At a time when broadcasting live sports on radio was big business, Jim Cox was a play-by-play pioneer. Jim’s long association with station CKNW started in 1945 as a sixteen-year-old statistician and between-periods interviewer for lacrosse broadcasts, the most popular sport in the Lower Mainland at that time. When the regular broadcaster died suddenly the following year, Jim was recruited to do play-by-play. It was a job he would keep for the next 36 years. In those days sports broadcasts not only made money, but it met a requirement of providing a prescribed number of hours of live programming.

When the Pacific Coast Hockey League and, later, the Western Hockey League were formed, Jim did play-by-play broadcasts of both the New Westminster Royals’ and the Vancouver Canucks’ home games. Between 1945 and 1956 CKNW did play-by-play of fourteen different sports, broadcasting everything from stock car racing to weightlifting. Jim proved his versatility by covering all of them. The list of sports he covered during that period would be unheard of today. He did play-by-play for lacrosse, hockey, basketball, golf, boxing, wrestling, stock car racing, swimming, weightlifting, track and field, curling, soccer and football – a major radio personality of his time. In 1954 the station covered the British Empire and Commonwealth Games and Jim handled the bulk of the work. His call of the Bannister-Landy Miracle Mile was a career highlight.

That same year the BC Lions entered the CFL and Jim began broadcasting games the following season. He handled the mike for all Lions games until 1983 when the broadcast rights went to a rival station. Jim retired in 1989. He was inducted into both the Canadian Football and Lacrosse Hall of Fame. Jim passed away in 1998.