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Much of CKUA's current daily airtime is derived from its coverage of music
and the arts. But throughout its 75-year history, the station has
presented a sturdy diet of news coverage, current affairs, history and
politics.
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Inter-city
citizen debates (The Round Table, and Farm Radio Forum, both from the
1930s), coverage of the Alberta Legislature, public affairs documentary
production (such as the 1983 award-winning Hiroshima Revisited),
newsmagazine shows and call-in forums (such as Fil Fraser's Alberta
Morning, which debuted in 1983), a newsroom that covered breaking news,
news bureaus in Calgary, Lethbridge, Grande Prairie and Red Deer - all of
these played a significant role in CKUA's coverage of the life and times
of Alberta after the Second World War.
Developments and approaches to newsgathering, presentation and
interpretation resulted in broadcasting innovation in both Canada and the
world. In 1944, the station was the first in Canada to send newscasts by
telephone line to the Yukon and the Far North. Question Period, presented
daily with commentator Warren Graves, was the first time in the world that
a sitting legislature had been presented on radio. With its appointment of
a full-time legislative reporter in 1947, CKUA was also the first to
broadcast commentaries from the Press Gallery of a provincial legislature
during sessions.
And in October 1985, it took an unprecedented walk on the wild side of
remote broadcasting with 15 hours' continuous live coverage of the
Conservative Leadership Convention.
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There
would be productions such as Ask an Alcoholic, in which alcoholics
discussed their addiction and experts fielded calls by telephone; earlier
in its history, CKUA had been the first to broadcast an Alcoholics
Anonymous program. In 1982, Chris Allen would pair up with Peggy Holmes
(at 85 years of age, the oldest broadcaster in Canada) to produce the
issue-based series, Something for Seniors.
Today, news and public affairs coverage is featured on four shows: CKUA's
flagship compendium of Alberta politics, Sunday Magazine; the 30-minute
news show, B.B.C. World News, broadcast Sunday through Thursdays at 10
p.m.; Heritage Trails, Cheryl Croucher's vignette-laden Alberta history
series and the features and hourly news updates each weekday morning on
Alberta Morning with Dave Ward.
