OTTAWA-GATINEAU – The CRTC has revoked the broadcasting licence of CKLN-FM, the community-based campus radio station located at Ryerson University, after finding that it breached numerous regulations and conditions of licence.
“Holding a broadcasting licence is a privilege that comes with responsibilities and regulatory obligations,” said CRTC chair, Konrad von Finckenstein, in a statement. “CKLN Radio was given several warnings and opportunities to come into compliance. Each time, it demonstrated an inability or unwillingness to address our concerns. Taking away its licence is the only appropriate course of action in this case.”
The station has been told to cease broadcasting no later than the end of the broadcast day on February 12, 2011. Friday’s decision follows a proceeding that included a public hearing held last December.
The Commission first began investigating CKLN-FM in July 2009 after receiving numerous complaints about the station’s governance structure, day-to-day management and operations, programming, and ability to remain on air. At the time, the station experienced significant infighting and the volunteers, staff and management were locked out of the studio premises by the building manager. During the seven-month lockout, CKLN-FM broadcast an intermittent loop of programming without any on-going community involvement or oversight by the licensee.
Once it resumed normal operations, the Commission said that CKLN “lacked any significant quality-control mechanism for its programming, and there was little involvement from the Ryerson University student body despite its status as a campus radio station”. It was also unable to meet some of the basic requirements of all licence holders, which include the submission of audible on-air tapes, program logs and other records, and complete annual returns.
In a dissenting opinion, Commissioner Louise Poirier called the licence revocation “unwarranted and inequitable”.
“Immediate revocation, without first applying any other regulatory measure, is clearly inconsistent with the Commission’s usual practice”, she wrote. “No other licences have been revoked in this manner in recent Commission history. Such revocations have always been preceded by either a mandatory order or a short-term licence renewal. The Commission is thus creating a precedent with respect to the principle of gradation of regulatory measures taken by the Commission when dealing with a licensee in a situation of non-compliance”.
Commissioner Poirier also said that the CRTC should have waited until the Ontario Superior Court of Justice had settled the matter around the legitimacy of the station’s current board of directors, which was the reason that the Commission originally adjourned its first hearing into the station’s activities last May.
