This February, U of T’s community radio station, CIUT 89.5 FM, will flip the switch to begin broadcasting from its new home at Hart House. Ken Stowar, program director and 20-year CIUT veteran, is excited about the move. “Students can actually watch and on-location participate live. It’s part of our ongoing embracing of the University of Toronto,” he says.
The Victorian house that CIUT has occupied since it began as the closed-circuit Radio Varsity in 1966, holds a lot of memories. Stowar estimates that in the 20 years since the station hit the FM dial, through CIUT’s doors have entered 5,000 volunteers, some of whom have gone on to work in other media, and from much larger stations. During the 2005 lockout, radio personalities Andy Barrie and Shelagh Rogers hosted their own morning show from CIUT for a month—CBC management be damned.
A typical day at 91 St. George St. starts at 5 a.m., when one of seven morning shows broadcast live from the studio. As these shows go live, a 20-strong team of volunteers that puts together the weekday news magazine Take 5 is in gear: planning, researching, and doing prep work for their 8 a.m. timeslot.
“This is a business of immediacy,” says Stowar. “People from all walks of life walk into this building all day long, all week long, all month long, all year long, and of course all the volunteer programmers are making their way through the building. So the building, in essence, is 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week. It doesn’t stop.”
