SignalR server to client method not working

Based on various resources the signalr code should be working, but I can't make it to send notifications from the server to client. Here is html/javascript part:

<script src="/Scripts/jquery-1.6.4.min.js"></script>
<script src="/Scripts/jquery.signalR-2.2.1.min.js"></script>
<script src="/signalr/js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript">
    $(function () {
        var cHub = $.connection.cHub;

        $.connection.hub.logging = true;

        cHub.client.sendMessage = function (content) {
            $("#container-hub").append($("<p />").html(content));
        };

        $.connection.hub.start().done(function() {
            $('[id$=bGo]').click(
                    function() {
                        cHub.server.send('Sync process started');
                    });
        });        
    });
</script>
<div id="container-hub" style="background: red; height: 100px; width: 100%;"></div>

Hub.cs class:

using Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR;

namespace CMS.Objects
{
    public class CHub : Hub
    {
        public void Send(string message)
        {
            // Call the broadcastMessage method to update clients.
            Clients.All.sendMessage(message);
        }
    }
}

Startup.cs class:

using Microsoft.Owin;
using Owin;

[assembly: OwinStartup(typeof(CMS.CStartup))]

namespace CMS
{
    public class CStartup
    {
        public void Configuration(IAppBuilder app)
        {
            app.MapSignalR();            
        }
    }
}

And here is how I am calling the method sendMessage method:

private void ShowMessage(string message)
{       
    var clients = GlobalHost.ConnectionManager.GetHubContext<CHub>().Clients;
    clients.All.sendMessage(message);
}

When the button bGo is clicked the message is getting appended to the container-hub div, but nothing when I call sendMessage method.

EDIT

Some additional findings; when I call sendMessage from within the OnConnected method it works:

public override Task OnConnected()
{
    Clients.All.sendMessage("Connection Initialised");
    return base.OnConnected();
}

After spending some decent time to investigate the problem I have finally found the solution. Not 100% sure, but I think the problem was with using the UpdatePanel on the page. Wrapped signalR javascript code to Sys.Application.add_load instead of using jQuery's $(function () { and it started working.

The reason I mentioned that I am not 100% sure is that the UpdatePanel with the ScriptManager has been removed multiple times giving no results before posting the question.