CKLW (800 AM) is a commercial radio station in Windsor, Ontario, serving Southwestern Ontario and Metro Detroit. CKLW is owned by Bell Media and has a news/talk radio format. It features local hosts in morning and afternoon drive times, with syndicated Canadian hosts in middays and evenings, plus Coast to Coast AM with George Noory overnight. Evening newscasts are simulcast from CHWI-DT Channel 16 CTV Windsor.

CKLW is a 50,000-watt Class B station, using a five-tower array directional antenna with differing patterns day and night. Despite its high power, it must protect Class A clear-channel station XEROK in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and other Canadian and U.S. stations on 800 AM. The transmitter is off County Road 20 West in southern Essex County, between Amherstburg and Harrow, only a few kilometres from the Lake Erie shoreline.

CKLW was an internationally known Top 40 station in the 1960s and 1970s. During this era, CKLW used a tight Top 40 format known as Boss Radio, devised by radio programmer Bill Drake. However, CKLW never actually used the handle "boss" on the air, just the style. Rather than a Boss 30, CKLW's weekly music survey was known as a Big 30. And instead of calling itself Boss Radio, CKLW called itself The Big 8.

During this period it was the top-rated radio station not only in Windsor, but across the river in Detroit, and even in cities as far away as Toledo and Cleveland.

CKLW first came on the air on June 2, 1932, as CKOK on 540 kilocycles, (which until 2013 was the long-time home of today's CBEF) with 5,000 watts of power. Originally, the original proposed callsign was CKWO, but it changed to CKOK due to confusion. The station was built by George Storer and was sold to a group of Windsor-area businessmen led by Malcolm Campbell, operating as "Essex Broadcasters, Ltd." CKOK became CKLW (and moved to 840 kHz) in 1933, when Essex Broadcasters, Ltd. merged with the London Free Press and its station CJGC (now CFPL), and became "Western Ontario Broadcasting", which was co-owned by Essex Broadcasters, and the London Free Press. The "LW" in the callsign is said to have stood for "London, Windsor", considered the two chief cities in the station's listening area. When the station's power increased to 50,000 watts, its listening area increased accordingly. In 1934, when London Free Press's station CJGC pulled out of the agreement, the station became wholly owned by Western Ontario Broadcasters. CJGC later evolved into today's CFPL, while CKLW moved from 840 to 1030 kHz in 1934, before settling on its present frequency of 800 kHz in 1941, thanks to a shuffle of frequency allocations.

CKLW for most of its history had a distinctly American accent to its programming, and for a number of years served as the Detroit affiliate of the Mutual Broadcasting System, an affiliation that began with its switch from CBS to Mutual September 29, 1935, and which would last from then until its purchase by RKO General in 1963. When Mutual was restructured as a cooperative in 1940, CKLW was one of the major shareholders in the network. Alongside its affiliation with Mutual, it also gained a dual affiliation with the CBC in 1935, replacing its CBS Radio Network affiliation with that of Mutual/CBC. In 1948, it became an affiliate of the CBC's Dominion Network as well as the main network which became known as the Trans-Canada Network. The Trans-Canada Network affiliation would last until 1950, when CBE 1550 launched and the Dominion Network affiliation remained until 1962 when the network dissolved. The Mutual System's owner, General Tire and Rubber Company, purchased a controlling interest in CKLW and its owner at the time, Western Ontario Broadcasting in 1956, along with RKO General (which had purchased a minority interest in 1954 and had controlled Mutual since 1952). RKO would later increase its stake to 100% in 1963.

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, CKLW was home to Happy Joe's Early Morning Frolic with Joe Gentile and Toby David, which was one of the first popular comedy-oriented radio morning shows in Detroit. The show continued strong after David left CKLW for Washington, D.C., in 1940, and was replaced by Ralph Binge. The duo kept listeners entertained with an endless stream of comedic sketches and situations. The show's sponsors got in on the fun as well, as Gentile and Binge's trademark was their ability to turn a standard 60-second commercial announcement into a comedy sketch that could run for three minutes or longer. A typical three-and-a-half-hour Gentile and Binge show might feature such comedic commercials for as many as fifty legitimate products, and some imaginary ones as well. Sometimes listeners didn't get the joke. For example, according to popular legend, after promoting a miracle weight-loss aid called "Dr. Quack's Slim Jim Reducing Pills" with the story of an obese woman who got stuck in a telephone booth, Gentile and Binge received over $3,000 from listeners requesting a $1 trial of the pills as advertised, and the station had to hire a clerk to return the money.

Gentile and Binge were a fixture on CKLW until moving to WJBK radio (now WLQV) in 1948, attracting audience ratings as high as 80% at their peak. The duo disbanded their partnership in 1956, and Gentile returned to CKLW. Toby David also eventually returned to AM 800 to host the morning show in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Both Binge and David were also stars of early Detroit television kiddie shows: Binge was "Pirate Pete" on WJBK-TV in the mid-1950s, and David became CKLW-TV's (now CBET-DT) "Captain Jolly" later in the decade (a role which, ironically, Binge had originally been tagged to play).