The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor A northern Manitoba tradition of nearly four decades comes to an end later this month. March 31 will mark the final broadcast of Rotary Radio Bingo, which has been heard nearly every Saturday morning since 1974. As The Reminder reported earlier this year, declining card sales have rendered the Rotary Club fundraiser unprofitable. The bingo _ heard on the Arctic Radio Network of CFAR-590 in Flin Flon, CJ-1240 in The Pas and 610-CHTM in Thompson _ has struggled in recent years even as expenses were slashed. Whereas the Rotary Club had been selling some 6,000 bingo cards per week a decade ago, fewer than 600 are now being purchased. The decline has been chalked up to a host of factors, including a competing radio bingo on NCI, the availability of other forms of gambling and the apparent lack of young people picking up dabbers. The radio bingo tradition began in 1974 when the Rotary Club borrowed the concept from two previous organizing groups. Flin Flonners first played bingo over the airwaves two years earlier, in 1972, when CFAR became the only station outside Winnipeg to pick up the Royal Winnipeg Ballet radio bingo. Less than two years later, the ballet company, dissatisfied with revenues from the fundraiser, turned it over to the Rotary Clubs of Manitoba, which only kept the program for about six months. A few months went by before Flin Flon Rotarian Jack Gordon purchased time on CFAR to hold his own bingo to raise money for his daughter's run at the Queen Mermaid crown. The success was surprising, prompting Gordon to recommend that his club, eager for a new revenue stream, host its own radio bingo program each week. And so Rotary Radio Bingo, based out of CFAR, was born.
