CRTC grants campus radio station temporary stay

The CRTC has granted campus radio station CKLN an emergency stay, allowing it to stay on-air until at least April. Earlier this month the CRTC revoked the station’s licence for failing to meet basic requirements, including filing records and including the local student body (CKLN is on Ryerson University’s campus and is funded by Ryerson students, but is not part of the school).

Writing for OpenFile Toronto, Sarah-Joyce Battersby reports that “The real work is keeping CKLN compliant. From filling out logs to playing Canadian content quotas, community radio stations have certain obligations to the regulator if they want to keep their licence. But this shouldn’t be a problem for CKLN going forward, [Lauren Speers, an Osgoode law student, volunteer DJ and chair of the station’s legal defence] insists. ‘We were 98 percent compliant, but we have to be 100 percent.'”

CKLN was operating without a station manager, which contributed to the lack of organization cited by CRTC. But Speers tells OpenFile that CKLN plans to conduct interviews for the position over the coming days.

“Most of [the compliance issues] have already been addressed,” Speers told OpenFile. “What we have to do now is let the students know that they’re welcome. Because they always have been. And we need to thank the community and the student community for all the support they’ve given us, and make everybody on the outside realize how important they are to keeping us on the air.”

OpenFile notes that a petition to save the station gathered more than five thousand signatures, including politicians and community members.

In her original story for OpenFile, Battersby wrote:

“CKLN, and other campus and community stations such as CIUT—U of T’s campus radio station, where I sometimes volunteer, though I never get to touch any buttons—fill the spaces between major commercial stations and our comparatively wealthy public broadcaster, because they’re mandated to serve the communities they broadcast in with niche programming and by providing training and a platform to enable community participation.”