Thank you, sir.
Good morning. My name is Don Conway. I'm the president and the majority owner of Pineridge Broadcasting. We're a small private broadcaster serving Cobourg, Port Hope, Northumberland County, Peterborough, and the Kawarthas in Ontario. Thank you for inviting us to appear before you.
I hope that by the time we part you'll have an understanding of small-market radio, the part we play in the everyday life and economy of our communities, and the financial stresses we live with each day in order to do it.
Due to the tight timelines, my comments to you will be limited to my oral presentation, but I'd be pleased to follow up with any written submission, if you require it.
I was born in Chute-à-Blondeau and raised on a farm at Alexandria. I sold my first calf to buy a transistor radio so that I could listen to music on the Cornwall station and the stations in Montreal to hear the play-by-play of les Canadiens and les Expos.
I started in radio in 1974 as a sales rep in Brockville. In 1983 the owner purchased a little, bankrupt AM radio station in Cobourg and asked me to go and run it for him. It was called CHUC, but on the street it was better known as “up-chuck radio”.