Fifty Thousand Watts of Dave
Once a radio rat, always a radio rat By JIM HURCOMB Talking about “The Golden Age of
Radio” is a subjective exercise. For my parents, it would the 30s
and 40s, when Bing Crosby, Jack Benny, Burns and Allen and Boston Blackie beamed into living rooms across North America. If you grew up musically in the 70s
and 80s it was probably CHEZ 106, with Geoff Winter, Shelley Hartman and Brian Murphy, or perhaps Kevin Nelson and the Majic 100 crew. When they look back in 20 years,
the kids of today will fondly remember the “Golden Days” of HOT 89.9 and LIVE 88.5. It really all depends who you grew
up listening to. For me, it was CFRA and CKOY.
My nightly homework hours were more focused on checking out the latest hits on the radio than learning that damn New Math. I even won a case of Coca Cola on Gord Atkinson’s Campus Club one night, making me the talk of Rideau High School the next day. It was always waking up to “The
General”, and knowing it was time to brush my teeth when he belted out the “Forward Ho!” And at night it was flipping between Al “Pussycat” Pascal and Nelson Davis down the dial on CKOY. Now those were the “Glory Days of Radio”! Dave Watts was another familiar
voice on the CFRA airwaves in the 60s 16 BOUNDER MAGAZINE
and 70s, better known by his awesome nickname, Dave “50,000” Watts. It referred to the power output of CFRA, which blasted out over the valley well into Northern New York states, making it the true powerhouse of Ottawa radio. He listened to CFRA as a kid growing
up here, and while he really aspired to be a meteorologist, he was attracted to the business after taking a field trip to check out CFRA on Isabella Street. In the summer of 1964, Dave was
looking for a summer job, so he sent out letters of interest to all the local stations. He says “CFRA was the only one that wrote back.” He got a job “schlepping”. Now for
those of you not familiar with the term, that means doing things that nobody else wants to do. That means lugging equipment all over the valley for “The Happy Blunderers” baseball team, or handing out flyers at the Ottawa Ex. If you couldn’t find anyone else to do it, you just asked Dave. But he loved it, and they kept him
on, gradually moving him up to more important duties. Dave Watts was a certified “radio rat”, just hanging around the radio studios like a wide-eyed kid peering over the boards at the local hockey arena. He had caught the radio bug. And the beauty of the radio business is, if you hang around long enough, and don’t screw up too badly, good things will happen. Dave Watts’ big break came in 1966.
That year he had moved up to the rather prestigious position of producer for Al
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