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CKLN picks up static

If Ryerson campus-community radio station CKLN disappeared from the airwaves, would anybody care?

In the age of podcasts, blogs and tweets, would an edgy, fractious, passionate little radio outlet be missed if it were suddenly yanked from the ether?

As a former volunteer radiohead, I think it would. I’m not the only listener who was aghast when a complicated, protracted internal struggle silenced CKLN for nearly six months in 2009. And now, just as things have started to come together for the broadcaster on the left side of the radio dial – at 88.1 on the FM band – CKLN is once again fighting for its life.

On Wednesday (December 8), the station faces a Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) hearing. The regulator claims that when it investigated a rash of complaints, it found programming logs, annual reports and other required records in disarray and in some cases unavailable.

The CRTC wants to discuss the station’s performance and status, but the formal wording of the hearing notice seems chilling, asking CKLN, among other things, to “show cause why the Commission should not take steps to suspend or revoke the broadcasting licence in question.”

Fighting words or formality? Hard to tell. According to CRTC rep Denis Carmel, the commission “does not comment on ongoing processes in order to ensure fairness and objectivity.” True, the regulator rarely sends a station to the gallows, but CKLN isn’t taking any chances.

“It’s a process we have to take seriously,” says Andrew Lehrer, who was elected CKLN vice-chair late last year after competing factions agreed to hold a general meeting. The station had been shut down when Ryerson’s student council withheld funds.

Lehrer says the new board has amended bylaws to prevent future mayhem and addressed many CRTC concerns. A new logger system, for instance, should ensure that music hosts avoid playing hits, which by CRTC rules can’t make up more than 10 per cent of all music aired.

Lehrer’s feeling positive about the looming CRTC grilling, but there’s lots to lose if it goes badly. In a monopolized media world, community stations, freed from profit considerations and ratings competition, serve as modest-sized hubs of progressive thought and diverse interests.

“Obviously, we want strong listenership,” says Shelley Robinson, exec director of the National Campus and Community Radio Association. “But we don’t want listenership at the expense of what we do. A program about sound art might not draw a huge audience, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth broadcasting.”

While these stations don’t know exactly what their ratings are – it’s too expensive to find out – Robert Washburn, e-journalism prof at Belleville’s Loyalist College, thinks they garner a large following in an unusual way.

“Instead of one, they have a lot of micro-audiences. The anti-poverty group has its show there’s a hip-hop show. They create a mass audience made up of smaller groups.” While there’s a “tsunami wave” of emerging media, Washburn says, “traditional media continue to have an important presence and a strong relationship with new media. It’s not an either-or situation.”

CKLN is already living in both worlds with its live streams, active Facebook presence and online chats during shows. But it’s still radio, and that, to my mind, is the magic.

Most people can blog to express their thoughts, but radio is the child of the age-old art of storytelling. Airwave communication, through the human voice, conveys a sense of randomness and immediacy, alive and in the moment.

With radio, you listen to a favourite show knowing the general content, but you don’t know who or what you will hear until it actually airs, opening up a world of unexpected possibilities.

But grassroots radio, unlike many online functions, is also a real-time social incubator. As Steve Anderson, national coordinator of OpenMedia.ca, puts it, “One thing that’s important is the actual physical space [of the radio station]. It brings people together so they can learn from and mentor each other. The internet can’t replace that,” he says.

As a programmer with CIUT’s Caffeine Free some years back, I was awash in constant discussions of politics, activism and culture, in a studio that was a creative commons. For all the craziness and chaos of these stations, their social contribution is immense.

But their staying power is their localism. It’s the same hunger for what is nearby, Anderson says, that is the key engine of the internet. “That’s not going away with the digital era,” he says. “With local music and culture, community radio’s always been a key force. It’s just getting stronger.”

Let’s hope the CRTC sees it the same way.

Read a history of CKLN here.

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