On April 1, 1978, to the driving beat of Deep Purple’s “Highway Star,” radio in Winnipeg changed forever, as a young upstart rock station called CITI FM tried to blow the collective minds of a city’s youth.

CITI was the first hard-rock station on the FM band in the Peg and it was determined to make its mark. But no one could have predicted the impact it would have on a cold, isolated, prairie town full of teens itching for something new, fresh and relevant to their generation.

Winnipeg had a reputation as a hard rockin’ town and new bands like Streetheart, Mood Ja Ja, Harlequin, and the Pumps had begun to pack clubs in the River City, building on a previous generation of trail blazers like the Squires, The Guess Who, Sugar and Spice, Mongrels, the Fifth and Brother. Hotel bars like the Norlander, the St. Vital, and the Zoo shook with the

Winnipeg sound. Line-ups around the block in 40 below weather were common and at times out drew the touring acts foolish enough to schedule a gig on the same night as these local heroes. I remember being at a legendary show at the Norlander where Streetheart had to jump from pool table to pool table looking for a way through the cheering mob to a darkened stage.  

In hindsight it seems obvious — build a hard-edged radio station and they will come. But back in the day it took balls, vision and the most powerful signal in North America to make a splash that, 30 years later, you can still feel the ripples of.
The key to the stations’s early success was the people behind it. CITI had a staff who were little more than kids themselves, a band of gypsies led by Brother Jake Edwards that included Andy Frost, Terry DiMonte “The Rock and Roll Doctor,” and “The Voice” Howard Mandshein. Irreverent, funny and knowledgeable, they poured out killer tunes by soon-to-be-superstars like Van Halen, Aerosmith and Black Sabbath, mixed with long forgotten bands like Climax Blues Band, Budgie, Pretty Things, Montrose and Goddo.

CITI broke acts in North America like U2 and The Tragically Hip while also championing Winnipeg bands, ensuring that they too got the star treatment and had their albums played in heavy rotation. Winnipeggers responded, flooding their phone lines eager to talk with the jocks that quickly became rock and roll gods.

Howard Mandshein remembers one way that Brother Jake Edwards got kids to tune in. He met hundreds of them a week and told them he’d mention their names on the radio the next morning. The lucky kid would then call his friends and they’d all tune in to wait for Brother Jake to name-check their friend. Edwards was fearless and funny — Winnipeg had never seen such a luminescent radio personality.

The real visionary behind CITI’s original dream team, recalls Mandshein, was program director Gary Christian. “He listened to his jocks and to the listeners, plucking out the best ideas. Then he’d be in his office early the next morning implementing them.” To this day Mandshein wonders how he caught Christian’s ear, insisting that he couldn’t tell a joke if his life depended on it. But Christian seemed to know that his station needed a revered musicologist to balance the brilliant radio talents that were Edwards and DiMonte.

Christian was an unparalleled motivator. In a time before cell phones Mandshein remembers getting a call from a payphone on Portage Avenue where Christian had pulled his car over. “Killer bit Howard, killer bit,” Christian’s voice bellowed above traffic. “Have a good show.”

The impact of 92 CITI FM reached well past the perimeter highway. Mandshein recalls meeting a program director for a major classic rock station in New York City who revealed that he had grown up in Grand Forks, North Dakota listening to CITI and swore that any success he’d had in radio came from emulating the station’s 1979/80 sound.

The station also made a career-rocking impact on a young fan named Joe Aiello. Aiello was just a kid when he called into Brother Jake’s morning show looking for tickets to a Streeheart concert at the Winnipeg Arena. He soon had Edwards in stitches with his impression of Mandshein’s unique voice. Little did Edwards know that this was the first on air appearance of someone who would later become one of the most recognizable voices of the station.

Tom McGouran joined CITI as the morning guy in 1994 when the station was at a low ebb. It didn’t take him long to pluck Aiello off the afternoon show, and this power duo has been waking up the city’s classic rock fans ever since.  

Famous for their on-air pranks, the pair say that one involving Roger Moore, the famed 007, remains one of their favourites.

Aiello, always looking for the funny, talked Moore into taking calls as a bad guy rather than the saint he was. Moore trash talked listeners who called in for show tickets at the “trashy ticket window” getting more and more into the role with each passing caller. The last caller was a young woman who begged Moore not to trash her and offered the star her panties in exchange for tickets. Without coming out of character Moore told her in his clipped English accent: “It would take more than used panties to get these tickets, my dear.”

Through the years, 92 CITI FM has been a part of the community, making us laugh, think and sometimes both at the same time.

At one point cancer had hit Aiello’s family hard, with both his mother and his wife battling the disease. The radio host was looking for a way to help and offered his hairy Italian back, or as McGouran calls it the “human sweater,” up for waxing. Aiello called it “Pulling for the Cause.” Callers flooded the phone lines, offering cash for every pull. Through gritted teeth, while enduring constant ribbing McGouran, Aiello screamed through over a hundred pulls and raised more than $15,000 for cancer research.

Recently McGouran and Aiello organized a petition to push the province into giving Manitobans a February holiday. The “Just Doer” campaign was a huge success, drawing in over 30,000 signatures and garnering national attention. In the end, they had played a part in creating Manitoba’s new annual holiday — Louis Riel Day.

Today CITI competes with a full FM dial of stations playing rock, pop, or some other variation, to say nothing of the hundreds of internet and satellite radio stations available to Winnipeggers, yet still hangs on to its core audience. They say if you want to be successful in radio today you need to focus on being local. CITI FM got that concept a long time ago and it has been the city’s rock and roll heart for three decades.

On the Stones’ 1974 single Mick claimed: “It’s only rock and roll, but I like it.” No truer statement can be said about 92 CITI FM.