space leapt into being.
CKWSCKWS-TV, went on the air November 18, 1954, with the Indian head test pattern. The technical requirements of its license were in place within three weeks, and on December 15, the station began regular 4:30 PM to 11:00 PM programming. In the 1990s, there would be 24 hour a day telecasting. CKWS was the thirteenth private television station to take to the air in Canada according to Records of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters.
When the Brookland Company Ltd. the CKWS startup owner made television a reality in Kingston, Ontario, viewers crowded around the then 12 and 16 inch screens in fashionable cabinets in local stores. The sales of TV sets took off in the area.
The Kingston Whig Standard blazed, "Here's the Picture" on its front page, and a special supplement explained how TV works, the history if its invention and how to adjust your black and white signal for best viewing.
Startup investors in 1953, Brookland Co. Ltd., included Senator W. Rupert Davies, publisher of the Whig Standard, sons Arthur and noted author Robertson Davies, and Roy Thomson and Associates. The Davies family held 51 per cent of the shares. Thomson, later Lord Thomson of Fleet, administered the station. CKWS-TV began under managing director Arthur Davies, manager Roy Hofstetter, engineer Bert Cobb and program manager, Bull Luxton.
The invention of the third major form of communications in a hundred years, after radio and film, accelerated home entertainment in Kingston. In the 1954/1955 season CKWS-TV delighted viewers with ED Sullivan's variety show, The Toast of the Town and The Liberace Show, Kraft Theatre, comedy on The Milton Berle Show and Our Miss Brooks, Howdy Doody for kids, films such as Wild Bill Hickcock, Henry VIII and The Count of Monte Crisco, NHL Hockey and local productions such as Ted Curl's Supper Club, the Teenage Dance Party and midday variety shows that focussed on local community events and personalities. Early and late evening news were a fixture.
In addition to a strong emphasis on community service in programming, CKWS-TV from its beginning has been a CBC affiliate. A contract with the network enables its programming to reach Southeastern Ontario viewers in selected daily time slots on CKWS-TV.
CKWS-TV for the first four years beamed from a 400 foot, two strut tower on a hill near Camden East, Northwest of Kingston. It reached many more viewers after the move in 1960 to its new 825-foot tower on Wolfe Island south of the city. The station's market expanded again in the early 1990s with rebroadcaster antennas 70 miles northeast and northwest of Kingston in Brighton and Spencerville. After an historic ice storm slammed the Wolfe Island tower to the ground in 1998, the company built a new one thousand foot tower to reach an even bigger audience. These market improvements have had consistent support from the Canadian Radio and Television Commission, regulator of broadcasting in the country.
The corporate identity of CKWS has changed from Brookland Ltd. to Frontenac Broadcasting Company, then with the purchase by Paul Desmarias and his sons of Power Corporation, became part of Power Broadcasting Inc. In April 2000 CKWS TV became a Corus Entertainment company.
At its inception, CKWS-TV strived for industry leadership. Startups by other companies often were in temporary buildings, but Brookland Ltd. built a spanking new two-story L shaped complex at 170 Queen Street in Kingston. Its 64 by 48 foot studio, largest in Canada at the time boasted two British built Pye, three lens studio cameras, state of the art studio lighting, two film chains, multiplexer and video and sound mixing rooms, a film and still photo processing lab and a set design shop. The same studio, re-equipped with satellite downlink, computer controlled writing, editing and logging and the newest in digital equipment for creative commercial and quality news production now takes on the challenges of the Millennium.
Floyd Patterson, CKWS-TV
