CIAO (AM)

CIAO is a Canadian radio station, broadcasting at 530 AM in Brampton, Ontario. The station, owned by Evanov Communications, broadcasts a multilingual programming format.

History

The station was launched in 1953 as AM 1290 CFJB, a daytimer owned by broadcaster Fen Job. Job was killed in a car crash in 1956, and the station was sold by his estate to CHIC Ltd. in 1959, adopting the new callsign CHIC the following year. In 1961, the owners also launched CHIC-FM on FM 102.1.

In 1964, CHIC became a full-time broadcaster, moving to AM 790. In 1977, CHIC-FM adopted the new callsign CFNY.

In 1979, the stations' owner went into receivership. The stations were subsequently acquired by Civitas Corp., the owner of CJMS in Montreal. Civitas became Mutual Communications in 1980, and CHIC adopted the new callsign CKMW. Mutual subsequently sold CKMW to Patrick Hurley, who incorporated as CKMW Radio Ltd., in 1983; CFNY was sold to Selkirk Communications.

As CKMW, the AM station adopted its current multilingual format, and ownership of CKMW Radio was transferred to Evanov in 1985.

The station adopted its current callsign in 1987, and moved to its current frequency in 1991 after CJFT in Fort Erie converted to the FM band. CIAO is currently the only radio station in North America broadcasting on 530 kHz.

Programming

CIAO's programming is primarily South Asian (Hindi and Punjabi) with some Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Filipino, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Sri......
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