Some stations chase reinvention every few years. Z99 has done the opposite. The call letters have stayed CIZL, the branding has barely shifted, and the station has kept the same name and logo since it first signed on the air in Regina, Saskatchewan, back in June 1982, even as the music underneath it changed decade after decade.
From Modern Rock to Top 40
According to the Canadian Communications Foundation's broadcasting history archive, CIZL-FM was licensed to Midwest Broadcasters Ltd., a company owned by the Rawlinson family, after the CRTC approved the application in 1981. The station launched at 98.9 MHz with 100,000 watts of power and a Contemporary Middle-of-the-Road format, with Doug Rawlinson overseeing operations as general manager alongside the company's AM station. Over the following decades the station moved through modern rock, contemporary hit radio, and Adult CHR before landing on the hot adult contemporary format it plays today, all while remaining under what is now known as Rawlco Communications, per Wikipedia's entry on the station.
A Regina Institution
Z99 shares studio space with sister stations CJME and CKCK-FM on Saskatchewan Drive in Regina, and for years the station launched the careers of on-air talent that went on to bigger markets. The Crash & Mars morning show got its start on Z99 before Rawlco relocated the duo to CKNO-FM in Edmonton when that sister station launched in 2010, a reminder that Regina radio has often functioned as a proving ground for talent that Rawlco's wider network later absorbed.
Community Roots
Beyond the playlist, Z99 has built a reputation around the annual Z99 Radiothon, a fundraising push in support of the neonatal intensive care unit at Regina General Hospital. It is the kind of long-running civic tie that stations rarely maintain once ownership consolidates, and it has stayed part of Z99's identity through the CRTC's 2002 reorganization of Rawlco's Saskatchewan properties and every format tweak since.
What You Will Hear Today
Tune in now and the station plays current Top 40 and hot adult contemporary hits, positioning itself as the place to catch the songs getting the most airplay across Southern Saskatchewan. It is commercial radio in the most straightforward sense: high rotation, familiar voices, and a format built to be the easy, reliable choice on a car radio anywhere between Regina and the smaller towns around it. More than forty years after its first broadcast, that consistency is still the point.