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TRANSCRIPT OF MEETINGS
FOR THE CANADIAN RADIO-TELEVISION AND
TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION
TRANSCRIPTION DES RÉUNIONS DU
CONSEIL DE LA RADIODIFFUSION
ET DES TÉLÉCOMMUNICATIONS CANADIENNES
SUBJECT/SUJET:
CAMPUS RADIO CONSULTATION/
CONSULTATION RADIO CAMPUS
HELD AT: TENUE À:
Réal Thérrien Room Salon Réal Thérrien
CRTC Headquarters Siège social du CRTC
1 Promenade du Portage 1, promenade du Portage
Les Terrasses de la Chaudière Les Terrasses de la Chaudière
Central Building Édifice central
Hull, Quebec Hull (Québec)
September 17, 1998 17 septembre 1998
Transcripts
Transcription
Afin de rencontrer les exigences de la Loi sur les langues
officielles, les procès-verbaux pour le Conseil seront
bilingues en ce qui a trait à la page couverture, la liste des
membres et du personnel du CRTC participant à l'audience
publique ainsi que la table des matières.
Toutefois, la publication susmentionnée est un compte rendu
textuel des délibérations et, en tant que tel, est enregistrée
et transcrite dans l'une ou l'autre des deux langues
officielles, compte tenu de la langue utilisée par le
participant à l'audience publique.
Canadian Radio-television and
Telecommunications Commission
Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des
télécommunications canadiennes
Transcript / Transcription
Campus Radio Consultation/
Consultation Radio Campus
PARTICIPANTS/PARTICIPANTS:
Joan Pennefather Commissioner/ Conseillère
Andrew Cardozo Commissioner/ Conseiller
Susan Baldwin Executive Director, Broadcasting/
Directrice exécutive, Radiodiffusion
Martine Vallée Director, Discretionary Services &
Social Policy/Directrice, Services
discrétionnaires et politique sociale
Anne-Marie Murphy Legal Counsel/Conseillère juridique
Morag York Senior Analyst, Discretionary
Services and Social Policy/Analyste
Senior, Services Discrétionnaires et
Politique Sociale
Richard Frith Senior Analyst, Radio and
Television/Analyste Senior, Radio et
Télévision
Annie Laflamme Analyst, Radio and
Television/Analyste, Radio et
Télévision
Richard Dollighan Consultant/Consultant
Emmanuel Madan Consultant, BOOM snap!/
Consultant, BOOM snap!
Caroline Côté President, NCRA/Présidente, ANREC
John Stevenson Former President, NCRA/Ancien
Président, ANREC
Jill Birch Vice-President, Radio, CAB/Vice-
Président, Radio, ACR
Hal Blackadar General Manager, CFNY-FM/Gérant,
CFNY-FM
Lynn Buffone Manager, Radio Policy, CAB/Gérant,
Politique Radio, ACR
Paul Monty Senior Officer, Regulator Affairs,
CBC/Premier Agent, Affaires
Réglementaries, S.R.-C.
Susan Englebert Director of Radio for British
Columbia, CBC/Directrice, Radio,
Colombie-Britannique, S.R.-C.
HELD AT: TENUE À:
Réal Thérrien Room Salon Réal Thérrien
CRTC Headquarters Siège social du CRTC
1 Promenade du Portage 1, promenade du Portage
Les Terrasses de la Chaudière Les Terrasses de la Chaudière
Central Building Édifice central
Hull, Quebec Hull (Québec)
September 17, 1998 17 septembre 1998
1
1 Ottawa, Ontario
2 --- L'audience débute le 17 septembre 1998 à 0830/
3 Upon commencing on September 17, 1998 at 0830
4 1 THE MODERATOR: Bonjour, welcome
5 everyone. I know that we're missing a couple of
6 important people, but I think that we should get
7 started and we will try to catch up and have them catch
8 up when they get here.
9 2 I really do want to thank you very
10 much for taking the time to be here today. And I am
11 happy to see that we have got all of the radio sectors
12 represented.
13 3 Just to start, I think I would like
14 to go around the table so we all know who we all are
15 and what organization everyone is representing.
16 4 S'il vous plaît, parlez dans la
17 langue officielle de votre choix.
18 5 I am Susan Baldwin, executive
19 director of broadcasting at the CRTC.
20 6 JOAN PENNEFATHER: Joan Pennefather,
21 commissioner, conseillère. Obviously I have not been
22 here long enough.
23 7 THE MODERATOR: And I was supposed to
24 remind everyone to push the button to speak, please.
25 8 PAUL MONTY: Paul Monty, regulatory
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1 affairs, CBC.
2 9 SUSAN ENGLEBERT: Susan Englebert. I
3 am regional director of radio for British Columbia for
4 CBC.
5 10 LYNN BUFFONE: Lynn Buffone, CAB
6 Radio, manager of radio policy.
7 11 JILL BIRCH: Good morning. I am Jill
8 Birch, vice-president of radio with CAB.
9 12 HAL BLACKADAR: Good morning, Hal
10 Blackadar, with Shaw Communications, specifically CFNY,
11 and Energy Radio in Toronto and Burlington.
12 13 CAROLINE CâTÉ: Caroline Côté,
13 president of the NCRA.
14 14 JOHN STEVENSON: I am John Stevenson,
15 I am also from the NCRA.
16 15 ANNE-MARIE MURPHY: Anne-Marie
17 Murphy, conseillère juridique, legal counsel.
18 16 MARTINE VALLÉE: Martine Vallée,
19 director of discretionary services and social policy at
20 the CRTC.
21 17 THE MODERATOR: And we have other
22 staff behind us, if they would introduce themselves, as
23 well, please.
24 18 ANNIE LAFLAMME: Annie Laflamme, with
25 the CRTC.
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1 19 RICHARD DOLLIGHAN: And Richard
2 Dollighan with the CRTC.
3 20 THE MODERATOR: Merci.
4 21 Comme vous le savez, le Conseil a
5 entamé un processus d'examen de plusieurs des ses
6 politiques importantes, dans le but de déterminer si
7 les cadres réglementaires sont toujours applicables et
8 remplissent les priorités et les objectifs prévus par
9 la Loi de la radiodiffusion et par le Conseil dans son
10 document "De la vision à l'action".
11 22 Nous avons récemment annoncé notre
12 politique de la radio commerciale et nous examinons
13 présentement les politiques des radios communautaires
14 et de campus.
15 23 La politique de la radio ethnique
16 sera, quant à elle, réévaluée dans le cadre de l'examen
17 de la politique de radiodiffusion ethnique qui débutera
18 sous peu.
19 24 We've reviewed the policy for
20 commercial radio, as I mentioned. And it is in the
21 context of a total radio review that we are examining
22 the campus and community as well.
23 25 With respect to the campus radio
24 review in particular, Commissioner Pennefather and
25 Morag York, who is not a morning person, either, and
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1 should be with us shortly and we will embarrass her
2 terribly when she arrives, attended the national campus
3 and community radio conference, the NCRC in Victoria in
4 June and heard from the various participants there
5 about the areas that they felt should be reviewed
6 within the context of this review.
7 26 We have also received comments from
8 campus radio stations that did not attend that
9 particular meeting and these comments as well as those
10 from the meeting are all on the public file.
11 27 As will everything that goes on
12 today, we have the court reporter here so that we have
13 a transcript of the meeting today and that, too, will
14 go on the public file.
15 28 It is one of the reasons that we need
16 these little name tags here so they can see them and it
17 would probably also help if you give your name when you
18 start to speak.
19 29 Following today's meeting, what we
20 intend to do is develop a public notice, probably that
21 we would issue in mid-December that will call for
22 comments on a proposed campus radio policy. And we
23 expect that that policy would be issued in the spring
24 of '99. And we count the seasons very carefully at the
25 commission. Spring ends June 21st. So any time up
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1 until then.
2 30 Welcome Morag. I've already
3 explained that you are not a morning person. May I get
4 you a coffee? Morag is really essential to this
5 process. She is leading this process. She has done
6 most of the work to make all of this happen and it is
7 very, very important to have her here.
8 31 We also have a parallel process going
9 on to review our community radio policy and we will be
10 holding a cross-sectoral meeting in October as part of
11 that process and I would hope that many of you would
12 participate in that as well.
13 32 Nos objectifs pour la réunion
14 aujourd'hui incluent:
15 33 First of all, issue identification.
16 34 We would just like to get the issues
17 on the table so it is very clear from every perspective
18 what they are.
19 35 We would like to understand what the
20 concerns of the various players are around the table
21 and also define in general the environment in which
22 campus radio stations are operating so that we have a
23 context within which to understand both the issues and
24 the concerns.
25 36 We do have an idea of many of the
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1 issues from the perspective of the campus radio
2 community from earlier discussions but we would now
3 like to add the other perspectives and really take an
4 opportunity to discuss them as thoroughly as we can.
5 37 I would also like to emphasize that
6 our discussion today really is very preliminary. It is
7 explore try in nature. Nothing that is said cannot be
8 contradicted at a later point or elaborated at a later
9 point in time. It is really just to get a sense of
10 what the issues are.
11 38 I certainly recognize that most of
12 you have not had an opportunity to go through all of
13 the issues or to take a final position on any of them
14 with members in your organizations and that that is
15 important to do. And I would hope that part of what we
16 will be able to achieve today is to give you a broader
17 understanding of the issues so the discussions with
18 your own organizations can be even fuller, more in
19 context and lead you to a position.
20 39 And some of the issues that have been
21 defined so far are certainly very wide-ranging and I
22 have noted in going through them that many of them
23 actually go beyond the parameters of a campus radio
24 review. So I hope that by the end of the day in the
25 context of campus radio we really will have a better
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1 understanding of the shared issues as well as those
2 that may be unique and particular to individual
3 organizations. And I think that as we do this we will
4 be able to gain a perspective on each other's ideas and
5 concerns, some ideas on how we can work better together
6 to meet both your objectives and the public objectives
7 that we all serve.
8 40 With respect to how we are going to
9 proceed today, what I would like to do is give you all
10 the opportunity to take perhaps up to ten minutes, just
11 to give an opening statement, some of your ideas, the
12 kind of things that you would like to have discussed
13 this morning and then we will follow up with a general
14 discussion of that. And then, about quarter to 11,
15 move into a phase that allows for just a summary
16 comment by everyone as well so that we have some
17 understanding of conclusions and perspectives.
18 41 I think I have gone through the
19 housekeeping matters for the most part. Just -- we do
20 not have translation available. As I have said, please
21 use your language of choice and it will be recorded in
22 the language of choice and that is the way the
23 transcript will appear.
24 42 So with that, Paul, perhaps I can
25 turn to you. I know that you had said that maybe you
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1 or Susan -- you said perhaps you might not want to
2 speak, but would you like to take the opportunity?
3 43 SUSAN ENGLEBERT: Sure. I sort of
4 jotted a couple of things down and so I will kind of
5 throw them out.
6 44 First of all, I would like to thank
7 you for inviting the CBC here. It is an opportunity
8 for us to meet with our colleagues from campus radio
9 which I do not think we have had -- we have never done
10 before, so it is nice to be able to do it. We have
11 never had a formal relationship with campus stations,
12 but I believe that we share many of the same goals
13 which I think lead to a complementary type of
14 programming and also relationships.
15 45 Many of CBC's established hosts,
16 reporters, producers came to CBC from campus radio and
17 as part of our development program and mentoring
18 programs, we welcome them to come and work with us and
19 many of them come for practicums. And it has been, I
20 think, a very beneficial situation for us and I hope
21 for campus radio as well and for the universities.
22 46 I think really that is about all I
23 have to say at the moment, I am very interested to hear
24 what comes next and the discussion. So thank you.
25 47 THE MODERATOR: Jill, would you -- I
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1 don't know whether you would all like to take an
2 opportunity or whether you have someone from CAB.
3 48 JILL BIRCH: Good morning.
4 49 We will just be making a few
5 introductory remarks and Hal and I will share this time
6 with you if we can to talk about some of the things
7 that CAB has been talking about as we have been invited
8 here to the campus radio hearings.
9 50 I think the first thing that struck
10 me was the importance of having an alternate voice in
11 Canada and the role that campus radio plays in finding
12 that alternative voice. And that is an important
13 thing. As I was going through the transcripts from the
14 Victoria meeting, there were a few phrases that really
15 captured the spirit of what campus radio is trying to
16 do and that is a voice for the voiceless and how much
17 that is needed in Canada. And also the issue that a
18 radio program is an audio essay and I thought that was
19 an interesting comment on the role that campus radio
20 does play.
21 51 And there are a number of reasons
22 that CAB is interested in participating in this
23 discussion. I think the first is to acknowledge the
24 contribution that campus radio makes to the totality of
25 broadcasting in Canada. It is an important element
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1 that we recognize.
2 52 The potential of campus radio to
3 contribute to the human resource element of
4 broadcasting is also -- just to further echo Susan's
5 point -- in talking to members, we found that so much
6 of the richness and strength that comes to private
7 broadcasting is born really in campus radio and
8 community radio. And we hope that we will see more of
9 that.
10 53 One of the things that we are
11 concerned with is building Canadian stars, Canadian
12 broadcasting stars. And by that I do not mean just
13 someone in front of the microphone, I mean stars that
14 write copy, stars that can help with Internet. We are
15 looking for the diversity that the campus radio can
16 offer there and to develop these people and get of get
17 them to continue to develop in the private broadcasting
18 arena.
19 54 Further are the synergies that are
20 created between campus radio and private broadcasting
21 in the sense that we are hoping that there will be more
22 opportunities for private broadcasting to go into the
23 campus arena and mentor people that are in that area,
24 to invite private broadcasters into the various college
25 university settings so that they can speak about the
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1 real life world experience. And these are all things
2 that we have been kind of thinking about how can we
3 provide more mentoring to the campus radio, what are
4 the kinds of things. So we are very interested here.
5 We are here to listen really, to understand what it is
6 that we can do to help in that sense.
7 55 The other area that I thought I would
8 raise is the important contribution that campus radio
9 makes to the development of new Canadian talent in the
10 sense that there is a connectivity in the communities
11 that campus radio can reach out and work with those
12 artists and take those risks putting them on the radio,
13 exposing them to the airwaves. I think that is an
14 important contribution that campus makes.
15 56 We certainly understand some of the
16 challenges that campus radio has. And in some of my
17 former work working with associations and
18 not-for-profits, I understand the issue of working with
19 a volunteer board and some of the push and pull that
20 goes on there. Very cognizant of that. And certainly
21 if there are some things there that, you know, we can
22 assist with in the sense of providing connections or
23 information to not-for-profit agencies that specialize
24 in boards and governance, be happy to help out there.
25 57 And we also recognize, of course, the
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1 issue of funding, the issue that student enrolment in
2 some cases is declining. We know that provincial
3 governments are cutting funding and that this is
4 becoming an important issue for the campus radio
5 stations and, you know, we are looking at ways that we
6 can understand how we can better help you in that area
7 and, again, are open to hearing more about what these
8 issues are that you face.
9 58 At this point I would like to just
10 have Hal Blackadar comment on some of the real life
11 issues that he experiences at CFNY.
12 59 HAL BLACKADAR: Thank you and good
13 morning. Well, just for the record, I would like to
14 repeat what I said before Morag arrived -- just
15 kidding.
16 60 I wanted to, first of all, pay
17 tribute here to what I think is already a system that
18 has considerable value to the private industry.
19 61 And if you will allow me to indulge
20 with you for a moment, some of the specific ways that I
21 have found that the system is currently working and
22 undoubtedly there are areas for considerable
23 improvement and obviously you will have areas of
24 concern.
25 62 I think that one of the things we
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1 should recognize is that when there is a healthy
2 program in place at campus universities, campus sites,
3 it is, in fact, a great source of talent that is
4 available to us.
5 63 Now, in my own case, we happen to
6 provide some scholarship money to various campus
7 programs. And, in providing that scholarship money,
8 which has come out of what is known in the private
9 sector as public benefits money and then we have also
10 provided some scholarship money beyond that as have
11 other broadcasters, that scholarship money is helpful
12 in bringing out some of the top talent at the campus
13 stations into our own workshops, our own stations. It
14 is there that, as Jill referred to, a bit of a
15 mentoring program begins. What we have tried to do is
16 to take that mentoring program, then and move it into a
17 next phase and try to bring these people on side as
18 full-time employees as much as possible. Now this is
19 where I get a little self-indulgent, but it is the only
20 way I can tell you effectively how this has benefited
21 the broadcast system.
22 64 Today we have in my present employ
23 between Burlington and Toronto, I think a total of
24 eight employees who are full-time employees who have
25 come out of campus and community stations. All of
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1 these young people have made and are making
2 considerable contributions. For example, Chicken
3 Shwana(ph), who happens to be a personality in his own
4 right on CFNY, came out of a program and is today of an
5 on-air personality attached to our morning show with
6 Humble and Fred. Another individual by the name of
7 Danger Boy.
8 65 We have another young individual by
9 the name of Danielle Holt who happens to be our
10 Internet and computer authority who is a graduate of
11 out of your own programs who provides on air resource
12 and is, in fact, a featured personality. And she has
13 been with us a little over a year, just taking a year
14 off now to travel around the world and gain some new
15 experience and coming back.
16 66 Karen Fischer, Rob Baird, two people
17 who came out of campus programs, creative writers with
18 us who are graduated and are today in Hollywood after
19 about three years in our shop writing scripts for
20 sit-comes.
21 67 The point I am making here is that
22 there is -- whether designed or otherwise, there is an
23 effective program in part in place today. And I would
24 encourage you to make sure that you recognize that you
25 do have a benefit that is leading into the commercial
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1 system that has been helpful to us on the private
2 industry side.
3 68 We happen to be a believer in our
4 company that it is that chain of events that occurs
5 that allows us to develop our talent, that brings the
6 talent along. If we have this kind of talent that can
7 continue to be developed, you do not have to have, as
8 we have today, an American syndicator like Howard Stern
9 on in Toronto or Montreal doing a morning show. It
10 just should not happen. And that is because we ought
11 to be able to develop, as Jill said, a star system that
12 can take people out of the campus environment, bring
13 them into commercial or perhaps into CBC, and then move
14 them through the system.
15 69 I can also tell you that I doubt that
16 we would have necessarily found the kind of young
17 people that we have in our own shops today without
18 having this kind of program in place because they do
19 bring to us a great value from day one. They have
20 learned that broadcasting is a multifaceted type of
21 programming. And when they come into an operation like
22 ours, they do have an experience that, quite frankly, I
23 do not think you could gain if you had not been in that
24 kind of a scholastic and learning environment.
25 70 So the role that you are playing is
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1 an important role to us and I would hope that as you --
2 as the commission develops its new policy in concert
3 with your input, that you would build on what you
4 presently have, allow us to have access to your
5 graduates, allow us to understand that as you develop
6 your programming, that that diversity that you
7 currently have in place is, in fact, an important
8 diversity to moving into the various aspects of
9 commercial radio.
10 71 I think that we would encourage
11 anything you can do in that area. And, as I said, I am
12 certainly here to listen and I would be very interested
13 in hearing other ways in which we as a private
14 broadcasting organization can provide stronger
15 feedback, a better job of mentoring and doing some
16 other things that I think can benefit both your agenda
17 and ours as well.
18 72 THE MODERATOR: Thank you. If I
19 could just take a moment, I would like to introduce
20 Commissioner Cardozo, Andrew. And Emmanuel Madan is a
21 researcher with us on contract who is looking at some
22 elements of the campus issues for us.
23 73 Please, Caroline?
24 74 CAROLINE CâTÉ: Actually, John will
25 speak.
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1 75 JOHN STEVENSON: Good morning. My
2 name is John Stevenson. I am a long-time, I guess a
3 long-time policy volunteer with the NCRA. And we have
4 a few opening remarks that Caroline and I are going to
5 chaotically share between the two of us, as you can
6 see.
7 76 This is sort of an interesting
8 meeting for me because I was involved in the campus
9 radio review in the early 1990s when I was president of
10 the NCRA years and years ago it seems like now, as
11 Richard will remember.
12 77 And I think that it is interesting to
13 see the change in attitude and the change of feeling
14 within the sector in that time. Richard commented to
15 me before the meeting this morning that when we first
16 did the campus radio review in 1991, 1992, that there
17 was a sense that it was going to proceed quite easily,
18 that the campus sector and the commission had a lot of
19 areas of agreement and it went quite well. There was
20 very good consultation and I think it showed a lot of
21 people that -- a lot of people within the campus sector
22 that the commission was successful and open to them
23 really for the first time.
24 78 But the situation has changed a
25 little bit in the last few years. There is -- my sense
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1 is that there is a lot more concern about the direction
2 of regulation and the impact that it will have on the
3 member stations of the NCRA. And Caroline and I want
4 to outline those areas as well. And it is really a
5 concern about the future and where we are going as a
6 sector and how we are going to be able to grow and
7 develop.
8 79 I do want to add that there are about
9 4,000 volunteer staff working at NCRA member stations
10 across Canada. Many of those people have aspirations
11 to go on and work in other media in CBC or in
12 commercial radio or television and so on. But most of
13 those people, I think, have a real desire simply to be
14 broadcasters within the campus radio environment.
15 80 We have a -- as people at the
16 commission and others know, campus radio in Canada is
17 in sort of a strange situation in regards to community
18 radio sectors in other parts of the world. Campus
19 radio has grown to fill a niche and a need for
20 community radio and community access media because
21 there have been very few independent community radio
22 stations in English Canada. People are probably
23 familiar with Wired World, in Kitchener, and with Co-op
24 Radio, in Vancouver. And those are pretty much the for
25 English Canada at this point.
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1 81 The campus radio has responded to
2 needs for community access by opening stations up to
3 community members, to community programs and that has
4 put us in a very interesting position of serving campus
5 and serving student needs and also serving community
6 needs.
7 82 And most people I think that are
8 involved with the sector, they may not do it for 20 or
9 30 years, they may only do it for three or four or five
10 years, but they still realize that what they are doing
11 is important and they realize they are addressing
12 communities, cultural communities or groups within
13 their towns and cities.
14 83 I wanted to talk first about Canadian
15 content regulation and briefly give everybody our sort
16 of position on Canadian content and the challenge we
17 see -- in changes to Canadian content regulation.
18 84 Back in the early '90s I remember
19 being asked a couple of times by people at the
20 commission what I thought of increasing Canadian
21 content from 25 to 30 per cent. And it was very easy
22 to respond that we were fully in favour of increasing
23 Canadian content and many of our members had gone to 30
24 per cent in the early '90s.
25 85 This time, though, there is a bit
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1 more of a concern in the increase in Canadian content,
2 especially if the long term goal is 35 per cent or 45
3 per cent or maybe within 15 years 50 per cent. And
4 that is not because campus community stations are
5 reluctant to play Canadian selections, but because as
6 over the last few years programming of popular music at
7 campus stations has changed somewhat in that the --
8 with the increased commerciality of what used to be
9 considered alternative genres of pop and rock music,
10 stations have turned more to urban formats and
11 electronic formats and third stream or, sorry, third
12 language programming. What we are talking about here
13 is rap, hip-hop, R & B, reggae dance, soul,
14 experimental musics, third language musics and so on.
15 86 Many of these selections would be
16 considered popular music and the challenge is obvious.
17 If there is an increase in Canadian content to 35 per
18 cent and then 40 per cent because there simply is not
19 the availability of these selections.
20 87 While I think that it is fair to say
21 that campus radio does a lot to present new artists to
22 an audience and to get those artists recognition, we do
23 not have a high enough percentage of listening to drive
24 substantial record sales and to actually create an
25 industry in some of these -- for some of these genres.
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1 They are simply too small, too specialized.
2 88 We are very concerned that we would
3 not be able to meet a 35 per cent obligation in
4 Canadian content for those kinds of musics. And the
5 result would be not that we would not present any of
6 those kind of musics, but that we simply would not
7 present as much of it as we probably should. And that
8 would be a real shame.
9 89 We would -- we have the same concern
10 about third language programming. If there is an
11 increase in percentages for third language programming,
12 we are worried that we will not be able to meet them
13 and then, again, the result would be that we would be
14 playing less Portuguese music or Russian music or
15 whatever kind of third language programming we have.
16 90 This kind of goes back to us to
17 concepts of music categories and category 2 and
18 category 3 and how they are currently constituted. And
19 we would like this process, the review process, to
20 address that and for the commission to explore ways to
21 separate pop and rock programming where high Can-con is
22 very easy to achieve from what we would consider to be
23 specialty category 3 which would include urban genres.
24 91 We also, and this is -- and I -- this
25 is a very clear directive from our membership, at the
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1 annual meeting they voted overwhelmingly on this, that
2 the commission not impose a 35 per cent Canadian
3 content requirement on campus and community radio
4 stations.
5 92 I've been involved with the sector
6 since 1985 and this is the first time -- and this is a
7 very, very strong indication from the membership that
8 they are very concerned about an increase.
9 93 We also would suggest that we will --
10 we will suggest that for computing Canadian content,
11 that the broadcast day be considered to be from 6 a.m.
12 to 12 midnight, that listening patterns for commercial
13 radio are not applicable to campus radio stations, that
14 we have more listening in the evening that than we do
15 during morning and afternoon drive and during noon. It
16 would be easier if we would were able to compute
17 Can-con simply for the full period of 6 a.m. to 12
18 midnight.
19 94 And I will turn it over to Caroline.
20 95 CAROLINE CâTÉ: I am going to go into
21 some of our comments on local talent development that,
22 as mentioned in our supplementary intervention with
23 commercial radio, with local -- on local talent
24 development, campus community radio stations do not
25 have all the resources to do all that we have the
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1 potential to do to support new and artists and new
2 music.
3 96 We have mentioned in that supplement
4 ways that we see that we can help and there are many
5 other ways that we feel that we can and we believe
6 that, in order to further help and -- the exposure of
7 independent artists that we need a funded office where
8 the artist can find support and access to non-profit
9 radio in the country. This office would also be used
10 to help campus community radio stations to find
11 independent artists in all music categories.
12 97 Right now, even Toronto and Montreal
13 stations have problems establish meeting their
14 established Can-con requirements for the stations
15 outside of Montreal and Toronto, apart from an couple
16 of exceptions, music does not make it out of these
17 cities. We want a place where we can ensure that music
18 can get to us and where we can find it.
19 98 This Canadian music marketing that I
20 am referring to is using actually the example that was
21 given on page 21, number 73, of the decisions on
22 commercial radio. And I felt that we can use that as a
23 model except here, the way that it is stated is it is
24 only in terms of transfer of ownership. But that we
25 would like to see such an office be funded in other
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1 ways like from the commercial broadcasting side and for
2 it to be all year round and not only in terms of the
3 transfers of ownerships although we would like to be
4 included in that. But we really do not have -- we
5 really do not have as much access as we would like to
6 have. We are always calling on the phone, and calling
7 around, finding out from our programmers, going to
8 shows, getting demo type tapes that way.
9 99 Already we do so much and having
10 artists come in and play live, doing live remotes. We
11 have tried different things such as contests, but we
12 just do not have the money to be doing that that I said
13 that we can do. And with just $300, we would be able
14 to have a room, have independent artists play,
15 broadcast it, record that so that they can get a demo
16 tape and use afterwards. Do for us co-presents things
17 that we do already, which is paid advertisements. We
18 could even arrange tours that they go from station to
19 station all across the country. That we do co-presents
20 and then help them find venues, but those are all
21 things that we would love to do but that we just do not
22 have the money and the resources to do which is a very
23 large concern right now is that we do not have the
24 resources, the money to do all that we want to do and
25 that we are mandated to do and that we are committed to
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1 do.
2 100 JOHN STEVENSON: There are a number
3 of other policy issues that our members have identified
4 in the last few months one of which is ownership and
5 control of campus radio stations.
6 101 There is a concern among a number of
7 stations, most stations, that student unions -- that is
8 student government not be, in future, licensed to run
9 campus radio stations. The concerns that the role that
10 campus station has grown into over the last 15 years is
11 one of balancing campus needs with community needs.
12 And the current stations that are licensed to their
13 student unions are concerned because student unions
14 exert too much control over programming, that there has
15 to be a balance in terms of governance at these radio
16 stations. That is something that we are going to be
17 proposing to the commission to change.
18 102 There are also two decisions over the
19 last ten years that the commission should review.
20 Again, a very strong indication from the membership.
21 One is the 1988 balance decision that affected co-op
22 radio initially and a balancing community access
23 programming. And also the other is the CKDU decision
24 involving sexual content on air.
25 103 Both these decisions have had a
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1 long-term chilling effect on expression at a variety of
2 radio stations. Both these decisions need to be
3 reviewed and clarified for our membership.
4 104 Also, the NCRA is involved in a
5 process of reviewing advertising policy. There is not
6 really a decision in terms of changing advertising
7 policy. But there will be a, I think, a proposal from
8 the NCRA to change that policy, probably to increase
9 maximums and change unrestricted advertising, change
10 the amount of unrestricted advertising on campus radio
11 stations.
12 105 Do you have anything else, Caroline?
13 106 CAROLINE CâTÉ: Yes. In terms of the
14 music categories, I went straight to local talent
15 development because that is -- but in terms of music
16 categories, there is a proposal on the table that we
17 discussed in Victoria and that we have been talking to
18 various CRTC members and the music -- different music
19 communities in supporting which is that we do right now
20 a lot and are doing more and more of DJ mixing,
21 turntablism and audio art. So sort of live sound
22 pieces. And we would like to have that reflected at
23 the music categories, but the way that we are seeing it
24 right now is to have them clearly included in the
25 special cases under NAPL, just to recognize these forms
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1 of art and what we do and that the people doing this
2 are the producers and the artists and it is live.
3 107 Some of our stations have already
4 been including this in our Canadian content under
5 special cases of NAPL. And I actually have a copy of
6 that if anyone would like to see that or make
7 photocopies after. But that we need it to be clearly
8 written in the music categories in our regulations so
9 that when we are explaining our percentages or when we
10 are called for play sheets and percentages, then it is
11 clear and will not be challenged and it is all
12 recognized.
13 108 There are some things that are fairly
14 easy as well that we would like to change which is kind
15 of administration in terms of our licences and that is
16 something like on the cover page of everyone's licence,
17 I think even commercial stations have the same cover
18 page. On the second page of it, in the No. 9, it says
19 "condition for commercial FM stations serving markets
20 other than single station markets concerning public
21 notice CRTC-93-121." And it says that it is a
22 condition of the licence that the licensee refrain from
23 soliciting or accepting local advertising for broadcast
24 during any broadcast week when less than one-third of
25 the programming aired is local. The definition of
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1 local programming shall be set out on page 8 of public
2 notice CRTC-93-38, or as amended from time to time by
3 the commission.
4 109 And this is something that can simply
5 lead to confusion that is on our licences. And we
6 would just like to see that revoked because some people
7 then go, oh, well, then -- you know, and then we are
8 looking for where does it say how much local
9 programming that we have to have, et cetera. Whereas
10 -- but most of our stations do 95 per cent at least
11 local programming.
12 110 But we would like to have it written
13 in our policies that we would like to do -- we would
14 just like it to be defined that we do a minimum of two
15 thirds of local programming. That is, you know,
16 programming that is done locally.
17 111 ANNE-MARIE MURPHY: I would just like
18 to clarify what is happening now in terms of review of
19 the licences.
20 112 I am currently involved in working
21 with the licensing staff in looking at licences so that
22 they actually reflect the situation of each type of
23 station or licensee.
24 113 So that I think you will be pleased
25 to see the outcome of this, conditions of licence that
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1 ought not apply will not appear on a licence. So that
2 should be available upon the next renewals and the same
3 for commercial radio.
4 114 CAROLINE CâTÉ: Okay. Thank you.
5 115 Just a last comment is going back to
6 money for us. That there is going to be a separate
7 review and comments on what is digital radio. And for
8 us with digital that we have no money to go digital.
9 So right now it is hard enough to keep afloat with our
10 budgets and do maintenance with our own equipment that
11 we have, our ancient equipment. And so, you know, to
12 say that we are very worried with digital coming up and
13 with all the talking of digital that we are not going
14 to have access to digital equipment because we just do
15 not have the money for it. And then there is also the
16 training and everything else that goes with it that we
17 are worried about because we do not have any money.
18 And that is it.
19 116 THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much.
20 There are a couple of areas I think I would like to
21 just give you some information about what we are doing.
22 One is some research that we are doing that I Emmanuel
23 is actually doing for Canadian content in the kinds of
24 genres that we you mentioned. And I will ask Martine
25 to let you know just exactly what that is. And then
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1 perhaps you can actually give some guidance to Emmanuel
2 of what he should be looking for, what kinds of
3 questions you would like him to be researching in that
4 area and that would be helpful.
5 117 And this is a personal question that
6 I have been asking about the turntabling. Do you pay a
7 royalty on the record when it is played?
8 118 CAROLINE CâTÉ: No.
9 119 THE MODERATOR: I could not get an
10 answer to the question and I think it just -- I don't
11 know how that should be handled and I just thought,
12 well, is it really being played? It is such a
13 different genre. And that was just a personal
14 question.
15 120 But I will turn to Martine and ask
16 her to just let you know exactly what the research
17 contract involves and perhaps get some feedback as to
18 what would be useful in there and some helpful hints as
19 to how we might conduct it.
20 121 CAROLINE CâTÉ: I would just like to
21 add for turntablism is that our point is that it is so
22 altered that it is now the DJ's, the producer's piece.
23 It is no longer that original piece.
24 122 MORAG YORK: Do we want to talk a
25 little bit about that now or do you want to talk about
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1 it later, the turntabling? Because I think we have a
2 couple of more questions where we may ask for a little
3 more explanation. But would you rather go through the
4 contract now?
5 123 THE MODERATOR: Sure. We can do that
6 now.
7 124 MORAG YORK: Well, I was going to
8 ask, as a sort of follow-up question, Susan asked if
9 you pay royalties. And I thought the question was
10 should you be paying royalties on those records. And
11 my understanding is that a lot of the vinyl that's used
12 in the process of creating turntabling pieces is what
13 they call "sample friendly" meaning that it is intended
14 to be used for that purpose. It is not expected that
15 royalties would be paid on it; is that right? In some
16 cases or in most cases or?
17 125 CAROLINE CâTÉ: In most cases I would
18 say that is true. And there is even a new little logo
19 that I saw in certain CDs that I saw coming to the
20 station recently which says "sample friendly".
21 126 MORAG YORK: Which is meant to
22 encourage DJs to use it for those purposes.
23 127 CAROLINE CâTÉ: Yeah, exactly.
24 128 MORAG YORK: And I have seen records
25 that are entirely comprised of samples of different
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1 kinds of music. You would have a record that is only
2 guitar samples, and a record that is only bass samples,
3 a record that would be vocal samples and you would use
4 those almost as instruments to build a piece of music
5 from those.
6 129 CAROLINE CâTÉ: Yes. Morag knows a
7 lot about this because she got to meet the Turnstyles
8 from Toronto in Victoria.
9 130 MORAG YORK: In Victoria, yeah, I saw
10 them perform.
11 131 CAROLINE CâTÉ: Who took Morag by the
12 hand and showed the different things that they do and
13 how they do it and their record collection, et cetera.
14 132 MORAG YORK: And when I talked to
15 them they looked like a band, you know, there was four
16 of them, they each had a turntable and they stood
17 behind their turntable. And I sort of referred to them
18 as a band. And afterwards Caroline said they do not
19 think of themselves as a band, they are DJs. They come
20 into our studios and do this as DJs, not as a band.
21 133 So it is a -- you know, they look
22 like what you would see in a bar. In fact, that is
23 where I saw them. But you also have the exact same
24 kind of thing happening in your stations.
25 134 CAROLINE CâTÉ: Yes.
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1 135 MORAG YORK: I think it is a hard
2 thing to understand if you have not seen it. But
3 anyway, does that help clarify what we are talking
4 about in terms of turntabling?
5 136 CAROLINE CâTÉ: Well, in terms of the
6 copyright issue, I do not think that we are going to be
7 -- I mean it is a long fight. We have been hearing
8 about this for a long time. Even in the news lately, I
9 don't remember who it was, but just someone that heard
10 their sample, their song in a commercial on TV. But I
11 do not feel that we are here to necessarily discuss
12 about copyright, we are not the copyright board.
13 137 MORAG YORK: But you did mention that
14 you had talked to them and you had a hard time getting
15 clear answers from them.
16 138 CAROLINE CâTÉ: I have talked to
17 various DJs that have called record companies, the
18 copyright board. SOCAN called around to say: "I am
19 using this sample, what is the procedure, do I need to
20 fill out any forms or whatever". And everyone keeps on
21 saying: "Oh, well we do not know we will call you
22 back". And that nobody knows what to do with it.
23 139 MARTINE VALLÉE: At the NCRC, I guess
24 the issue of Canadian content was raised there and the
25 things that John brought up about the availability of
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1 Canadian content in lots of the music genres that are
2 played by campus stations. So what we have done is we,
3 to be able to get a good contract on this is it we have
4 contracted Emmanuel, who is a music consultant, to take
5 a look at the availability of Canadian content and the
6 sources of Canadian music in the genres of music that
7 are sort of suitable for campus radio, the types of
8 things that you play.
9 140 What Emmanuel is going to be looking
10 at is we are going to be asking for the play lists of
11 campus stations to get a handle on, you know, what are
12 the different types of music being played. And
13 Emmanuel will be then looking at talking to a number of
14 sources to find out what is the availability and what
15 is the type of music and this will include various
16 music organizations. It will include the more sort of
17 formal organizations like SERPA and things like that.
18 But also talking to recording recording studios,
19 promoters, all the different sort of music sources that
20 he can identify and also talking to campus programmers
21 at campus situation stations about where they find the
22 music. And he will be looking at primarily focusing on
23 two sample markets. I think one of them will be
24 Toronto, and one of them will be a smaller market,
25 recognizing that where you get the music from may
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1 differ sort of depending on the size of market the
2 station is in.
3 141 That pretty well sums up what you are
4 looking at, Emmanuel?
5 142 EMMANUEL MADAN: Well, yeah.
6 Basically one of the things that I think is important
7 to bring out in this report is the fact that there are
8 a lot of very unique situations that campus radio finds
9 itself in that really do not apply to other
10 broadcasting sectors. So I want to, I guess, underline
11 those and draw attention to the fact that there are a
12 lot of unique situations.
13 143 For example, the fact that there's
14 often a one-on-one rapport between musicians in a
15 community and broadcasters in that community. So tapes
16 can be played or CDs can be played without a record
17 label ever having been involved, for example. Things
18 like -- well, obviously, turntabling as we were talking
19 about this morning and audio are, these are things that
20 fall outside of the, you know, existing codified and
21 well understood categories of how the music industry
22 works. And in almost all cases we are talking about
23 Canadian content. So that in addition to looking at
24 the more conventional channels of music distribution
25 with record labels and music distributors and so on.
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1 144 THE MODERATOR: Do you have any
2 helpful hints as he goes through this or anything that
3 you would like to ensure is covered in this kind of
4 research that would be helpful to both you, us and the
5 broadcasters?
6 145 JOHN STEVENSON: Well, I think it
7 sounds like Emmanuel is going in the right direction.
8 146 The concern that I would have is that
9 looking at stations in Toronto, it gives a skewed
10 perspective on availability of different kinds of music
11 when comparing Toronto to any other city in Canada. I
12 suppose, Montreal would be the other, Montreal and
13 Vancouver. But a lot of our stations are in smaller
14 places in Calgary and Edmonton and Kingston and places
15 where there just is not such a large critical mass of
16 artists.
17 147 And I think it is -- I hope that will
18 be clearly acknowledged and studied.
19 148 LYNN BUFFONE: I was also wondering
20 if, when you review the play list, you will also take a
21 look at the specialty format. There are several radio
22 stations in Canada who do specialty and perhaps some of
23 the music genres that appear on their play list may be
24 helpful to identify additional Canadian content.
25 149 EMMANUEL MADAN: Yeah, well,
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1 specialty programming, third language programming
2 basically all radio programming on campus radio are to
3 form part of the study. So nothing will be left as far
4 as that goes.
5 150 And also to address John's point, we
6 are definitely looking at a sample of actually more
7 than two markets. I am hoping to be able to speak in
8 person to people in two markets. But I do not think
9 that this study can really be credible with a sample of
10 under five. And if it was five, then it would be one
11 large market, two middle-sized and two small, possibly,
12 something like that.
13 151 MARTINE VALLÉE: Just to clarify,
14 Lynn, what you said, when you were talking about
15 special commercial stations in specialty format --
16 152 LYNN BUFFONE: That's right, Martine.
17 153 MARTINE VALLÉE: Okay. And so
18 identifying both -- well, identify what commercial
19 stations are in specialty format and take a look at the
20 genres of music they are doing and what their sources
21 of music are.
22 154 THE MODERATOR: Andrew?
23 155 ANDREW CARDOZO: I wonder, on this
24 question of Can-con to what extent do you rely on
25 Facteur Music Action who are mandated to essentially
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1 back new artists and relatively new artists. Because
2 when you talk about the genres that you do play: Rap,
3 hip-hop, R & B, third language, my sense is it is fair
4 to say that there is not a lot of records out there at
5 this point. But I -- my sense is also that there are a
6 lot of artists who are not getting records made. So to
7 what extent do you either work with them or encourage
8 them to open up in who they fund?
9 156 CAROLINE CâTÉ: As I have mentioned
10 at the commercial radio review is that these
11 organizations especially at Music Action does not go
12 into the different communities. They do not promote
13 themselves.
14 157 When I even talk to them they say:
15 Well, we don't really buy ads to say that we exist and
16 what is available. And that to me would be just a
17 first to buy an ad in the little burgundy paper in
18 Montreal in the different communities in RDP, whatever,
19 communities where we can find third language artists
20 and where we can find the urban, electronic, maybe even
21 student papers to say that they exist and that money is
22 available because a lot of people do not know that
23 money is available. Or get very -- if you go to Music
24 Action, I mean, how does it represent us in those
25 communities, right, like, who is working there?
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1 158 If you go, it is a bunch of -- it is
2 not just people from those music communities that are
3 working. I know more Music Action than Facteur. I
4 know that Facteur is doing more work in that. I would
5 be very curious to see a list as well of where money
6 has gone with all bands and artists.
7 159 With Music Action/Facteur and then to
8 look in the libraries of a couple of stations and see
9 what has made it there. Because, to my knowledge, they
10 do not hand out any kind of list in help of this is
11 where you should send out your CD or any kind of help
12 with that. And I think that would be really important
13 as well. Because there are some artists who have
14 within around longer and have gotten more help that
15 have gotten to know the ropes. But most of those CDs
16 do not get to us or they just get to the stations -- if
17 they are Toronto artists, then they get to the Toronto
18 stations. But it will not get further than that. And
19 we definitely need access. And we would love to be
20 more a part of that in terms of giving out money. That
21 is why I mentioned even our own office to help the
22 independent music industry and to specifically help us
23 as non-profit radio.
24 160 MARTINE VALLÉE: Does Facteur/Music
25 Action send out -- I know the commission often receives
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1 a sample of records that have been helped or supported
2 partially by Facteur/Music Action. Are those sort of
3 things sent out to campus stations?
4 161 CAROLINE CâTÉ: I have never seen
5 that. I mean, I have had someone -- I met a programmer
6 at the station where I work that works for the Canadian
7 Council, the Canada Arts Council who brought me herself
8 a box of things that were lying around the office. And
9 that was the first time that I have had something like
10 that. And most of it we did not have at the station.
11 162 And it just happens to be, like, we
12 are Ottawa, I work in Ottawa, she works in Ottawa, she
13 has this lying around, she brought it in. But that is
14 too often how artists get to us or even finding an
15 artist at a secondhand store in Montreal. That happens
16 to me all the time for French music. It just does not
17 get out of Montreal.
18 163 JOHN STEVENSON: My experience with
19 Facteur is quite minimal. They just do a bad job with
20 campus radio. They do a really bad job and it is
21 terrible.
22 164 I think I was in campus radio for
23 several years before I even heard of them and that is
24 terrible. And we should know that.
25 165 ANDREW CARDOZO: I would really like
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1 to see that issue explored because the staff I have
2 seen, we've received some of their samples. It is
3 quite impressive in terms of the range of new artists.
4 I would not say it is extensive, but there are a fair
5 number of different genres of music, of hip-hop and R &
6 B and stuff and a bit of third language stuff. And,
7 certainly, campus radio has traditionally and more and
8 more been the area of giving new artists a break and a
9 chance. So we would have to look at how that
10 relationship can be expanded.
11 166 MORAG YORK: I think Emmanuel is
12 taking notes that maybe there are people he should talk
13 to as part of his study.
14 167 CAROLINE CâTÉ: I would also like to
15 add that a lot of what I've seen, especially Facteur
16 fund is a rock type. And we get a lot of rock type
17 music at the station. And we have very little rock
18 type music programming. CFNY takes good care of that
19 and, you know, like we do not, we are less and less
20 into the indy-rock music types at our stations.
21 168 HAL BLACKADAR: Madam Chair,
22 commissioner, as the treasurer of Facteur and a board
23 member, I was of the belief that Facteur was, in fact,
24 distributing the product to campus stations.
25 169 However, if that is not the case, I
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1 will be absolutely delighted to take this back to the
2 board meeting next Friday and I will follow up. And I
3 can assure you that Facteur would have no problem
4 conceptually with getting it out there. I thought it
5 was already going, but if it is not there, I certainly
6 will take it to the board and I cannot imagine why we
7 would not.
8 170 CAROLINE CâTÉ: I do not believe a
9 fund just to do the distribution, because it costs a
10 lot for an independent artist just to do the
11 distribution of a CD, or provide a list or even
12 providing tracking to those artists that would help so
13 much, it would be such a great start.
14 171 THE MODERATOR: Thank you.
15 172 Just a question to CBC, perhaps,
16 because I know that you have a number of alternative
17 music selections and do you have ideas for sources or
18 ways to get at some of that material that might be
19 helpful.
20 173 SUSAN ENGLEBERT: I think we could
21 certainly talk about it. I do feel that with CBC, we
22 are the next step. Sometimes bands start at the
23 college level and then they usually come on to us next.
24 But we are always, in fact, looking for ways to do
25 partnerships and to help young bands get going and I
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1 think quite willing to go into partnerships with campus
2 radio in that regard.
3 174 We have a number of -- the late night
4 program from Montreal, Brave New Waves and Radio Sonic
5 and those programs are do a high Can-con, 50 per cent,
6 sometimes more. And there is a high level of live
7 bands on those programs.
8 175 So, as I say, we are certainly open
9 to doing deals and putting money forward to in
10 partnership and, in fact, do that now with some people
11 where they may book the band, bring them in and we'd
12 like to record them, so we pick up the AFFM costs which
13 we have to pay which helps people put the show on as
14 well. There are different deals we can do to sort of
15 help the presenter. So certainly it is something I
16 think that we could be looking at.
17 176 THE MODERATOR: Thank you.
18 177 I will ask if there are other, rather
19 than my going my kind of list as a result of the
20 discussion so far, I will give you the opportunity to
21 raise issues, respond to some of the issues that have
22 been raised. If there is a particular topic that you
23 would like to focus on in discussion for a few minutes.
24 178 Maybe I could just ask Caroline,
25 while Hal an Jill are talking, and John, I think you
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1 actually raised the issues of the hours for the Can-con
2 distribution, the 6 a.m. to 12 midnight.
3 179 Do you have with you the
4 distribution, when your audience is listening, when
5 your peak periods are?
6 180 JOHN STEVENSON: I don't know if
7 there are any stations in the NCRA that actually
8 purchase the ratings book. It hasn't been seen to be a
9 very useful tool when advertising is not a huge chunk
10 of our revenue.
11 181 The last book I saw in terms -- the
12 last book I actually looked at was about ten years ago
13 for the Halifax market. So it is very unscientific, my
14 perception is.
15 182 But because campus radio tends to be
16 more active listening than passive listening, more
17 people actually listening to the programming than
18 taping it and listening to what the person is saying
19 than, say, the car market or something like that,
20 evenings tend to be quite a bit higher. And also
21 because there is quite a few more young people
22 listening to campus radio than probably to most
23 commercial formats where it is drive time.
24 183 So I would think that that hasn't
25 changed much in the last ten years where we are
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1 probably looking at higher evenings or daytimes or
2 evenings just as high as daytime listening. But
3 without the BBMs, I couldn't tell you officially.
4 184 CAROLINE CâTÉ: I would just like to
5 add weekends. So evening and weekends, if we look at
6 phone calls, funding drive.
7 185 MORAG YORK: We have BBM statistics
8 and we have the unsurpressed statistics which are the
9 raw numbers where the numbers are very small or too
10 small to be statistically reliable, necessarily. We
11 don't usually do much with them because the numbers are
12 so small.
13 186 But I have asked in the context of
14 this for our researching people to try to put together
15 numbers from across the country to kind of aggregate
16 them so you would get a reliable number and then try to
17 graph something that would show the listening patterns
18 over the day for all the campus stations we have data
19 for in aggregate. If we get something that our
20 research department is comfortable with, we could try
21 to put that on the public file. Oh, yeah, and we would
22 have to ask BBM, I guess. Although it is in aggregate
23 -- anyway, we will check it out.
24 187 CAROLINE CâTÉ: I don't know if the
25 CAB would agree with me on this, but I don't know how
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1 much we believe in BBM, really.
2 188 So many people as well that have been
3 in our sector have come in even for a semester or six
4 months. The turnaround at our stations is just
5 incredible. The main host will stay a while, like a
6 couple of years, maybe, but that their contributors
7 change. And the first question is have you ever been
8 involved or do you know anyone who has ever been
9 involved. And if we look at our turnover which at a
10 station where I work we have 250 volunteers 100 to 150
11 of those change every year. I mean, how many people is
12 that? Imagine all the stations across the country, how
13 many people that is that have been involved in our
14 sector, how many people know someone else that has been
15 involved and that can't answer these questions and that
16 listen to our stations. So I find it, I don't know.
17 189 JOHN STEVENSON: Yeah, the numbers
18 are very small for campus radio. I think the last
19 estimate of total listening in Canada was less than --
20 like, 0.9 per cent was non-commercial, non-CBC radio.
21 190 So I do not -- you may get some
22 pretty strange sort of -- pretty strange sort of
23 graphing of the listening pattern. But, typically,
24 also another factor is the stations tend to be low
25 power so they are not conducive to cars listening. By
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1 and large, it's your 50 watt stations. You have to
2 fiddle with the antenna in the distant part of town
3 sometimes to pick it up.
4 191 So I think what we will probably is
5 end up with is the suggestion that we treat the whole
6 day as the same.
7 192 THE MODERATOR: I guess I am just
8 looking for something a little stronger than intuition
9 on which to base that kind of analysis. I think
10 intuitively we probably all understand that it is a
11 very different day.
12 193 My daughter has just recently
13 discovered the campus radio station and that is
14 definitely nighttime listening and we do get it in the
15 car and it is alternative and she thinks it is
16 absolutely wonderful. She also said: Isn't this
17 great, just think of all the kids -- because she has
18 asked me, can you get my tape played on -- a friend's
19 tape played on a radio station. She said: This is the
20 place to take it. So you definitely have another fan
21 out there.
22 194 ANDREW CARDOZO: You want this kid on
23 your board.
24 195 THE MODERATOR: Hal, Jill, did you
25 want to pursue something?
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1 196 JILL BIRCH: Yeah, thank you. Just
2 one of the questions just for clarification, we are
3 going through the position paper that had been
4 developed and I just wanted a little bit more
5 clarification on the issue of the low power training
6 licences being enhanced. I was wondering if you could
7 just provided some further detail for us of what that
8 means.
9 197 CAROLINE CâTÉ: We have been talking
10 to the CRTC about a possibility of having a temporary
11 low watt licence to try it out. And a lot of student
12 unions, universities, colleges feel hesitant to just go
13 with such -- it is an important thing to hold that
14 licence, to have it and to be promising to do that
15 programming. And people want to try it out for a year
16 and see if it is possible for it to be sustainable and
17 to develop the music library and are we able to do this
18 and how many hours can we really do before applying for
19 a full licence and the full licensing term. That is
20 what it is.
21 198 JOHN STEVENSON: The technical
22 solution in the past used to be carrier current, which
23 is when you run an FM signal through power lines on
24 campus. And that isn't a very effective means of
25 broadcasting, to say the least. And I think this sort
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1 of change would be a replacement and more effective
2 trial basis as opposed to carrier current. So I do not
3 think it is a big conceptual change. In terms of
4 regulation, I think it is more of a technical change
5 that is more appropriate that actually works.
6 199 JILL BIRCH: A further question we
7 had was with regard to the position of increasing
8 advertising on the campus radio stations. And we were
9 just wanting to get a little bit more clarification
10 about what type of advertising that meant in your eyes,
11 would it look like, those kinds of issues.
12 200 CAROLINE CâTÉ: I would like to say
13 that there is no station in the campus community radio
14 sector at all that I have talked to or that who has
15 written me anything that wants to do more advertising
16 and that nobody gets their four minutes an hour.
17 Nobody. So I do not think you guys have to worry about
18 that at all.
19 201 What we are more looking at is, in
20 terms of administration, what is restricted and
21 unrestricted. Do we just want to go unrestricted
22 because people are always calling up: What is
23 restricted, again, what can't we say? Oh, we don't say
24 that anyway. It's more that kind of thing. That it's
25 just easier if we would just: Okay. We have four
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1 minutes an hour and that is it. And then maybe
2 defining a sound to make it -- because we feel, well,
3 say the best or better than is not what constitutes a
4 commercial ad, it is really the sound, like, how does
5 it sounds, how is it being said.
6 202 I mean, we can do lots of commercial
7 ads and not say those words. So we are saying: Well,
8 then, you know, it really is the sound. And we know
9 our sound and we don't have that sound anyway. But if
10 we just need to define a sound or say that, well we
11 will not sound like the commercial stations in our
12 market will sound, then maybe we should just say that
13 and just keep the four minutes. But we are fine with
14 the four minutes.
15 203 JILL BIRCH: If I could just ask, I
16 guess, an open question. If, seeing as we are all here
17 gathered around the table, if private broadcasters
18 could assist campus radio, what are some of the things
19 that you think? We have obviously had some discussions
20 with members internally at CAB and talked a lot with
21 Hal and his relationships. What in your mind would be
22 some helpful things that we might be able to do for
23 you?
24 204 JOHN STEVENSON: Well, Caroline can
25 speak to this as well, but I think as a sector what I
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1 have seen over the last decade is really a plateauing
2 of resources within the campus community radio sector.
3 That is, the situations that stations are in now are
4 pretty similar to what they were in the late 1980s,
5 that there was a lot of growth and a lot of development
6 and a lot of learning that took place in the late '80s
7 and early '90s, but we have plateaued. And as a
8 sector, we, I think, it would be very positive if we
9 could look to the future, instead of looking at just
10 survival, but looking at expanding what we are doing
11 and doing what we are doing better.
12 205 Most stations have budgets that are
13 minuscule by commercial radio standards or by the
14 standards of the CBC. I know the station I worked at,
15 in Guelph, some years ago, the budget was less than
16 $200,000 for a staff of six and a volunteer staff of
17 150 and maintenance and programming and everything that
18 we had to do at the station. And it is great that we
19 can do quite a bit with limited resources, but I think
20 the time has probably come when we have to look to the
21 future and look to doing things more competently and
22 doing -- expanding out into the community, being more
23 of a resource and that sort of thing.
24 206 And I am at a bit of a disadvantage
25 because I did not go to the conference this summer, the
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1 NCRC conference. And so I don't know what people have
2 been saying recently about how we can do this. And
3 maybe Caroline can speak to that. But one of the ways
4 is more direct support from other sectors of media to
5 campus broadcasting, to recognize us as a form of
6 community broadcasting and as such to support us, to do
7 things that commercial radio probably cannot do, to go
8 into areas to provide a lot of programming that
9 commercial radio, just because of commercial
10 constraints, cannot really do.
11 207 And I am not sure what model -- and
12 Caroline probably has more ideas than I do about that
13 -- I am not sure what models we should be suggesting,
14 but any kind of support that we receive makes a huge
15 difference to us. And I know that over the last
16 several years Standard Broadcasting has been the -- I
17 think it is the only large media organization that has
18 given any support to the NCRA and through that to our
19 members. And the impact of that has been absolutely
20 huge. And it is only -- I think the total moneys is
21 less than $100,000 over a period of years. Any amount
22 of support is -- makes a huge difference to the sector
23 and allows us to be able to consider things we could
24 not consider before.
25 208 The total budget, I think for all the
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1 campus stations in Canada is probably around $3.5 to $4
2 million a year and that is nothing. And any support
3 makes a huge difference.
4 209 CAROLINE CâTÉ: John mentioned that
5 Standard gave us, for a couple of years $25,000 a year
6 and that actually went down by $10,000 this year. And,
7 you know, I have to mention that $5,000 of that, by
8 their request, is for the awards banquet where they
9 will come and eat. And for us, $5,000 can really go a
10 lot further than that. That with $10,000, I am talking
11 about a whole new production studio. And that money
12 has gone down and I was surprised to hear you say that
13 at your station you fund -- you help certain stations.
14 I don't know if it is co-op and placements and
15 different awards, I have no clue. But I have never
16 actually heard of them. And also in terms of
17 instructional stations, you were mentioning a lot of
18 instructional stations. 90, 95 per cent of us are not
19 instructional stations. We are not instructional
20 stations, we are not attached to programs. And we are
21 not seeing that money and we are not seeing those
22 programs. We are not seeing journalism contests. We
23 are just not seeing any of that. So I am really
24 surprised to hear you say that. It sounds great for
25 instructional stations, but also, in talking to
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1 instructional stations, they very much told me that
2 they need more support, that they are -- they are the
3 parents and who is going to be going to your stations
4 and that they are not feeling that kind of support.
5 210 So I mean Standard was a beginning.
6 We were hoping to foster more relationships from there.
7 And it is great to hear the CBC say it and it is great
8 to hear you representing the CAB. But we really do
9 need to sit down and see the ways that we can do that.
10 211 The office idea with local talent
11 development is just a first idea as to how -- and that
12 is especially for the artists and getting the artists
13 to us and us to them.
14 212 But, I mean, we have very much looked
15 at the cable model and how much of their percentage of
16 their budget goes to the community stations. And I
17 know it isn't the same thing because their studios are
18 -- it is as if we would move in. And we do not want to
19 move in, either, you know. We don't want to say:
20 Well, we want to use your studio now, you know, please
21 create a home for us. You know, we have our homes.
22 But if there is some way that we can work that way,
23 that would be great.
24 213 JOHN STEVENSON: I think it is
25 particularly applicable when we talk about the coming
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1 of digital radio and how we are going to be able to
2 accommodate that within budgets that on campus are
3 slowly shrinking.
4 214 It is a fear that a lot of stations
5 have that they simply will not be able to be on digital
6 radio and they will not really be broadcasting in 15
7 years or 10 years. And that is a real danger. Nobody
8 is going to rush in. Nobody from the university
9 community is going to rush in and nobody from
10 government is going to rush in and take care of that.
11 It has never happened before.
12 215 These stations started with the sweat
13 and the hard work of people who had a dream to see them
14 created. And nobody -- sometimes universities lent
15 $100,000 or something to a station to start, but it has
16 always come back to the people who wanted to start it.
17 And now we are looking to the future and we cannot
18 necessarily do this, cannot go to the next step by
19 ourselves.
20 216 THE MODERATOR: Susan?
21 217 SUSAN ENGLEBERT: I think in some
22 cases -- with CBC there are things in place that,
23 perhaps, people just do not know about. And I think
24 somehow we are going to have to find a way of getting
25 the kind of programs that we have in place out to you
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1 so that your people know what is going on.
2 218 For instance, we do have -- it is
3 called a New Voices project and we are asking people
4 who have never been on the radio before to -- on CBC
5 before, to come and spend time with us to put together
6 15-minute small programs. It is on five nights a week.
7 219 And we have had, actually, a number
8 of people from campus radios take part in this. But it
9 is a wonderful introduction into CBC. We started doing
10 it last year and we started with two nights a week. We
11 have now expanded it to five. It is 15 minutes in
12 length. And I think if you get into the Internet, it
13 is called Out Front. And it sells you how to go about,
14 you know, getting through the maze of CBC and getting
15 on to it.
16 220 But it is an excellent way of
17 starting out. And it is rather similar to the many
18 years ago we had something called Five Nights which
19 went away, but out of that came some wonderful people
20 Mark Starvitz is one of them who went on to do the
21 journal and all sorts of things. But there are a lot
22 of people within CBC who came in that way.
23 221 And we have some other things when we
24 talk about talent and developing talent, there are
25 routes to go, that I think we need to obviously let you
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1 know how to access better what we have.
2 222 CAROLINE CâTÉ: I have always felt
3 the CAB open to our resumes, especially after five
4 years of knowing production and on-air and research and
5 interviews and music in and out. But it is just the
6 training that in terms of for us that we have to spend
7 a staff that much time with that much turnover. That
8 is really where we need help. There is a void of
9 resources to get those people trained and up to par.
10 223 It is great to hear of these programs
11 but that is already when they have been with us for
12 years and it is the before where we need help.
13 224 SUSAN ENGLEBERT: So you are saying
14 that you need, when people come into your station, you
15 need help in training them, is that where you are
16 going?
17 225 CAROLINE CâTÉ: I would say -- I am
18 saying that the program that you have is great. But
19 for sure a training program would be incredibly
20 helpful.
21 226 At the station where I work, I am the
22 only person in the whole programming department and we
23 are only three full-time staff. Come September, I
24 have, what, a hundred new volunteers to train all by
25 myself and I can't. So how many people of those stay,
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1 go, how much follow-up can I do? Again, I am just
2 human, one person.
3 227 And, for sure, if we can get help
4 with some kind of training, especially from the CBC or
5 people that are from a campus community radio sector,
6 then that would be amazing.
7 228 HAL BLACKADAR: I think, if I may,
8 just so I do understand this correctly, you have
9 mentioned this morning, among the other challenges you
10 have, one is the financial challenge. Both you and
11 John have spoken about the issue of digital which is a
12 topic unto itself which private broadcasters are having
13 equally the challenge to find funds to develop their
14 business plan into the new technology. So we would
15 share your concerns as well that we have to find that
16 money somewhere.
17 229 I guess I would say to the commission
18 that there are undoubtedly, perhaps, under the present
19 benefits test, ways in which funds could be directed
20 towards your program. However, I am not exactly quite
21 clear how broad those may be.
22 230 I think at this point the benefits
23 test -- and correct me if I am wrong here -- that has
24 generally concentrated primarily on the development of
25 Canadian musical artists and programming, and I am
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1 thinking of the musical side. And I think that there
2 has been less emphasis, if you like, on the journalism
3 side and less emphasis, particularly on the hard costs
4 that are associated directly down into the
5 infrastructure of the campus stations.
6 231 And I maybe during this review
7 process it may be up to the commission to decide
8 whether or not to open that door or not to see if there
9 are some areas there in benefits task that would be
10 applicable, that can work for all parties, and see
11 whether or not that is a good use of those funds as we
12 go through the benefits test or some other ways to
13 develop that.
14 232 JOHN STEVENSON: I understand that
15 the commercial stations have a huge challenge with
16 digital radio, but it is -- for campus radio it is
17 simply overwhelming. There is no money in the bank
18 that these stations have that -- well, I think maybe a
19 couple of stations have been saving up for digital,
20 whatever form that is going to take.
21 233 But by and large stations, they may
22 be running a deficit in one year. They may have to
23 borrow money from a student organization or from the
24 university to continue. These are non-profit stations.
25 The challenge is frightening for our stations.
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1 234 And we would -- I think the time has
2 come for a serious look at the benefits test and having
3 some funds from benefits tests applied to our sector in
4 a systematic way. Standard Radio did that. They have
5 been the only people within the broadcasting sector who
6 have done that. And the benefits it to everyone
7 involved, I think, are considerable. And a little
8 money from the commercial sector means a huge, huge --
9 makes a huge difference to the non-commercial sector.
10 And that is something that we'd really like to see.
11 235 ANNE-MARIE MURPHY: I would like to
12 clarify the current benefits test as defined in the
13 latest commercial policy. First of all, it is a policy
14 and the commission did say that it would generally
15 require a certain allocation. So that is number one.
16 236 Secondly, out of a transaction, the 6
17 per cent is to be allocated, yes, 3 per cent to a new
18 fund to be created, the Canadian Music Marketing and
19 Promotion Fund. 2 per cent to either Music Action or
20 Facteur. And then 1 per cent which is left to the
21 discretion of the purchaser to either of those
22 initiatives, but is left pretty well open to other
23 Canadian talent initiatives, which is very broad, or to
24 eligible third parties as defined under the CAB
25 guidelines for Canadian talent development.
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1 237 So that, as it currently exists under
2 that general allocation model, 1 per cent could be
3 potentially directed to other initiatives that are not
4 defined.
5 238 HAL BLACKADAR: I take it that that
6 would require a definition that would permit campus
7 stations, for example, to qualify, though, would that
8 be correct?
9 239 ANNE-MARIE MURPHY: Under the current
10 Canadian talent development policy, there are -- there
11 is -- there are guidelines that are a little bit more
12 definitive. But when I read this policy, I see other
13 Canadian talent development initiatives as undefined in
14 addition to the CTD program.
15 240 So I would suspect that proposals
16 would be considered under that 1 per cent.
17 241 RICHARD FRITH: It probably, though,
18 Hal would be a lot easier, and Caroline and John,
19 easier to deal with if the initiative -- because there
20 is this umbrella thing, this sort of umbrella
21 requirement in the policy that says that basically the
22 acid test is that all money has to go towards
23 development of Canadian and other artistic talent.
24 242 It would seem to be more in the
25 spirit -- and I am speaking hypothetically -- if it had
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1 to do with projects for campus radio that were sort of
2 under the rubric of initiatives that you guys took to
3 develop Canadian talent than going, like, to general
4 operating funds of the station. Because that seems to
5 be one step removed, although we have not really
6 thought it through.
7 243 THE MODERATOR: It is a policy that
8 we are going to be reviewing. And I was thinking as I
9 was listening to Hal that, yes, there is the benefits
10 test and I would agree with Anne-Marie that that 1 per
11 cent is open enough that if the suggestion comes
12 forward that a broadcaster would indeed like to make
13 that 1 per cent contribution to campus radio, that is
14 something that would very logically be considered under
15 that.
16 244 Secondly, there is the Canadian
17 talent development initiative. And, again, I think
18 this is where I think it needs to be clarified on
19 behalf of campus radio stations, what is the talent
20 being developed so that we can look at the definitions
21 which we are interpreting now very leniently so we take
22 as broad an interpretation as possible and see if we
23 can fit that in.
24 245 The third element, it seems to me,
25 something, Jill, that you have raised when you were
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1 talking, I think, the star system idea from CAB and
2 whether that is something that can itself be expanded
3 to include a star system for campus radios. Also,
4 include the kind of training, whether it is
5 journalistic training, whether it is the kind of
6 infrastructure programming training, and whether there
7 is any potential there. So that there would, in fact,
8 be three elements which are potential sources to assist
9 campus radio.
10 246 CAROLINE CâTÉ: What is very
11 important to us, because we have always been eligible
12 for the benefits test, but as we have said, only one
13 commercial broadcaster has given us money. We would
14 very much like to be written in the policy that we are
15 eligible, that money can go to us. And more than even
16 in the 1 per cent which is very vague, but even in the
17 3 per cent for local talent development. But we need
18 to be written there so that even if there is a staff
19 change at our station, which happens and so forth,
20 people can say: Oh, yeah, we can give money to them.
21 They exist. We can give money to them. Because we
22 have not seen that in the past because it hasn't been
23 specific.
24 247 THE MODERATOR: I understand. Part
25 of the problem that we have -- and we have actually
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1 tried to develop such a list, an eligibility list and
2 it gets very long, it gets very complicated and then
3 you get the what-ifs.
4 248 And part of it I think really is the
5 necessity to develop the communication links. I do
6 think that one of the things that is happening this
7 morning is that we are getting more of those
8 communication links there. And where the CRTC can help
9 in identifying or providing incentives or incentives
10 for incentives as we go through the various processes I
11 think there would be a strong willingness to do that.
12 Where we can assist in the communication function and
13 making those linkages, I think we would be happy to do
14 that.
15 249 It does become very complicated to
16 create an eligibility list because there are always
17 exceptions. There is always one more. And I think we
18 could probably find a more productive way, but
19 certainly the message you are delivering is one that I
20 am hearing around the table very well received.
21 250 JILL BIRCH: Susan, if I could just
22 comment, I think right now, specific to the Canadian
23 talent development, if we can work with the CRTC to get
24 some flexibility there, you can count on it that CAB
25 would get the word out to its membership that this is a
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1 new opportunity.
2 251 And dovetailing with that is that
3 radio is very conscious of its future right now. I
4 think now more so than ever radio is looking ahead.
5 They want to be able to anticipate what the future
6 challenges are going to be and meet them. And
7 certainly with Howard Stern coming to Canada, that
8 incident in itself has caused radio stations to reflect
9 on, you know, what have we done? What should we be
10 doing? How can we invest in our infrastructure? How
11 can we invest in our future?
12 252 And what we are really trying to do
13 at CAB is help position radio as a viable, wonderful
14 medium, which it is, and ensure its development and its
15 growth. And so if we can help you in the sense of
16 providing some relief, because it seems that it is
17 something that is very much required, we will do
18 everything we can to do that. So look to us to work
19 with those solutions with the CRTC.
20 253 THE MODERATOR: Just on the digital
21 radio side, and I am well aware of how expensive that
22 is, I don't know whether there is any communication
23 with Digital Radio Research Inc., whether they know or
24 are aware of the issues relating to campus radio. It
25 certainly is a body that is examining and implementing
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1 digital radio. They are dealing with the transition
2 period. Now, it is not necessarily funding but, again,
3 it may be another forum where if they are aware that,
4 oh, yes, maybe there could be some linkages or some
5 partnerships there.
6 254 And, Jill, I know the CAB is
7 certainly a member of the DRRI board and maybe it would
8 just be worthwhile to invite NCRA or whomever would be
9 appropriate in to discuss with DRRI. Again, it is just
10 to increase the awareness and, you know, there is so
11 much innovation out there, who knows what might come of
12 something like that.
13 255 CAROLINE CâTÉ: In terms of digital
14 radio, the times that I have talked to the man from
15 Standard who is on the board, I think, in dealing with
16 digital radio a lot. Every time that I was talking and
17 asking questions about digital, it was -- there is not
18 that many answers. And we have been having a hard time
19 getting any kind of communication as to what is
20 happening.
21 256 And, also, in the past, we had to
22 fight with l'ARC du Quebec in Canada to get a seat on
23 Industry Canada's committee on looking at digital
24 radio. And I was actually supposed to meet with Lucie
25 after this meeting, Lucie from l'ARC du Quebec, because
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1 she found that they had been meeting without her. And
2 after fighting for our seat and that she was the one
3 representing the non-profit sector, that people had
4 been meeting without her and telling us at all what was
5 going on. And she said it was about a year and a half
6 she had not heard from them at all and found out
7 through the grapevine that they had been meeting
8 without her. So another reason why we are worried
9 about digital.
10 257 HAL BLACKADAR: If I may, I am
11 intrigued by your comments on digital radio and in the
12 initial committee that was set up, as I recall, a
13 tripartite committee, there were representatives
14 initially from campus and community radio stations.
15 And I am just not sure what happened along the way, but
16 we went through those meetings.
17 258 But could I ask you this: When we
18 are talking about the digital world, I am a little
19 surprised that your emphasis is on a digital
20 broadcasting concept rather than the digital world of
21 the Internet which would strike me to be a world that
22 you people know better probably than anyone, but in a
23 confined area where your audio streaming and all of
24 that in itself is a great opportunity. And I am just
25 wondering whether or not you have looked at the digital
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1 world of audio streaming on campus in that milieu,
2 rather than broadcasting side of trying to get into
3 this huge investment which is going to take digital.
4 259 CAROLINE CâTÉ: We have very much
5 looked at that. It is not that we don't have people at
6 our stations. I mean, we have the people at our
7 stations that know how to do that. But, again, money
8 to pay them to do that -- the equipment even that extra
9 Marantz tied up to the computer to load in our
10 programs, having the space.
11 260 JOHN STEVENSON: There are similar
12 financial challenges to doing live streaming.
13 261 CAROLINE CâTÉ: Although not as
14 large.
15 262 JOHN STEVENSON: No, not as large,
16 but because you would need to have a dedicated server
17 and band width and those are all -- particularly for
18 the band width are ongoing expenses where there is no
19 cost recovery.
20 263 So it is -- doing radio over the
21 Internet has interested me for quite a while and I know
22 some stations are doing it because they have the
23 support of their university computer people. So I know
24 that they are doing it down in London at Western and I
25 am sure a couple of other people are doing it.
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1 264 But you need stuff donated to you in
2 order to do it because unless someone on the computer
3 side of stuff says: Okay. Well, we will help you do
4 it, we will give you the server space and you can run
5 off this Internet line, you can't do it. You just
6 don't have the option of doing it because the expenses
7 are too high and you can't necessarily see the benefits
8 in the short term.
9 265 CAROLINE CâTÉ: And then also not
10 even all of our stations have access. I know Industry
11 Canada has a program to help non-profits get onto the
12 Internet, but that has been taking so long and they are
13 talking about the year 2000 and we would have needed it
14 five years ago and, you know, that kind of thing.
15 266 MORAG YORK: I was going to comment
16 that like in CJSW, in Calgary, I think, they have a
17 live stream that I am aware of. But, you know, on the
18 other side of it is the receivership, the ability of
19 listeners to actually be able to hear it and campus
20 radio especially is aiming for what is often called
21 marginalized groups who are maybe less likely to have
22 access to computers or the kind of equipment that you
23 could use to receive Internet, maybe even less than
24 other listenership populations.
25 267 And just going back to the carrier
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1 current thing, I remember when I was in Victoria and I
2 was talking to the computer people and we were talking
3 about the training licence. And I was saying: You
4 know, what is wrong with carrier current or something
5 like that, why don't you just do that, you know, it is
6 a good solution. And they all kind of looked at me
7 like I was crazy and said: No, you have got to be able
8 to turn it on, the receiver, like you've got to be able
9 to turn it on in your car, it makes a huge difference.
10 If people don't -- if they can't turn on the radio and
11 hear you, you might as well not exist. It makes a huge
12 difference to be able to be over the air, for people to
13 go home, turn on the receiver and hear you. And I
14 think you have the same problem with the Internet in
15 that sense. It is not really there on the receiver
16 side.
17 268 JOHN STEVENSON: And I am a big short
18 wave radio fan from my childhood and Internet radio now
19 is very similar to the short wave. I mean, there's
20 lots of stuff you can listen to, but you have got to
21 have the equipment and you have got to find the
22 material.
23 269 Maybe it is not quite as bad as short
24 wave, but it is not mass media, you know, it is
25 push-pull kind of stuff.
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1 270 RICHARD FRITH: John, the thing with
2 carrier current, I think, is you can turn it on and you
3 can get it on the radio, but you also get a big, big
4 buzz if you have got any lights like this, right?
5 271 JOHN STEVENSON: Oh, it is an
6 adventure. I know that when they did it at Guelph
7 years and years ago, that they did not set it up right.
8 And the power -- you are only supposed to do the power
9 lines in particular parts of campus, so it is supposed
10 to be blocked off from going downtown. And it went all
11 the way downtown. It was so strong it was just
12 overwhelming, which is, of course, our long-term goal.
13 It was overwhelming all these other stations. And this
14 buzz, everyone's a.m. station. So it is not, it is a
15 great idea that just does not work very well. You
16 might as well be using a string and tin cups, that
17 would be another option.
18 272 THE MODERATOR: I guess just to carry
19 on the concern side. It is probably worthwhile for the
20 limited audience. But, you know, as I listened to CBC
21 and CAB talking earlier, the whole idea of drawing the
22 diversity from campus radio into the mainstream of the
23 system is something that you would not want to lose,
24 either.
25 273 And so to marginalize, if that is
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1 what would happen through the use of the Internet,
2 while that may be a valuable complement to everything
3 that is going on, probably the transition to digital
4 still remains an issue. And it may be that the
5 transition timing is somewhat longer for campus than
6 others, but that is certainly an issue that should be
7 addressed.
8 274 CAROLINE CâTÉ: Maybe also if we can
9 start on projects such as getting us the computers and
10 that equipment and starting with that and then with the
11 longer commitments and partnership.
12 275 HAL BLACKADAR: I think those are
13 very valuable points. I think that it is kind of
14 interesting that we as broadcasters are, in fact,
15 probably, interestingly enough, moving probably more
16 toward Internet broadcasting or should be as in concert
17 with digital over the air.
18 276 But it is kind of interesting that we
19 as broadcasters need to define our way to the Internet
20 because that is where the future will be. That is
21 where the future lies. And it is not, generally
22 speaking, going to be necessarily over the air as much
23 as we are seeing to this point in time according to the
24 Internet. Clearly, the Internet is going to be a huge
25 source of revenue and a huge source of listenership as
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1 we go along.
2 277 I think, though, if you look at the
3 digital role out in this country -- and Madam Chair
4 your point is a very good one -- if you look at the
5 digital role out in this country, we are now underway
6 shortly in Toronto, shortly thereafter in Vancouver and
7 in Montreal, with digital. I would expect by the time
8 we get into markets like London and Halifax and some of
9 these other markets, we will be some time out. At
10 which point in time I think you will find that the
11 costs that we have seen to date to buy digital
12 equipment is going to come down considerably. And to
13 give you some idea of how much it has come down, it is
14 -- today a transmitter is about a third of the cost of
15 what it was six or seven years ago when we first became
16 involved with digital radio. So that cost is coming
17 down.
18 278 It may be advantageous to not be on
19 the first wave coming in, but to find yourself
20 somewhere a little later on when the costs are far more
21 cost effective. And, frankly, at this point in time
22 there are no receivers in this country. Well, CBC has
23 three, I think, and we have listened to them. But set
24 penetration is going to be an interesting cost as well
25 because the average cost at this point is still about
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1 $700. So we have got some distance to go.
2 279 CAROLINE CâTÉ: And that is just for
3 the receiver. We have mentioned our budgets, right.
4 We can imagine the rest.
5 280 MORAG YORK: I was just going to say
6 that digital radio, you know, because of the nature of
7 it where you have one transmitter that can broadcast
8 five signals, it does seem to be a natural area where
9 you could have some partnerships or cooperation.
10 281 And I know the CBC has been
11 especially involved in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal. I
12 was wondering if there has been some discussion or some
13 thought about partnering with some of the smaller
14 stations in the market if you have four services
15 somewhere and you have a fifth channel available. Have
16 you thought about that at all?
17 282 SUSAN ENGLEBERT: I am probably not
18 really the person to answer this. I really do not
19 know. I mean, I know, as I am sure everyone does know,
20 that CBC has been meeting with private broadcasters and
21 inviting them to hop on their system, their
22 transmitters. But I do not know if they have gone any
23 further than that.
24 283 CAROLINE CâTÉ: And we have said that
25 we would like to be part of those meetings.
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1 284 THE MODERATOR: Okay. Perhaps I
2 could just suggest that we take a quick break and if
3 there are other issues address them upon returning.
4 285 One of the issues I thought we might
5 talk about just after a five-minute break, if we could,
6 is the issue that you raised, John, about the board of
7 directors, the ownership and control issue. And I
8 thought that with the people that we have around the
9 table, perhaps there is some good advice, some
10 experience that may be useful as we are all examining
11 that issue. And maybe we could talk about that a
12 little after a break.
13 --- Suspension à 1012/Recess at 1012
14 --- Reprise à 1030/Resumed at 1030
15 286 THE MODERATOR: Perhaps I could just
16 ask you to give a brief recap of ownership control of
17 student unions.
18 287 JOHN STEVENSON: It is a pretty well
19 known fact that campus radio stations do not have very
20 much continuity. That is that compared to other kinds
21 of organizations, non-profit organizations and other
22 kind of media, there are not a lot of people who stay
23 with campus radio for long periods of time, say, at
24 most more than six or seven years.
25 288 But that is more continuity than
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1 student government tends to have, which might turn over
2 100 per cent every year. So the situation, it has come
3 up a few times and I think it comes up in the life of
4 every campus radio station that the student union wants
5 to change something fundamental about the radio
6 station, change its mandate. People in student
7 government are well-intentioned, but they are
8 cripplingly under-informed about the sector and about
9 what the history of the station and that sort of thing.
10 289 Some of the most experienced and
11 respected people in campus radio have been victims of
12 this kind of change. I know one manager who was with
13 the station for more than ten years and was a very
14 important resource to campus radio all across Canada
15 and because of changes within the student union he was
16 asked to resign and one of the people who had
17 engineered his resignation actually took his place to
18 try to make the station more in the image of what that
19 particular student union wanted that year. It is very
20 unfortunate because campus stations are not just
21 accountable to the university community, to the
22 university staff and particularly to the students; they
23 are also accountable to the community at this point.
24 And it is that responsibility that can be endangered by
25 a student union that simply wants the station to play
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1 -- start playing country music or adult contemporary or
2 something which is completely contrary to the licence
3 of the station and to the history of the station.
4 290 So the members of the NCRA, at the
5 last conference, voted to recommend to the commission
6 that new stations that are licensed not be licensed
7 solely to the student union. There are other models
8 for licensing. I know at the University of Guelph and
9 at Dalhousie University, I worked at both stations,
10 there was an independent organization that was created
11 either a society or a non-profit corporation. At
12 Guelph it was a corporation that had been founded in
13 part by a student group and in part by the university.
14 It was the merger of two clubs that had existed. But
15 it was a separate incorporated entity that had board
16 members from the university administration and student
17 representatives but it also had mandatory
18 representatives from the community as well that were
19 elected and were volunteer. So it provides a balance
20 of the directors.
21 291 And that is the sort of model that is
22 going to allow stations to move forward without undue
23 influence from student unions.
24 292 RICHARD FRITH: And I think that is
25 something that we try to encourage because, you know, I
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1 would say in most cases it is the case now. And the
2 other thing that happens, if you license a student
3 union group directly, we found in a couple of cases,
4 you know, you could get a situation where the number of
5 non-Canadians on the student board was greater than
6 permitted under the Order in Council that we operate
7 under. So that is one point.
8 293 The other -- the current condition of
9 license on the board of a campus station sort of is
10 pretty open in that it says only that the majority of
11 members of the board of directors have to be somehow
12 connected with the institution, be they students,
13 volunteer, faculty.
14 294 Does that -- do you think that that
15 current condition meets the needs of NCRA? Because
16 that is something we put together basically in the last
17 policy review and I was interested in whether or not
18 that seems to be a good condition for your purposes.
19 295 CAROLINE CâTÉ: I don't know how much
20 people paid attention to that, to be honest. I know
21 that CHUO we have the problem that our board, is it
22 three? Three members of our board are just put on by
23 the student union and they tell us that we are not
24 their priority. So I cannot imagine them be the
25 licence holders. And most of the people that are on
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1 our board, only two of them are part of the station
2 they are volunteer reps. And then we have two staff,
3 including myself, and we do not have a vote. So I
4 think it has to be clear, way more clear.
5 296 JOHN STEVENSON: I felt for a long
6 time and I felt -- I said this in the last review, back
7 in '92, that campus stations need to be mandated as a
8 kind of community station. And that, given that,
9 having a majority of members of the board being
10 associated with the university is not really
11 appropriate. There should be university representation
12 on the board, if that is the case, but I am not really
13 -- it is a while since I have had to deal with the
14 board. I think probably since the last review I have
15 not dealt with a campus review of a station board, so I
16 was not aware of that change.
17 297 MORAG YORK: If you look at the
18 funding of most campus stations, there is sort of three
19 sources of funding. There is advertising, there is
20 direct funding through funding drives, listenership
21 funding and there is a student association funding.
22 And, in most cases, direct fees from students make up
23 maybe about a third of the budget of a campus station.
24 And I think that the condition that Rick was talking
25 about was an attempt to make sure that there was some
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1 accountability for that funding that came from the
2 students. So I think that we would want to see some
3 mechanism in the ownership that ensures that students
4 who are funding perhaps a third of the station have
5 some representation on the board and at least some
6 accountability back and forth.
7 298 Now, that does not necessarily mean
8 -- you know, the two are not exclusive. You could have
9 some direct representation from the student, but not
10 necessarily through the student association. But I
11 think that that was the concern we were trying to
12 address and we need to find some kind of compromise on
13 that.
14 299 JILL BIRCH: On another tangent,
15 there are some places that you can get help.
16 300 In a previous life I worked with the
17 Canadian Society of Association Executives and one of
18 the things that CSAE does is it assists not-for-profit
19 organizations, NGOs, in working with boards of
20 directors.
21 301 There is a number of books and
22 pamphlets and seminars that the association holds and
23 you don't even have to be a member to go to these
24 seminars. You can be a member but specifically to that
25 point, because the challenges of reporting to a
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1 volunteer board, as I am sure all of us have
2 experienced over the course of our lives is sometimes
3 difficult, and that is there to support and help.
4 302 So if there is further information I
5 can give you on that, I would be happy to share that
6 with you. Because I think this is one of the
7 challenges you have, as John was saying, is you are on
8 a roll for ten years, a new person comes in, and he
9 says: Well, I could do that job five times better and
10 you are gone.
11 303 And the whole issue there becomes
12 orientation of the board that when you have your first
13 meeting is what is your orientation that you give to
14 the volunteers and who is mandated to do that. And you
15 almost need to have a systematic process where you say,
16 you know, this is how we operate and that involves a
17 lot of succession planning with volunteers and a number
18 of issues like that. So there is tonnes of
19 information. One of the gurus is John Carver. He has
20 a book out on board governance that you can pretty well
21 get anywhere. I don't know if that would help, but it
22 is a huge issue.
23 304 JOHN STEVENSON: I think those kind
24 of resources are really important, but there is not
25 really any substitute for continuity and for having
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1 most of the people on the board familiar with what you
2 are doing and when -- if the majority are from the
3 student government, they will not be familiar with what
4 you are doing. And you are under, you are basically --
5 it does not matter how long you have been there or if
6 they get the idea in their head that, you know, they
7 are going to change the station and they need to make
8 changes and your costing too much money or whatever
9 kind of problems may happen. That is not
10 accountability to the students, that is simply student
11 politics. That is, you know, university student
12 politics.
13 305 You know, when I came out of
14 university student organizations and went into work for
15 other non-profits, I was expecting the same kind of
16 political environment. And it does not exist in --
17 whatever challenges non-profits have outside of
18 universities, they, they are -- they tend to have a
19 core group of people, the organizations that know, you
20 know, that have been there for a while, they know the
21 rules and so on and that is quite a bit less common at
22 the university student organizations.
23 306 JILL BIRCH: And just the flip side
24 of that, there is one issue where you are trying to
25 orientate your volunteers and what their roles and
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1 responsibilities are. But I think the other issue is
2 to seek help for yourself in the sense of how do I work
3 with volunteers? How do I understand what motivates
4 them? You know, why are they here? And what is their
5 agenda, whether it is hidden or open. So part of it, I
6 think, is developing the skills required to understand
7 the mind set. And, again, you know, there are
8 organizations that can help you with that. There are
9 philanthropic groups who have all kinds of information
10 and programs. Because part of it is just getting it in
11 your own head where they are at and then kind of
12 working either around or through them whichever works
13 best for you.
14 307 THE MODERATOR: All on the public
15 record.
16 308 ANDREW CARDOZO: Can I just come back
17 to Morag's point about accountability. If the campus
18 radio station is getting a certain amount of money from
19 the students via student council, is there a balance or
20 a way you can see that would be acceptable where there
21 would be some connection between the student council
22 and the board of the radio station?
23 309 JOHN STEVENSON: Well, I do not think
24 anyone is arguing that there should not be people from
25 student government on the board.
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1 310 ANDREW CARDOZO: Not the majority,
2 you are saying.
3 311 JOHN STEVENSON: It is just that I
4 know the stations that have the student union running
5 the licence versus stations that do not and you are
6 always dealing with student government. There tends to
7 be a lot of shared resources between student
8 government, maybe you share a photocopier, maybe you
9 share the accountant.
10 312 So that is going to be a given that
11 you have contact with people. And if you are working
12 in the sector that you are familiar with the people in
13 student government, that you talk to them and have a
14 sense of what their priorities are and that sort of
15 thing and that has been my experience.
16 313 The danger is when, if you are
17 completely at the whim of people in student government
18 and they can make arbitrary decisions about the
19 station. And I do not think anyone would argue that
20 there should not be contact with people in student
21 government and that sort of thing.
22 314 ANDREW CARDOZO: Have there been
23 instances of the student government trying to decide
24 what you say about them? Like, what you say in terms
25 of the politics of student council and run-up to
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1 student elections or council elections and so on.
2 315 JOHN STEVENSON: I can't recall any
3 -- I am trying to remember. There has been other fun
4 things that have happened. Not that one in particular.
5 That is more a student paper sort of problem. I know
6 that that happens quite a bit in the student press, but
7 in terms of influence, no. It tends to be more around
8 programming and they cannot understand why we are doing
9 the programming that we are doing, why we are not
10 playing, you know, more Aerosmith, that sort of thing.
11 316 But that is within the context of a
12 lot of -- you know, the vast majority of these people
13 in student government understanding what you are doing
14 and supporting it. It is just that it doesn't take --
15 they just need one bad year to -- it happened at
16 Windsor, it happened at Fredericton, I think it has
17 happened at Western. Every once in a while it happens
18 and it throws you back to the point where you have to
19 build it all back up, again, volunteers get angry and
20 leave, a lot of energy goes into fighting for something
21 and it is a lot of wasted energy.
22 317 MORAG YORK: Maybe I can just follow
23 up on John's point about the programming a little bit.
24 It leads us to sort of part of the elements of the 1992
25 policies. As I understand it from Richard, when we
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1 developed the 1992 policy -- it looks like I'm blaming
2 you.
3 318 RICHARD FRITH: I think it is good.
4 319 MORAG YORK: I think it's a brilliant
5 policy, Richard.
6 320 Some of the elements of that policy
7 are fairly detailed regulatory requirements, things
8 like the spoken word level, the hit level, the
9 requirement for a certain level of music programming
10 from different categories. There is a number of
11 regulatory requirements that are reflected in the
12 promise of performance that do not apply to commercial
13 radio at this point any more but we've left that them
14 for campus radio. And the sense that we had, I think,
15 in 1992 was that they helped to provide some protection
16 to campus stations in the event that they do get some
17 pressure from the students' association to develop the
18 more mainstream sound or more commercial sound. This
19 gives you something.
20 321 And I have had calls from people
21 saying: My student association wants me to play hits,
22 can I tell them that the CRTC only lets me do 10 per
23 cent hits? Or something like that. They want to have
24 those kind of things to point to.
25 322 So I was just wondering if you could
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1 give me a sense of how many of those regulations or if
2 those regulations or those details or those elements of
3 the policy are still serving that purpose, if there is
4 a way they could be improved or streamlined. Do you
5 have any concerns in that area?
6 323 CAROLINE CâTÉ: Basically, if we have
7 not mentioned it, it is because we like things the way
8 they are. They have been serving for that. And also
9 for our new staff coming on, well, look at the licence,
10 read the policies.
11 324 MORAG YORK: So you do not see that
12 as difficult.
13 325 CAROLINE CâTÉ: As a constraint, no.
14 326 MORAG YORK: And they reflect what
15 you want to do, mostly?
16 327 CAROLINE CâTÉ: Yeah.
17 328 MORAG YORK: I told you it was
18 brilliant, Richard.
19 329 THE MODERATOR: Is there anything
20 else that you would like to see in there to help with
21 some -- address some of the concerns you have
22 expressed?
23 330 You can always get back to us on
24 that.
25 331 JOHN STEVENSON: I don't know if
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1 there was anything else that came out of the conference
2 about that stuff. Because I wasn't there.
3 332 CAROLINE CâTÉ: And for sure with the
4 call for comments, right, this is just a beginning. We
5 are going to be doing lots of brainstorming from here
6 and lots of proposals, especially with things like the
7 music categories. So we can have a proposal (a), (b)
8 and (c) as to how we can get those things to better
9 work for us.
10 333 I would just like to come back for a
11 minute in terms of the ownership. A small example of
12 having our station -- people on the board being mainly
13 student government like, with us right now at CHUO, the
14 new treasurer is always the treasurer of the student
15 union. Comes in, says, oh, you guys are in debt, how
16 can we get out of debt? Oh, you have to sell more
17 commercials and you have to be more commercial. Oh, I
18 am going to call the CRTC and see how we can change
19 that licence. And that is typical, right.
20 334 And that is without them being the
21 holders of our licence. And then it does change our
22 direction. And you are mentioning the orientation
23 because the majority of the people on the board are not
24 station people and then they decide that that is now
25 our direction is trying to change our licence.
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1 335 So it throws us for a definite loop
2 and brings us back. And they are not thinking of the
3 volunteers. Like, we know the volunteers we are used
4 to. We know what we are doing in terms of staff and
5 the volunteers. But then those are people who do not
6 come into the station and look at the books and say:
7 Oh, how do we get out of that? And they are just
8 thinking: Well, add more commerciality. If you did
9 not have so much third language programming, if you
10 didn't have so much French programming, then.
11 336 JOHN STEVENSON: But they other side
12 of that is they do not know commercial radio and they
13 just have this conception of how radio is supposed to
14 work. But they come in and they say: Well, sell more
15 ads, or do this or do that. You start mixing up what
16 is going on on the air, you start playing more music
17 that is perceived to be commercial, that could drive
18 away your audience.
19 337 But they think, you know, we are
20 student government, we can fix the problem. And they
21 do not know enough about the sector or about radio
22 generally to even address it.
23 338 JOAN PENNEFATHER: This is related to
24 this discussion in the sense that in Victoria and today
25 as well, you raised the issue of balance, the policy
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1 related to balance. I was -- it is coming back to
2 mind, because as you discussed the board of directors
3 and the influence they do or do not have on
4 programming, I think John said it was programming where
5 the issues really begin to arise. If you are proposing
6 a different mix, you are also proposing, perhaps,
7 different expectations, more community, what community,
8 what representation, which brings me back to balance.
9 339 And I was wondering if both of you
10 could just expand a little bit more on that concern,
11 what it specifically means in terms of a review. You
12 said could you review it. Why? What are you looking
13 to change there, or what does it mean to you, the
14 current policy of balance?
15 340 JOHN STEVENSON: Well, the biggest
16 concern I have always had about that policy that came
17 out of the Co-op Radio in Vancouver licence renewal and
18 that was ten years ago now, and that was the first
19 thing I had to deal with when I was on the NCRA board,
20 the concern that has always come out of that is that it
21 has a chilling effect -- it discourages people within
22 the sector from dealing with issues or putting people
23 on the air that may have strong opinions that are
24 legitimate opinions that are defensible. But it
25 discourages people from going forward with that. And
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1 that concern comes out of the perception and maybe
2 people at the commission can clarify it, the perception
3 that when we put someone on the air and they have an
4 opinion that generates reaction from a listenership,
5 the perception now is that we are obligated to produce
6 programming which balances the opinions that are
7 expressed.
8 341 So it is not good enough that if
9 someone goes on the air and says something and someone
10 complains, we are not just -- it is not just good
11 enough to say to that person who is complaining: Well,
12 why don't you come in and we will record you talking
13 about this for ten minutes. They can say: Well, no, I
14 am not going to do that, I am not going to come in, you
15 have got to do it.
16 342 And as the policy currently reads,
17 and I know I was reading an e-mail debate that went on
18 this summer between a couple of people about this. As
19 the policy currently reads, it seems as if we are
20 obligated to produce programming somehow to provide
21 balance to legitimate opinions and points of view that
22 we as a station did not directly produce.
23 343 So in the case of Co-op Radio, it was
24 the Voice of Palestine program. And they said things
25 that some people in the local communities did not agree
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1 with and it was not good enough that they were offered
2 time to give their own opinions. The expectation was,
3 according to the policy, was that we would -- that
4 Co-op Radio would go on the air and somehow, I don't
5 know how, produce a balance when all we are doing for
6 the most part is providing access for these people to
7 provide their opinions. And I think that is the
8 concern.
9 344 And I think everyone in the sector
10 would be committed to fairness. But balance when there
11 are so many different sides to so many different
12 contentious stories and we want to provide those
13 different sides, I think that the issue, the idea of
14 balance is a difficult one.
15 345 JOAN PENNEFATHER: It is difficult,
16 it always is very challenging, whether you are talking
17 a system or you are talking individual program. But I
18 do think it is an important one to discuss because of
19 the very nature of the campus radio stations. We all
20 mentioned at the beginning the alternative voice, the
21 diversity of opinion. What does that really mean in
22 the day-to-day? And reading the policy one can
23 interpret it different ways. That is what I wanted to
24 hear. What exactly does it in the day-to-day turn out
25 to mean? How have you interpreted it?
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1 346 Have you anything to add, Caroline?
2 347 CAROLINE CâTÉ: The example of Co-op
3 Radio and the Voice of Palestine is a incredible
4 example and a specific example, something that I have
5 not heard of ever happening again in terms of the
6 different opinions.
7 348 I see no problem in that at our
8 stations that with the lesbian, bisexual, gay,
9 transgendered show that there would be people from each
10 of those communities in a certain debate given a voice
11 as much as possible.
12 349 I mean, we do go out, people know to
13 go out and get those different opinions within a show.
14 But then if we get a complaint then with that show,
15 right, because we are the only ones that are providing
16 a voice that are giving, again, access to certain
17 groups to voice opinions and give -- and to speak of a
18 certain issue, that form them, you know instead of
19 somebody, you know what I am trying to say, that then,
20 why do we see that as a balance in a way?
21 350 Especially in our definition, I was
22 shocked in Victoria to hear that, yes, then, we are
23 responsible for providing that balance because in our
24 definition we are the alternative voice. So who does
25 not have a voice, what opinions are not expressed in
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1 commercial radio, CBC, we give a voice to. And we see
2 that, we see ourselves very much as creating a balance.
3 351 So I was flabbergasted in Victoria
4 when this came up.
5 352 JOAN PENNEFATHER: And in doing that,
6 you, yourselves, according to policy, must create a
7 balance and what you are talking to me is your
8 interpretation of what that imposes upon you?
9 353 JOHN STEVENSON: I think that there
10 is -- I mean, I know that ten years ago there was a
11 perception that the sector would provide a balance
12 within -- provide another perspective within the system
13 as a whole. That was the argument that was made, that
14 the system as a whole needs to have diversity. And
15 that by particularly a co-op which has a lot of spoken
16 word programming, by going out and finding the people
17 that they did, they were going to be presenting
18 perspectives that were different than what is presented
19 on public broadcasting and commercial broadcasting.
20 354 Because of that, you get a
21 perspective about people's opinions and the kind of
22 ideas that are out there in the community that do not
23 fit neatly into an idea of, okay, here is X and here is
24 Y and they are fighting, you know. If you have got --
25 every kind of cultural group and political group has
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1 different chunks within it with different opinions.
2 355 It does not seem to be very useful to
3 go out and if someone is giving a particular opinion
4 that may be contentious to roll up the tape and try to
5 come up with something that is contrary when you --
6 when the opinion that they are presenting is, you know,
7 it is their perspective, it is their experience and
8 there is not an easy way to come up with balance in
9 that sense. And it just sort of implies that, you
10 know, it is what the mainstream media does. You know,
11 there is this group and then there is this group.
12 There is labour, there is management. There is
13 pro-life, there is pro-choice and they are fighting.
14 And the world that we see in campus radio is not that
15 straightforward. You have all sorts of different
16 perspectives. And it is tough.
17 356 And, as Caroline said, you know, that
18 is the last time I remember that there was a complaint
19 and that there was an issue around balance. Ever since
20 then, everyone has been worried about it more so than
21 anything else. They talk about it, they are scared.
22 And I don't know of any direct circumstances where
23 people have shyed away. I know that at CFRU, in
24 Guelph, it did not stop us from doing anything.
25 357 But I know there was a lot of -- back
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1 in the early 1990s, a lot of discussion on the air
2 about East Timor and the university was funding
3 development projects in Indonesia. And I was concerned
4 on a certain level about would we have to produce
5 something and would my spoken word people produce it or
6 not. And I did not want them to have to produce it. I
7 mean, this was a legitimate opinion. I do not want to
8 go on the air and say, yeah, Indonesia, go Indonesia.
9 It was not the moral position and I think that has been
10 proven to be the case over the years.
11 358 MARTINE VALLÉE: I don't know whether
12 it would be helpful or not and maybe Anne-Marie could
13 just jump in to tell us what the balance policy is.
14 But the balance policy applies to each individual
15 station and when a station is broadcasting a matter of
16 public concern, views on sort of a controversial
17 matter, it has a responsibility to present over a
18 reasonable period of time other points of view on that
19 matter to balance it out.
20 359 So it is not -- I mean, the
21 application of it is not if you, you know, you say
22 something about pro-life then you have to have a
23 program, a strong program about pro-choice. It is not
24 that you have to have one or the other, it is just
25 within a period of time that the audience should be
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1 exposed to other points of view on the issues. So it
2 does not necessarily mean that you have to have a
3 strong opinion on the other point of view, it is just
4 that other points of view are presented somehow.
5 360 JOHN STEVENSON: It is the some how
6 that is the sort of the problem.
7 361 MARTINE VALLÉE: We have this
8 conversation a lot with religious stations because we
9 define religion as a matter of public concern. So
10 religious stations by their very nature are obligated
11 to provide balance in their programming. And one of
12 the ways that we tell them that they can provide
13 balance is to have, perhaps, a show, a discussion show
14 or invite different people in a panel just to talk
15 about the issue and that sort of exposes other points
16 of view on the issue. We do not have any sort of set
17 rules exactly how what has to be done. But I think the
18 commission is fairly flexible in what it, you know,
19 what it perceives to be balance to the issue.
20 362 ANNE-MARIE MURPHY: I think that the
21 issue of balance and balance within each station is
22 something where numerous factors come into
23 consideration, one of which being the type of station
24 that is being examined. It will not be the only
25 factor, but, like everything else, because of all of
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1 the different circumstances, the context, the type of
2 licensee, all of those factors come into consideration.
3 So that it is not just having one show to balance
4 another show.
5 363 MORAG YORK: Well, the balance policy
6 applies to all broadcasting. It is not unique to the
7 campus radio sector. I was wondering if the CBC or CAB
8 had any comments on providing a balance programming, if
9 they have difficulty with it or how they accomplish it.
10 364 SUSAN ENGLEBERT: We do not have
11 difficulty with it, but we are all always very aware of
12 it. And, in fact, we have, as I am sure you know, we
13 have computer programs in place so that we keep track
14 of what we do.
15 365 Some of that is quite time-consuming
16 but we have to do it because obviously we are very much
17 sitting out there and we have to. It is something that
18 we just have to do. And we either do it -- it does not
19 necessarily have to be balance within a program. We
20 may find that we have somebody on the air with one
21 position which we will perhaps not invite someone else
22 on, on that program, but within a day or that week,
23 another different opinion has to be on the air.
24 366 It is tricky at times. You know, I
25 can understand. We are always extremely conscious of
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1 it. And it does take up time. There is no doubt about
2 it. But I do not have -- I do not have any answers to
3 your dilemma. It is just something that from the CBC
4 point of view that we must do. It is very important.
5 367 JOAN PENNEFATHER: Just one question
6 of clarification: What is the balance, music to spoken
7 word, on campus? Just approximately, how much music
8 versus how much spoken word.
9 368 CAROLINE CâTÉ: We do 25 per cent
10 spoken word.
11 369 THE MODERATOR: Jill or Hal, did you
12 want to say anything about this?
13 370 JILL BIRCH: I think a lot of the
14 venting that now goes on with radio, how it has
15 evolved, there is a continuous discussion and dialogue
16 now that is encouraged with talk-back lines and things
17 like that, that I think prevents a lot of complaints.
18 Because people feel: Well, I am going to call this
19 radio station and just give them a piece of my mind and
20 it gets on the air.
21 371 I think that is a remedy that I think
22 maybe radio has found. And I am going to defer to Hal
23 as the subject matter expert here. But I think
24 certainly there is ways that you can get around it in
25 terms of providing for that balance by encouraging it,
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1 saying: Look, if you have a problem, you know, call
2 this line and you will get on and, in fact, you will
3 hear yourself.
4 372 So people, I think, are able to
5 understand that there is an outlet. And perhaps in the
6 old days there was no outlet, it was a very one-way
7 mechanism. And I think radio now is developing
8 relationships in a different way with its listeners.
9 And saying: You know, we have an opinion for what it
10 is worth, but we want to hear what you think.
11 373 It is important for the radio station
12 to be real with its listeners to understand what they
13 think and that further defines and reflects their
14 programming.
15 374 So I don't know, Hal, if you have any
16 other comments you would like to add.
17 375 HAL BLACKADAR: I think that is true.
18 I think we have learned that hurtful words from
19 listeners is often easier to deal with than
20 correspondence with the commission.
21 376 I think that what I think we are
22 seeing today is broadcasters accepting the fact that
23 people do want to be heard. I mean, even my own rock
24 station in Toronto where listeners phone up and, you
25 know, we will put a montage of them together on the air
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1 back-to-back on the air. And they may have a very
2 strong view about something that was said by someone
3 without even a strong position when it was said. It
4 may be about a piece of music, it may be about
5 something that is happening. And that comment then
6 begets another comment that is on the other side so,
7 you know, you are there.
8 377 Beyond that station, if you -- I
9 think, in listening to talk stations, you hear that
10 people today seem to be much more aggressive in coming
11 out and not being reluctant to get those points of view
12 across. I know when I am listening to some other talk
13 stations around Toronto there is times when I am
14 tempted to phone in myself but then I am always
15 reluctant to confess that I am listening.
16 378 I think that, you know, in a strange
17 way, you know, your question is a very good question.
18 I hate to sort of parcel out in terms of minutes or
19 time of day, whatever, but somehow we seem to get there
20 in some way. But I don't know if we get there with a
21 big plan. I think it just kind of sort of happens
22 today.
23 379 I know that we are criticized from
24 time to time on some subject matters that we have done
25 where we have had to, as you say, back up a bit and
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1 say, okay, we have to provide something that is a more
2 reasonable balance here. But I really would like to
3 think that, at least on the commercial side, that we
4 are much more open to that. And you are hearing much
5 more of it now on the air than you have ever heard
6 before. At least, that is my impression.
7 380 JOHN STEVENSON: Okay. My concern,
8 it is a practical concern. These individual stations,
9 the situation that Co-op faced ten years ago, and that
10 is, is it enough to offer the person who has a
11 competing view or an opposing view, if it is not -- if
12 it is within the confines of law, is it reasonable to
13 offer them a place, offer them some time on the air
14 just to comment on this issue? And if they do not take
15 that time, is it -- are we then discharged from our
16 obligation to attempt to balance?
17 381 Because the situations tend to be
18 people coming in, producing their own program on a
19 community access basis, coming in, saying what they
20 want to say from their perspective, sharing their
21 experience and then it, you know, and broadcasting
22 that.
23 382 Now, they -- I am just wondering
24 where within our structures we are supposed to, you
25 know, how we are supposed to accommodate opposing
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1 views. Because I do not think the community access
2 show, the whole idea is access to the air waves. They
3 come in and say what they want to say and we want to
4 avoid abusive comment and so on, but it becomes a
5 problem when we offer someone air time and they do not
6 want to take it, we suddenly have a huge problem
7 because we would not feel very good about going to
8 those people who did the community access show and say:
9 By the way, you have to find someone who does not agree
10 with your position on this particular issue.
11 383 And the way that the staff, paid
12 staff is developed at campus radio, by and large they
13 are support staff for people to do individual shows.
14 They do training and so on, but they don't produce that
15 much programming themselves.
16 384 So suddenly, you know, it is a real
17 problem because how do we, you know, do we go out and
18 do a special program, how -- there are a lot of
19 resources that have to go into that. And it seems to
20 be based just on a perception in the mainstream of what
21 is contentious and what is controversial when, as
22 Caroline said, you know, she is trying to -- if you do
23 the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered program,
24 there is conflict within that community, there is
25 political conflict, different things, different
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1 approaches. There is enough within that community that
2 you are trying to provide balance in, even within that
3 community. So it is a practical concern that we have.
4 385 I mean, I know we have tried
5 talk-back machines and that sort of thing. I do not
6 think that addresses the balance issue.
7 386 RICHARD FRITH: So what I am hearing
8 you saying, just to make sure I have it right, you
9 know, in that document that came out with the Co-op
10 decision, if I can roll back my mind that far, it
11 suggests different mechanisms to deal with balance. It
12 seems to me some of them you would have no concern
13 with, the idea that someone would contact the station
14 and say: Hey, I really disagree, could I be
15 accommodated somehow? You seem to say: Yeah, that is
16 possible.
17 387 There is the idea of having access to
18 some program where the person does not have to become a
19 formal volunteer at the station but their view is
20 recorded.
21 388 The one you have trouble with is in
22 the absence of all these things going out and having to
23 produce a program.
24 389 JOHN STEVENSON: Yeah, that's right.
25 Because you have got a group of people who are used to
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1 using the air waves to share their own personal
2 experiences and their own perspectives. And it is not
3 a traditional journalistic role, but it is still a
4 valuable role within broadcasting where you are going
5 to facilitate personal and group expression.
6 390 And I think it becomes a problem for
7 these individuals because that is not the kind of role
8 that they are used to being in. They have set up a
9 debate program or something like that. Again, although
10 it is a practical concern, it is almost completely
11 hypothetical, because I do not think there have been
12 any balance-based complaints that I am aware of in the
13 last ten years. But that is still the concern that
14 this would be the kind of onus that we would place on
15 these staff people.
16 391 RICHARD FRITH: Okay. That is
17 helpful. Because, you know, if we got rid of the
18 balance requirement all together, one then comes up, I
19 am just saying completely for everyone, then one comes
20 up with, you know, a model of broadcasting that is
21 quite different for Canada.
22 392 For example, in the States you have
23 got some talk stations that with go Rush Limbaugh,
24 Ollie North, G. Gordon Liddy. And regardless of what
25 you think of the views, it is one sort of political
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1 point of view that is all the time. And that is sort
2 of quite different than the Canadian model. But I
3 think what I hear you saying is you would just like a
4 clearer way of dealing with it and perhaps some
5 leniency in that one thing about producing a balancing
6 program yourself because of the nature of your sector.
7 393 JOHN STEVENSON: I cannot speak for
8 all the stations at all. I would expect that there was
9 also a school of thought within campus broadcasting
10 that the sector provides a balance to political
11 opinions that are expressed in commercial radio so that
12 the objective would be to balance out those opinions.
13 394 My own personal opinion, I understand
14 the important of fairness and providing and providing
15 fairness to individual stations, but I think the most
16 important thing for the stations would be some
17 compromise in the area of having to produce programming
18 that is contrary, that they be obligated to present
19 programming if someone will come in and do it, because
20 that is what they do, they do community access. But
21 that there not be an onerous obligation to produce
22 programs when there is not any resource to do that and
23 there is not anyone who wants to come in an back up
24 their opinions that they have expressed in a complaint.
25 395 But Caroline might be able to speak
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1 to that as well.
2 396 CAROLINE CâTÉ: I was drawing concern
3 in terms of the balance in programming especially in
4 that most of our stations have been looking at our
5 definition that we are alternative and that we are the
6 voice for the voiceless. So if at our station we do a
7 special program on sexual abuse, I do not want to get a
8 complaint and have to put on the opinions of people who
9 have sexually abused. You know, that is a strong
10 example.
11 397 The LBGT show, talking unifiedly
12 against the mayor in Ottawa-Carleton once again
13 fighting to not put up the flag, you know, I do not
14 want to necessarily have to give a voice to the mayor
15 to talk to us about her homophobia issues.
16 398 We are here to, again, the community
17 access that John is talking about, but this is the only
18 place that you are going to hear these opinions, these
19 voices, these stories, this kind of education that we
20 just do not hear anywhere else.
21 399 So we do very much see ourselves as
22 an alternative medium, or a place to hear those
23 alternative voices and in our deposition that is what
24 we are there for. And I do not want to have to have,
25 you know, these shows that contradict each other that
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1 if we have the LBGT show, to have the "we are
2 homophobic show". What is that?
3 400 MARTINE VALLÉE: I think it is
4 something that just needs clarification -- now I think
5 Susan wants to try to sort of wrap things up -- is what
6 constitutes a matter of public concern and you talked
7 about a show on child abuse or something like that. I
8 do not think a show talking about child abuse would be
9 necessarily defined as a matter of public concern or
10 something that needs to be balanced. It is a show
11 about an issue, so that may be something that we could
12 talk about some more, you know, in some other forum or
13 something.
14 401 But I think Susan needs to sort of
15 wrap things up now.
16 402 THE MODERATOR: I think that you have
17 certainly identified some issues that are ongoing and
18 that will be part of other processes that we are
19 dealing with at the commission as well. And so the
20 dialogue will definitely continue on this one on
21 several fronts.
22 403 What I would like to do now is just
23 offer you the opportunity to sum up, if you wish to
24 take it, and then we can call it a day. But if there
25 are issues you think we have not addressed that we
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1 should make sure we are flagging when we continue with
2 our policy review or a final comment that you would
3 like to make on any of the issues that we have
4 discussed, please do so.
5 404 And perhaps, Susan, I could ask you
6 to start.
7 405 SUSAN ENGLEBERT: Well, I've enjoyed
8 it very much. I think it seems to me that particularly
9 around subjects like talent development and perhaps
10 training issues and things that it certainly got my
11 mind thinking a little bit here.
12 406 I would say that definitely I will go
13 back and talk to different people at the CBC and see
14 what we can do. As I said earlier, I think that
15 sometimes there are -- the channels just have not been
16 opened very much and perhaps this is a good way to
17 start them.
18 407 I don't know if you know of a show
19 called "Radio Escapade" that we do, but we have over
20 the last couple of years been inviting a lot of people
21 from campus radio in to work with us and, in fact, we
22 have a what we call a knapsack which is full of
23 technical gear and they actually use that gear to do
24 the program and we have been doing it all across the
25 country.
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1 408 So, you know, we may just try and
2 step that up a bit more and obviously we should be
3 sending you some of that information so that you know
4 about it because it has been going on with particularly
5 Halifax, CIUT and with the University of Toronto as
6 well.
7 409 So, you know, I think that we are
8 obviously doing things but I do not think it is getting
9 to you. And I think there is probably a lot more that
10 we can be doing.
11 410 THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Susan.
12 411 Jill?
13 412 JILL BIRCH: On behalf of the CAB, I
14 would also like to thank the CRTC for inviting us to
15 participate and hear the world that campus stations are
16 involved in.
17 413 I think that, as I mentioned, radio
18 is taking a real hard look at itself and trying to find
19 ways it can develop for the future, the ways that it
20 can build a star system, ways that it can encourage
21 communities across the country in this area of
22 diversity.
23 414 We feel that the alternative voice is
24 an important voice and certainly I think today there
25 are a number of issues that I have certainly been
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1 capturing and I will take this back to CAB and really
2 get the word out. And I encourage campus association
3 to develop a relationship with CAB and use us as a
4 vehicle to get your message out to private broadcasters
5 throughout the country.
6 415 Most of the broadcasters in radio,
7 commercial radio, are members and we have a number of
8 vehicles where we can get information out to them. So
9 in the instances of DAB, for example, we have
10 committees that are set up. We will be attending a
11 meeting, as a matter of fact, just after this one,
12 today, where you know that I will be raising this at
13 this committee meeting.
14 416 So for me it is helpful just to
15 understand that here are the main concerns I have and
16 then I can go back to the membership and consult with
17 them and understand better ways that I can work with
18 you and with your group. So I thank you for the
19 opportunity and we will do everything we can to support
20 you. Thanks.
21 417 CAROLINE CâTÉ: I would like to thank
22 everyone for their encouraging words. I will be
23 picking up business cards before I leave and, yeah, it
24 is great to hear supportive words. It is the first
25 time that I have heard them. But it is really great.
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1 And I will be trying to -- we will be trying to work
2 all together and seeing what we can do from here.
3 418 THE MODERATOR: Thank you.
4 419 John, did you want to add anything?
5 420 JOHN STEVENSON: No.
6 421 THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much.
7 I found it certainly very encouraging to listen to the
8 kinds of initiatives that are available, the opening of
9 the lines of communication that has happened today, the
10 fact that there are things going on out there to
11 increase the visibility for campus radio.
12 422 It is not going to make all the
13 issues that you have put on the table go away, but it
14 is certainly going to help address a number of them.
15 And I think you have found quite a number of willing
16 partners to help address some of the other issues that
17 are of general concern to radio on a broader level.
18 423 You know, the CBC talked about
19 partnering. Jill certainly offered use of
20 communications mechanisms to link to a wide range of
21 broadcasters. Hal's commitment to go to the Facteur
22 board with the issue about the distribution of lists
23 and product.
24 424 I think these are the kinds of things
25 that really do go a long way to understanding the
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1 common issues and how they can be addressed in a very
2 positive way for the broadcasting system as a whole.
3 425 So I would really like to thank all
4 of you for the contribution that you have made today
5 and I hope that that contribution will continue as we
6 go through the campus radio review process. Thank you
7 very much.
8 --- L'audience se termine à 1120/
9 Whereupon the hearing concluded at 1120
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