Owned and operated by Stingray Radio, the station is branded on-air as Rewind 103.9 with a classic hits format.
CHNO's studios and offices were located at 166 Elm Street West in Sudbury, while the RCA transmitter and two towers were situated in the McFarlane Lake district of Sudbury, along Burwash Road, on part of Lot 3, Concession 6, Broder Township.
In 1952, the station was the subject of controversy when Ricard refused to permit Local 598 of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers to purchase airtime on the station for a labour-oriented news program, on the grounds that the program represented "Communist propaganda".
[1] His objection had less to do with the program's spoken content and more to do with the host's choice of interstitial music between segments, including a song by Paul Robeson.
After struggling through a variety of formats, including classic rock as AM 55 The Crusher in 1994, country and talk in 1995 and 1996, the station reverted to oldies in 1997.
Former program director Scott Jackson, now the manager of CJLF-FM in Barrie, has stated that CHNO and CJMX were the most neglected stations in the entire Pelmorex corporate family during the time that he worked there, despite being the network's nominal flagships.
[14] Despite no longer having common ownership, however, CHYC and CHNO continued to operate from the same studio facility at 493 Barrydowne Road in Sudbury until 2009.
[15] In 2002, however, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting filed a brief with the CRTC opposing the station's license renewal — FCB took the position that in practice, the agreement was extending well beyond advertising sales and into both program production and news gathering, and thus constituted an illegal de facto local management agreement.
[17] At 12:00 AM on January 1, 2006, with little or no warning, the station flipped to a variety hits format branded as Big Daddy 103.9 with slogan "Playing Anything", ending another era of Top 40 music in the Sudbury market.
[18] [19] General manager Darlene Palmer said the station wanted to offer Sudbury "music you can dance to, sing to, date to, divorce to."
In July 2008, however, Newcap announced a deal to acquire CIGM from Rogers in exchange for CFDR in Halifax.
[24] In 2011, CHNO-FM aired syndicated programs such as the 1970s reruns of American Top 40 with Casey Kasem, the Classic Countdown with Dick Bartley and the Donny Osmond show.