Edmonton Journal from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada • 8

A8 MONDAY, JUNE 19, 2006 CONTINUED FROM PAGE A1 EDMONTON JOURNAL OK boys' most recent coup was creation of Edmonton first cutting-edge rock station ri nT'T 1 i I i. muni A mMI 11 WWJ! If- -d XT i I ii ll GREG SOUTHAM, THE JOURNAI, After more than 30 years as business partners and 40 years as best friends, Roger Charest, left, and Stu Morton, owners of the OK Radio Group, are selling their company and retiring. recalls, "the phones never stopped. People kept coming by the station. And the next day, everywhere we went in town there was jubilation.

The whole town was magic." The next year, Charest and Morton launched CFOK in Westlock and QOK in St Paul. Fort McMurray boomed. And in 1980, Charest started CKER AM in Edmonton, the ethnic station that's now World FM. After OICs sale of its St. Paul and West-lock stations, an FM station in Fort McMurray followed in 1985, and OK expanded to Victoria in 1987 with the now-dominant rock signal.

Faced skepticism "Victoria was really the beginning of the maturity of the company, moving from being a small broadcaster to a much more sophisticated market, surrounded by Vancouver and Seattle. The band is jammed there," Morton says. The OK boys faced skepticism in Victoria from an insular radio community that hadn't a clue who they were. "Absolutely, there was a lot of that. 'They're from Fort It was obvious that we weren't being taken kept our own counsel, concentrated on whatwe wanted to do.

We redefined the product; we redefined radio in Victoria," Morton says. A second Victoria station followed in 1994, as did Sun FM in Grande Prairie. On Friday, OK applied for a second Morton was aUniversity of Alberta commerce student spinning early rock 'n' roll on the campus's closed-circuit station. By the decade's turn, they were close buddies and veteran radio jocks with great gigs. Charest was with CHQT in Edmonton and Morton with CKRD in Red Deer.

When Charest announced plans in 1972 to trek north and build Fort McMurray's first-ever station, his peers were incredulous. "Everybody said, 'You're crazy. Don't do it. The town's not ready. This is Charest says.

"But I never had any doubts. And the first call I made was to Stu." Morton remembers it: "Roger called me and said, 'I think I'm going to get a licence in Fort McMurray, I'd like you to consider joining And I said. 'Oh. (Pause.) Where's Fort Morton and his wife drove up, on the chassis-rattling gravel highway during the Remembrance Day weekend of 1972, and were sold. "Even today people think of the oil-sands as a desert of fladand with rolling sand dunes.

Of course, it's not like that at all. It's very dramatic scenery. I loved the look of the place, the sense of history," he says. "It was very remote but yet the people we met were so excited about the future of Fort McMurray and they had such a vision, you really got caught it up in it" The night of CJOICs launch, Charest station in the booming northwestern Alberta city. (Rogers Radio will assume responsibility for the startup if the application is successful.) Perhaps OICs biggest coup came just last spring, when men reared on Elvis and Bill Haley launched Sonic, Edmonton's first modern-rock station, with its challenging playlist of cutting-edge bands like Metric and The New Pornog-raphers.

Sonic was immediately a player in Edmonton's competitive radio market, its attention-grabbing early broadcasts from a beaten-up trailer in a Nisku industrial park a metaphor for OICs indie, underdog spirit. "I knew there was a place in the market for that type of station," says Morton, who professes to like Sonic favourites like The Shins they sound like Simon and and Franz Ferdinand. Charest compares OICs achievements, crowned by Sonic's surprising success, to "a racehorse that's won the Kentucky Derby." So why sell? Spend 10 minutes talking either to Charest, who's run a dozen marathons and is contemplating No. 13, or Morton, who still cranks out long hours producing in his home studio in Canmore, and it's obvious they have energy to burn. Why stop now? "It's time," Charest says.

"Perhaps I'm doing it a little soon, but not that soon. OKRadio needs to continue to grow, and Idon'tthinklcan continue to provide the leadership or would want to when I'm 70." Morton agrees with his old friend. "I said to Roger after we did Sonic, 'I've really enjoyed this, butl don'twanttodo another one of these he says. "If we did one in Calgary, it's five, six, seven years away. By the time you're on the air, Roger's in his 70s and I'm in my late 60s.

I don't want that stress. I want to be around for a while." As the sale of their Alberta stations proceeds neither Morton, Charest nor Rogers Radio executives will comment on the transaction accolades pout1 in. In a business as cutthroat as any, the duo are remarkably well-regarded by their competitors. Rogers Radio CEO Gary Miles has known Charest for a quarter-century and, calls him "the kindest man I've ever met." Marty Forbes, vice-president of Standard Broadcasting in Edmonton and boss of Sonic's main rival, The Bear, has nothing' but praise for the OK boys. "These are guys who started out many; many years ago in tiny, little, wee markets, where the challenges were significant.

And to have grown to where they are, to pickup a (huge cheque) from that kind of start, is wonderful," Forbes says. Highly respected "They have reputations as 'people' peo pie, family guys. A guy I know has been with them for 30 years, and they treat everybody with respect. They're good competitors, but at the end of the they're good people first." Forbes says it's telling that three of Morton's children daughter Kate is the sultry voice of Sonic andtwoofCharest's have followed their fathers into the business. OK is "very successful, very profitable' and very fun," Charest says, but it's the1 company's reputation of which he seems the most proud.

"When your family is young, you have to bring your children up to be good citizens. You look at the radio stations in the, same way," he says. 'We've always tried to run the business like a home. No matter what happens in your day if you're selling advertis-; when you walk through the door of the radio station, you're home. Have a cup of coffee and there's some bread in the oven.

Let's sit back and enjoy this. This our home, and it's safe here. "Stu and I are proud of the company and how long people have been with us They love it, I guess." sohlerthejournal.canwest.com In Roger Charest erects a transmission tower for Ft. McMurray's first radio station in December 1972. OK RADIO Continued from Al The Jim Pattison Broadcast group recently bought OICs two Victoria rock stations forarumoured $12 million.

Toronto's Rogers Media is about to snap up OICs five Alberta stations including Edmonton's upstart Sonic FM and the 26-year-old multicultural stalwart World FM for a rumoured $40 million. But their friendship a bond that began here in the early '60s between two radio-crazy twentysomethings will endure. With a catch in his musical voice, Morton says of Charest: "Roger's a great, outgoing person, a creative guy, my best friend. We've been in business for 30 years and we still love each other." Of Morton, four years his junior at 62, Charest says: "This big ride has been wonderful. Stu has brought more pleasure into my life than he'll ever know.

We've been through the highs and lows together. There's a magic there." Huge gamble Magic it's how they both describe, frequently and independently, the huge gamble they took more than 33 years ago when they launched CJOK. Back then, Fort McMurray's phone listings were 20 pages long, in a stapled book the size of an elementary-school scribbler. The Great Canadian Oil Sands plant, later Suncor, was struggling, and Syncrude's entry into the bitumen-extracting business was five years away. Charest and Morton had met in 1963, young men already seduced by the dominant media form of the day.

Charest was a night announcer at CFRN radio and SUPPLIED Roger Charest with his children, Roger Jr. and Colette, at CHQT radio in 1968. Both followed their father into the business, as did three of Stu Morton's children. 0 fi3i WpRrMKiQFJllilYEADI A E0N20QZ0DGE CAUSER KWD KIW 2006 JXXXX CARAVAN BCV1 0115' 7CB6512 2006 CARAVAN I Mill BRAKruaW2006jmU Bm3KTW20MWU50QC4X4SlT STKH6CR1428 ALL NEW 2007 CAUBER STK 7C84725 0 DOWN 9 15908 Yiii ttJVmZMrrPUDZRTYSJWlT BSAHD NEW 2006 JSOOjyCDUAUYDZSEl JNtDMUtOStl cnmnitf STM60R2822 SWV4376 STM6GH8829 JEHPTJ STM8IJ1937 21,888 i7i $27,988 34,988 ct ffOt 5 MNJBP fBIMHIfll STXH6CM85H US 4X4 SIT DU3ANG0 BRAND NEW DODGE. 159- s25888l I -214 153- HUB 1' Tsrwroia ktainr.

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