CKUA Radio is a Canadian donor-funded
community radio
Community radio is a radio service offering a third model of radio broadcasting in addition to commercial broadcasting, commercial and public broadcasting.
Community broadcasting, Community stations serve geographic communities and communities o ...
station based in
Edmonton
Edmonton is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Alberta. It is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Central Alberta ...
,
Alberta
Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...
. Originally located on the campus of the
University of Alberta
The University of Alberta (also known as U of A or UAlberta, ) is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, t ...
in Edmonton (hence the UA of the call letters), it was the first public broadcaster in Canada when it began broadcasting in 1927. It now broadcasts from studios in
downtown Edmonton
Downtown Edmonton is the central business district of Edmonton, Alberta. Located at the geographical centre of the city, the downtown area is bounded by 109 Street to the west, 105 Avenue to the north, 97 Street to the east, 97 Avenue and Rossdale ...
, and as of fall 2016 has added a studio in
Calgary
Calgary () is a major city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in C ...
's
National Music Centre
The National Music Centre (NMC; ) is a non-profit museum, performance venue, and recording studio located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The centre's permanent building, branded Studio Bell, is located at 850 4th Street S.E. in Downtown East Villag ...
. CKUA's primary station is CKUA-FM, located on 94.9
FM in Edmonton, and the station operates fifteen
rebroadcasters to serve the remainder of the province.
As of February 28, 2021, CKUA is the 13th-most-listened-to radio station in the Edmonton market according to a PPM data report released by
Numeris.
History

CKUA was founded on November 21, 1927
["Mercy - Arden collects half a dozen ARIAs"](_blank)
''Edmonton Journal'', Edmonton, Alberta, May 30, 1994, p. 12 through a provincial grant which allowed the University of Alberta's Extension Department to purchase the licence of CFCK, which had been on the air since 1922, sharing a frequency with
CJCA. CKUA was also the first radio station to offer educational radio programming, including music concerts, poetry readings, and university lectures. From 1930 to 1931 the station was an affiliate of the
CNR Radio network.
From 1945 to 1974 CKUA was operated by
Alberta Government Telephones
Alberta Government Telephones (AGT) was the telephone provider in most of Alberta from 1906 to 1991.
AGT was formed by the Liberal Party of Alberta, Liberal government of Alexander Cameron Rutherford in 1906Wilson, Kevin G., Deregulating Teleco ...
. The
crown corporation
Crown corporation ()
is the term used in Canada for organizations that are structured like private companies, but are directly and wholly owned by the government.
Crown corporations have a long-standing presence in the country, and have a sign ...
,
Alberta Educational Communications Corporation (later known as Access), assumed ownership of the station in 1974.
In 1994, Access sold the CKUA network to the non-profit CKUA Radio Foundation for $10. The same year the station won an Alberta Recording Industry Award of Excellence.
On March 20, 1997, the station went off the air for five weeks due to political squabbles, poor financial management, and attempts at privatization.
The station restarted broadcasting on April 25, 1997, after control was given to the public from directors appointed by the provincial government. As of 2005, more than two-thirds of the station's funding came from its listeners in the form of donations.
In April 2024, CKUA announced that it needed to raise $3 million in donations by September 30, 2024, to avoid closure. Despite rising audience numbers and steady revenue, the station cited factors including the
recent inflation surge, limited government funding, and the vacancy and devaluation of the Alberta Hotel building, which it owns and rents out, for its financial struggles.
Cultural impact
The station's practice of supporting local, independent, and non-commercial artists has helped launch the careers of musicians such as
k.d. lang
Kathryn Dawn Lang (born November 2, 1961), known by her stage name k.d. lang (stylised in all lowercase), is a Canadian pop and country singer-songwriter and occasional actress. Lang has won Juno Awards and Grammy Awards for her musical pe ...
,
Jann Arden
Jann Arden (born Jann Arden Anne Richards; March 27, 1962) is a Canadian singer-songwriter, author and actress. She is best known for her signature ballads, " Could I Be Your Girl" and " Insensitive", which is her biggest hit to date, as well ...
, and
Bruce Cockburn
Bruce Douglas Cockburn ( ; born May 27, 1945) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist. His song styles range from folk to folk- and jazz-influenced rock to soundscapes accompanying spoken stories. His lyrics reflect interests in spirit ...
. In addition, CKUA has contributed to the careers of
Arthur Hiller
Arthur Hiller, (November 22, 1923 – August 17, 2016) was a Canadian television and film director with over 33 films to his credit during a 50-year career. He began his career directing television in Canada and later in the U.S. By the late ...
,
Robert Goulet
Robert Gérard Goulet (November 26, 1933 October 30, 2007) was an American‐Canadian singer and actor of French-Canadian ancestry. Goulet was born and raised in Lawrence, Massachusetts, until age 13, and then spent his formative years in Canad ...
, and
Tommy Banks, among others. Throughout the 1930s an early
radio drama
Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theatre, or audio theatre) is a dramatized, dramatised, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the liste ...
series, ''CKUA Players'', was produced out of the station and broadcast throughout
Western Canada
Western Canada, also referred to as the Western provinces, Canadian West, or Western provinces of Canada, and commonly known within Canada as the West, is a list of regions of Canada, Canadian region that includes the four western provinces and t ...
by a network of stations.
[Radio Drama, English Language]
''Canadian Encyclopedia'', accessed January 23, 2008
Programming
CKUA schedules different programs throughout the week and thus can offer many different genres including
blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, cha ...
,
bluegrass,
R&B,
Celtic
Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to:
Language and ethnicity
*pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia
**Celts (modern)
*Celtic languages
**Proto-Celtic language
*Celtic music
*Celtic nations
Sports Foot ...
,
country
A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. When referring to a specific polity, the term "country" may refer to a sovereign state, state with limited recognition, constituent country, ...
,
classical,
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...
,
reggae
Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica during the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its Jamaican diaspora, diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay", was the first ...
,
folk
Folk or Folks may refer to:
Sociology
*Nation
*People
* Folklore
** Folk art
** Folk dance
** Folk hero
** Folk horror
** Folk music
*** Folk metal
*** Folk punk
*** Folk rock
** Folk religion
* Folk taxonomy
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Fo ...
,
hip hop
Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hip- ...
,
dance
Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...
,
funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in African-American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African-Americans in the ...
,
rock
Rock most often refers to:
* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wale ...
, roots, and
world
The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that Existence, exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique, while others talk ...
.
Historic music archive
CKUA's music library boasts one of the largest and most diverse music collections in Canada, with more than 250,000
CDs and
LPs, including 10,000
78 rpm
A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English) or a vinyl record (for later varieties only) is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The g ...
records, as well as a few
aluminium transcription discs,
45s, and other various media formats.
Broadcast locations

CKUA was headquartered in the Alberta Block building on
Jasper Avenue
Jasper Avenue is an arterial road in central Edmonton, Alberta, and is the city's main street. Jasper Avenue has no official street number but is aligned with 101 Avenue with the majority of its length. Jasper Avenue is a major public transi ...
in Edmonton starting in 1955. In October 2012, CKUA moved into its current location in the Alberta Hotel building, with its first broadcast from the new location on October 15, 2012.
Broadcasting issues
The station's original transmitter was located at 580
kHz
The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base uni ...
in Edmonton. It operated at 10,000 watts. Due to its location near the bottom of the AM dial, as well as its transmitter power, it was powerful enough to cover nearly all of Alberta's densely populated area. It added an FM simulcast on June 28, 1948.
Starting in the 1970s, CKUA built a network of 16
FM repeaters across Alberta. CKUA also broadcasts in western Canada on select cable and satellite providers (such as
SaskTel
Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corporation, operating as SaskTel, is a Telecommunications in Canada, Canadian Crown corporations of Canada, crown-owned telecommunications firm based in the province of Saskatchewan. Owned by the provinci ...
, who carries CKUA across Saskatchewan as a
Lloydminster
Lloydminster is a city in Canada which has the unusual geographic distinction of straddling the provincial border between Alberta and Saskatchewan. The city is incorporated by both provinces as a single city with a single municipal administra ...
station). As of February 29, 1996, CKUA became the first radio station in Canada to
stream
A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a strea ...
their broadcast online, and now has upgraded the service to carry an unlimited number of streams. The station currently has more than 250,000 weekly listeners.
Because of CKUA's extensive coverage, the station was one of only a handful of broadcasters (another being
CTV Two Alberta, formerly Access) to carry the Alberta
Emergency Public Warning System. The provincial government-funded programme provided the station with 12% of its annual income until the contract was lost to an Ottawa firm, Black Coral Inc., in January 2010.
CKUA announced plans to shut down its legacy 580 AM signal, the longest continuously-used AM frequency in Canada, in the spring of 2013. It would have needed to invest as much as $5 million to upgrade the transmitter site to modern standards, an amount it could not afford.
[CKUA-AM history]
at Canadian Communications Foundation
The Canadian Communications Foundation (CCF) was a Canadian nonprofit organization which documented the history of broadcasting in Canada, particularly radio and television networks, programs and broadcasters. The organization was established in ...
However, CKUA did not receive formal approval from the CRTC until September 12, 2013. AM 580 went off the air on November 21, 2013, the station's 86th anniversary.
[CKUA says goodbye to 580 AM by CKUA Radio Network]
''soundcloud.com'', November 21, 2013
Current on-air personalities
The CKUA program lineup relies on a number of on-air personalities.
Previous on-air personalities
Transmitters
References
External links and references
CKUA Radio website with live broadcast streaming
CKUA Historyfrom the
Canadian Communications Foundation
The Canadian Communications Foundation (CCF) was a Canadian nonprofit organization which documented the history of broadcasting in Canada, particularly radio and television networks, programs and broadcasters. The organization was established in ...
"CFCK" later became "CKUA" - History from the Canadian Communications Foundation''CKUA: Radio Worth Fighting For'', by Marylu Walters; University of Alberta PressBroadcast Frequency List
CKUA: Fifty years of growth for the university's own station by Jean Kirkman
*
*
{{Authority control
Radio stations in Calgary, Kua
Kua
Public radio in Canada
1927 establishments in Alberta
Radio stations established in 1927
Culture of Alberta
Educational broadcasting in Canada
University of Alberta
CNR Radio