Folk, roots, blues and the odd symphony across Alberta.
CKUA went on the air on November 21, 1927 from the University of Alberta's extension department, the first public broadcaster in Canada, mixing concerts with poetry readings and university lectures. The province ran it through Alberta Government Telephones and later Access, which sold it in 1994 to the non-profit CKUA Radio Foundation for ten dollars. It went dark for five weeks in 1997 amid political fights over its future, came back listener-funded, and now broadcasts from the Alberta Hotel in downtown Edmonton.
Most hours belong to the host, so a weekday can pass from folk singer-songwriters to soul, jazz and alt-country with no format in charge, all drawn from a library of more than 250,000 records. Specialists fill the evenings and weekends, from Holger Petersen's Natch'l Blues and Roy Forbes's Roy's Record Room to The Celtic Show and Bob Chelmick's The Road Home, which mixes songs with poetry.
Built for long Alberta drives.
