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COMMUNICATIONS After a two-year effort by the independent London Telephone Company, it was bought by the Bell Telephone Company of Canada (established 1880) in 1881. In October 1926, the single manual telephone exchange was replaced by two new exchanges, however, still manual telephone service (Canada's first dial exchange was only established in 1924 in Toronto): the Metcalfe and Fairmont exchanges. On May 20, 1951, just after midnight, the two exchanges were replaced with the first dial exchange. Although all numbers were changed to new five-digit numbers (party lines had an extra digit, represented by a letter, on the end), only some 22,000 of the 37,000 customers received dial telephones. Manual equipment removed from homes was put to use over the next seven years to expand phone service to meet the post-war boom. On June 2, 1957, several thousand additional manual customers were changed to dial service. On June 1, 1958, at 3:00 a.m., with active lines numbering about 60,000, nearly all remaining telephone customers on the London exchange (including customers in London and Westminster Townships) were converted to dial service. The existing exchange became the GEneral exchange (i.e., 8-8391 become GE 8-8391), while customers east of a line roughly along Rectory, Quebec and Sterling Streets, and Briarhill Avenue, were rewired to the new GLadstone exchange. Some 9,000 manual phones that remained, served by GEneral or HUdson numbers, were converted to dial service on GEneral by the following spring, making the city itself fully dial-operated. With the annexation of January 1, 1961, manual telephones of the Byron exchange became part of the city, and they were converted to dial on September 15, 1963, the date that the last exchange names in the district were abolished in favour of All Number Calling. Bell Canada continues to be the incumbent local exchange carrier for London, offering customers on the actual London exchange (not including the Lambeth exchange) free calling to 62 exchanges extending far to the northwest, east, south and southwest. London pioneered in the establishment of cable television in Canada, being either the first or second city in Canada with cable service. London Cable TV had just 15 customers at first when it started in 1952, and only one customer had acquired a set before service was offered. Another cable system was established in the southwest portion of the city, and a gentleman's agreement set the serving boundary. The southwest system quickly became part of MacLean Hunter, while the London system later became part of Canadian Cablesystems, which was then purchased by Rogers Communications in a hostile take-over. Since the acquisition of MacLean Hunter by Rogers, the systems have essentially amalgamated operationally, although the systems cooperated extensively since about 1970 on community television projects. London had the second operating private television station in Canada, CFPL-TV (CKSO-TV Sudbury was the first, about five weeks earlier), on-air on November 28, 1953. CFPL remained affiliated with the CBC television network until August 31, 1988, when it became independent, then affiliated with Baton Broadcasting, and then rebranded and upscaled as "The New PL". The station had established a Windsor-area associate station in the early 1990s, CHWI-TV. It has long had an association with sister station CKNX in Wingham, which by itself would have been unviable. It remains basically the only local TV station in London, although the area is served by CKCO Kitchener, Global Television and repeaters of CBLT Toronto. London also had radio since 1922 when CJGC was established, and later served the Canadian National Railways radio network as "phantom station" CNRL, broadcasting CN programming only when CN trains with radio cars were in the area. It joined a Windsor station in early 1933 to become CKLW, but a local station was reestablished late that year, CFPL, affiliating through the 1930s to about 1978 as a station of the CBC Radio network (the Dominion Network from 1944 to 1962). A sister FM station was established in 1948, but remained largely undistinctive until the late 1960s when federal regulations required distinctive programming except during overnight hours. CFPL was the only radio station in the city until 1956, when competitor CKSL started. CFPL remained as a community-service oriented station, with full news coverage and open-line programs. CKSL found its niche with music programming. A third station, CJOE, was founded in 1967 by Joe McManus, and tried to emulate CFPL's style, without success. Purchased in 1970, it switched to a rock format, and the call sign CJBK. Radio voices in the area boomed in the late 1970s and 1980s, with three CBC-owned repeaters bringing the AM, FM and French networks into the city, and the CKO All-News Network founding a station, the third in its network, staying on the air until the CKO network folded in the 1980s. In addition to one station each with Fanshawe College and the UWO, other stations are associated with existing stations. Until 1937, London had two newspapers that had proven staying power: the London Free Press and the London Advertiser. The Advertiser folded in 1937, and there has been no local competition for the Free Press since then. The Free Press was one of the rare newspapers still publishing both morning and evening editions through 1981, when the evening edition was permanently terminated. |
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