CKIS-FM (92.5 MHz) is a Canadian radio station in Toronto, Ontario. Owned by Rogers Radio, a division of Rogers Sports & Media, the station broadcasts a Top 40/CHR format branded as KiSS 92.5.
The station was founded on January 26, 1993 as CISS-FM under the ownership of Rawlco Communications in the "New Country" format. CISS was acquired by Rogers Communications on February 26, 1999, and was rebranded first as Power 92, then Kiss 92.5 as a top 40 station, but the station was renamed to 92.5 Jack FM on June 4, 2003 with the call letters CJAQ-FM under a jockless adult hits format before abandoning the concept in 2006 and played classic rock music. The current iteration of "Kiss" was relaunched on June 5, 2009.
CKIS studios are located at the Rogers Building at Bloor and Jarvis Streets in the northeastern corner of downtown Toronto, while its transmitter is located atop First Canadian Place.
History
The beginning and Country music (1989–1999) On July 31, 1989, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced a call for applications to license a new FM station on the 92.5 frequency, which was believed to be the last available FM frequency in the Toronto market. On August 8, 1990, Rawlco Communications was awarded a licence from the CRTC for a new FM radio station. The format chosen to air on the frequency was country music that would target an audience ranging from 25–54 years of age. Rawlco planned on changing frequencies for the station to 99.1 FM, which was formerly the home of CKO-FM-1, but cancelled the plan after the CRTC denied this. On January 26, 1993, at 1 p.m., singer Anne Murray pressed the button to launch the station, with the CISS-FM call letters and CISS-FM 92.5 (pronounced "kiss") branding.
The station's licensing by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission had been controversial, because the CRTC had passed over an application by Milestone Radio for an urban music station, which would have been a new format in the Toronto market, in favour of Rawlco's application. Milestone's second attempt at an urban station was also passed over in favour of CBLA-FM; the company finally won a licence on its third attempt, and launched CFXJ-FM in 2001.
First "Kiss" era (1999–2003) Rogers Communications announced a deal to buy the station in February 1999. The deal would not be completed until August, but immediately after the deal was announced, Rogers took control of the station's programming by way of a local management agreement or LMA (at the time, LMAs were not actively regulated by the CRTC). Without much warning, on February 5, 1999, at 7:30 p.m., the station flipped formats to Top 40/CHR and changed monikers to Power 92, becoming the first city-grade Top 40 station to serve Toronto since the demise of CHOG in October 1995. The final song on "CISS" was "The Dance" by Garth Brooks, while the first song on "Power" was "Doo Wop (That Thing)" by Lauryn Hill.
The station's on-air staff was immediately let go. Some reports at the time indicated the staff had been taken out to a meal at a restaurant nearby, then returned to the station to find they were no longer allowed in. In a conversation recollecting the incident 23 years later, Mike Richards indicated that the staff had been invited to a fine dining restaurant and were expecting a meal but, after a lengthy delay, they were instead handed their layoff notices in one of the dining rooms. When the station flipped to Power, the station attracted adverse attention from the operators of CKDX, then a dance music station branded as Power 88.5 in Newmarket, north of Toronto, and from Corus Entertainment, which owned several "Power" stations in western Canada at the time, and who had taken steps towards potentially turning their Toronto rock music station CILQ-FM in a new direction as Power 107. On February 26, 1999, the station rebranded as Kiss 92 FM. The station would later rebrand as Kiss 92.5.
In its early days, the station also aired imaging material in which an announcer pronounced the name of the city "Toe-ron-toe", widely considered a mispronunciation of Toronto. New material was soon substituted.
