Early years The station launched on August 8, 1962. Its original frequency was 1540 kHz, using the call sign CHFI, simulcasting the
beautiful music of sister station
CHFI-FM, one of Canada's first
FM radio stations. Because 1540 is a
clear-channel frequency assigned to stations in the United States and the Bahamas, CHFI was authorized to broadcast only during the
daytime. In 1963, it sought to pay
CHLO in
St. Thomas, Ontario to move from 680 to another frequency, to free up 680 for CHFI's use. No deal was finalized, but, by 1966, the stations reached an agreement to share 680, and CHFI moved to 24-hour operation at that frequency. In 1971, so as to distinguish itself from CHFI-FM, the station changed its callsign to CFTR; the "TR" being a tribute to
Ted Rogers, Sr., radio pioneer and father of controlling shareholder
Ted Rogers. In 1972, CFTR abandoned the beautiful music simulcast of CHFI and adopted a
Top 40 format. For many years, it was the primary competition to Toronto's original Top 40 station,
CHUM. CFTR also hired
John Records Landecker from
WLS in
Chicago in 1981. Landecker spent two years at the station before returning to Chicago to work at
WLUP.
All-news era Through the 1980s and 1990s, music listeners switched to FM, prompting AM stations like CFTR to find non-music formats. On June 1, 1993, at 10 a.m., CFTR announced it would be discontinuing the Top 40 format, and began broadcasting a countdown of "the top 500 songs of the (then) past 25 years" titled "The CFTR Story". At 6 a.m. on June 7, after playing
Phil Collins' "
Against All Odds" (which was the #1 song in the countdown) and
Starship's "
We Built This City" (which also ended CHUM's Top 40 era in 1986), and the station stopped broadcasting in AM stereo, CFTR adopted its present
all-news radio format as "680 News". It was the first all-news radio station in Canada since the end of the former
CKO network in 1989. The station offers listeners a "weather guarantee" jackpot, which is drawn from a pool of listeners who enter the contest. In June 2021, Rogers announced that it would rebrand its news radio stations under the
CityNews brand to create a shared identity with local news on
Citytv television stations and their corresponding smartphone app and website. The rebranding took effect on October 18, 2021, with the station rebranding as
CityNews 680. On March 25, 2024, as part of a reimaging of the
CityNews brand, CFTR rebranded as
680 NewsRadio Toronto. ==Notable staff==