I Heart Edmonton

Morning Radio By Emil Tiedemann If you’re one of the lucky ones who get up in the morning and can’t wait to get to work, then good for you!! Sorry, I haven’t had my coffee yet. But, if you’re like the majority of us - who either dread that spirit-crushing alarm clock or would rather be doing anything else other than getting up before humans were ever meant to and then heading to a job that offers little to no stimulus - then coffee isn’t the only thing you will probably need to get you through the weekday mornings.    630 CHED's Ryan Jespersen (photo by Aaron Pedersen). I kid, I kid! Although it doesn’t actually solve any of our problems of having to work for a living, those voices we hear coming from the local radio stations seem to make our starts to the day a little more bearable.  Most of my mornings begin with Crash & Mars of 102.3 NOW! Radio , who have the illustrious ability to make me laugh out loud when I’m alone in my vehicle no matter how lit...

CKUA By Emil Tiedemann With just a 500-watt signal, the CKUA Radio Network signed on for the first time on Monday, November 21, 1927 at the University of Alberta campus. It took a couple of Windmills, some worn iron poles, a $700 provincial grant, and two engineering students from the UofA to make it happen that day, and just like that CKUA became the first public broadcaster in the country!  By May 1929, CKUA was also Canada’s first broadcaster to offer public educational radio programming, including university lectures, poetry readings, and music concerts. When the Alberta Government Telephones company (AGT) took over operations of CKUA in 1945, they moved it from the UofA to a building on Jasper Avenue downtown, where it remained for the next 56 years.    The basement of CKUA in downtown Edmonton is full of thousands of vinyl records, CDs, audio tapes, and more! ACCESS assumed ownership in ‘74 and would eventually help launch the careers of some of Canad...

NOW! Radio host Mark D talks about his life in radio and how he almost ended up as a Rabbi? BY EMIL TIEDEMANN " I WASN'T allowed to listen to the radio growing up," admitted NOW! Radio host Mark Drelich , who moved to Edmonton from hometown Brooklyn when he was about two years old. "When I was younger I would put one Walkman headphone in my ear for the 630 CHED Oilers broadcast, and the other I would keep out to hear if my mom was coming down the hallway."  Mark D in training at Toronto's Humber College That's quite a progression from then and now - no pun intended - given Mark's current position at perhaps the most engaging FM station in the city.  Clearly, being in radio was never on his radar, let alone something Mark ever imagined for his future. Especially coming from a "very religious household" that had assumed he would take a more divine route, like his siblings.  He travelled to Toronto and Baltimore to gain a ...