By Steve Faguy
GATINEAU – Five radio stations in eastern Canada have been called to appear at a CRTC hearing on May 12 and will be asked why the Commission shouldn’t suspend or revoke their licenses.
All five radio stations have long histories of compliance issues, and all five had their last licence renewals reviewed by the Commission in 2017, which then imposed two-year renewals and mandatory orders. This could be their last chance to keep themselves on the air.
Their applications show a common theme: an inability to meet the heavy burdens of CRTC reporting, particularly related to music lists and self-assessment reports.
CJMS 1040 Saint-Constant and CJWI Montreal
Jean Ernest Pierre argues a mix of computer error and overly complex regulations are to blame for the failure of his two Montreal-area AM radio stations to meet their licence requirements and mandatory orders issued in 2018. His French-language stations — country music station CJMS 1040 and Haitian station CJWI 1410 (CPAM Radio Union) — have a long history of compliance issues.
For CJMS, this is the sixth licence term — every one since it was first licensed in 1998 — that the station is in non-compliance, under three separate owners. It will also be the second time it has failed to meet the requirements of mandatory orders. Pierre bought CJMS from previous owner Alexandre Azoulay for $15,000 in 2014 after Azoulay blamed previous non-compliance in part on his father’s dementia. The Commission took into account the ownership change when it decided to allow the station to stay on the air.
For CJWI, which launched in 2002, the regulatory history is not as long, but the violations of licence conditions have escalated and this is the fourth licence term that it has failed to meet its conditions.
The Commission says both stations failed to submit complete annual financial statements for 2018-19, and filed a self-evaluation form that was inconsistent with its music log. It also says CJWI failed to meet requirements related to the amount of popular, French-language and Canadian music broadcast. The most severe issue was that it broadcast less than half the required 35% of Canadian content in the “World beat and international” category in a week sampled by the Regulator.
Pierre argues that financial statements were sent by the November 30 deadline but quotes his accountant suggesting the document was “too big” for the CRTC’s electronic filing system.
As for the log discrepancy, Pierre said it was because some announcers would turn the sound off on music being played during their shows, but those songs were erroneously included in the computer-generated music lists.
The Commission suggests in its correspondence the possibility of a $2,836 Canadian content development contribution as compensation for CJMS’s shortfalls in music broadcast — something Pierre called “a punishment” but was willing to accept.
Asked about the possibility of non-renewal of his licenses, Pierre called that “excessive” and said his stations had acted in good faith amid “very specialized” requirements that required repeated assistance from commission staff. “The role of the CRTC is not to punish small broadcasters like CJMS, but to help them meet the established guidelines,” he wrote.
CICR-FM Parrsboro, N.S.
This 50-watt community station doesn’t have it easy. The town on the shores of the Bay of Fundy it’s located in isn’t even a town anymore — it was dissolved in 2016, its 1,205 residents merged into Cumberland County. The station’s programming consists mainly of automated music and “no one is in the station for sometimes hours at a time,” writes director Alain Couture.
Couture tells the Commission that his volunteers “unfortunately do not have a broadcasting bible that would help us to understand all the terms and requirements that you occasionally ask for.” He said their OTIS software cannot provide logs in the format the CRTC requires and “we simply do not have the staff to sit down and modify the log records to ensure the appropriate information, as requested, is submitted.”
As a result, its paperwork is incomplete, and it has failed to meet conditions of licence related to program logs despite a mandatory order imposed in 2018. Couture doesn’t provide much hope for future compliance. In response to a question about missing musical selections in the logs, he notes those were part of pre-recorded syndicated programs and “time will tell if we are able to fulfill this requirement.”
Like Pierre, Couture pointed to the CRTC’s heavy regulatory workload for small broadcasters. “Reading all these bulletins and most importantly, understanding them has been a very trying exercise of which I still have a lot of bulletins to read,” Couture writes.
CKMN-FM Rimouski/Mont-Joli, Que.
Things are much more optimistic at Rimouski’s only community radio station. Thanks in part to provincial government grants, the station spent $130,000 over the past three years to set up a new transmitter, install new consoles and software, and hire additional staff. It also announced agreements with other media outlets to improve local journalism.
Regulatory compliance continues to be a problem, however, despite short-term renewals in 2011, 2015 and 2018 that each came with mandatory orders attached. While the submission of annual financial statements was the biggest issue in the past, this time the CRTC found discrepancies between the station’s self-evaluation and musical lists, and an insufficient amount of specialty music broadcast, below its 5% minimum requirement.
The station blamed human error for the logging issue, saying its WinMedia software required manual intervention to produce CRTC-compliant logs. In 2018, it promised to work with Quebec’s association of community broadcasters to conform to logging requirements, but the association says the CRTC’s demands create a huge workload for community stations, and that work largely falls on managers who have to devote a lot of time (120 hours in CKMN’s case, which the association said was typical) manually reformatting logs when they could be spending that time on other station business. “This situation causes stress and fatigue, opening the door to human error,” it says.
For the music requirement, the station notes several jazz selections it broadcast were longer than standard pop songs, and suggested the Commission take that into account when calculating whether it met its quota.
“We recognize that CKMN had deficiencies in its regulatory obligations,” general manager Dany Proulx writes, “but a revocation of licence would be a death sentence for our local station. Despite the errors of the past, the county’s community station fulfils its mission with rigour and profound conviction. The revocation of CKMN’s licence would deny the population of an essential service.”
CFOR-FM Maniwaki, Que.
How long does it take to pay $880? For this station in western Quebec, the answer is more than a decade. And the CRTC still doesn’t have proof that the required Canadian content development contribution, which compensates for shortfalls going as far back as 2004-05, has been paid, despite a 2018 mandatory order.
Its list of compliance issues is extensive:
- Failure to submit annual returns on time
- Failure to respond to requests for information
- Failure to provide complete programming logs
- Failure to provide complete audio recordings
- -Failure to receive commission approval before making changes in ownership
- Failure to submit proof of payment of a required CCD contribution
Unlike the other stations, CFOR isn’t coming up with excuses. It just hasn’t responded at all. A letter asking for explanations sent Jan. 22 had a deadline of Feb. 4, but no answer is on record.
“Given the recurring nature of the non-compliance over multiple licence terms and the licensee’s apparent lack of cooperation, the Commission is concerned with the licensee’s ability and commitment to operate the station in a compliant manner,” it wrote in the 2018 decision.
Other stations
Four other stations have also been asked to explain compliance issues, but have not been asked to appear at the hearing:
- CKKX-FM (Kix FM 106) in Peace River, Alta. (self-assessment report)
- CKGC-FM (103.5 Capital FM) Iqaluit (annual returns, Canadian content, audio recordings, self-assessment report)
- CKIQ-FM (99.9 Ice FM) Iqaluit (annual returns, National Public Alerting System, tangible benefits)
- CJRJ (Spice Radio 1200) Vancouver (ethnic programming, CCD contributions, self-assessment report)
The deadline for comments on the applications is March 27.
