Few frequencies in Canadian radio have worn as many names as 92.5 in Edmonton. Over four decades, the same signal has been a country station, a soft rock station, a Top 40 juggernaut, and an adult hits outlet, cycling through identities as tastes and owners changed, before landing on a branding idea that leans entirely on what makes Edmonton, Edmonton.
Four Decades, Five Formats
The station signed on August 11, 1982, as CJAX-FM playing country music, before switching to the CKNG-FM call sign it still holds today, according to its Wikipedia history. From there it moved through soft rock as "King FM," a run as Top 40 powerhouse "Power 92," a stretch as "92.5 Joe FM" playing adult hits from 2004 to 2013, and then a hot adult contemporary format branded "The New 92.5 Fresh FM" starting in 2013, the identity Radio Shuffle still lists the station under. Ownership moved along a similar winding path, passing from CFCN Communications and Moffat Communications in the 1980s to Westcom Radio in the 1990s before Corus Entertainment took over in 2000, a company that still runs the station today.
Trading "Fresh" for a Local Nickname
On August 3, 2018, Corus dropped the Fresh Radio branding entirely and relaunched the station as "92.5 The 'Chuck," a name pulled straight from a local nickname for the city itself, as reported by Broadcast Dialogue. Brad Phillips, then Corus's VP and head of FM Radio, framed the move around celebrating "what life is like in the city," and program director Greg Johnson described the resulting format as a "pop-rock variety machine" spanning the 1980s through current hits, delivered with tighter, more produced announcer breaks instead of long-winded chatter. The on-air roster stayed in place through the switch, but staff shifted toward working as content creators across social and digital platforms rather than just voices on the dial.
Where "The 'Chuck" Actually Comes From
The nickname behind the rebrand has real linguistic roots. According to the Dictionary of Canadianisms, "Edmonchuk" blends the city's name with the Ukrainian surname suffix "-chuk," a nod to Edmonton's large population of Ukrainian descent, one of the biggest of any Canadian city. The term carries a mix of affection and gentle ribbing depending on who's using it, and the dictionary notes it is generally considered a term Edmontonians use about themselves rather than one outsiders should reach for. Building an entire station identity around a nickname with that kind of local specificity is an unusually direct way for a commercial broadcaster to signal it's speaking to Edmonton and nobody else.
A Station Still Finding Its Local Voice
The localization push has kept evolving well past the 2018 rebrand. By August 2024, the station had replaced syndicated morning content piped in from Seattle and Vancouver with a locally hosted show, continuing the same instinct that drove the original name change, less imported programming, more content that could only make sense in Edmonton. For a signal that spent 36 years cycling through generic format names like Power 92 and Joe FM, settling on a nickname that only means something if you already live there marks a distinct turn toward hyper-local identity.