In October, CKLW-AM in Windsor, Ontario, the former "Big 8" Top 40 giant plagued by falling ratings for years, fires 79 staffers and goes mostly automated in preparation for a format change to Music of Your Life on 1 January 1985.
Earlier on, he was one of the 20/20 News anchors during the "Big 8" years at CKLW radio in Windsor / Detroit.
In the late 1960s, Windsor radio station CKLW AM 800 engineered a wiring setup which has allowed the station's signal to be heard clearly by automobiles traveling through the Tunnel.
CKLW's FM sister station CFXX experiments with a Top 40/Rock hybrid format called "94 Fox FM" in some dayparts, but its application to make "The Fox" a full-time format is denied by the CRTC and the experiment lasts only a few months.
MacGregor then read the patriotic commentary on CKLW Radio as part of a public affairs program; and, due to the huge response he was asked to record "The Americans" with "America the Beautiful" performed by The Detroit Symphony Orchestra as the background music.
CJAD broadcasts with 50,000 watts in the daytime and 10,000 watts at night to avoid interfering with other stations using the 800 frequency, such as the country-formatted CJBQ in Belleville, Ontario, the moribund CHRC in Quebec City (which is approximately 250 miles 160 km away and has shut down in September 2012), and CKLW in Windsor, Ontario.
The antenna is a six-tower array with differing patterns day and night, to protect Class-A clear-channel station XEROK-AM in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, as well as neighbouring stations CKLW in Windsor and CJAD in Montreal.
By the 1950s, and continuing through the mid-1970s, many of the most powerful North American "clear channel" stations such as KDKA, WLW, CKLW, CHUM, WABC, WJR, WLS, WKBW, KFI, KAAY, KSL and a host of border blasters from Mexico pumped out Top 40 music played by popular disc jockeys.
The station made a second attempt at Top 40 in 1969 with a lineup of disc jockeys that included K.O. Bayley, Lee 'Baby' Simms, Jim Hampton and CKLW mainstay Tom Shannon, but it lasted only a few months.