When Roger Charest received the broadcasting license for a new station in St. Paul, Alberta in 1974, the promise behind it was unusually ambitious for a small northern town: at least 44 hours of local programming a week, plus dedicated segments in French, Cree and Ukrainian, reflecting the mix of communities that actually lived in the area. That station, CIOK, signed on in 1975 and has run continuously under one call sign or another for half a century.
Five Names, One Signal
The station's history reads like a map of Canadian radio consolidation. CIOK became CHLW in 1982 under new ownership, stayed on 1310 AM through several corporate changes including Telemedia Radio and NewCap Inc., then converted to FM in 2009 and took its current call sign, CHSP-FM, in 2011. The frequency has carried a country format essentially the entire time, surviving five ownership changes without ever abandoning the genre that defined it from the start.
Real Country, Then New Country
Under NewCap, the station rebranded as Real Country 97.7 The Spur in 2011, then simplified to Real Country 97.7 in 2016 as part of a wider rebrand across the company's Alberta country stations, a consolidation that also eliminated seven on-air positions at the time. Stingray Group took over ownership in 2018 and added a syndicated morning show piped in from sister station Real Country 95.5 in Red Deer the following year, a cost-saving move that cut local staffing further even as the on-air brand stayed familiar to St. Paul listeners.
Small-Town Radio in a Consolidating Industry
CHSP's story is really the story of rural Canadian radio over the last fifty years: a station built on an explicit promise of local, multilingual programming for a small town, gradually folded into a provincial and then national ownership structure that trades some of that local identity for operating efficiency. The country format has outlasted every single one of those changes, proof that whatever St. Paul's listeners want from their local station, country music was never up for negotiation.
Stream CHSP Real Country 97.7 Free on Radio Shuffle
Tune in to CHSP Real Country 97.7 on Radio Shuffle, no account, no app, no fee. Press play and hear fifty years of country radio broadcasting out of St. Paul, Alberta.