CHKG-FM (96.1 MHz) is a commercial radio station in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It airs talk and music programs in multiple languages, with Chinese languages shows after 3 p.m. on weekdays, including Mandarin and Cantonese. It is owned by the Fairchild Group. The studios are at Aberdeen Centre in Richmond.

CHKG-FM is a Class C station. It has an effective radiated power (ERP) of 46,000 watts (100,000 watts maximum). Its transmitter tower is on Mount Seymour in the District of North Vancouver.

History

In 1995, the Fairchild Group, which already owned Vancouver multicultural station CJVB (1470 AM), and Roger Charest, owner of CKER in Edmonton, made a joint bid to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to establish FM world music stations in Vancouver and Calgary. The application was approved in 1996. The CRTC selecting the Fairchild Group over bids from Telemedia for an alternative rock station and Radio One Vancouver Corporation for an "adult/pop and talk" station. The CRTC found that the Vancouver radio market could not support another general-market station. CHMB (1320 AM) also proposed an ethnic FM station but withdrew its proposal.

CHKG-FM began broadcasting on September 6, 1997; 26 years ago (September 6, 1997). It was the fifth Fairchild ethnic media station to go on the air, and the first multilingual FM station in Western Canada. Programming was split between world music from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Chinese hit radio the rest of the day. Together with CJVB's daytime Chinese programming, it provided a 24-hour Chinese service while also catering to other communities.

CHKG held subsidiary communications multiplex operation authority over most of its history to broadcast a subcarrier-only service, originally in Korean and later in Punjabi. By the 2015 renewal, the SCMO service had returned to Korean.

Programming

CHKG operates with a program schedule that generally is the inverse of CJVB. During the day from Monday to Saturday, it airs programs in Filipino, Hungarian, Italian, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Macedonian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Thai, and Vietnamese.

The conditions of CHKG-FM's licence prevent it from airing Chinese-language programs between 6 a.m. and 3 p.m, Monday through Saturday, when those shows are heard on CJVB 1470. After 3 p.m. and all day on Sundays, CHKG-FM presents Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese shows.