Commissioner Shoan worries Vancouver radio approval calls into question “the integrity of the Commission’s licensing process”

By Steve Faguy

GATINEAU - The CRTC has approved two of 13 competing applications for new radio stations and retransmitters in the Vancouver area. But the decision wasn’t unanimous, and the dissenting commissioner believes one of the approvals puts the Regulator’s licensing process itself into question.In the decision issued Wednesday, the Commission approved an application from 0971197 B.C. Ltd., a.k.a. Roundhouse Radio, for a spoken-word station in downtown Vancouver at 98.3 FM, and an adult contemporary music station in Surrey at 107.7 FM owned by Sukhvinder Badh’s South Fraser Broadcasting Inc. It denied the other nine applications for 107.7 — four ethnic stations,...