Newstalk

Newstalk (formerly NewsTalk 106) is an independent radio station in Ireland. It is operated by News 106 Limited, a subsidiary of Denis O'Brien's Communicorp, and broadcasts under a sound broadcasting contract with the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.

The station is a "quasi-national" (covering most, but not all of the state) station as of 29 September 2006, previously having been an Independent Local Radio station with a franchise for Dublin.

Format

The station is the only commercial radio station in Ireland to take on an exclusively talk based format. However, musical interludes can be heard on weekend shows. News is broadcast every 30 minutes (originally every 20 minutes). Shows are broadcast live from 06:30 - 00:00 on weekdays, 07:00 - 23:00 on Saturdays and 07:00 - 23:00 on Sundays. Outside these hours, repeats are broadcast. The station's flagship morning programme is Newstalk Breakfast, presented by Ivan Yates and Chris Donoghue between 07:00 and 10:00. More popular is the flagship late afternoon programme The Right Hook, broadcast 16:30-19:00 (with George Hook).

CFRB

CFRB, branded as Newstalk 1010, is an AM radio clear-channel station in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, broadcasting a news/talk format on 1010 kHz, with a shortwave radio simulcast on CFRX on 6.07 MHz on the 49m band. CFRB's studios are located in the Entertainment District at 250 Richmond Street West, a building which is adjacent to 299 Queen Street West, while its 4-tower transmitter array is located in the Clarkson neighbourhood of Mississauga.

History

Founded in 1927, CFRB was not Toronto's very first broadcaster, but it is the city's oldest broadcaster still operating today. It has also retained its original call letters from 1927 to the present. (CKYC was on the air from to 1925 to 1996, but only adopted these call letters in 1991 having previously used CKCL and CKEY; its frequency is now occupied by a completely different station, CHKT.)

CFRB was founded by the Rogers Vacuum Tube Company (the precursor of Rogers Communications) to promote Edward S. Rogers, Sr.'s invention of a batteryless radio receiver that could be operated using alternating current and therefore did not need the cumbersome battery that had previously been required. The station itself was a demonstration of Rogers' application of his invention to radio transmitters as well as receivers, a development that allowed for a signal that reproduced voices and music more clearly. The new type of transmitter also made CFRB the world's first all-electric radio station. The letters "RB" in the station's callsign stand for "Rogers' Batteryless" (the letters "CF" form one of Canada's ITU prefixes). The station began transmitting on an experimental basis in January 1927 as 9RB, before being converted to commercial operation a few weeks later, on February 19, with the transmission of a live symphony orchestra concert conducted by Jack Arthur.