CHUM Radio

CHUM signed on in Toronto in the 1940s as a modest AM station, but its defining moment came in 1957, when new owner Allan Waters switched it to a Top 40 rock and roll format — generally credited as one of the first Canadian stations to adopt the format wholesale. Waters went on to build CHUM Limited into one of Canada's major broadcasting companies, eventually encompassing CityTV and MuchMusic, but the AM station remained its flagship and cultural anchor for decades, operating from a building on Yonge Street whose illuminated CHUM sign became a recognizable landmark.

The CHUM Chart

CHUM's most enduring artifact is the CHUM Chart, a free weekly printed survey of the top songs in Toronto distributed at record stores from the late 1950s into the 1980s. Tailored to what Toronto listeners were actually buying and requesting, it became a collectible in its own right, and decades of back issues are now preserved and studied as a week-by-week record of the city's pop tastes. Changing tastes and a fragmenting radio market pushed CHUM-AM away from Top 40 in the mid-1980s, with the format effectively moving to its FM sister station.

Sources

• The Canadian Encyclopedia — CHUM Limited
• Wikipedia — CHUM (AM)