ARCHIVED -  Transcript / Transcription - Toronto, Ontario - 2002-09-24

Multiple broadcasting and ownership applications &

applications further to Public Notice CRTC 2002-39

"Call for applications for a broadcasting licence to carry on

a radio programming undertaking to serve Toronto, Ontario"/

Demandes de radiodiffusion et de propriétés multiples ainsi

que des demandes suite à l'avis public CRTC 2000-39

"Appel de demandes de licence de radiodiffusion visant

l'exploitation d'une entreprise de programmation de radio

pour desservir Toronto (Ontario)"

HELD AT: TENUE À:

Travelodge Hotel Hôtel Travelodge

Toronto Yorkdale Toronto Yorkdale

2737 Keele Street 2737, rue Keele

Toronto, Ontario Toronto (Ontario)

September 24, 2002 le 24 septembre 2002

Transcripts

In order to meet the requirements of the Official Languages

Act, transcripts of proceedings before the Commission will be

bilingual as to their covers, the listing of the CRTC members

and staff attending the public hearings, and the Table of

Contents.

However, the aforementioned publication is the recorded

verbatim transcript and, as such, is taped and transcribed in

either of the official languages, depending on the language

spoken by the participant at the public hearing.

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.

Multiple broadcasting and ownership applications &

applications further to Public Notice CRTC 2000-39

"Call for applications for a broadcasting licence to carry on

a radio programming undertaking to serve Toronto, Ontario"/

Demandes de radiodiffusion et de propriétés multiples ainsi

que des demandes suite à l'avis public CRTC 2000-39

"Appel de demandes de licence de radiodiffusion visant

l'exploitation d'une entreprise de programmation de radio

pour desservir Toronto (Ontario)"

BEFORE / DEVANT:

Andrée Wylie Chairperson / Présidente

David Colville Commissioner / Conseiller

Andrée Noël Commissioner / Conseillère

Cindy Grauer Commissioner / Conseillère

Andrew Cardozo Commissioner / Conseiller

ALSO PRESENT / AUSSI PRÉSENTS:

Joe Aguiar Hearing Manager / Gérant

de l'audience

Pierre LeBel Secretary / Secrétaire

Alastair Stewart Legal Counsel /

Conseiller juridique

HELD AT: TENUE À:

Travelodge Hotel Hôtel Travelodge

Toronto Yorkdale Toronto Yorkdale

2737 Keele Street 2737, rue Keele

Toronto, Ontario Toronto (Ontario)

September 24, 2002 le 24 septembre 2002

PAGE / PARA NO.

PHASE I (continued)

PRESENTATION BY / PRÉSENTATION PAR

Humber College 1234 / 7405

Geethavaani Inc. 1317 / 7887

PHASE II

INTERVENTION BY / INTERVENTION PAR

ARK Broadcasting 1396 / 8462

Canadian Multicultural Radio 1396 / 8470

Catholic Youth Studio - KSM Inc. 1399 / 8488

CKMW Radio Limited 1402 / 8515

Infinity Broadcasting Inc. 1408 / 8558

San Lorenzo Latin American Community Centre 1409 / 8566

Magic 1610 Markham Radio 1410 / 8578

A. Fitzroy Gordon 1411 / 8588

Radio 1540 Limited 1412 / 8597

Coopérative radiophonique de Toronto Inc. 1412 / 8604

Toronto, Ontario / Toronto (Ontario)

--- Upon resuming on Tuesday, September 24, 2002

at 0903 / L'audience reprend le mardi

24 septembre 2002 à 0903

7396 LA PRÉSIDENTE: A l'ordre, s'il vous plaît. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our hearing.

7397 Before we begin the day, for those who are following our progress, we will hear today the last two applications, and we will then proceed to Phase II.

7398 For the applicants who are preparing for Phase II, I want to remind you that Phase II is an intervention period to comment, oppose or support the other competing applicants and not an opportunity to address the merits of your own application. In case the preparation you are doing is off course, you will have an opportunity to correct it.

7399 Mr. Secretary, please.

7400 MR. LEBEL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

7401 We will now hear Item 16 on the agenda, which is an application by Humber College, on behalf of a not-for-profit corporation to be incorporated as Humber College Communications Corporation, for a licence to operate a non-commercial English language FM (campus - instructional) radio station in Toronto.

7402 The new station would operate on frequency 91.9 MHz (channel 220A1) with an effective radiated power of 60 watts.

7403 Appearing for the applicant is Mr. Jerry Chomyn, and he will introduce his colleagues.

7404 You have 20 minutes to make your presentation.

PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION

7405 MR. CHOMYN: Madam Chair, Commissioners, fellow applicants, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Jerry Chomyn, the Program Co-ordinator of the Radio Broadcasting Program at Humber College. With me today is the Dean of the School of Media Studies, William Hanna, and Joe Andrews, the Program Co-ordinator of the Post Graduate Broadcasting Program.

7406 On behalf of Humber College, I would like to thank you for this opportunity to make this presentation.

7407 Today I will given an overview of our application and at the same time highlight the reasons why we should be awarded an FM licence. Mr. Andrews will give you an overview of the Ethnic Broadcasting School mentioned in our application, but first Mr. William Hanna, our Dean, will give us an overview of Humber College and The School of Media Studies.

7408 William.

7409 MR. HANNA: Thank you, Jerry.

7410 The School of Media Studies is the largest college-level combination of media sector programs in Canada. The 3,000 full-time and 3,000 part-time students who comprise the School of Media Studies train with a team of dedicated professionals, teachers who have years of experience in their respective fields and remain closely tied to the industries of which they are a part.

7411 The 25 programs in the school range from traditional media programs like radio broadcasting, journalism and film and television to new media programs like multimedia, Web site and design and post production.

7412 Humber College has the highest application rate in Ontario. This year more than 57,000 students applied for around 6,000 full-time seats. The college currently has approximately 14,000 full-time day students and nearly 40,000 part-time students taking day and evening courses.

7413 The college population not only reflects the multicultural richness of the society of which it is a part but also draws heavily from the ethnic communities found within its immediate setting. This provides an environment in which numerous distinct ethnic clubs exist within the college.

7414 Humber's Institute of Language and Culture addresses the needs of these disparate communities, both through language classes in over 12 different languages, as well as through social and cultural activities. The proposed multicultural station fits ideally with profile of the student population, the philosophy of the college and the needs of the communities which make up Humber College.

7415 Humber College's Broadcasting-Radio diploma program is designed to develop the total broadcaster, capable of handing all of the tasks they may encounter in the working world: writing, announcing, production, management, sales, programming, promotion, market research, interviewing techniques, news and sports writing and reporting.

7416 The course content reflects current needs and with the growth of multicultural broadcasting in Ontario, there is a commensurate growth in the demand for graduates equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge to deal with the particular needs of this part of the industry.

7417 The School of Media Studies has many co-operative partnerships within both the educational and professional worlds. One such is with the First Nations Institute, the native Canadian training institution which addresses the needs of Ontario's native population. Students taking courses of study in journalism (both print and broadcast), film and television production and radio broadcasting follow the curriculum of Humber College and receive the Humber diploma. Students enrolled in the broadcast journalism program and radio broadcasting would have a unique opportunity to develop and broadcast native content in a supportive, educational environment.

7418 This then is the context within which the Ethnic Broadcast School will find itself.

7419 As Jerry Chomyn will indicate, Humber has a number of creative programs from which to draw fresh new talent and content. We feel strongly that our application addresses a need, has strong and varied content, addressed the CRTC Campus Radio Policy and does all this in the context of training and exposing future talent.

7420 The college supports this application fully and will provide the necessary support to ensure its success.

7421 Jerry.

7422 MR. CHOMYN: Thank you, William.

7423 So why give this scarce commodity to Humber College at a time when there is unprecedented demand?

7424 First and foremost, this application will touch the most people. Without taking away from anything the other applicants have to offer, it is important nonetheless to point out that this application is different from the rest. The mandate of this FM station will be to train broadcasters and journalists, broadcasters of Canadian origin, broadcasters of ethnic origin and broadcasters of aboriginal origin.

7425 Audiences across Canada and beyond will hear our graduates. We are here because it has been acknowledged that ethnic communities need greater access to the broadcast airwaves. The increase in ethnic and aboriginal radio stations in Canada underscores the need for broadcast training grounds. The CRTC has acknowledged the need for Campus Instructional FM radio stations by granting licences in Winnipeg, Kitchener-Waterloo, Belleville, Victoria and Ottawa but not in the most populous and ethnically diverse city in Canada -- Toronto.

7426 Second, the Commission has indicated that Campus Radio has an important role to play in ethnic broadcasting. The new FM station will fill that role, providing valuable airtime to underserved ethnic communities. This will be done in a complementary fashion rather than a competitive one. This FM station will not have a negative effect on any existing Toronto radio station.

7427 Quite the contrary, it will benefit all Toronto broadcasters by providing them with highly trained competent professionals. Through the Ethnic Broadcasting School the entire ethnic broadcasting system in Canada will benefit.

7428 This station will also reflect the diversity that is Toronto by virtue of the student population. Students that make up the on-air staff of the radio station are a wonderful mosaic that accurately depicts the face of Toronto and indeed the world.

7429 Third, this application uses a severely limited FM frequency thus maximizing spectrum utilization. The fact that no other applicant applied directly for this frequency alone speaks for itself.

7430 In a CRTC decision last year approving a community campus based FM station for Nanaimo, British Columbia, the Commission said:

"In its policy, the Commission noted that the cultural diversity present in many Canadian communities places campus stations serving those centres in a position to make a strong contribution to the reflection of that cultural diversity, especially by providing exposure to new and developing artists from minority cultural groups."

7431 This statement is especially true at Humber College, perhaps one of the most culturally diverse schools in the country.

7432 You have asked all applicants to detail what contribution they will make to achieve the objectives of the Broadcasting Act. In preparation for today, I reread the Broadcasting Act and then reread our application.

7433 I feel confident that Humber College's application meets and exceeds the letter and the spirit of the Broadcasting Act. From introducing new and previously unheard musical talent, to showcasing original Canadian comedy, to providing educational programming that is unique to the broadcast system, Humber's application scores an "A" on all counts.

7434 The diversity of voices will be numerous: young voices, ethnic voices and aboriginal voices. This, then, will be the voice of Humber College's new FM station.

7435 Our ethnic programming will allow the diverse ethnic communities of Toronto to hear about themselves and what is going on in their respective homelands all from a Canadian perspective. And because we will be broadcasting our ethnic programming in English, other communities will also hear and learn about them. Broadcasting our ethnic programming in English minimizes any negative effect on existing ethnic broadcasters.

7436 Our plan is to review our ethnic programming on a yearly basis. The programs will reflect the ethnic community that is most under represented at the time, thus acting in a complementary rather than competitive fashion with existing ethnic broadcasters. We will direct listeners to other ethnic radio stations where they can find like programming.

7437 And now with more details about our plans for the Ethnic Broadcast School, here is the Co-ordinator of the Radio Post Graduate Program, Joe Andrews.

7438 MR. ANDREWS: The intent of this section of Humber College's presentation is to provide a brief overview of the Ethnic Broadcasting School proposal.

7439 The Ethnic Broadcasting School will be part of Humber College's School of Media Studies continuing education department. Continuing education is a vibrant component of the adult learning at Humber College.

7440 Humber College provides over 28,000 adult learners each year training in hundreds of certificate and diploma programs. More specifically, over 3,000 students annually enrol in the various School of Media studies courses from those that are general interest in nature to those leading to a certificate or diploma.

7441 The development of the Ethnic Broadcasting School is the result of much discussion with leaders of the ethnic broadcasting community, primarily those within the GTA, through the hundreds of applicants the radio broadcasting program receives and interviews each year, along with those numerous inquiries regarding specific radio broadcast training in ethno-media.

7442 To note at this time, there is no formalized training in ethnic broadcasting in Canada. If someone from the ethnic community was interested in working in the Canadian ethnic broadcast industry, the typical route to employment usually starts by volunteering on a producer driven show. Others have completed a more traditional broadcast education either in Canada or in their native homeland.

7443 Outside of the key station staff requirements, in many cases it is the independent producer who obtains brokered airtime where some training takes place. But is a usually not formalized in structure.

7444 In the end much about the business is overlooked or not introduced at all, including an understanding of the CRTC and the ethnic radio policy, announce and radio news techniques, production and, most importantly, sales, marketing and program brokering.

7445 As a result, Humber College's School of Media studies embarked in the development of the Ethnic Broadcasting School. This started with the circulation of the proposal to our existing advisory committee and specific ethnic broadcasting leaders.

7446 Feedback received was extremely positive, and by all accounts this type of broadcast education is long overdue.

7447 The Ethnic Broadcasting School will focus first on the delivery of six courses in formalized ethnic radio broadcasting leading to a certificate.

7448 Students will be introduced to what Canadian ethnic radio broadcasting is all about.

7449 The program curriculum will be guided by an advisory committee made up of various ethnic media leaders, taught by faculty with experience and expertise specifically in ethnic media.

7450 One of the most important outcomes of this curriculum will be the production of the various types of ethnic programming to be used on the college radio station. Students in the ethnic radio broadcasting program will be responsible for producing six hours of ethnic programming content per week. The end result is an avenue for students to develop and showcase their work while also meeting one of the key mandates of this application before the Commission.

7451 As requested in Order in Council 2000-1464, the CRTC issued their report to the Governor in Council. The Commission concluded the necessity of licensing programming services that clearly reflect the diversity of language and the multicultural and multi-ethnic reality of the Greater Toronto Area.

7452 This public hearing and application process takes into account Canada's evolving demographic profile, thus creating a need for trained professionals for the ethnic radio broadcasting community.

7453 The development of the Ethnic Broadcasting School at Humber College may evolve to include other media, but this first step more importantly is one that will indeed make a contribution in achieving and broadening the objectives established in the Canadian Broadcast Act.

7454 Jerry.

7455 MR. CHOMYN: Thanks, Joe.

7456 Our development of Canadian talent will be substantial. This will include on-air exposure for Canadian musicians, songwriters, actors and comedians. In fact, no other radio station in Toronto has such an aggressive plan to provide exposure of new Canadian talent. We see this as an important part of our mandate.

7457 Over 300 students are enrolled yearly in Humber's renowned music program. The students from this program will be the source of much of our specialty music programming including the program Sessions. Live recordings will be made of these artists and aired on a daily basis. We fully expect considerable buzz about this and our many other Canadian talent initiatives. The resources of Humber College will be exploited to the fullest.

7458 Humber's Comedy School is unique and extraordinary. Students from this school will be centre stage on the program Just for Lafs. Not only Humber students will benefit through this venture. Through our relationship with Yuk Yuk's, audiences will hear the best of new comedians from across the country, whether they are Humber students or not. No other radio station that we know of is featuring original Canadian comedy.

7459 Our approach to educational programming is innovative and unique. We wanted programming that not only addresses the needs of the community but also programming that would complement our other efforts, especially those directed at the ethnic communities of Toronto.

7460 What we came up with is Teaching English as a Second Language, using the medium of radio.

7461 The new FM station will draw resources from the existing English as second language program at Humber. This program is recognized as one of the best of its kind. Not only will this be instructional and useful to the ethnic communities, we plan on making the programming fun and entertaining. In the privacy of their own home new immigrants will learn the English language from the convenience of their radio. We will advertise this with our many other continuing education offerings.

7462 In the Commission's campus radio policy you have stated that new stations should be complementary of existing commercial and community stations. Certainly the diversity of programming we are proposing will make us substantially different and complementary to any commercial station. The fact that the Radio Broadcasting Program's Advisory Board is made up of Toronto broadcasters gives us confidence that we will always remain complementary.

7463 The spoken word component of this new FM station will also be substantial, including a twice-daily one-hour news magazine show. This, and all other spoken word programming, will be produced in conjunction with Humber's renowned Broadcast Journalism Program. This program currently produces 12 different magazines yearly. The work done on these magazines has earned Humber's Broadcast Journalism program numerous Columbia Scholastic Press Association Journalism Awards, the only Canadian institution to do so.

7464 These international awards originate from the Columbia School of Journalism in New York, one of the finest journalism schools in the world.

7465 Our journalism program has just recently won five awards from the Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication. In fact, we swept the on-line awards. It is this expertise that we bring to this new FM radio station.

7466 Musically we will be eclectic, including pop and rock from around the world, jazz, world beat and country. These attributes alone will make us substantially different from any commercial radio station in the city.

7467 Our commitment to 50 per cent Canadian content in Category 2 music ensures that not only Humber students benefit from our initiatives, but also recording artists from across Canada. Our yearly talent search will offer airtime to the winners, whether they are Humber students or not, and an opportunity to record a demo, an important first step in a musical career.

7468 As for our relationship with the other campus stations in the market, let me again reiterate that there is no other instructional campus station in the market. The three other campus stations are classified as campus community stations and are associated with universities.

7469 The Commission, in its definition of campus stations, has ensured that there is a distinctive difference in mandate and programming of campus community and instructional campus stations.

7470 The fact that we are a college will make our focus substantially different from the other campus stations, but complementary, since we will also reflect post secondary education and the voices of youth. No other campus station in the city dedicates as much time to live or live-to-tape music as we will. No other campus station trains broadcasters.

7471 Campus radio stations have a close affinity to the school and student population from which they originate. Our research indicates that few Humber students listen to the other campus radio stations in the city. We hope to introduce the Humber population to campus radio with this new FM station.

7472 The revenue projections we have made are very most but attainable. As indicated in our application, most of our revenue will come from businesses within a close proximity to the college wishing to reach the student population. This will have a neutral effect on other radio stations and, in particular, ethnic radio stations.

7473 On a technical note, I would like to emphasize that our application for the 91.9 FM frequency was done very deliberately, recognizing the scarcity of frequencies in this market. To this end, we hired one of the most respected and professional broadcast engineers in the country, Mr. Gordon Elder, to do our engineering study.

7474 Although we have been exploring the options for a number of years now, we settled in on this frequency, believing that it would be of little interest to commercial broadcasters because of its limitations.

7475 As Mr. Elder described the coverage: It is an island in a sea of competing frequencies. However, that island does meet our needs as a campus instructional station.

7476 Much of the legwork to secure this frequency was done long before the call for these applications, a fact that can be confirmed in our ongoing correspondence with Industry Canada. In fact, Humber was preparing to submit an application and had Industry Canada technical approval when the Commission first put a moratorium on radio applications in Toronto.

7477 Our first inclination to apply for a low power developmental FM station was unpractical, since these stations are unprotected. Recognizing the scarcity of frequencies in this city, we opted for a low power, albeit protected, 60 watts at 91.9 FM.

7478 The Commission's directive that asked for applications directed to the ethnic communities of Toronto reactivated our application. We knew this mandate fit our plans perfectly, because of the make-up of the student population at Humber College.

7479 Finally, let me say that it is very difficult for us to be in a competitive hearing such as this. Humber College works very closely with all the radio broadcasters in Toronto. Our advisory boards are made up of representatives from every radio and television station in this city. The stations provide our students with many on-the-job training opportunities. And, finally, they hire our graduates. In fact, I would be hard-pressed to name one station that does not have Humber grads as part of their staff.

7480 Regardless of who is eventually awarded a licence as the result of this hearing, we will be working very closely with them.

7481 In the spirit of our close relationship with all Toronto broadcasters, Humber College will not intervene orally against any of the other applicants. We wish all of the applicants well and best of luck.

7482 Thank you, Madam Chair and Commissioners. We welcome your questions.

7483 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Chomyn and your colleagues.

7484 Commissioner Grauer, please.

7485 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Thank you, Madam Chair.

7486 Gentlemen. I wanted to start off today with some questions on your ethnic broadcasting program, which you talked a lot about this morning. One of the things that struck me is, you describe it in the future tense, "will be". Has it started yet? If not, perhaps you could tell me when and what are the conditions in which you plan to start the program.

7487 MR. CHOMYN: The radio broadcasting program has been --

7488 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: I'm sorry, the ethnic one.

7489 MR. CHOMYN: The ethnic broadcasting program, I'm sorry. At the beginning I had difficulty hearing you.

7490 The ethnic broadcasting program has not started yet. It is in the planning stages.

7491 Maybe I can hand it off to Mr. Andrews and he can fill you in at the stage they are at now.

7492 MR. ANDREWS: Thank you very much, Jerry.

7493 The intent of the ethnic broadcasting school proposal was to garner some interest and feedback. Through the development phase that we have gone through, we are in fact -- "we" being the school of media studies -- are of course going to tie this in at this point with the application.

7494 If the application is approved, or if the application is not approved, we are looking at the unveiling and the delivery of this curriculum quite seriously in the future. That date is targeted hopefully for 2003. We do have to go through preliminary stages and, of course, circulation of material, formation of our advisory committee to make sure that the content in fact would be appropriately targeted to those that would end up eventually utilizing the graduates from that program.

7495 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understood you. Did you say it is or -- you said it is tied to this application. Is it contingent on the application?

7496 MR. CHOMYN: No, not at all. No. The ethnic broadcasting school is an idea that we came up with in one of our brainstorming session. Believe it or not, it is a beautiful coincidence that the Commission called for ethnic broadcasters to apply.

7497 We look at all continuing education the same way: If it makes sense to our population, if it makes sense, if there is a demand for it, then we will provide it. We are approaching the ethnic broadcasting school that way.

7498 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: I wonder if you could elaborate for me a bit on how more specifically perhaps how you see any curriculum courses differing and how many would differ between mainstream and ethnic broadcasting. I know you touched on it a bit in here, but perhaps you could be a little more specific.

7499 MR. CHOMYN: I will hand it over to Joe in just a moment, but I just wanted to comment on one very real aspect of the broadcasting industry that I'm sure the Commission is aware of. It is a very competitive industry.

7500 To get into our radio broadcasting program is also very, very competitive. I believe we receive over 1,000 applications for 60 positions every year.

7501 The criteria for choosing people, one of the biggest criteria, is the literacy of the applicants. We look at their English language capabilities. Many ethnic broadcasters, or would-be ethnic broadcasters, have difficulty in meeting those. We see those as candidates, prime candidates for the ethnic broadcasting school.

7502 To get into some more detail on how they are different, I will pass it again to Joe.

7503 MR. ANDREWS: The curriculum is going to be specifically targeted to those who acquire or need to acquire or upgrade their ethnic broadcasting school skills, or I should say ethnic radio broadcasting skills.

7504 Once they have completed, the graduates will be able to specifically apply their skills within the ethnic broadcasting industry to clarify the types of courses that we were looking at specifically. This is through preliminary feedback from our existing advisory committee, as well as feedback from some of the broadcasting leaders from the ethnic community here within the GTA.

7505 We came up with a preliminary six-course delivery, which would be, number one, the introduction to the Canadian ethnic radio broadcasting industry, which would be an overview of the industry itself, historically as well as what exists currently.

7506 Announcing techniques. Again, this would be from a generalist point of view where the students themselves would perfect their skills in communicating. It would be done in English.

7507 Radio news techniques. Regardless of, of course, the language, there are specific techniques and standards we would like to adhere to as found in our programs currently and we want to, of course, apply those in that particular course.

7508 Broadcast production skills would be found. This would be using digital equipment and, of course, would be found in a variety of different broadcast facilities.

7509 Sales marketing and program brokering, which was one of the courses that in fact came back from the discussions that I had with the existing advisory committee, as well as those from the ethnic broadcasting community, because the majority of broadcasters within that particular delivery mechanism deal with a lot of program brokering and of course there is a technique and a process protocol and we wanted to make sure that those students who come through understand that.

7510 Of course, last but not least, which will be tied into the application, as Mr. Chomyn has identified, is the program production. It is how to formulate programming that would be found, be that in hour-long format, it could be a component that is specifically geared towards a specific group, but of course would meet the specific standards that we currently adhere to with what we do in our program.

7511 MR. CHOMYN: I think the other very important part of that is that in the program production a part of that is going to be to research and to find a need that is out there as far as the program is concerned.

7512 We have said in our application that the bulk of our ethnic programming will not be music-based, it will be news magazine interviews talk-based. So again, very, very significantly different from our radio broadcasting students that are in the regular broadcasting program.

7513 MR. HANNA: I would like to just add one other thing from a slightly different perspective.

7514 From my perspective, looking at this administratively within the schools when you study, is we are identifying within the mandate of the college, which is access, we are identifying a client group which is ethnic student broadcasters, or would like to be ethnic broadcasters, who cannot access or have great difficulty accessing the traditional path. What we are looking at is a specific ethnic broadcasting school that will be targeting that population.

0935

7515 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Okay. What I am trying to do here is get an understanding of -- because I really have kind of struggled with it through the application -- is where all these pieces fit together. In other words, the program, what differentiate courses, some of the ones you have identified this morning, introduction, broadcast. These are mainstream courses.

7516 Presumably they would be the same courses you would offer to a mainstream student because what are the differences between ethnic broadcasting and, if I can call it, the mainstream broadcasting is program delivery in specific languages and the issues of brokering, as you have mentioned, which are distinct.

7517 Other than that there is a lot of commonalities. So it's really trying to understand what will the school do, the ethnic broadcasting school that is actually different than the mainstream, and I think that you have pointed out that what you want to do is provide a path for students who perhaps have trouble with English is what it sounds like.

7518 Is that it or...?

7519 MR. HANNA: It's English and then because of the English you have a problem with following course contents and the like. So partly what we will also do in a complementary way is have beefed-up English training for the students, both oral and written English which, because of the institution that we have, we can provide to our English as a second language school.

7520 I would like to picture it more as we have a number of very, very great resources that we can bring to bear on a specific -- I hate to call it a problem -- a challenge, which is an ethnic broadcaster who may have different fields and challenges than other students. Maybe we can address those both our links with the ethnic broadcasting stations in Toronto who will be part of the advisory committee, but also through the resources of the college that we can address some of the difficulties that these students might face.

7521 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: I wonder, I have a few questions on your presentation.

7522 You speak about on page 2 the needs of the communities which make up Humber College. What communities are you referring to when you talk about the communities?

7523 MR. HANNA: Several actually. We have a very active student association, the Humber Student Federation, and over the last number of years we have watched it evolve into a multiethnic organization. We have strong representation from the varied ethnic groups that make up the College and they have been developing various clubs and have become very assertive in terms of looking for ways to express their needs, the work that they have produced, et cetera, and the President of this association this year has been very open in his desire to find, for example, campus radio. He is very supportive of this.

7524 Broadcasting within the station, within the campus itself. Finding the means for the various clubs and the various student groups that are represented through the Humber Student Federation to get out what they produce.

7525 This is where you get things like the School of Comedy, the School for Writers, the Music Program, all of these programs, because we are training these students, have content. They produce content and very often that content is confined within a very small location, sometimes only the program itself.

7526 They are looking for a way to get a much wider audience to what they are producing. We feel this is an ideal catchment.

7527 As well within what is called the catchment area of Humber College where we are in Etobicoke, both north and south, you have a number of strong population centres for immigrant groups, ethnic groups, et cetera, that also send their kids to college who participate in ongoing opportunities at both campuses, and who also express a need for more programming that is geared to their needs.

7528 So we try to respond to that. We have been working with -- most recently we have expanded our campus in the south, the one down at the Kipling and Lakeshore area. We actually brought in additional students into that campus this year and we have done that partly with an eye to the South Etobicoke Rejuvenation Project, which you may be familiar with, which is looking at revitalizing South Etobicoke and I am part of the resource group for that area.

7529 They are very enthusiastic about the possibility of an Etobicoke-based station that will allow access for the community groups they represent in their revitalization of Etobicoke.

7530 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: That's very helpful. You have one satellite campus, if I can call it that. Is that Kipling and Lakeshore?

7531 MR. HANNA: We used to call it the satellite campus. We actually had a number of them and we have now brought it down to three campuses, two that I would call main campuses and one that is very small and it's specialized.

7532 The two main campuses are the North Campus where we have approximately 8,000 to 9,000 students -- depending who is counting -- and the South Campus where we have around 4,000-4,500 students. The South Campus is the one at Kipling and Lakeshore.

7533 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: And where is the third one?

7534 MR. HANNA: The third one is a very small campus on the Queensway which is a power motor, small tools program. It does things like boat engines, and the like. They also have -- I won't even call it a campus. They have a site on the lake as well for yachts and boats and things.

7535 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: I wonder if you could tell me how the proposed FM station will differ from what you are doing at the moment, your present -- I think it was the closed-circuit and over the Internet.

7536 MR. CHOMYN: Well, I think it's going to be night and day. The station that we are currently using, the working lab -- and I think that it's important to designate it as a working student lab. For the benefit of the students it is important that I take it deadly seriously as a radio station and I portray it as a radio station at all times. I think Mr. Hanna can verify that perhaps sometimes I take it way too seriously.

7537 But it's important to give them that feeling that this is real. We are on the air, we have to be conscious of what we are doing.

7538 The radio station now is a rolling music format, developing announcers, with considerable news content. We are doing news every 30 minutes on the station at times.

7539 The biggest difference, I think, is the specialty programming and the involving of many other components of the school, which is something that we have wanted to do and is something that we have planned on doing upon receiving an FM licence. But at this point we did not pursue that.

7540 Does that give you -- the licence that we are applying for is an FM instructional. What we are doing is closer to a commercial radio station.

7541 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: In terms of the programming.

7542 MR. CHOMYN: In terms of the programming, yes.

7543 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Yes. I mean, towards the end I will have some other questions in this area, but that's helpful for now. We can move on.

7544 I wonder, we have talked a bit about the ethnic broadcasting program. Could you also tell me a bit about the Aboriginal Media Program and how, in fact, these programs will all fit together within your school and what are your plans, for instance, over the next five to six years for these programs.

7545 MR. HANNA: I can give you a partial answer to that -- partial because I don't have all the knowledge myself right now.

7546 We initiated the partnership -- actually they initiated it with us -- with the First Nations Institute about a year and a bit ago, where they were looking for a partner for diploma credential activity, and started off with the journalism, moved into radio.

7547 The actual instruction occurs both at Humber -- actually three places. At Humber, at the First Nations training centre in Belleville, and in the various native reserves in Northern Ontario.

7548 They were looking for, and were very excited by this prospect because they are looking for, like many, a place to voice their culture and their issues.

7549 We have developed with them the curriculum has been modified for all of our programs. The actual skills component does not change. The content does. It has a very definite native focus. We have been working -- it takes about a year to go through a full curriculum to try to actually find how we can accommodate both the needs of the native community with the requirements of our credential.

7550 So in terms of the actual program it's slightly different because you have a different approach, I would say, to the same skills content for that particular branch, the aboriginal branch of the diploma. The actual diploma they receive says "Aboriginal Profile" in the diploma. So it would be "Radio Broadcasting-Aboriginal Profile", but it is the Humber credential that has a modified curriculum.

7551 What we are looking at there, what they are very excited about, is the content side. They will have students like our students who are developing a whole bunch of content targeted towards an aboriginal population into a group, and they see this as a means of expressing that.

7552 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: And what is in Belleville?

7553 MR. HANNA: They actually have a very small, I will call it a training centre campus, we will call it a campus where the students have a very different resident structure in terms of the way they take their classes. There is a large distance component to it. They will come down for sessions at the Belleville Campus in their what we call liberal arts-type courses where they are doing native culture, native philosophy, et cetera.

7554 They will do the fields components in summer blocks, for example, for eight-week stretches. It is a non-traditional format in terms of the school year.

7555 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Thank you.

7556 Now what I would like to do is talk about the programming on your proposed station and what I would like to do is talk about your ethnic programming per se.

7557 It, I gather, is going to be on the weekend mostly. Is that correct? Can you tell me why this is, that you scheduled it on the weekend?

7558 MR. CHOMYN: The Ethnic Broadcasting School, the plan from the beginning was to hold the school on weekends to allow greater access for people that may be employed through the week and also it comes down to a facility management problem for us.

7559 We have radio production studios and we have facilities that allow production. Those are used and maximized through the week. On the weekends many times we find that they are under-used and it was our plan to combine those two factors looking at the availability of when those ethnic students might most conveniently take the program and secondly when we would have plenty of facilities.

7560 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: And what kind of programming will it be? What will it sound like? What will those programs comprise?

7561 MR. CHOMYN: The way I hear it here is a news magazine-type of format that would include news and information from not only the ethnic group's homeland, but also from here in Canada, relating to that ethnic group. It would include coming events in the community, things that were occurring within the City of Toronto, and perhaps interviews with dignitaries or leaders or celebrities or things of interest to that community.

7562 As I said, the bulk of that programming I hear it as being spoken word. I think I mentioned this in a submission to the Commission years ago, teaching someone to spin a CD doesn't teach them much about broadcasting. So we see it and we hear it as a spoken word in-depth magazine program.

7563 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: And in English?

7564 MR. CHOMYN: Yes.

7565 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Now, the other thing I would like to talk about is the programs you propose to broadcast during the formal educational portion.

7566 Now, according to your deficiency response, you are proposing some, if not all, this to be ESL. Is that correct? If not, what other kind of formal education would you be proposing to broadcast?

7567 MR. CHOMYN: To start, and what we have indicated on our application, it would be ESL. We saw that as a unique and a complementary thing to offer. After discussions with our ESL department at the school, I am convinced that it could be quite entertaining.

7568 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Entertaining.

7569 MR. CHOMYN: Well, you will have to wait for that because there are good teachers and there are bad teachers and the teacher that I have been talking to is not only a writer and a novelist and a teacher at Humber, he is also a broadcaster.

7570 So all those qualities he is going to bring to developing this program for us.

0948

7571 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Thank you.

7572 With respect to your annual talent search, could you go over for me what you expect the costs associated with it to be, how much airtime will be involved, and also how many hours of studio time are you willing to donate?

7573 MR. CHOMYN: The actual talent search is going to tie into a talent search that is already being done by the Humber Students Federation. It will tie into that, which will minimize the cost to the campus station, reduce the cost to virtually nothing.

7574 What the campus station in return will provide is emcee talent in the form of announcers for the various stages of the competition. We will also provide airtime, promoting of the competition and the marketing and sales expertise to attract entrants into the competition.

7575 Since a part of our program is a sales and marketing program, this flows in nicely with that.

7576 The winner of the talent competition, again we would love to offer them bags of money, which we have not got; but we will offer them airtime. The airtime will be that they will be slotted as a regular part of our musical programming as if they were any other artist that we received via CD.

7577 The time that you have talked about, the demo will be recorded on our 24-track facility at the Lakeshore Campus, which houses our music program, and whatever it takes to produce a demo that the music teachers there -- and they are all working musicians, I should point out -- are satisfied will help introduce this new act or this new band to the recording industry.

7578 MR. HANNA: In terms of the promotional costs -- I think you were also asking about how we would promote this -- they are both provincial and nation-wide activities.

7579 With respect to the provincial one we are part of various consortium and partnerships with other colleges and universities, and there are promotional opportunities there where you would send directly, for example, college and university talent, to all the music departments or whichever theatre departments, wherever we want to target. We can hit almost every educational and training institution in the province that way, and at a very low cost, because we have a mutual exchange that way.

7580 Likewise, on a national level there are associations where, for modest promotional cost -- and when I say modest, for a fairly full coverage nationwide hitting a number of associations, you are probably looking at close to $10,000 worth of advertising that we would have to do in order to get that kind of call out. The local ones would be far less, probably under $1,000 -- and by local, I mean in terms of product.

7581 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Thank you.

7582 I would like to ask a question about your training program.

7583 How long is the mandatory training program for non-curriculum participants at this point?

7584 MR. CHOMYN: At this point we don't have non-curriculum participants, because the radio station at this point -- and I guess this is one of the differences -- is directly tied as a working lab to the radio broadcasting program and the journalism programs at Humber. They have to be there for two years to participate.

7585 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Could you talk about what it will be, then, in the proposed FM?

--- Pause

7586 MR. CHOMYN: I just asked Joe what our ethnic broadcasting program is. It is 30 weeks. I don't see that as being doable for people enrolled in the ethnic broadcasting program.

7587 We would set something up. Again, I am guessing at best. I am thinking that it would be about a six-week training program. There would be certain things that they would need to know as opposed to a length of time period.

7588 We don't want anybody going on the air without a complete understanding of the policies of the station and the Commission. We don't want anyone going on the air without a complete understanding of the college's policies that are governing it.

7589 At the same time, we want them to have some expertise in a studio environment. So we would take time to train them on the studio environment and the implications of that.

7590 Depending on the programming, we also would want to cover off things like legal, libel and slander. Certainly if there is an opportunity to prevent anything from happening like that, we would take it as a proactive basis rather than a reactive basis.

7591 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Thank you.

7592 MR. HANNA: Just to add on the comment about the 30-week training, that 30 weeks is the actual radio broadcast content. It does not include necessarily the English. There would be English in that, but there would be assessment of the students coming in, and for the additional ESL training we would have a supplementary program in conjunction with our English Department, which will be doing specialized training for the students to bring them to the level where they could handle a curriculum.

7593 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: And you are having some community access programming, as I understand, as well.

7594 MR. CHOMYN: What I was referring to, Commissioner, is the community access programming three hours per week.

7595 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Are you proposing to do any brokered programming? Will any of your ethnic programming be brokered?

7596 MR. CHOMYN: No.

7597 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Will all of your programming be station produced then?

7598 MR. CHOMYN: I think in the application I said 97 per cent.

7599 What I wanted to leave the door open a little bit for is we have talked to a number of instructional stations, and we have started exploring the idea of exchanging programs.

7600 We also talked to a community station in the Northwest Territories, and they thought it would be neat if we sent them a program about Toronto and they sent us one about the Northwest Territories.

7601 So 97 per cent I am going to say is going to be station produced. We would like to leave the opportunity open that we might want to do some program exchanges with other campus stations.

7602 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Can you give me your views on a condition of licence to that effect, then: that 97 per cent would be station produced?

7603 MR. CHOMYN: Absolutely.

7604 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Thank you.

7605 Do you currently have an employment equity plan in place?

7606 MR. CHOMYN: I know we do. I was looking at William. The college has all of that in place, yes, Commissioner.

7607 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Can you describe for me how that might apply to the radio station? Do you have any details on it?

7608 MR. HANNA: It is actually difficult to say right now. In terms of staffing, for example, we would be drawing from both existing faculty that we have, from faculty we will be bringing in specifically for the ethnic broadcasting, and from the student population who will be doing the training there, all of whom are already subject to the legislation that we follow at the college and covered by the equal opportunity legislation.

7609 The college is extremely adherent to all of this. In terms of specifics for this, it would be within the normal college mandate.

7610 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: What I would like to do now is talk a bit about the demand for the service as evidenced by the support for your current service.

7611 You stated that the success of the existing service indicates that there is a demand for the proposed service, and you provided the advertising revenues you generated for the last four years, although you spoke a little earlier about how much this one would differ from the existing service.

7612 How many hours right now do you provide on the existing closed circuit service, how many hours a day?

7613 MR. CHOMYN: Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

7614 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Twenty-four and seven.

7615 MR. CHOMYN: Yes.

7616 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Do you currently provide any ethnic programming on the current service?

7617 MR. CHOMYN: No.

7618 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: You have also provided a survey conducted by Humber College and indicated that it was completed when Humber College last applied for an FM licence.

7619 When was that and what year was the survey conducted in?

7620 MR. CHOMYN: I think it was about a decade ago.

7621 Commissioner Colville, I believe, sat on that hearing at the time. He could maybe verify that. We are a little bit older since that time.

7622 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: You have stated generally that it is the students at the college that are really your potential audience, for the most part. The signal will be available outside the college, and you are allocating three hours a week for that community programming.

7623 Can you tell me why you haven't considered the residents of Etobicoke-Rexdale as at least part of your listening audience in terms of the orientation of the programming?

7624 MR. CHOMYN: Commissioner, I think with all due respect we really have. I think there is a notion that there is a school with students in it and then there is this place called Etobicoke, and there is no sort of relationship between the two of them.

7625 The truth of the matter is the size and scope of Humber College -- and I am going to be wrong on these numbers -- is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 60,000 a year that go through either in fulltime or night-time or part-time courses.

7626 I think if you travelled through Etobicoke you would be hard-pressed to find anyone that didn't either attend Humber, is attending Humber or had relatives who were attending Humber.

7627 I think the influence of the college and the size in relationship to Etobicoke makes the two of them sort of intertwined.

7628 I think when we address programming to the student population, we are also talking that the student population is not what we may think of as the typical 18 or 19-year-old coming out of high school. It may be the 35 or 40-year-old that is getting upgrading. It may be the 50-year-old taking evening courses.

7629 That is how we think that the audience is intertwined.

7630 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Then would you say that most of your students who are also your potential audience live and reside within that community of Etobicoke-Rexdale and that kind of is --

7631 MR. HANNA: The short answer is "yes".

7632 The longer answer is that number has changed over the years. I think all of the colleges now draw off -- because you have specialty programs, you will be drawing outside of what used to be fairly heavily regulated catchment areas. Ours was Etobicoke in the City of York.

7633 However, the bulk of the students still reside within the catchment area, certainly both in their own homes and also in the residences that we have there, as well.

7634 In terms of our targeting the programming, yes, we are targeting the student population that we have but we are also targeting their families, because their families live in Etobicoke and they come from the same ethnic background.

7635 One of the beauties of this particular frequency for us is that it is so limited it actually is almost perfect for Etobicoke. We see that as a big advantage.

7636 I personally would like to see a growing content from the community. I think that is something that you work at. You get the station and you start building those relationships to get the additional content from there. I certainly see this as something that would happen.

7637 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: One of the things that I have been struck by is, as you know, it is a highly competitive hearing. As you also know, frequencies are in very short supply --

7638 MR. CHOMYN: No kidding!

1005

7639 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: In southern Ontario and southwestern British Columbia and the Montreal area. What we do -- it's our work; it's how we spend much of our time -- is try to balance the interests overall, not just this hearing.

7640 How can we do the most for the most number of people with the scarcity?

7641 I don't know if you have seen our Specialty Audio Public Notice that came out. As you know, we have been speaking to most applicants about how they thought this might suit them.

7642 In particular, it seems to me that you have a closed circuit radio service now. You are available over RealAudio on the Internet. It seems from much of what you are proposing, and even our discussions, that it isn't a drive kind of programming; that your audience is somewhat contained, and you are not looking to drivers, people in cars, as being a big part of your audience.

7643 I wonder if you could comment on the specialty audio. Have you considered doing your instructional service in somewhat the same way as the existing service is done, perhaps in addition to the existing service?

7644 MR. ANDREW: Commissioner, this has been an odyssey that has gone on for a long time. We have considered just about every option.

7645 I read with interest your release last Thursday, I believe it was, on the Specialty Audio Services. There are a couple of points.

7646 We don't want to close the door on any option. That is the first point I want to make. We have to look at the options very carefully.

7647 Our target audience -- you mentioned it really isn't drive programming. Our target audience is a mobile audience, though. You come to the parking lot at Humber College, and I will convince you that it is a very mobile audience. They are coming to and from school. They have classes in the morning. They may have classes in the evening. They are going back home. They are always very mobile.

7648 For that reason alone the specialty audio services would really just hit one very small tiny segment of our target population, and that would be the ones that are at home.

7649 Many of these students, as I say, are very mobile. We not only want to hit the people that are in cars but the people that are rollerblading, the people that are walking with their Walkman through the grounds of the Humber College area. That is not possible with the specialty audio services.

7650 The second thing we looked at is the cost factor may be prohibitive for some students, especially younger ones who we find are under a tremendous strain, having to pay for education and the increasing education costs. That may be something that could be considered.

7651 Many students are living in accommodations that could be their home, but it also may not be their home. It may be temporary accommodations.

7652 So for those reasons I don't want to close any doors.

7653 I think those services are better suited for a less mobile audience, and certainly there are lots like that.

7654 MR. HANNA: I would just like to add to that.

7655 As far as outside of the college community, the non-student, the family they are coming from, the people who reside in Etobicoke who are part of the ethnic groupings in Etobicoke, we found in discussions with our student federation that a number of the ethnic clubs we have are also reflective of the ethnic groupings outside of the college. They are the ones who are pressing for a voice there.

7656 Those communities, by and large, tend to be immigrant communities and therefore the income level is lower. It is one of the lowest computer access groupings that we have. We do a survey of all of our students to see who has access to Internet at home, who has a computer at home, who does what. Those groups tend to have the lowest frequency of access to that kind of equipment.

7657 The statistics show that the Internet-based RealAudio is not something they would have access to.

7658 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Even your drive audience -- I take your point about the rollerbladers and walkers, but your drivers can't drive very far because they are going to lose the signal really, can they? That is really what I -- as I tried to struggle my way through this. Thank you for your response on that.

7659 Have you considered an AM frequency?

7660 MR. CHOMYN: That is next on my list.

7661 Yes. Yes, we have.

7662 I think I had somebody from Industry Canada tell me -- I can't remember who it was -- he said: "Well, Jerry, remember CIUT started off with an AM frequency." I said "Yes, but how many years ago was that? How many FM stations were there at the time?" Ironically, the frequency that CIUT got was originally applied for by Humber College prior to my arriving.

7663 Our target audience tends not to listen to AM radio. If you especially look at the youth, if you look at youth radio in the City of Toronto -- any city, any marketplace -- FM is their preferred choice. That is the way it is.

7664 The other real factor -- real factor -- and some of the other applicants have mentioned this, to set up a ground system for an effective AM coverage pattern may be prohibitive.

7665 We haven't explored that, but it sounds like if it is going to be costly for a commercial broadcaster, it would be very costly for us.

7666 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: You haven't explored it, though?

7667 MR. CHOMYN: No. We had our engineer actually look at what was available. I think he made the point that there was -- I believe it was 1570. He suggested that would be an ideal repeater for CHIN, being so close to the 1540 frequency. That is about as far as we have gone with that.

7668 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: I know. So I might as well ask you now.

7669 There is a letter from Mr. Elder in your file in which he says -- and I wonder if you can perhaps help me -- Industry Canada:

"We expect that one or more suitable alternative FM frequencies will be available for Humber College in July or later." (As read)

7670 That was his letter dated May. I wonder if you could tell me if he has come up with any other alternatives for you at this stage.

7671 MR. CHOMYN: He hasn't passed any on to us.

7672 We initiated this third adjacency look at. We approached Industry Canada with the frequency three -- I believe three or four years ago now. It was my feeling that 91.9 would work as a third adjacency. We had to wait.

7673 I mentioned in my presentation that we were all prepared to submit to the Commission an application based on technical approval from Industry Canada, but then the Commission sort of put a hold on the application until they finished all their testing on third adjacencies. So we were one of the ones that initiated that.

7674 I think that what Mr. Elder was talking about is further tests are going to be done on second channel adjacencies. I haven't heard if there have been any results on that.

7675 I am led to believe by other people that is going to be a much more contentious -- you have seen already at this hearing how people are a little sensitive about interference to their signal when it isn't a third adjacency or a second adjacency. We haven't heard anything new on that yet.

7676 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Thank you.

7677 I have some questions on your advertising business plan.

7678 You provided us with different sources of advertising vis-à-vis local market radio stations, increase in the budget of existing radio advertisers, new advertisers and other media. The aggregate of these sources comes to 95 per cent, I think we added up. I wonder if you know where the missing 5 per cent is?

7679 MR. CHOMYN: This is a bad sign for somebody that did the advertising. I think the last time I added it up it was 105. Somebody said "It's 105", so I didn't apply.

7680 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: They were wrong. You were right.

--- Laughter / Rires

7681 MR. HANNA: The remainder will be made up in one of two ways. Actually, quite frankly, because we are an adjacent institution we do have a lot of latitude back and forth.

7682 I expect what will happen here is that any remainder will be picked up by the Humber Student Federation for their own purposes in terms of the advertising they would do. As well, the school makes regular advertising activity of its own as well.

7683 MR. CHOMYN: I think it would be new advertising is where it would come from, from people who don't traditionally use radio as an advertising media.

7684 But Mr. Hanna is quite correct, there are a number of parts of the school that have things that they want to advertise and we received a little bit of money now from them, so we see that increasing as well.

7685 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: As you probably know, when we developed the ethnic policy that has been in place for a number of years and was recently reviewed, we did hearings across the country. We had extensive public consultation. Overwhelmingly there was demonstrated a need for third-language programming, which was why it is an essential element of the policy.

7686 You referred earlier to in planning your ethnic broadcasting program you felt a distinct need to have a path for third language students whose facility in English was not strong enough, perhaps, to enter. I'm wondering why you then have chosen to do your ethnic programming in English and not in third languages.

7687 MR. CHOMYN: The decision was made on a number of factors. These are not in any particular order, but one of the factors that we looked at is that we did not see ourselves as competition -- or didn't want to see ourselves as competition to any other existing ethnic broadcaster. We did not want to take audiences, we wanted to be a complementary service.

7688 The way that I read the Commission's comments regarding campus radio is that the campus radio licences were very critical to ethnic broadcasting, but in different ways, rather than the traditional third-language programming that ethnic broadcasters do. That is one of the things that we looked at.

7689 Another thing that we looked at is the actual monitoring of the programming and knowing what is going on and what they are saying. This might prove to be a bit of a burden on a pretty modest operation.

7690 Finally, on a personal note, as an immigrant that came here 50 years ago, I think it is helpful to be exposed to learning about your culture in English, because English is the working language in this part of Canada. I'm sure that went into my thinking as well.

7691 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Thank you. I am just about done.

7692 One of the things I know you referred in your remarks to the recent decision with respect to Nanaimo and the instructional station there -- I don't know how familiar you are with the background, but it was a product of long and extensive negotiations between the commercial broadcasters, the college, broadcasters in Nanaimo, in Vancouver, to really meet the needs of a number of different communities, broadcasters and types of station. It took a number of years to do that, too. It was not a simple situation by any means.

7693 I'm wondering to what extent have you had discussions with other broadcasters, people in the CAB, local Toronto broadcasters to see if there isn't some way to identify any other frequencies or if this is what you have come up with?

7694 MR. CHOMYN: Well, our contact with the broadcasters of this city is on a daily basis. Our advisory board for our radio broadcasting and journalism programs at Humber College meet on a twice-yearly basis. These broadcasters make up the bulk of stations in the City of Toronto.

7695 We haven't consulted with the CAB. We have looked at a more localized look at it.

7696 This application, our advisory board was briefed that we were making this application. They represent every radio station in the City of Toronto. They unanimously supported this application. Their support was, I think, even stronger because they found out the frequency we were going for was really not a frequency that could be used by a commercial broadcaster unless it was used as a repeater, which, just my opinion, I think that there is a better use and I think Humber is that better use for it.

7697 So they have indicated to us. Broadcasters in the City of Toronto have always been supportive of our applying for a radio station licence. In fact, at the last hearing that we had with our advisory board, they were rather puzzled that there has never been an instructional licence in the City of Toronto. They said there are so many broadcasters that work here and are trained here. Our alumni looks like a Who's Who of radio in Canada. They were shocked that there wasn't.

7698 We advised them that we were applying and they supported us wholeheartedly.

7699 As far as coming up with other frequencies, we have relied on our broadcast consulting engineer all along and this one looked like it was tailor made for us.

1020

7700 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Thank you.

7701 One question I forgot on advertising. Your current radio station is generating advertisers and has been doing so since 1972. I wonder if you could give us some examples of who those advertisers are.

7702 MR. CHOMYN: The advertisers that use the radio are -- I think people have a stereotype of who students are, so as you can imagine every bar within probably a three or four kilometre radius wants to have a Humber night. So they are very strong supporters of our radio station.

7703 The advertisers tend to be mom and pop businesses close to the college that may offer services for students. They are normally people that are quite taken aback by the fact that we are selling commercials for $2.00, I believe our current rate is, if you buy in bulk.

7704 They are not normally people who use an awful lot of radio. We know that because they don't have commercials pre-produced. Many of the times the experience in the sales and marketing students is that they have to actually talk to them and consult with them on the advantages of using radio, which tells me that they don't actually use a lot of radio advertising.

7705 But it runs the gamut, as I say, from bars to small businesses that are within easy access of the college.

7706 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Thank you.

7707 Now, as you probably know we have been asking all the applicants: Your application for 91.9 is competitive and technically mutually exclusive with two other applications at the hearing. What we are doing is seeking the views of the competitors as to why their application makes the best use of the frequency.

7708 I know we have talked about this, but you might want to take this opportunity to give us your best pitch.

7709 MR. CHOMYN: Whoa! No pressure here.

--- Laughter / Rires

7710 MR. CHOMYN: Thank you, Commissioner.

7711 We have a solid application that fully addresses all of the requirements of the Commission's policy for instructional stations -- it used to be institutional -- instructional stations.

7712 You have acknowledged that campus radio stations have an important role to play in ethnic broadcasting. We believe we can fill that role.

7713 We have the unconditional support of Humber College and all of its resources. I think those are both financial and people resources and programming resources. It is a program director's dream to have this many resources at his or her disposal.

7714 I think we have the philosophy that we want to be complementary to other radio stations. We have said that we will promote programming that is on other ethnic stations. If we want a program that is directed to a certain community, we will find out where that programming is also on on CHIN or CIAO or any of the other ethnic broadcasters and direct their audience to that. We see that as a service.

7715 Any programming that we have that we feel other broadcasters are offering, we will direct our listeners to them, again to act as a service.

7716 There is no instructional radio station in Toronto. We have pointed that out. There are three campus community stations.

7717 I think in my application I also made mention of the fact that there hasn't been a campus licence awarded in Toronto in I think roughly 30 years. I think it is time to look at that as well.

7718 In my mind, and others may disagree, the solution to CHIN's dilemma seems straightforward. CHIN is probably one of the most respected ethnic broadcasters in Canada, if not the world. They have a long history, a colourful history of serving the community well.

7719 We believe they deserve the 101.3 frequency. That was their first choice. That would leave 1540 open for a novice ethnic broadcaster. That's a good way to get a start. That's a good way to feel your way. It also would leave 91.9 for us.

7720 We feel the Franco-Canadian community is well served in Toronto with a very powerful AM station, 50,000 watts operated by the CBC.

7721 I saw a discussion group the other day that had the opinion that maybe that station should be offered to the ethnic community because it's such an all-encompassing station that has 50,000 watts, but nevertheless the station is there. It does provide programming.

7722 Finally, this new FM station with the participants from the College, will reflect all of Toronto's multiethnic communities, all the faces and the voices that are Toronto and are Canada.

7723 Thank you.

7724 COMMISSIONER GRAUER: Thank you very much, Mr. Chomyn.

7725 Those are my questions, Madam Chair.

7726 THE CHAIRPERSON: Commissioner Noël.

7727 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Well, you sort of led me into my line of questioning here.

7728 You are aware that, yes, the French-Canadians in Toronto, or francophones and francophiles, as they are called, which number about 400,000 people, according to the Census figures, are served on the AM band by la Première chaîne which is the copycat of Radio One. But that programming --

7729 THE CHAIRPERSON: Excuse. Oh, la Première chaîne is on AM.

7730 COMMISSIONER NOËL: But la Première chaîne originates almost entirely from Montreal. There is 40 hours of local production, mainly news, and that's it. All the rest of the programming -- it is a Montreal station. So there is not much in terms of local recognition for the people in Toronto.

7731 Aren't you disturbed by that fact?

7732 MR. CHOMYN: Madam Commissioner, in all due respect, if I were the Program Director of the station I would be very disturbed by that fact, and certainly if I were the Program Director I would recognize where the audience is and I would program accordingly.

7733 I believe that there is a large audience that is underserved in Toronto and the programming comes from Montreal. As a Program Director I would want to address that.

7734 COMMISSIONER NOËL: You are aware that it's a network.

7735 MR. CHOMYN: Yes, yes.

7736 COMMISSIONER NOËL: The SRC Première chaîne is a network so there are a number of network hours in a number of cities where there is a large French population. There are also commercial French broadcasters which there are none here.

7737 Well, my line of questioning was you have mentioned that 91.9 is an island in a sea of frequencies. I would like to discuss with you really what do you think of serving such a small geographically limited population as opposed to the use of 99.7 which is a first suggestion, therefore it's mutually exclusive which was applied for by la Coopérative radiophonique de Toronto and the proposed contour of that frequency would spread from beyond Mississauga to the west, and to Oshawa to the east.

7738 The use -- and I am just talking use of the frequency -- of the frequency which covers a much broader part of the population, and then on the other hand there is also the CHIN application for a rebroadcaster using a reclassified 91.9 which would also give them a much wider coverage.

7739 So why would your very geographically limited use of that frequency be a better use than those two applications?

7740 MR. CHOMYN: The 91.7 FM frequency that you mentioned that has been applied for by the Coopérative radiophonique group is the frequency that we applied for the last time that we applied for a licence.

7741 At that time -- and I will go back to a little bit of history here -- that frequency was reserved for French-language service for the CBC. It was allocated to, I believe, the St. Catharines-Niagara Falls area and in our conversations with people at that time we were led to believe that the CBC had no plans to ever use it since it was to quote their words at the time "commercially unfeasible" or "it didn't make sense to use it" with the expenses involved in setting up a radio station.

7742 So we applied for the 91.7. We had an engineering study done at that time that would allow us to cover the entire city and certainly beyond. We were unsuccessful. That was followed by CIAO in Welland applying for that frequency, receiving permission for that frequency.

7743 When we started investigating and pursuing this again three or four years ago, that is one of the frequencies we again looked at. However, I didn't have a lot of confidence that it would be usable since I drive in from Barry every day, which is 75 kilometres north of here, and I can hear, by the time I get halfway to Humber, 91.7 loud and clear playing country music.

7744 It was my untechnical knowledge or guess that I wouldn't be a good frequency to use. This was later confirmed in conversations with Gord Elder, our broadcast engineer, who said that the interference would just be horrendous. The ability to get an approval from an existing broadcaster to cut into part of their broadcast coverage area was slim to nil. It was based on his advise that we looked at 91.9.

7745 Now, 91.9 is an island in a sea of competing frequencies. It is exactly that, if you look at the coverage map.

7746 It the Commission checks a letter that I submitted I think it was in 1992 in response to campus radio stations policy, one of the things that I expressed concern about is campus radio stations with huge coverage areas and it's very difficult in my mind to reconcile a campus community station that has a coverage area the size of half of Southern Ontario. That doesn't somehow sit right with me.

7747 Having said that, we can't go back and change history, but the Humber frequency 91.9 that you have identified as an island, that's perfect for our campus instructional station, for our needs.

7748 Does that answer your question?

7749 COMMISSIONER NOËL: It does answer my question and the rest of my question was around AM and I think you have answered Commissioner Grauer's question on that.

7750 Thank you.

7751 THE CHAIRPERSON: Commissioner Cardozo.

1033

7752 COMMISSIONER CARDOZO: Thank you, Madam Chair.

7753 I just wanted to get a bit more sense of Humber College as a school. I get a sense of you talked about it being a fairly multicultural school and stuff, but I am thinking primarily the School of Media Studies and the broadcasting program.

7754 What would you say is the percentage of visible minorities in these schools? And has it grown noticeably over the past ten years or so?

7755 MR. CHOMYN: The answer to your second question is yes. I am going to give you an answer for our radio broadcast program first-year students. The College does all types of research. I am not sure if they look at that specifically.

7756 One third of our first-year class in broadcasting would be classified as visible minorities. The other ways that the demographics have changed, when I started with Humber in 1988, I believe there was something in the order of ten women and 70 males in the radio broadcast program.

7757 Today the number is probably 35 women to 25 males in our first-year radio broadcasting.

7758 COMMISSIONER CARDOZO: And how about among the faculty? Do you have a diversity of teachers and professors?

7759 MR. CHOMYN: It totally reflects the City of Toronto. This is where we get our employees from and, yes, very much so.

7760 COMMISSIONER CARDOZO: And the courses that you teach, are they courses -- and I am thinking here of the students who are studying to be in the English and French media, or I guess primarily English media in this case -- that relate to covering a diverse society?

7761 MR. CHOMYN: Well, I think that we made mention in our presentation that our program, the radio broadcast program -- and understand, in the School of Media Studies there are journalist programs, media sales programs. I am more comfortable talking about the broadcast program only because I am the coordinator there.

7762 COMMISSIONER CARDOZO: Okay.

7763 MR. CHOMYN: We train the total broadcaster. As part of being the total broadcaster, there are broadcast journalism courses that talk about every aspect of journalism, including the sensitivity towards covering different issues in a multiethnic, multicultural society.

7764 I think that one becomes very, very aware that this is everyday life for us. When I come to work, this is not something that needs to be imposed or reminded. The ethnic diversity is around me.

7765 Humber College is like the United Nations. It's a wonderful mosaic.

7766 MR. HANNA: Just to add a little bit to that, all college students through the school are required to complete a general education component and there are required courses in there that cover things like sociology, ethnicity and very exclusively the humanities course has a whole component that lasts about three weeks in a 15-week curriculum that looks at multicultural issues, and those are required general education courses for all college students.

7767 COMMISSIONER CARDOZO: And to what extent do the students and other faculty and the ethnic broadcasters have input into the project that you put forward today?

7768 MR. CHOMYN: I think the largest input came from advisory committees, existing advisory committees for broadcasting and for journalism which represent broadcasters.

7769 Beyond that, consultations with the Humber Students' Federation which is the student government. I attended numerous meetings to discuss the project. They unanimously endorsed this project and have already been e-mailing me lots of other ideas that they would like to see.

7770 One of the programs, by the way, in our programming schedule is HSF Today and that is a program that will be produced with the student government to allow them to talk about issues that are affecting the student body as a whole.

7771 The people that we have talked to for the Ethnic Broadcasting School are existing ethnic broadcasters in Toronto. We have talked to them on sort of two different fronts. On one front, what should we put into the Broadcasting School and what comments, if any, do you have about the campus radio station?

7772 I think that the comments that I have been hearing back from members of the ethnic broadcasting community are all positive, saying that they like our approach, they like that we are complementary, not competitive, and they like that ethnic broadcasters are going to finally receive some training, some direction on CRTC policies, on other legalities involved in broadcasting beyond just how to talk into a microphone and how to run the equipment.

7773 COMMISSIONER CARDOZO: So have they provided internship opportunities, and I am thinking of your discussion with Commissioner Grauer that the education you provide would be in English whereas they may end up wanting to do broadcasting in Polish or Swahili.

7774 MR. CHOMYN: Sure. The radio broadcast program at Humber is a two-year program with a 160-hour internship within a radio station that follows that program. I suspect that the Ethnic Broadcasting School will also have a very strong ethnic broadcasting internship, just judging from the response that we have had from other broadcasters who have told us that this internship component is perhaps one of the most helpful parts of the course.

7775 It allows them to train the broadcasters in their policies and their way of doing things and at the same time allows them to evaluate someone for 160 hours before they have had to hire them.

7776 COMMISSIONER CARDOZO: Thank you for that. Your answers on the first couple of questions I asked are particularly interesting. As you may be aware, we have been encouraging the English and French broadcasters to do more in terms of how they reflect our society. Obviously, what happens in your school is the front end of whether there are going to be students and people ready for those jobs at the end of the day.

7777 MR. CHOMYN: I think you have hit it right on the head. I think you have hit the nail right on the head.

7778 What Humber College does is going to affect broadcasting five, ten years down the road. What I am seeing is the changing demographic, the changing face, if you will, that is going to be reflective in all of broadcasting.

7779 I think the only downside to that, if it is a downside, is I think the large urban centres are going to be the beneficiaries, first off, and it may be slower filtering down to small markets. But it will happen.

7780 COMMISSIONER CARDOZO: You have lots of students who come from outside Toronto; come from small cities and towns.

7781 MR. CHOMYN: Yes; all over Canada sometimes.

7782 COMMISSIONER CARDOZO: Thank you very much.

7783 Those are my questions, Madam Chair.

7784 THE CHAIRPERSON: Commissioner Noël.

7785 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Thank you.

7786 Just as a matter of information, does Humber College sit on a large tract of land? Is it on a large piece of ground?

7787 MR. CHOMYN: I wouldn't want to cut the grass. It is very large.

7788 COMMISSIONER NOËL: So maybe you could electrify your football team with --

7789 MR. CHOMYN: It is very large, yes. It is many hundreds of acres. I am not even sure.

7790 MR. HANNA: It is just adjacent to the conservation area. The Humber River actually goes through behind the creek. So you have a very lovely landscaped area that is supported, and we have co-operation with the former city of Etobicoke, now the city of Toronto, to maintain that conservation area.

7791 So it actually has a lot of area of its own, but then we are backed on to the conservation area, which we maintain.

7792 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Thank you.

7793 THE CHAIRPERSON: Mr. Chomyn, the facility that you have at the moment you have described as a working lab. We describe it as closed circuit.

7794 What is it actually? Does it carry a current through the electrical system?

7795 If you are in an office at Humber College or in a room in your residence, can you plug in a radio and get the signal?

7796 MR. CHOMYN: If you hold a radio up to the window and turn the antenna, maybe.

7797 THE CHAIRPERSON: So it isn't a current through the electrical system.

7798 MR. CHOMYN: No, it isn't. I think in one of the deficiency responses I mentioned that it is 15 speakers, 15 or 20 speakers throughout the halls of the college, hard wired.

7799 THE CHAIRPERSON: I see. So it is really hard wired.

7800 MR. CHOMYN: Yes.

7801 THE CHAIRPERSON: So there is absolutely no spillage on the grounds at all of the signal.

7802 MR. CHOMYN: In our technical brief we have identified that we had a student build a small transmitter. We described it as a flea-powered, under half a watt.

7803 THE CHAIRPERSON: In the hope of having something closer to carrier current.

7804 MR. CHOMYN: In the hope of being able to hear it in the parking lot outside of the range.

7805 THE CHAIRPERSON: Does it work?

7806 MR. CHOMYN: If the wind is blowing in the right direction and you hold --

7807 THE CHAIRPERSON: So it is extremely limited.

7808 MR. CHOMYN: Very limited.

7809 THE CHAIRPERSON: You are aware, of course, that some institutions have had carrier current installations that spill over on the whole campus. Have you ever thought of that?

7810 We have an engineer here, but my understanding is you put the transmitter near the source of electricity.

7811 You have more than one building, so you must have an electrical facility.

7812 MR. CHOMYN: Madam Chair, the facility is a very convoluted complex set of buildings.

7813 THE CHAIRPERSON: But normally electrified from a single source.

7814 MR. CHOMYN: You are over my head.

7815 I have been led to believe that it would be very impractical within the setting. We did look at closed circuit, and that was carrier current, years and years ago.

7816 THE CHAIRPERSON: And it didn't work.

7817 MR. CHOMYN: They said it was impractical.

7818 THE CHAIRPERSON: I know we have had one university -- well, the university now is on a frequency, but the University of Ottawa for some time had carrier current and it would spill over certainly on the campus, which is right in the congested part of town.

7819 You don't think it is an alternative for you?

7820 It certainly extends the closed circuit.

7821 MR. CHOMYN: As I say, we looked at it quite a few years ago.

7822 THE CHAIRPERSON: And it is not an option.

7823 It is certainly not comparable, and often the carrier current installations eventually ask for FM. But it would seem to be a step above what you are able to do.

7824 MR. HANNA: Perhaps I could add to that, as well.

7825 We have two major campuses, one in the north part of Etobicoke and one in the south part of Etobicoke, and this would not in any way address the needs of south Etobicoke.

7826 THE CHAIRPERSON: But it could be an improvement, if it were an option.

7827 MR. HANNA: Yes.

7828 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

7829 Counsel, please.

7830 M^e STEWART: Merci, madame la présidente. As usual, I will be very brief.

7831 I notice in Schedule 1 of your application that you say that the station will produce eight hours of ethnic programming a week and of eight different groups.

7832 Would you be willing to accept a condition of licence with respect to those figures? And by production, I assume also you would mean that you would not only produce but also broadcast eight hours of ethnic programming a week?

7833 MR. CHOMYN: Correct, and we would.

7834 MR. STEWART: Could you identify for the Commission the different ethnic groups that you propose to serve?

7835 MR. CHOMYN: As indicated in our application, this would be a fluid exercise. We would every year review the most underserved ethnic groups by the existing ethnic broadcasters in the city of Toronto. We would do that by consulting with our Ethnic Advisory Board and have them clearly indicate to us who was underserved, and we would program accordingly.

7836 MR. STEWART: Would that be programming on an annual basis; i.e., would that determination be made at the beginning of a year? And how often, if at all, would it be changed during the course of the year?

7837 MR. CHOMYN: It would be determined on a yearly basis tied to the school year, which is the traditional September through -- well, we are 12 months of the year, but the normal school year, September through May.

7838 It would be reviewed yearly, and it could be extended for an additional year. But the maximum would be two years.

7839 MR. STEWART: That is the maximum that any particular group would be served?

7840 MR. CHOMYN: Correct.

7841 MR. STEWART: Would that group have any chance of being served again after --

7842 MR. CHOMYN: Absolutely. I think what we would do is when we did the review we would look and if the landscape had not changed, they certainly would be eligible to be looked at again.

7843 I think the idea that we had behind this was to recognize the fluidity of the entire ethnic community and to ensure that the people that are underserved receive the airtime.

7844 MR. STEWART: Thank you.

7845 I would just like to ask one or two brief questions with respect to your community access commitment, which I believe is three hours.

7846 Could you repeat, to the extent that you have already provided this information, where community access programming would fit into your schedule.

7847 MR. CHOMYN: It would be distributed through the week. Again, we would take a look at the type of programming that it was, and that would determine where we would exactly schedule it, time-wise I am thinking, depending on where it made the most sense.

7848 MR. STEWART: Is that community access programming separate and apart from the ethnic programming?

7849 MR. CHOMYN: Yes. But I am going to say there is nothing that would prevent an ethnic community group from applying for that community access.

7850 MR. STEWART: I believe you had a conversation with Commissioner Grauer on the subject. But for the record, can you provide some information about what this community access programming would consist of?

7851 MR. CHOMYN: The goal of this particular type of programming would be to give access to members of the community who are not necessarily associated with Humber College that wish access; and to also provide broadcast training for non-broadcasters, eventually allowing them to market their programming to either other commercial broadcasters or perhaps ethnic broadcasters.

7852 Time will be allotted based on the following: the demand, who applies for it; the uniqueness of the proposal -- in other words, is it filling a gap, something that isn't available or heard on radio in the marketplace at present; the target audience and underserved audiences.

7853 Again, all programming would be for a duration of one year. It could be renewed for another year, maximum two years.

7854 The only conditions that we have are that all participants must complete a comprehensive training program supplied by the college, and they must adhere to CRTC and station policy guidelines.

7855 MR. STEWART: Thank you very much. I have one final question.

7856 Are Humber College students listening to this proceeding right now on the Internet? Is this part of the course? Is the success of your application part of the course?

7857 I say that in jest, so that I am clear.

7858 MR. CHOMYN: You have provided us with a perfect assignment. If all else fails, this has been a wonderful learning exercise for them to analyze and give us feedback on our performance, as well.

7859 Thank you.

7860 M^e STEWART: Merci, madame la présidente. Ce sont toutes mes questions.

7861 THE CHAIRPERSON: You are expecting an A-plus, I imagine.

7862 MR. CHOMYN: Nothing less.

7863 THE CHAIRPERSON: Either that or they get a "D".

7864 MR. CHOMYN: They will have to sit at the back of the room as well.

7865 THE CHAIRPERSON: It is nice to have leverage.

7866 We thank you for your co-operation, Mr. Chomyn, Mr. Hanna and Mr. Andrews. We will not see you at Phase II, I understand, but we may see you at Phase IV.

7867 MR. CHOMYN: I would like to thank you. You have a very difficult decision ahead of you. I don't envy you.

7868 Enjoy your stay in Toronto.

7869 THE CHAIRPERSON: Hopefully, we will get an "A". Thank you.

7870 We will now take a 15-minute break and resume at approximately five after eleven. Thank you.

--- Upon recessing at 1050 / Suspension à 1050

--- Upon resuming at 1115 / Reprise à 1115

7871 THE CHAIRPERSON: Order, please.

7872 Mr. Stewart.

7873 M^e STEWART: Merci, madame la présidente.

7874 This is a statement for the record.

7875 In fulfilment of an undertaking given to the Commission on Friday the 20th of September, CHIN filed revenue projections split by programming, produced by associate producers and produced in-house in connection with its application to flip its AM service to an FM frequency.

7876 CHIN filed this information in confidence submitting, among other things, that its application should be examined more as a renewal rather than an application for a new licence and that consistent with the Commission's practice with respect to renewal applications information of this nature should be granted confidentiality.

7877 CHIN also submitted that the information was commercially sensitive and its disclosure could be damaging to CHIN's existing business relationships.

7878 Following careful consideration of CHIN's submissions, the Commission denies its application request for confidentiality. The Commission notes that this information has been filed in the context of an application for a new licence and that the Commission's practice is that financial projections filed in proceedings of this kind are to be filed on the public record.

7879 Merci, madame la présidente.

7880 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

7881 Monsieur le sécretaire, s'il vous plaît.

7882 MR. LEBEL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

7883 Item 17 on the Agenda is an application by Geethavaani Inc. for a licence to operate a commercial AM ethnic radio station in Toronto.

7884 The new station would operate on frequency 1650 kilohertz with a transmitter power of 1,000 watts.

7885 Appearing for the applicant, Mr. Nadarajah Kumarakulasingham, and I will ask him to introduce his colleagues.

7886 You have 20 minutes to make your presentation.

PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION

7887 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Good morning, Madam Chair, Members of the Commission and staff.

7888 My name is Nadarajah Kumarakulasingham. Please feel free to call me Raj.

7889 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

7890 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Thank you.

7891 President and Chief Executive Officer of Geethavaani Inc.

7892 Before I start my presentation I want to introduce my team here today.

7893 First of all, I wanted to thank the Commission for giving us the opportunity to put our application in front of you for approval. Thanks to Canada. Thank you to the Commission.

7894 On my right, Jegan N. Mohan, Barrister and Solicitor, our legal counsel. He is an experienced lawyer in Toronto, well-known and well-respected for his pro bono work in the South Asian community.

7895 He has received a House of Commons citation for his leadership in legal, social and religious services to the Tamil community. Recently he was recognized by the Law Society of Upper Canada and the South Asian Lawyers Association for his notable achievement in the South Asian community.

7896 He is a regular contributor in the Geethavaani Law and Society Program and other social issues affecting the community.

7897 On my left is Professor Elagu Elaguppillai, a well-known scientist in Ottawa and the President and Chief Executive Officer of a pharmaceutical company.

7898 He was a scientific advisor to the Canadian Atomic Energy Control Board for many years.

7899 He has taught at Carleton University and at the University of Ottawa.

7900 He has represented Canada in numerous international commissions and committees.

7901 He is the Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Pharmaceuticals of Canada.

7902 He is a well-respected member of the Tamil community, recently joining our advisory committee.

7903 On my far left is Mr. Peter Chan. He is a professional engineer who has been advising us with regard to all engineering and technical matters on behalf of our engineering consulting firm.

7904 Behind me, on the far right, Theiva Mohan, Barrister and Solicitor, an experienced and well-respected lawyer in Toronto. She is the first Tamil-speaking lawyer called to the Ontario Bar.

7905 She has been associated with Geethavaani from its early days. She is a regular contributor to Geethavaani programs on women, children and elders issues. She is a strong advocate against spousal and child abuses.

7906 She is the only Tamil female lawyer in the Scarborough Area Advisory Committee of Legal Aid Ontario.

7907 She is a valuable member of our Advisory Committee.

7908 To the left and directly behind me is my wife, Umadevi Kumarakulasingham. She is not only always behind me, but is also behind my success in my Korean broadcasting. She is the other shareholder in Geethavaani Inc.

7909 Next to her, seated, Mr. Mohan Nadarajah, Producer of Youth Programs in Geethavaani. He is active in the Tamil community. His knowledge of the Tamil youth is so powerful that without his assistance our current youth programs cannot be carried out.

7910 Next to Mohan Nadarajah is Sinnathurai Sri Murugan, one of the producers in Geethavaani responsible for programs relating to 60-plus listeners.

7911 To the far right Prema Manoharan, a social activist in the Tamil community, advocating justice and equality for women. She is the organizer of numerous seminars and talk shows on women-related issues. She volunteers her time for Geethavaani.

7912 Seated next to her, Raja Chokalingam, our computer consultant.

7913 Now I want to begin my presentation. Thanks again.

7914 We are proud to say that Geethavaani has been in the business of ethnic broadcasting for 10 years with success serving the South Asian community.

7915 We presently operate SCMO 91.1 CJRT. With our proven track record in ethnic broadcasting, we have made this application for a licence to operate a radio station on conventional 1650 AM frequency.

7916 We are the only applicant for operation on this frequency. We also do not have any direct interventions opposing our application.

7917 In our operation of the SCMO, one area of complaint was that the community cannot hear us because our programs cannot be tuned in while in their automobiles and household radios. Therefore, in order to satisfy the unmet demands of the Tamil community and other disadvantaged linguistic groups, we have made this application for a radio station enabling our listeners to tune into the conventional 1650 AM frequency.

7918 When we say "unmet demands" of our listeners, we wish to draw your attention to that there are 11 newspapers, five yellow page directories, television programming and three SCMO radio programmings. The missing mix of the media is a radio station broadcasting on regular AM or FM frequency.

7919 It is with our ethnic broadcasting experience we were able to identify the unmet demands of the South Asian community. We will design and develop programs to educate, motivate and entertain the community we serve. We are confident that with this experience we will be able to satisfy the unmet demands of the rapidly growing South Asian community in Toronto in the proposed radio station.

7920 The statistical data, which we have provided to you today, demonstrates the rate at which the South Asian community is growing in Toronto and the diversity of the South Asian community. We believe it is common knowledge a significant number of immigrants from Sri Lanka are Tamils. A substantial number of Tamils from Sri Lanka live in Toronto.

7921 In addition, there are Tamils from India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa and Fiji who use the products and services from Tamil businesses and listen to Tamil programs. The linguistic groups in the South Asian community which we intend to serve at the present time are underserved and they are in demand of a radio station to tune in at any time and anywhere.

7922 At this juncture I am asking Mr. Mohan to continue with the presentation.

7923 Thank you.

7924 MR. MOHAN: Thank you.

7925 Madam Chair, Commissioners and the staff of the Commission, I bring to this table my 27 years of intimate knowledge of the South Asian community. For the last 25 years I have been waiting for an opportunity to come before a Commission like this to address the needs of the community.

7926 This application is about to satisfy the unmet demands of the Tamil community and South Asian communities who are underserved.

7927 Sri Lanka apparently has remained as one of the top 10 countries from where immigrants have come to Canada and the statistical data attest to the rapid growth of this community in Toronto. Being newcomers to Canada, they demand information relating to essential matters affecting their daily lives.

7928 The community's demand for awareness of services and products available to them, issue-oriented messages, public announcements, news and weather forecasts in their languages is unmet in a media readily available to them. If this demand is to be met, it can only be achieved by providing easy access to radio programs which are cost-effective and can be easily tuned in anywhere at any time.

7929 We have outlined in our application our relevant programming goals to fulfil the demands of the relevant community we intend to serve. We are confident with our experience we will be able to meet these challenging goals. These goals, in our opinion, are in compliance with the ethnic broadcasting policy of this Commission.

7930 The linguistic groups within the South Asian community which we intend to serve consist of a substantial number of newcomers to Toronto. In this community there is a mature, well-educated, established, active and affluent sector. The newcomers to Toronto are looking for information and guidance from the established members of the community to accelerate their blending in Toronto society.

7931 The demands of these affluent sectors of the South Asian community are different. The established residents are looking for entertainment and news from their countries of origin, whereas the newcomers are looking for a mix of entertainment, issue-oriented information and news.

7932 The established members of the community are willing and able to provide guidance to the newcomers for their orderly and fast settlement in Canada. The demands of the different sectors of the community are identified in our application and we are already familiar with the demands and know how to respond to them.

7933 The radio station is a suitable media to address the unmet demands of the community. In this context, the community is in need of a radio with the facility to tune in anywhere at any time.

7934 Presently, the demands of the Tamil community are not adequately met by the existing SCMO radio programs because of the limitations inherent in the reception of these programs. In this context, the Tamil community, along with the other linguistic groups in the South Asian community, are underserved.

7935 The community appreciates the Commission's request to submit applications for ethnic broadcasting. The statistical data we have provided in the application and the additional information which we have given today, demonstrate the Tamil community, along with other South Asian languages, need a radio station in Toronto to satisfy their unmet demands.

7936 We have identified other linguistic groups in our application, taking into consideration the demographics of Toronto. The other linguistic groups are small in number and cannot sustain a full-time radio station of their own, due to the unavailability of advertisement dollars. However, they also have similar demands as the Tamil community.

7937 We have given careful consideration when we included other linguistic groups whom we intend to serve, because they access the same businesses the Tamil community does and the Tamil business community is aware of the demands of these linguistic groups and are willing to advertise in the programs of the other linguistic groups. The Tamil community infrastructure includes a retail sector, food industry and service sector. As such, the demand for advertisement time within the community is significant. In other words, the Tamil community advertisers are willing to subsidize the programs of the other South Asian linguistic groups.

7938 The members of the South Asian community work hard and want to have access to the products and services that will keep them and help them to live well. The services the newcomers wish to access are somewhat different from those of the established residents in Toronto. There are times they overlap. However, the products they want to purchase are always the same. For example, the food they eat, the South Asian groceries they buy at are common for all ages and all linguistic groups in the South Asian community. The established residents who are professionals frequently advertise to reach the South Asian newcomers.

7939 One must understand the services are not only provided in the South Asian languages, but also there is a comfort zone between the service provider and their consumers.

7940 Furthermore, at the present time there is a limited opportunity for advertisers and programmers to bring relevant consumer and issue-oriented messages to the South Asian community, in particular the Tamils. It is in this context the community, which we have identified to serve, is in need of a radio station to address their unmet demands.

7941 The technology which we have identified has enabled us to build a radio station at an affordable cost. The community we intend to serve is not affluent, but they aspire to become one. Therefore, in order to promote the community business we have structured the cost of advertising at an affordable rate. We are able to achieve this price structure because we already have established an infrastructure to run a radio station.

7942 The technical data relating to the establishment of the proposed AM radio station has been provided to Industry Canada. Approval had been granted and been confirmed to you. Therefore, our application to operate an AM radio station is technically feasible, affordable and within our financial means.

7943 We have realistically projected the income and expenses for the proposed AM radio station for the year 2003, including the start-up costs. Also, we have provided projected statements of income and expenses for a period of six years following the year 2003.

7944 The projected costs of manpower needs is detailed in the financial part of our application.

7945 We have a head start on advertising revenue because we are already in operation of a SCMO radio program and have a wide range of advertisers.

7946 We have been assured by the entrepreneurs and service providers in the South Asian community, primarily the Tamil business, who are our current advertisers, that they intend to increase the volume of their advertising when the playing field is widened by bringing new business due to the ability to tune into a conventional AM frequency anywhere at any time.

7947 All our current advertisers and listeners are delighted to hear that we have ventured into making an application for an AM frequency radio station. This means the advertisement revenue will increase as more listeners tune into our radio programs in an AM frequency of their usual receivers.

7948 Developing Canadian talent. Developing Canadian talent is as necessary and important to us as it is to the CRTC. We consider the development of Canadian talent is highly prioritized element of our business plan for an AM radio station.

7949 Our current commitment to develop Canadian talent has reached a level even beyond our expectations. Proof of our commitment to Canadian development in the past is here with us.

7950 We are serving a community which has been linguistically discriminated in their mother countries. It was not a surprise to us when we discovered talent in young and old within the groups which we serve in Toronto.

7951 I also may add that the talent within the Tamil community from Montreal and as far as Vancouver visit our studio in Toronto to provide programs.

7952 The community has seized this window of opportunity provided to them to develop their talents. The talent development is not confined to our in-house programs. We encourage and make available our studio facilities for the use by interested outside groups to promote the language, religion and culture of their choice.

7953 We are committed to continue the development of Canadian talent making the necessary contributions to support and fulfil our obligations towards the CRTC policies with regard to Canadian talent development. We assure you, there will be no compromises.

7954 Finally, we conclude our presentation by highlighting the main reasons why our application for 1650 AM frequency be approved.

7955 First, the Tamils and the other linguistic groups within the South Asian community have grown in recent years and continue to grow rapidly in Toronto as evidenced in the statistical data.

7956 There are recent unmet demands for a fulltime radio station which can be tuned in anywhere at any time.

7957 In this regard, we have proposed to open a radio station broadcasting on 1650 AM frequency for which there is neither competitive applications nor direct interventions opposing the grant of licence.

7958 Two, a significant but largely ignored and neglected segment of the South Asian community will be given an opportunity to have access to advertise their products and services, thereby making known to the community the availability of the products and services and tune in for news, weather broadcast, road condition and messages anywhere at any time.

7959 Three, to provide the listeners in the South Asian community national, local and international news with increased coverage of South Asian news, issue-oriented messages and public announcements in their languages.

7960 Four, the use of 1650 AM frequency is technically feasible and financially affordable.

7961 Five, the advertisers and programmers in the South Asian community, who presently have limited opportunity, will be benefitted by this radio station to bring relevant consumer and issue-oriented messages to the rapidly growing South Asian population in Toronto in their own languages.

7962 Six, we have shown realistic and achievable audience level.

7963 Seven, our projected income and expenses are realistic.

7964 Eight, we have in the past promoted the development of Canadian talent in accordance with the guidelines of ethnic broadcasting of the CRTC and will continue this commitment in the future.

7965 Nine, we have a proven track record in ethnic programming and broadcasting. It is our guide in our new venture.

7966 I believe that we have given and addressed all the issues which the Commission Chair, at this time, at the beginning of this hearing outlined to address why and how our radio station will be run.

1130

7967 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

7968 I will ask Commissioner Noël to address your questions.

7969 I must try my hand at your name a little later.

7970 Commissioner Noël.

7971 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Good morning and thank you for your presentation.

7972 My friend here told me to call you Mr. Kumar, but he said to call you Mr. Raj. So I will go by Raj.

7973 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Both are okay.

7974 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Pardon?

7975 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Both are okay.

7976 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Both are okay.

7977 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Thank you.

7978 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Thank you for your presentation.

7979 I will ask you a number of questions this morning that are meant to complete our file, to complete the record.

7980 I will ask you questions in the areas of programming. I will ask you a number of questions on your advisory board, not the names of the people, but the function it will perform.

7981 I will ask you some questions on your proposed Canadian Talent Development initiatives, on the level of ethnic programming, on your audience projections, your advertising revenue projections, and the impact, the way you measured the impact on existing stations broadcasting through the Tamil community.

7982 If we read the Ethnic Broadcasting Policy, we have to look at a broad range of ethnicities within the community, and in this particular proceeding we invited applications for services that were to reflect the local multilingual and multiethnic reality of the GTA.

7983 Your proposal is to serve -- and I am looking at your Schedule C here, your weekly program schedule. Your programming will serve mainly, primarily I would say, to the level of 78.57 per cent the Tamil community.

7984 Could you describe to us how you plan to balance the reflection of local issues and concerns of the GTA through your scheduling Tamil programming and to the other audiences because the Tamil programming, as I look from your schedule, is almost 100 per cent Tamil programming in the morning, ie. from 6:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and then again from 5:00 p.m. to midnight during the week. During the weekend it's from 9:30 a.m. to midnight.

7985 So how would you reflect the needs of the other linguistic groups that you will serve at the same time as giving the information to the Tamils? You have 14 other languages plus English. So 16 altogether counting English, but 78 per cent of the programming week is devoted to the Tamil language.

7986 How will you balance the information to the rest of the community which will have time slots during the week between one o'clock and five o'clock and during the weekend between six in the morning and 9:30 in the morning?

7987 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: The main language we serve is Tamil, yes, but on a weekday basis we carry Sinhalese, Urdu, Malayalam, Telugu and English.

7988 In Tamil programming basically we will carry hourly news briefs, also the same thing with Sinhalese, Urdu, Malayalam, Telugu. It will be English briefs in common.

7989 On the weekends we carry the other languages and we believe that particular briefing we can carry community issues oriented, messages, another subject in there.

7990 But you were asking in the end about particular timing. Can you repeat it, please?

7991 COMMISSIONER NOËL: What I said is: How will you provide relevant information to the other communities when let's say for example the Russian, the Swahili, the Japanese, the Pustu, the Tagalog, the Somali, et cetera, they are all scheduled for half an hour slots very early on Saturday and Sunday morning. We are talking here between seven o'clock and 9:30 in the morning.

7992 For the rest of the week they will not have access to any information on your AM station. Do you think it will provide some balanced information for the groups of those communities? If there is such a big block of Tamil programming, I am wondering how you will balance the information to the rest of the 16 languages you want to serve.

7993 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: We consider --

7994 MR. MOHAN: May I answer the question? We understand the community which we intend to serve, the character of that particular community which we intend to serve in the other languages as well.

7995 What Geethavaani is proposing is because of timely information which we are going to give. Tamil has been the predominant language in that particular group.

7996 On the other hand, we would be broadcasting, even though it's a Tamil program, in the interest of the communities which we serve, we intend to throw in other languages when there is a need for announcements which are considered important and the audience must receive because that's the purpose of this mix.

7997 COMMISSIONER NOËL: You mean during the blocks that are on your program schedules, during the blocks that are reserved for Tamil programming, you would also do special announcements in other languages?

7998 MR. MOHAN: Yes. We will have a certain flexibility in what is brought out in that particular hour because what we consider is very important, is one of the primary reasons this application has been made, is we intend to address the demands, the unmet demands, of the community which we intend to serve, even though we have given a very tight schedule and we are saying there will be Tamil programming, but if some particular linguistic group knowing very well that 1650 serves peers in to see when there is a storm, hitting torrent, we certainly will try to broadcast and will broadcast the danger which is being encountered and the information will be passed on to the listeners.

7999 There will be a degree of fluidity in running the programs during the day and the night.

8000 COMMISSIONER NOËL: And you will have the linguistic resources available for such emergency-type announcements?

8001 MR. MOHAN: Yes. We have the resources available because as you would know the SCMO is now operating in four or five languages in that particular linguistic group and we have resources in the other languages to help the Geethavaani to address both issues as the emergency situations arise and which we think is important that the message must be passed to the community.

8002 That is one of the unmet demands which we intend to address and redress.

8003 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Okay. Now, still on programming, could you describe the kind of programming that you will do in all those languages? Will it be mostly spoken word programming or will it be a music-driven service? What will be the mix of spoken words and music?

8004 MR. MOHAN: The spoken words is the priority. The reason is that these particular languages -- there is plenty of music available in the marketplace at much affordable prices. You can even buy a disc for a dollar or two dollars on the music part of it.

8005 But what we intend to do in our programs is the education, the motivation and information is the one that we want to give to the community. That is what the demand is for, and that is the demand which we intend to meet. And the spoken words will be the priority in that particular program.

8006 COMMISSIONER NOËL: In terms of percentage, what would be spoken words against music?

8007 MR. MOHAN: I would say the spoken words would be anything in the range of 80 per cent.

8008 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Eighty per cent; all right.

8009 Will that proportion be the same in each of the groups that you will be serving, or will it vary from one group to the next; i.e., will you have spoke word for the Tamil and for, let's say, the Bengali?

8010 MR. MOHAN: Yes. The reason is music is at the bottom of the priority in this context. As we say, the demands which we have identified for the community are the spoken words, the information, and we intend to access it further for these programs.

8011 COMMISSIONER NOËL: How much of the total programming -- and I am talking all languages -- would be produced in-house at the station versus brokered?

8012 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Main languages like Singhalese, Urdu, Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada, we already have producers who are working with us with the Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada and Tamil that we carry on the SCMO. Those languages are the in-house programming.

8013 The other ones, like Russian, Swahili, Somali, Japanese, Twi, Pustu, Persian, Takluk, Bengali will be brokeraged anyway.

8014 COMMISSIONER NOËL: So if my calculations are right, 3.6 per cent would be brokered and the balance, i.e., 96.4 per cent, would be in-house produced.

8015 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: In-house, yes.

8016 COMMISSIONER NOËL: What about the English?

8017 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: English in-house.

8018 COMMISSIONER NOËL: In-house?

8019 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes.

8020 COMMISSIONER NOËL: How will you find out how your producers serve their communities, see how tight the brokered producers can serve the communities? Do you have links in those nine communities which will get approximately 30 minutes a week? What are you links with that community -- those communities, the nine of them?

8021 MR. MOHAN: The link to those communities is through me. I have been an immigration lawyer for the last 25 years, and I have quite a broad network of clientele, business people and people who are fluent. We have already identified and there are competing parties even within certain language groups. But at this particular time we are appraising each person's capability to deliver within the mandate which we want.

8022 There are people who say music must play a dominant part. We say no, music is not a dominant part; we want spoken words. That is what the community needs.

8023 So we have identified in all those language groups which we have just outlined.

8024 If you would really look at the language mix there, it is very carefully selected. It is not of convenience, because we see that these particular groups, like Swahili, Twi, Pustu are languages which have tremendous problems.

8025 Pustu, which is spoken in Afghanistan, is new. They are encountering similar problems that the Tamil community underwent and are still going through.

8026 For us, if I may say, all these language groups have motherhood problems. They are struggling to have a grip, to learn, and they have problems which have characteristics to each one of those groups. There are common ones but there are ones which we see, like Pustu, they have this -- there is a fear in that community.

8027 We identify the issues and we are looking for people who can produce programs and who know what they are doing. We are not simply picking one just to satisfy the requirement that we run the radio station. We are looking at the needs of each one of these language groups.

8028 For example, if I may say, the languages like Malayalam, the language like Kannada, not many newcomers in those language groups. It is an established community in those languages. Their needs are somewhat different from the needs of the newcomers.

8029 We are trying to have a balance, and we try to give quality programs which will address their issues on a day-to-day basis.

8030 COMMISSIONER NOËL: And you are the link with those communities.

8031 MR. MOHAN: Yes, we have links.

8032 COMMISSIONER NOËL: But you are the main link, if I understand, with those communities.

8033 MR. MOHAN: Yes. I should at this time, within my professional ethical boundaries I could say that I am here today not on a retainer; I am here today because I am committed, as the Commission is committed, to help these communities which are young, to grow.

8034 Twenty-five years ago there were 200 families in GTA, Tamil families. When I look at the statistics which are given on page 81 of our submission, the Tamil has grown to be the fourth language group there. Within 25 years it has grown as the fourth largest single group.

8035 The data which is provided today is from Immigration, because the statistics in 1981 was based on the 1996 Canada statistics. The ones which we are giving today from the Citizenship and Immigration show that Tamil has been in the top ten source countries for immigrants. That is what you see in that.

8036 In 1996 it was the fourth language, and with this the demand is there. And it is all within the recent communities. So are the others. But we haven't given a healthy mix to serve all the communities with a consistent policy as to what their needs are what ought to be addressed.

8037 COMMISSIONER NOËL: I don't have a list of all the members of the actual advisory committee. If you give me two seconds, I will find it. I know I have it somewhere.

8038 MR. MOHAN: That advisory committee is on page --

8039 COMMISSIONER NOËL: It is an appendix to your letter of June 5th. That is what I need to find.

8040 Here we are.

8041 The committee now consists of seven members, as I can see.

8042 MR. MOHAN: Yes.

8043 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Mrs. Mohan is on that committee at the time, but I don't see your name on the committee.

8044 Are you a member of that advisory committee?

8045 MR. MOHAN: I am not. I don't want to be structured in any way. I want to have the flexibility as much as possible, because I serve on numerous committees on an ad hoc basis. I can go to two to three pages if I start putting on my résumé in which committees I sit.

8046 I am available, and I have made my services available on a pro bono basis to Geethavaani since its inception.

8047 COMMISSIONER NOËL: I understand that, but you seem to be the person that has their roots in the other communities rather than just the Tamil community -- the other communities that you intend to serve, the newcomers, the Pustu, the Twi, the Swahili, the Bengali.

8048 Wouldn't your presence on that advisory board be good for the station?

8049 MR. MOHAN: Yes, and I attend those advisory committee meetings.

8050 COMMISSIONER NOËL: I am making you a job offer, you see.

8051 MR. MOHAN: Thank you. At this stage of my life, as I told you, I want to be a free person.

8052 COMMISSIONER NOËL: A highly paid job offer.

8053 MR. MOHAN: Thank you for that confidence.

8054 We have quite a healthy blend of advisors, and I take seriously my volunteer work. I bring in what I feel the communities must be served. It's because it is the human element involved in radio broadcasting. That is a need which we are trying to address here.

8055 Let me give you a quick example, which will give you an idea how important, when I said spoken words and the programs that we intend to have, it is not only peculiar to the Tamil community but it is particular to the other languages, as well.

8056 I will give you a good example.

8057 There was a gentleman from Afghan, Pustu. He has his son in school. He simply does not attend any parents' meetings with the teachers because he feels he doesn't speak the language. So does his wife. The kid keeps asking him: Are you going to come and meet my teacher? He can't. But the fact is he doesn't simply know that he can ask for an interpreter, and the school board has a mandatory requirement that they must provide an interpreter to assist these parents who do not speak the language. He doesn't know that until I ask: How are your children doing at school, and he said: "I don't know. I don't know." I said: "Do you know this?" And he said: "Thank you."

8058 That piece of information, we all take it for granted. I give a piece of advice: learn English fast. You don't need to speak perfect English as long as you can communicate with the teacher and look after your children's education. That is important. The piece of information is that the school board will pay and provide an interpreter. This is common to all the languages that we are talking about.

8059 It would take only a split second on the airtime to give this kind of information. We can give it in other languages. We are talking about 30 minutes. There is so much information. And I think Geethavaani has a policy that public interest announcements are given free. You don't need a sponsor because the community consciousness is there.

8060 You use the word commercial, and I asked my friend here what is commercial. And he said that is the terminology the Commission used.

8061 A substantial part of it is information oriented. And as you would know, information is power; knowledge is power.

8062 That is what we are trying to achieve. We want to cut it across the board and provide to all groups which we intend to serve.

8063 COMMISSIONER NOËL: I will ask a few other questions on the advisory board.

8064 As it stands now, the advisory board is composed of seven people, and it was established for the SCMO which served five languages.

8065 Now that you are going to serve 16 languages, do you plan to add representatives of the other communities to that advisory board? And what would be their role?

8066 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes, ma'am. Yes, Madam Commissioner.

8067 We already have plans to add more advisory members to our advisory committee. Every language we will put a member there to advise us on the languages, or every community issue. Let's say Bengali, we are going to put somebody from Bengali who is a capable person.

1200

8068 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Will these people be able to gather feedback from the community to see if the community feels that it has received proper programming? Are they happy with this programming? So those people would have roots in their community and would be able to bring you some feedback about what the needs of the community are in terms of broadcasting?

8069 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Since I applied for this licence, from the second day I visited personally every single association in this community. I was talking with the professionals and people. They came to my office and we discussed this very frankly. We have a strong connection with them and we will find the right people for that committee. We will get the response of what the community thinks and what their needs are.

8070 COMMISSIONER NOËL: So your plan is to have a much bigger advisory board.

8071 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes, ma'am.

8072 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Do you have a figure in terms of number of persons on the advisory board? There are two new languages which have 4 per cent, about, of your programming, which is the Singhalese and the Urdu, the Pakistani people. Will you have members of those two communities?

8073 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Absolutely, ma'am.

8074 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Also from others in the other nine languages which you plan to serve?

8075 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes, madam.

8076 COMMISSIONER NOËL: How many all together?

8077 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: If there are 12 languages, we would want to keep the number in odd numbers, like let's say 13 or 15.

8078 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Your committee would double in size.

8079 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes. Will be double the size, yes.

8080 COMMISSIONER NOËL: There will be people who are grass roots in their own community?

8081 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Capable of finding the problems.

8082 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Thank you.

8083 Now we will move to Canadian Talent Development. Let me find my little thinkpad around here.

--- Pause

8084 COMMISSIONER NOËL: I am a little confused about what you have accepted and what you have not accepted in your application, so maybe we will just go through the line of questioning on the Canadian Talent Development.

8085 You have accepted, by condition of licence, to participate in the CAB plan. What are you prepared to do in terms of Canadian Talent Development over and above the contribution of $3,000 a year to the Canadian Association of Ethnic Broadcasters? Do you plan to have other commitments than the $3,000 a year for the CAEB?

8086 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes, madam. More than what we committed.

8087 Presently we are doing it with the SCMO. These are the samples that I can show you we reproduce to help the producers in the community. There are two series that recently we released by a new talent, people who do the story and music, something like that, and we published about five books, a series of talks about the culture and integration with the mainstream last year and before that. So since in the SCMO presently we are doing it, we will do the same thing with the new licence.

8088 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Okay. Now, in a letter of deficiency that was sent to you on May 15th, we attached guidelines, policies for the acceptability of CTD initiatives, listing what are the initiatives that are acceptable as direct initiative and those which are more of an indirect nature. You sent us back an Appendix A and B with your letter of June -- was it June 5?

8089 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: June 5th.

8090 COMMISSIONER NOËL: I think is June 5. That's right.

8091 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes.

8092 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Appendix A and B.

8093 The policy describes promotional costs, awards and prizes to listeners, in-house, studio expenses as indirect, therefore not acceptable as direct Canadian Talent Development initiative.

8094 Could you tell us why you believe that a lot of your expenses would fall, in our view, in the indirect category. Why should we consider them as direct?

8095 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: In the promotion one the direct cost is $2,250.

8096 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Yes. We think it is indirect. You list them as direct costs.

8097 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Promotions mean what we believed at that time. We had to print the flyers, we had to pay for the printers to print the flyers.

8098 COMMISSIONER NOËL: So it is not on-air promotion?

8099 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: No, ma'am.

8100 COMMISSIONER NOËL: That is the answer I'm looking for.

8101 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Oh, good. Finally --

--- Laughter / Rires

8102 COMMISSIONER NOËL: We will get there.

8103 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Always live with it.

8104 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Could you make a breakdown as to what are things that are done in-house by your station which would be indirect and things that are done by outside sources which would be direct. This would help us looking at your CTD commitments, because it is difficult to analyze when you don't have that kind of information.

8105 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: We will.

8106 COMMISSIONER NOËL: What we need to know is what is actually paid out to third parties and what is done in-house.

8107 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: We will.

8108 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Okay?

8109 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes.

8110 MR. MOHAN: Yes, we can provide that. The direct costs which, in Geethavaani's opinion, was a direct out-of-pocket expense.

8111 COMMISSIONER NOËL: All of the direct costs in the Appendix A are direct out-of-pocket expenses?

8112 MR. MOHAN: Out-of-pocket expenses.

8113 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Paid to third parties?

8114 MR. MOHAN: Yes.

8115 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes, madam.

8116 COMMISSIONER NOËL: There is a large amount that is committed to awards and prizes, including trophies, plaques, certificates, vouchers, cash prizes, tickets for sports, CD, lunch and dinner certificates, tickets for musical shows and functions which, according to our politic policy, are not acceptable.

8117 Do you think you could redirect those initiatives to something that is more acceptable in terms of that will really be a contribution to the Canadian Talent Development, like a scholarship, like the production of a CD, talent shows? There is a lot of money involved here, but a trophy is nice but it doesn't bring much in terms of talent development. It is a recognition and it costs a fair bit of money, but it is not very productive, if you see what I mean.

8118 MR. MOHAN: Thank you for the suggestion. While you were addressing the issue something was going in my head.

8119 Certainly we would be able to do that because what we have put in there -- it is a valid point. What we have put in there can be substituted. We still can have that. We can ask our advertisers to take it up, because this is as a direct cost which is coming out-of-pocket out of Geethavaani's funds.

8120 We could always replace this as a part of advertising promotion sponsorship and direct the $21,000 or more, as you said, in tangible terms of scholarship and other things which will be of some benefit.

8121 COMMISSIONER NOËL: So you would agree to redirect some of those benefits to something which is acceptable as Canadian Talent Development initiative --

8122 MR. MOHAN: Yes.

8123 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes, madam.

8124 COMMISSIONER NOËL: As a condition of licence?

8125 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes, madam.

8126 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Thank you.

--- Pause

8127 COMMISSIONER NOËL: I refer you to paragraph 16 on page 5 of your answer of June 5. We are talking estimated 12-plus audience share.

--- Pause

8128 MR. MOHAN: Which page, please?

8129 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Page 5 of your June 5 letter, paragraph 16, at the very bottom of the page. It is a little table of your estimated 12-plus audience share in terms of percentage.

--- Pause

8130 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes.

8131 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Could you tell us how you derived your figures to come to an audience share of 1 per cent in year seven?

8132 I will tell you why I am asking. According to our calculations, based on the BBMs of the fall of 2002, all six over-the-air ethnic stations at this time account for a total of 2.8 per cent of the 12-plus tuning in the GTA. So I'm sort of wondering how your station on AM could draw one-third of that audience.

1215

8133 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: I want to answer this question very honestly.

8134 As an ethnic broadcaster, but still an SCMO, I am not really familiar with BBM, madam.

8135 A friend of mine, it was a long-time friend, Doug Kirk, who is the President and CEO of KX96, we used to meet -- even last night he visited me until one o'clock and explained to me everything, how to answer and everything.

8136 THE CHAIRPERSON: I know him very well.

8137 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: This question, when it was raised, and I wanted to answer properly, and I asked him -- I explained to him how much was the audience population and this and this. I was feeding the numbers and everything. He explained to me, according to your numbers it would be a similar answer. That was my honest opinion.

8138 I am not very familiar with BBM. It could be a bit more than that, what you said.

8139 COMMISSIONER NOËL: My problem is, there are actually six stations over-the-air, six ethnic radio stations that are serving the GTA at this time, not counting the SCMO. We are just talking over-the-air. Their total 12-plus audience is 2.8 per cent of the GTA.

8140 You plan to have 1 per cent of the GTA, 12-plus audience, which is a big chunk.

8141 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes.

8142 COMMISSIONER NOËL: So I am trying to find out how you got these figures. It would mean that you would have one third of all ethnic tuning over the year with an AM frequency.

8143 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: We mean that for all six stations the BBM report is 2.5?

8144 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Yes, 2.5 total. All six stations --

8145 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: All six of them?

8146 COMMISSIONER NOËL: All six of them have 2.8, all six of them. You say that you are going to achieve 1 per cent which is one third -- it's a generous third of the 2.8. I am wondering how you --

8147 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: It's fairly high.

8148 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Yes, I mean you can be enthusiastic, but there is a limit to enthusiasm.

8149 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: South Asians in number they are a big community, like I said, but again it's very honest. I was so much enthusiastic that I was explaining to Doug Kirk -- he explained to me how I can answer this. This is the answer we came up with. But you are right.

8150 COMMISSIONER NOËL: So it's a Doug Kirk calculation.

8151 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: That's Doug Kirk.

--- Laughter / Rires

8152 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Okay.

8153 Now, if we go to your ethnic languages, the Commission may wish, in assessing your application, to impose on your conditions of licence related to the level of ethnic and third-language programming.

8154 In your case for the calculation, we excluded English, unless you are telling me that it's the West Caribbean, West Indies type of English. For us English is English. So it doesn't count as a third-language or as ethnic programming.

8155 So you have about 4 per cent of English-language programming, which we have excluded for the calculation, which gives us 96.83 per cent, according to your schedule, of ethnic programming, and 96.83 per cent third-language programming.

8156 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes, correct.

8157 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Would you be willing to adhere to these weekly levels as a condition of licence?

8158 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes, Madam.

8159 COMMISSIONER NOËL: And you recognize that English is --

8160 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: But towards the --

8161 COMMISSIONER NOËL: It's towards the overall community. Your English is not the Caribbean type English which is somewhat different -- Creole and --

8162 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: No, it's towards the community. That's what my plan was.

8163 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Towards the community. Okay. So we rightfully didn't count it as ethnic programming.

8164 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes, you are right.

8165 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Thank you.

8166 Would you also be prepared to accept a condition of licence that a minimum of 78 per cent of all the ethnic programming would be in the Tamil language? That represents the levels that are in your application. By making little fancy calculations to exclude English, we come to about 78 per cent of all ethnic programming being in Tamil. So you would be ready to accept a condition of licence --

8167 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes, Madam.

8168 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Thank you.

8169 Is there any other commitments at this stage that you would like to -- you would be willing to adhere to as conditions of licence that would serve to maintain the nature of the ethnic programming service you are proposing?

8170 Is there any other conditions? Would you like to have conditions of licence that say that 5 per cent -- no, I am not right, 3.97 per cent would be in Sinhalese. Would you like to commit to numbers for each of the languages or do you prefer to commit only --

8171 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: No. Whatever we put in there is committed.

8172 COMMISSIONER NOËL: It's committed. So you would be ready to commit at least for the major groups to a level of 3.97 per cent for Sinhalese and Urdu and Malayalam --

8173 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Malayalam.

8174 COMMISSIONER NOËL: And 1.98 per cent for Telugu and 0.79 per cent for Kannada.

8175 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes.

8176 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Okay. Thank you.

8177 Now we will turn to your financial projections and they are to be found on page 49 of your application.

--- Pause

8178 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Financial Operations it is called, on page 49 of your application. I don't know if we have numbered or you have numbered --

8179 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Every copy is numbered.

8180 COMMISSIONER NOËL: In your financial projections, your revenues are only coming out of local advertising, and that's for the whole duration of the licence for the seven years, only local advertising. But on page 86 of your application, you do mention a number of businesses which in our view are more like national advertisers. You are talking about Bell Canada, Sprint Canada, Clarica which is an insurance company, Cantel which I think has changed its name and is now Rogers AT&T.

8181 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: AT&T.

8182 COMMISSIONER NOËL: And those are national advertisers. Do you expect to have some revenues from those national advertisers and to what level?

8183 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: According to my experience on SCMO all these national advertisers they are not very welcome on the national stations. When we go to the participants they will ask first, "What dial are you on". We have no answer. A few more: "What is a SCMO". We have to listen --

8184 COMMISSIONER NOËL: But Rogers at least should know.

8185 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Well, we can't explain. For some people they don't understand what SCMO means.

8186 COMMISSIONER NOËL: So you don't expect to get, or if you get an AM frequency you expect that these people will be --

8187 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: I would expect, yes.

8188 COMMISSIONER NOËL: But you are not counting on that for your projections.

8189 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: According to my present experience, I don't want to put too much into it, like too much commitment --

8190 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Oh, you have given them a very, very lightweight according to your projections. It's zero across the board.

8191 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Well --

8192 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Anything else would be additional revenues. That's what you mean. You are not counting on that for the operation of your station.

8193 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: We are happy that we reach more than what are we --

8194 COMMISSIONER NOËL: They are on your wish list.

8195 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes.

8196 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Okay.

8197 MR. MOHAN: May I add? When we are really looking at those national advertisers, we also look at market -- they have their own market study. Now, the amount of listeners which SCMO attracts is something which they also know because of the limitations.

8198 Our projection is, for example, Sprint or Bell Canada, the rates for calls to South Asia, and when we can say that it's not 2,000 people listening, there will be 15,000, they also will be happy to say, "Sure. We can see what you are doing".

8199 The same as the Commission has a policy for broadcasting, they also have a policy to market their products and to support their ethnic media in terms of advertising dollars.

8200 In my past experience, when say some calamity strikes in some parts of South Asia, Bell Canada may not have as a policy that you could pay monthly payment, spread the bill over five months. But when you approach them on an individual basis then they can do it. That's the kind of information which we tie up in what we intend to do because "Hey I got a $2,000 bill. What am I going to do?". But the people don't know that Bell Canada is able to split it and you pay over ten months or fifteen months in addition to your regular payments.

8201 So I think this is the kind of information we want to share. This is something that we would like to see in a competitive market like Bell Canada and Sprint are competing for cheaper rates.

8202 COMMISSIONER NOËL: And for the rest of the information that's the other part of our work, to make sure that the companies give you proper information on billing management.

8203 I am looking at my colleague here at the other end who is the Vice-President of Telecom. I am teasing him.

8204 If I refer you to pages 82 to 84 of your applications, there is a list of advertisers. Are these advertisers your current advertisers?

8205 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes, Madam.

8206 COMMISSIONER NOËL: All these people have ties with your SCMO station as of now?

8207 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes.

8208 COMMISSIONER NOËL: So it's not a wish list. Those are actual --

8209 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Actual advertisers.

8210 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Okay. What kind of commitment have they given you that they would increase their advertising budgets if we grant you the application?

8211 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: We submitted to the board more than 4,000 supporting letters in the intervention period.

8212 In that, more than 600, I believe if I am right, from advertisers who committed if we go on the AM frequency that they will increase their commercial volume with us.

8213 COMMISSIONER NOËL: So you have commitments for specific amounts?

8214 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes.

8215 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Now, in your projections, there is an annual growth, average annual growth of approximately 13 per cent throughout the seven years of the licence.

8216 How did you calculate the average growth of 13 per cent? If you look at the numbers, that --

8217 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Forty-nine?

1230

8218 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Still on page 49, yes.

8219 MR. MOHAN: The average growth was calculated based on experience and the competition in the marketplace.

8220 To start with, it was realized it would take some time. If I may illustrate to you now, the food industry is very strong in the South Asian community. Food is very, very strong. The restaurants and take-out businesses are very strong.

8221 Now, what we were looking at now, for example, if you are at say Markham Road and Elsmere, and if you are in the neighbourhood of Markham Road and Elsmere, what we are proposing is target marketing. People are driving back home. You say that these are the specials available in this restaurant, which is in the neighbourhood in which you are driving, they have access to us.

8222 Now, what is happening is even though there is a variety of the food industry, the target marketing cannot be done because of the inaccessibility of that particular information in the car while you are driving home. So it applies to groceries too.

8223 So by creating a healthy competition, which we believe over a period of time, compared to what Geethavaani is experiencing now with the SCMO, we thought later the growth will be substantial.

8224 Now, for example, I think he brought it but never showed it. It started with one yellow page in the community. Now there are five. Each one of them is over 1,000 pages of advertising. So are the newspapers. When I said earlier that the missing part of this whole media is radio, and we believe in AM, easy access, the potential of growth is greater.

8225 We estimate it at a very conservative figure of 13 per cent.

8226 COMMISSIONER NOËL: So you believe that the fact that as of now there is barely any Tamil over the air -- I think there is one hour a week, according to our statistics. There is one hour a week of Tamil production over the air at this time. Am I correct, plus 42 hours on --

8227 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: CHKT 1430.

8228 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Yes, but during the night.

8229 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: That's during the night, after midnight to six o'clock.

8230 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Midnight to six o'clock.

8231 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes.

8232 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Okay.

8233 MR. MOHAN: But everybody --

8234 COMMISSIONER NOËL: But during the day there is only one hour over the air.

8235 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: No.

8236 COMMISSIONER NOËL: No? There is more than that?

8237 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: That's all we can receive. CHKT 1430 carries only from midnight to six. The one hour I believe could be from CHIN.

8238 COMMISSIONER NOËL: CHIN, that's right.

8239 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: They carried before, but they don't now, according to my knowledge.

8240 COMMISSIONER NOËL: I see. So what you say it is a strong community and it has no over the air --

8241 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: No over the air programming.

8242 COMMISSIONER NOËL:  -- programming during the broadcasting day.

8243 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Not at all.

8244 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Therefore, there in an untapped mine of advertising here.

8245 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes.

8246 COMMISSIONER NOËL: And that's how you explain your percentage of growth of 13 per cent.

8247 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes, madam.

8248 COMMISSIONER NOËL: You think those are conservative figures.

8249 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Very conservative.

8250 COMMISSIONER NOËL: As you have seen from this hearing, there are a number of applications that are tweaked at the Tamil community in this hearing. I would say that of the 17, seven are targeting the South Asian community in Toronto. There is a possibility that three could be licensed because there is no mutual exclusion, including yours.

8251 There are three frequencies that are sought for by the seven applicants, which means technically we could have three South Asian stations licensed.

8252 Would that affect your business plan?

8253 MR. MOHAN: We have considered what kind of impact it will have on an AM station. The whole plan which we have put together, one aspect is what the impact would be if there is another station.

8254 We believe in our own experience in the past. We have three SCMOs in the market, and the impact has been minimal. Ordinarily there are four, and even when there were four the impact was minimal.

8255 The fourth one did not go out of business because there was lack of advertising dollars. From what I know, they had some management problems. That is the reason that they did not continue, not because of the lack of advertising dollars.

8256 There are people because of the SCMO radio advertisers made advertisements in all three SCMOs. There is no reason why a person should listen, because the programming is different; listenership is different. Therefore, we do not see there will be an impact.

8257 I think the community is large enough to accommodate the radio stations which you think may come in.

8258 COMMISSIONER NOËL: The community would be large enough, in your view, to accommodate three South Asian stations at the same time.

8259 MR. MOHAN: I believe so.

8260 COMMISSIONER NOËL: And the advertising dollars would be there for all three of them.

8261 MR. MOHAN: Yes. The niche market is -- even though it says South Asian, there are cultural nuances within those communities and how the program must look at it. It is quite a variety. I believe that three stations can be sustained.

8262 COMMISSIONER NOËL: In the same type of format.

8263 MR. MOHAN: Yes.

8264 COMMISSIONER NOËL: You say in your application that 1 per cent of your revenue will come from other stations. Could you tell us how you came to that figure.

8265 Actually, it is not in your application. It is in your June 5th letter.

--- Pause

8266 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: The only language is Tamil, according to my understanding. There is no other Tamil programming on the over the conventional air stations.

8267 Other than that, we already carry Talinga, Malayalam, Kannada. We are the only one SCMO stations that carry multilingual languages. We already have a market for Talinga, Malayalam, Kannada and Tamil. With that is only Urdu and Singhalese and the other one is Bengali, a very little portion.

8268 COMMISSIONER NOËL: In your view, your main communities, Tamil and Singhalese, et cetera, are able to bring in enough advertising dollars to sustain the other languages?

8269 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: The Singhalese. No other stations carry Singhalese programs.

8270 Teluga, there are no other stations that carry Teluga programs. Malayalam, there are no other radio programs that carry Malayalam programs. Kannada, there is no program on the air for Kannada. It is only in the SCMO. We have that market with us.

8271 We already have enough advertisers who can help us to succeed in this.

8272 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Thank you.

8273 I have a question about the cost of installing your transmitters. Ever since this hearing has taken place and we have asked people if they would agree to take an AM frequency rather than an FM frequency, we were always told the cost is too high.

8274 You have broken down the costs in your letter of June 5th. I am on page 5.

8275 The grand total, including everything, engineering, installation, audio processor, antenna and ground systems, comes to $90,000, including a contingency fee of $20,000.

8276 Could you -- and perhaps this question is addressed to your engineer. You say it is an economical way of doing business, but others are saying it is not. I would like to understand.

8277 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Before I pass this question to my engineer, Peter Chan, I want to explain to you how we chose this frequency.

8278 In the position we want to apply for a conventional radio frequency, and I was in discussions with a few engineers. We did a brief for FM. The FM frequency is really limited. With this, it is cost effective. We have to put too much money into put this station there.

8279 When it comes to AM, engineers were telling me that it was too much money from our view, millions of dollars to put it. Luckily I went to one of my friend engineer's office one day and there was on the table an engineering brief. I was curious. I was asking what is it. Finally, I come up with this million dollar answer. There is a way to do it. I told my engineer we are going to do it.

8280 Now the answer from Peter Chan.

8281 MR. CHAN: I must say that I have only been involved in this application for a few weeks. Mr. Brian Sawyer, who is my associate, is out of the country and he asked me to represent him today at this hearing.

8282 He has just finished an installation in Montreal, a new station on 1610, CJWI, in which some quite new technology was involved in building it. The total cost is remarkably low. We are not talking millions; we are not even talking hundred thousand.

8283 Because of the high frequency, the actual antenna is very short. It is only 75 feet long, so less than 30 meters. It is made out of fibreglass. A wire runs inside it, coiled up inside it, and it acts almost like a 60 degree tower which is required by Canadian standards. This antenna is reasonably inexpensive.

8284 The ground system that was built is inexpensive. The whole installation was much, much lower than everybody had anticipated.

8285 It is in operation, and it has been approved by Industry Canada and is functioning as of about two weeks ago.

8286 Does that answer your question?

8287 COMMISSIONER NOËL: I have another question.

8288 We have been told repeatedly by applicants, not only here but in other public hearings, that you need a large tract of land to put wires underneath, if I understand the concept.

8289 Are you telling us that this can be installed on a rooftop?

8290 MR. CHAN: It is all on the rooftop.

8291 COMMISSIONER NOËL: You don't need land?

8292 MR. CHAN: There is the ground system, which is the wires running out, some 60 wires running away from the bottom of the antenna, from the base of the antenna. The whole thing takes place on a rooftop 60 metres by 60 metres.

8293 It is not a new technology. I was involved in building an AM antenna on a rooftop in Cornwall some 35 years ago, and it worked. It wasn't very efficient, and it needed more maintenance at that time than the station was able to supply.

8294 It is not a new technology in that sense, but this particular antenna that Mr. Sawyer has found is remarkable. You can touch it. You don't get a burn off it, because it is all insulated. It is erected by two people in one day. It works because of the high frequency, because of the 1610 in Montreal. Here we are going for 1650.

1245

8295 COMMISSIONER NOËL: So it would only work on the extended band.

8296 MR. CHAN: On the higher band, yes, because if you go on the lower frequency then to get the proper size of the antenna you need a higher antenna; also more ground system and therefore more land, more acres of land, and therefore more dollars.

8297 COMMISSIONER NOËL: So this works on a rooftop with no need for wires underground.

8298 MR. CHAN: The wires are on the roof.

8299 COMMISSIONER NOËL: It is all on the roof.

8300 MR. CHAN: It is all on the roof and then connected by a water system pipe to the ground. It is grounded. It has to be grounded.

8301 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Otherwise, it is like a barn with those little spikes there, if they are not connected. They are called "des paratonnerres"; in English, I don't know.

8302 MR. CHAN: It is working and it reaches enormous -- I myself took all the measurements in the field. In some directions we went as far as 35 kilometres. This is one kilowatt. It went to 35 kilometres.

8303 In the other direction, through the city of Montreal of course there is a lot of attenuation because of wiring, open wiring, power lines and houses, and it doesn't go quite as far. It only goes about 18 kilometres.

8304 I am talking about the 0.5 millivolt contour, which is the recognized contour for AM and FM for the reach of the station.

8305 COMMISSIONER NOËL: There is no problem with the landscape of Toronto and the fact that there are -- I went downtown last weekend, and you have wires all overhead for the trams.

8306 MR. CHAN: No. We have those in Montreal which are higher, maybe 200 metres away. It works because the signal goes up and then comes down, the whole sphere of signal.

8307 COMMISSIONER NOËL: This means that the land on Lakeshore Boulevard will drop in price now. This was my technical question.

8308 There was one thing I noticed which sort of puzzled me. I think it is in your supplementary brief. It concerns other frequencies around and interference. There is something about 1,000 kilometres, and I am not sure I understand --

8309 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: It's in the answers of the letters, I believe.

8310 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Probably. I did put a little mark somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. It probably dropped off.

8311 Could you tell us what that 1,000 --

8312 MR. CHAN: There is a station in the United States in California which operates on 1650 and we calculated the nighttime interference. Nighttime interference levels are higher because the signal goes up and comes down and therefore goes much further.

8313 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Which means that you wouldn't have to lower the power at night.

8314 MR. CHAN: Exactly.

8315 COMMISSIONER NOËL: If we were to license -- there were applications on 16 --

8316 MR. CHAN: Sixteen-10.

8317 COMMISSIONER NOËL:  -- 10. Would there be a problem of power at night if we were to license somebody on 1610?

8318 MR. CHAN: Aren't they applying for 10 kilowatts day and night? No, they are applying for 10 kilowatts -- on 1610, 10 kilowatts day and five at night.

8319 But that is 1610. They have to protect Montreal.

8320 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Oh, I see.

8321 MR. CHAN: They have a protection --

8322 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Now I understand. So on 1650 you don't have to lower the power at night at all.

8323 MR. CHAN: That's right.

8324 COMMISSIONER NOËL: But on 1610 they do have to lower the power at night because of Montreal.

8325 MR. CHAN: The applicant is only going for 1 kilowatt because we don't need to cover the whole of the City of Toronto or the outskirts. There aren't that many ethnic people living there that are of interest. The main concentration is close in.

8326 Besides, the other existing radio stations are not objecting because we are not cutting into their coverage.

8327 COMMISSIONER NOËL: Those are all my questions. Thank you.

8328 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Thank you, madam.

8329 THE CHAIRPERSON: How do you supply the SCMO receivers to your subscribers? Do you sell them yourself, lease them out, or are people responsible for getting them themselves?

8330 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: That is a really good question, madam.

8331 According to our practice, we sell those receivers at a very minimal cost, a very minimal cost. Those particular receivers, they can pick up any Tamil SCMO signals. It was an open-band radio, not particular receivers that only --

8332 THE CHAIRPERSON: Does the price resemble what we heard before from other applicants, which was about $200? I'm wondering what "minimal" means.

8333 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Around $35 to $50. You can listen to all the frequencies on the particular receiver.

8334 THE CHAIRPERSON: So purchasing a $35 to $40 piece of equipment you could get three full Tamil SCMO services at the moment?

8335 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes, madam.

8336 THE CHAIRPERSON: Do you have any comment on why as much as $200 has been cited as the price of a receiver retail, with $80 American wholesale?

8337 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: SCMO circuit, they put on different receivers what they like. Let's say if I have a stereo system in my home I can have an SCMO recorder, I can fit it in there and I can listen to all the frequencies.

8338 Basically, it is we want to get a good signal, a fairly good signal on the $40 ratio. It's fine. If somebody wants to put it in their $100 set, they can put it.

8339 THE CHAIRPERSON: I'm sorry, I made a mistake I guess. The $80 was for a DRB receiver. But I think SCMO was quoted as $200 retail by some applicants.

8340 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: American companies, still they are selling their SCMO receivers up to $110 American dollars, particular companies. The company we deal with in New Jersey, we can get our radio receivers for less than $20 U.S. So we don't want to put too much profit in there to get the listeners to us.

8341 THE CHAIRPERSON: That means, then, that for a reasonable price one could have a number of SCMO receivers in one house --

8342 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes.

8343 THE CHAIRPERSON:  -- and expand the availability of the signals in that fashion. You could get three SCMO services in a number of places for less than $100, if you could get the receiver as cheaply as you say.

8344 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Still we have found difficulties in automobiles. We believe automobiles are most listeners are in. We didn't find any system can get those signals in the automobiles. Even if they have a pretty good price for these receivers, the reception is very poor.

8345 We experience lots of blind spots all over the area, noises, and the reception is very, very poor and always listeners complain: We can't listen to you because there is too much noise. We had to turn the radio here and there, we had to put it in the other window, we had to put an external antenna. So the reception is very, very poor on the SCMO signal.

8346 MR. CHAN: Can I just amplify a little bit for you. I think it makes it easier.

8347 If you buy an FM receiver, most of them today, if not all, have stereo outputs. That means they are using half or a third of the available band each channel gets. The SCMO channel is another one over the stereo, higher up, 57 kilohertz. So once you buy that receiver, you can pick up -- with that SCMO crystal in there, then you can pick up any SCMO channel.

8348 But the modulation level of the SCMO is different than the left and right channels in FM receivers. Therefore you get this result that Raj has told you about, it doesn't sound very good everywhere. There isn't enough modulation.

8349 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

8350 MR. CHAN: That is the technical answer.

8351 THE CHAIRPERSON: Mr. Chan, do you think that we should ask the broadcaster in Montreal for whom you save so much money to redirect it to Canadian Talent Development?

8352 MR. CHAN: It's up to you.

8353 THE CHAIRPERSON: You would never get another client.

8354 MR. CHAN: Oh, yes, we will.

--- Laughter / Rires

8355 THE CHAIRPERSON: Counsel?

8356 MR. STEWART: Merci, madame la présidente.

8357 Just a preliminary question. Mr. Chan, did I understand you to say that you had only been involved in this application for the last few weeks?

--- Pause

8358 MR. STEWART: Mr. Chan, I am speaking to you.

8359 MR. CHAN: Yes?

8360 MR. STEWART: Did I understand you to have said that you were involved in this application effectively marginally, you only came into it pretty late, in the last several weeks?

8361 MR. CHAN: Which application are you talking about?

8362 MR. STEWART: The application that is before the Commission right now and in respect of which you are here appearing before the Commission?

8363 THE CHAIRPERSON: My understanding is that your partner prepared the application and he is now out of the country and you are speaking on behalf of your company.

8364 MR. CHAN: Right. That is correct.

8365 MR. STEWART: If that is the case, then I see that you have sent the technical map with your own name as a professional engineer of the province de Québec. Sir, was this map -- the technical information prepared for this application, was it prepared under your guidance or supervision or by you?

8366 MR. CHAN: You are talking about the map dated April 10th?

8367 MR. STEWART: April 10th, yes.

8368 MR. CHAN: Yes. That was done -- the map was made before I was involved with Mr. Sawyer, but I joined the association again April 1st, so this was a correct stamp.

8369 But I was not involved prior to this. The consulting work with Raj has been going on for many months, if not years, before this in which I was not involved.

8370 MR. STEWART: Did you or did you not prepare this map?

8371 MR. CHAN: I did not myself prepare the map. It was prepared in our office by the secretary. It is a computer system.

8372 MR. STEWART: Is it in accordance with the professional practices that you would --

8373 MR. CHAN: Oh, absolutely.

8374 MR. STEWART:  -- stamp it as having been effectively your map?

8375 MR. CHAN: I am having a little bit of difficulty -- excuse me. I am having a little difficulty understanding you.

8376 MR. STEWART: Engineers, such as yourself, can, in effect, certify that the maps have been prepared -- can stamp maps, should I say, even though they have not been involved in their preparation. Is that consistent with your professions' practices?

8377 MR. CHAN: I'm not really sure what you are implying. This office in which I am working has several engineers on call. I am not the only one. So the maps are prepared by a computer program. As you can see, it is done by computer, not -- and the distances that are shown, for instance the 5 millivolts and the half a millivolt contour, our circles, they are just generated by computer. So they are not drawn by individuals in that sense.

8378 So I don't see the point of your question too well.

8379 MR. STEWART: I was just intrigued that here is a map dated the 10th of April --

8380 MR. CHAN: Yes.

8381 MR. STEWART:  -- with your name on it --

8382 MR. CHAN: Yes.

8383 MR. STEWART:  -- and you said you only came into this very recently.

8384 MR. CHAN: It is a requirement by Industry Canada that maps have to be signed off by a professional engineer.

8385 MR. STEWART: Thank you.

8386 For the record, can you tell us which radio station no longer provides the SCMO service for the Tamil community?

8387 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: According to my knowledge, CJRT -- I am using the 67 kilohertz and they are the company on 92 kilohertz. I believe that was shut down. I am on 67 kilohertz, they were on 92 kilohertz. They are the one that is no longer in operation.

8388 MR. STEWART: Thank you.

8389 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Thank you.

8390 MR. STEWART: With respect to the ethnic programming commitment that you gave to the Commission, did I understand you to say that you excluded the English-language portion because you didn't consider that that was part of ethnic programming?

8391 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: It was my answer for Commissioner Noël. It is towards the community. It is not includes, it is towards the community.

8392 MR. STEWART: Which community?

8393 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: The whole community, whatever we intend to serve. The whole communities.

8394 MR. STEWART: By that are you saying ethnic communities?

8395 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes.

8396 MR. STEWART: So would it be fair to say that all of your programming, including English programming, is targeted to the ethnic communities?

8397 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes.

8398 MR. STEWART: If that is the case, are you prepared to accept a condition of licence that 100 per cent of your programming would be directed to the ethnic programming?

8399 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes. Yes, sir.

8400 MR. STEWART: Thank you.

8401 Now, with respect to your commitment regarding third language programming, are you in a position to accept a condition of licence that 97 per cent of your programming would be in third language?

8402 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes, sir.

8403 MR. STEWART: Thank you.

8404 Just briefly, could you explain why you chose the small -- or the groups that you have allocated at most a half an hour each to? I appreciate Mr. Mohan said that he has had dealings with these groups through his business activities, but in your view -- perhaps I can rephrase the question.

8405 Do these amounts adequately reflect the needs of these communities?

8406 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: I believe so. I believe strongly, because according to my experience when I started my wonderful program with CARB-FM , those times, 10 years ago, I was looking for air time to get my program on the air. I was stopping at every door. I couldn't find the time. Finally, after six months, Frank Evers, President of CARB called me and said: Well, we can give you a time, but that is only from 6:00 to 7:00 in the morning, Sundays. I had no choice, I accepted it.

8407 Everybody was asking me, "Who is going to listen at that time? Everybody is sleeping on Sunday morning". I said, "No, I will make them listen". Take the challenge up to my third program that producer dollars were poured in.

8408 Put my program up for two hours a week right after three months. And I extended my hours to four hours after six months. I extended my hours to 6.5 hours after one year. I extended my hours to ten hours after two years. I extended my hours to 42 plus ten, 52 hours after three years.

8409 So that particular one-hour program so early in the morning I could put news brief. I could put all the community announcements. I could put whatever is necessary for the community. I do that in one hour.

8410 So even some programs that carry half an hour we can feed enough information in there. So mainly we will serve South Asians. We want to carry the other languages. We believe that in our pattern it will be fairly good.

8411 MR. STEWART: Thank you.

8412 You gave an undertaking to provide a breakdown of in-house and third-party Canadian Talent Development expenditures to Commissioner Noël.

8413 Can you provide that breakdown by the end of business tomorrow?

8414 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Could you repeat that question for me again?

8415 MR. STEWART: Yes. You gave an undertaking to Commissioner Noël to provide a breakdown of in-house and third-party Canadian Talent Development expenditures.

8416 I am simply wanting to know if you are in a position to provide that breakdown by the end of business tomorrow.

8417 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes sir, we will.

8418 MR. STEWART: Thank you.

8419 We have asked this question of most, if not all, applicants and it follows. Can you provide a breakdown of your projected revenues as between in-house and brokered revenues?

8420 MR. MOHAN: Could you please repeat that question?

8421 MR. STEWART: Yes. Can you provide a breakdown on an annual basis over the course of your proposed licence term of projected revenues broken down as between in-house revenues, revenues derived from in-house programming, and revenues derived from brokered programming?

8422 MR. MOHAN: Yes.

8423 MR. STEWART: Can you do that by tomorrow end of business?

8424 MR. MOHAN: We certainly will need a little bit more time to work on that. I believe we could really provide that information before the end of Phase IV, I believe.

8425 THE CHAIRPERSON: What is the percentage of your brokered programming? I thought it was quite low.

8426 MR. STEWART: It's about 3.9.

8427 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes, Madam. That's what my answer was. That's what is the reality.

8428 THE CHAIRPERSON: How much of your total programming would be brokered rather than produced in-house? What answer did you just give?

8429 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: It's very -- if you add it --

--- Pause

8430 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: It's in the range of 3.5 something.

8431 THE CHAIRPERSON: Percentage or hours?

8432 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Yes.

8433 THE CHAIRPERSON: Percentage?

8434 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Percentage.

8435 THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes. So it's not -- it's difficult to break down. It's not going to be a very fundamental aspect of your application.

8436 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Thank you, Madam.

8437 THE CHAIRPERSON: So by Phase IV it would be sufficient.

8438 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Thank you, Madam.

8439 MR. STEWART: If I can just clarify, by prior to the beginning of Phase IV. Thank you.

8440 These are all my questions.

8441 Merci, madame la présidente.

8442 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Thank you.

8443 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

8444 Thank you, Mr. Kumarakulasingham.

8445 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Raj Kumar.

8446 THE CHAIRPERSON: Can I get on your station now?

8447 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Thank you.

8448 THE CHAIRPERSON: Or do I need to learn more?

8449 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Thank you, Madam.

8450 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much for your cooperation.

8451 We will resume at 2:30. I would like to remind the applicants that during Phase II it's an intervention phase where you will have an opportunity to comment, support or oppose your competitors' applications, but not to pursue the virtues of your own.

8452 Alors je voudrais rappeler aux requérantes que la Phase II est pour intervenir soit en appui, en opposition, pour faire un commentaire vis-à-vis les demandes de vos compétiteurs, mais pas pour discuter des avantages de votre propre demande. Ce n'est pas le but de cette phase-là.

8453 Alors nous reprendrons à 2 h 30.

8454 We will be back at 2:30 for Phase II. Thank you.

--- Upon recessing at 1310 / Suspension à 1310

--- Upon resuming at 1430 / Reprise à 1430

8455 THE CHAIRPERSON: Good afternoon, and welcome back to our hearing.

8456 Encore une fois je vous souhaite la bienvenue à notre audience.

8457 Monsieur le secrétaire, s'il vous plaît. Mr. Secretary, please.

8458 MR. LEBEL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

8459 We have now reached Phase II of these competing applications. During this phase applicants appear in the same order as they did in Phase I and they are granted ten minutes to intervene on competing applications.

8460 Items No. 3 and 16 have already indicated that they will not intervene in Phase II.

8461 I will now ask ARK Broadcasting Inc. to intervene at this time.

PHASE II

INTERVENTION

8462 MR. SELEZEN: Hello, I am Konstantin Selezen, Executive Director and creative head of ARK Broadcasting.

8463 We didn't file any interventions with the Commission and it is our intention not to intervene against any other applicant during this stage of the hearing.

8464 It is also our intention, as we indicated before, to complement the existing ethnic broadcasting radio scene rather than to compete with the existing broadcasters. That's all.

8465 Thank you.

8466 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Selezen.

8467 Mr. Secretary, please.

8468 MR. LEBEL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

8469 I will now ask the Canadian Multicultural Radio to intervene at this time.

INTERVENTION

8470 MR. ANTONY: Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Members of the Commission and Commission staff.

8471 My name is Stan Antony. I will spare you the long introduction of our opening remarks. With me today Mohan Nadarajah, Sivakkumaran, Ravinder Singh Pannu and Siva Sanmuga. Thank you.

8472 MR. KUMARAN: Good afternoon, Madam Chair. We are delighted to be back before you in the intervention phase.

8473 We do not intend to intervene against any of the other applicants. We believe that our application reflects our personal beliefs and operating ethos. We want to do radio, we are committed to providing quality programming to all South Asians and to the various multiethnic and multilingual communities we propose to serve.

8474 We are pleased to support the application filed by la Coopérative radiophonique de Toronto for a French-language community radio station on 91.7 FM.

8475 We believe the numbers of Francophones and Francophiles in Toronto justify the granting of this licence. We believe that reflection includes representing the interests of the Francophones within such diverse communities as the Vietnamese, Francophone Africa, Haitians, Arabic communities and the Romanian community.

8476 We have discussed with la Coopérative how we could cross-promote each other's programs to these communities.

8477 We also believe that la Coopérative will be very helpful with our proposed Cross-Cultural Music Festival. When we filed our application, we thought that it wold be a good idea to include Franco-Ontarian and Aboriginal performers in our cross-cultural entertainment programs and in our festival to reflect the full diversity of Toronto to our audience.

8478 Then we saw the Coopérative's application and decided that we would be much better served to ask for their expertise in identifying performers than in doing it ourselves. This is also part of our agreement with them.

8479 Yesterday we filed a document with the Secretary that outlined the sources of revenues forming the basis of the assumptions in our business plan. As he requested, we are providing him with 15 copies today.

8480 Thank you very much.

8481 THE CHAIRPERSON: That completes your intervention?

8482 MR. KUMARAN: Yes, it does.

8483 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Antony and your colleagues.

8484 MR. ANTONY: Thank you.

8485 THE CHAIRPERSON: Mr. Secretary, please.

8486 MR. LEBEL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

8487 We will now ask the Catholic Youth Studio, KSM Incorporated, to intervene at this time.

INTERVENTION

8488 DR. GIL: Madam Chair, Commissioners, ladies and gentlemen.

8489 I have three points to make about other applications.

8490 First, several of the applications before you include religious programs as part of their service.

8491 I hope the Commission will view this religious programming as a very positive feature of their applications.

8492 The Religious Broadcasting Policy, Public Notice 1993-78, states:

"The Commission will continue to encourage licensees of conventional stations to reflect the religious and spiritual needs of the communities they serve".

8493 Unfortunately, conventional radio stations rarely reflect the religious and spiritual needs. They have time for news and talk, popular music, sports and stock market reports, but not religion. Nor is there much time available for brokered religious programming.

8494 When Catholic Radio has asked most ethnic stations for time slots, no time is available. Yet religion is a very important part of the multicultural and multiethnic reality of the Greater Toronto Area.

8495 Religious programming also deals with social, community and family issues, especially those of immigrant communities.

8496 In addition, several applicants have stressed the importance of using bridge languages, especially English, to reach multicultural audiences in the GTA.

8497 English is not a substitute for third language programming. However, it is a necessary complement if as many as possible are to be reached.

8498 I was particularly interested that CHIN stressed this fact based on their 36 years in ethnic markets.

8499 My second point is I would like to congratulate those applicants who, like Catholic Radio, are appearing before you for the first time.

8500 New applicants lack the much greater resources of the established broadcasters. We are not familiar faces to you. We are still learning about how the CRTC process works.

8501 Radio is one of the few mass media where independent voices can find a place. Other media like television, the daily press and feature films require far greater financial resources.

8502 I hope you will licence as many new applicants as possible to add diversity and to complement the existing marketplace.

8503 Finally, I would like to thank the many intervenors who took the time to participate in this process.

8504 Over the next two days, probably 100 individuals will take time away from their work and families and navigate the bad traffic on the 401.

8505 They will come to express their support for one the 17 applications before you.

8506 They will do so because they want to help develop their community. They make a very important contribution and we thank them for that.

8507 Thank you.

8508 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Father Gil. Now you are an expert at our processes.

8509 DR. GIL: Well, I am learning every day.

8510 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you -- not as divine as yours. Thank you, Father.

8511 DR. GIL: Thank you.

8512 THE CHAIRPERSON: Mr. Secretary, please.

8513 MR. LEBEL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

8514 We will now ask CKMW Radio Limited to intervene at this time.

INTERVENTION

8515 MS LAURIGNANO: Good afternoon. Unlike our predecessors, we are intervening but it doesn't mean that we are not as nice.

8516 THE CHAIRPERSON: Not as divine.

8517 MS LAURIGNANO: That's true.

8518 MR. CURRIE: That may be debatable.

--- Laughter / Rires

8519 MS LAURIGNANO: Madam Chair, Commissioners, in Phase I we were asked by the Commission counsel the following question, and I quote:

"Would you be prepared to accept a condition of licence that a minimum of 45 per cent of all ethnic programs broadcast would be in the languages of Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali, Tamil, Gujarati, Malayalam, Marathi, Konkani and Spanish, which is a reflection, really, of your programming schedule?"

8520 In response, I trust we were clear about our concerns regarding conditions of licence that would tie anyone's hands in a marketplace where others may not be so restricted, or to be limited from moving into another niche where pre-emptive strikes or market conditions impose undue hardships.

8521 THE CHAIRPERSON: Ms Laurignano, were you here when I forewarned applicants that this phase is to intervene and not to speak about your own application?

8522 MS LAURIGNANO: No, I was not.

8523 THE CHAIRPERSON: I haven't read it all. How do you feel it will meet that concern; that this is an intervention stage, not another opportunity to speak to your own application?

8524 MS LAURIGNANO: All right. We are certainly prepared to move this to another phase. That is not a problem.

8525 THE CHAIRPERSON: Do you have any feeling about how you will be short if you continue this --

8526 MS LAURIGNANO: No. This is actually very short. It ends with this page. I just wanted to clarify.

8527 THE CHAIRPERSON: But do you understand that this phase is to either comment, oppose or support other applications?

8528 It is a very complicated process sometimes to keep things on an even keel for everybody.

8529 MS LAURIGNANO: All right.

8530 THE CHAIRPERSON: Would you like a few minutes to go through your presentation?

8531 MS LAURIGNANO: I can recap it fairly quickly.

8532 THE CHAIRPERSON: I don't want to unfairly limit you.

8533 Why don't we take five minutes, and you can take a look at it to see whether there are parts that you would rather not refer to.

8534 MS LAURIGNANO: All right; thank you.

--- Upon recessing at 1442 / Suspension à 1442

--- Upon resuming at 1447 / Reprise à 1447

8535 THE CHAIRPERSON: Some of this material, of course, can be useful in the process.

8536 MS LAURIGNANO: Definitely.

8537 THE CHAIRPERSON: I am just trying to keep everybody on the same footing.

8538 Are you ready to proceed?

8539 MS LAURIGNANO: Thank you. We appreciate it and apologize. It certainly was not our intention to abuse the process in any way.

8540 THE CHAIRPERSON: Go ahead.

8541 MS LAURIGNANO: For the record, I would like to say that following up on the question asked from Commission counsel, we would be prepared to accept as a condition of licence that a minimum of 45 per cent of all ethnic programs broadcast would be in the languages of Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali, Tamil, Gujarati, Malayalam, Marathi, Konkani and Spanish.

8542 MR. CURRIE: CHIN is applying for a number of different scenarios, and we have tried to figure out how they might impact on our existing ethnic station in Brampton.

8543 In our view, here are some serious impacts on CIAO, from the greatest adverse impact to the least.

8544 One, the worst would be for the Commission to license 101.3 to CHIN as a new service and award 91.9 to CHIN-AM 1540 at the same time. There would be no way that CIAO could attract and keep producers, talent, advertisers and listeners. They could create blocks and with the better signals of the three stations they would leave us to be reacting constantly to their whims.

8545 This is not a scenario the Commission should be thinking about: the immediate and complete demise of an existing broadcaster.

8546 Two, the next most serious problem would arise if you gave the 101.3 service to CHIN without dealing with the 91.9 business at all. This would augment the flexibility they now have to do combos and other programming efficiencies that would make them too formidable a foe in the marketplace. To us, we would be looking at two FMs and a powerful AM in Toronto up against our small AM in Brampton, and their stations all interfere with our market.

8547 CHIN-AM now covers a six million population, which they are apparently prepared to abandon for the chance to serve a three million population for just the opportunity to expand the overnight programming period when the commercial attractiveness is at its least, even in downtown Toronto and where within CHIN-AM's night-time pattern reside concentrations of a number of ethnic groups that can be adequately served.

8548 Who gains from that exchange? To us, this flip is not a good use of the spectrum.

8549 Three, the next most serious problem would arise if you do not give 101.3 to CHIN but instead give them 91.9 as a repeater to continue their 1540 AM service. This would not be the best use of the frequency since with their existing AM/FM combination they should be able to continue to serve their specific communities without any difficulty.

8550 Our understanding of the 91.9 coverage area, from the Imagineering Study, indicates that it could be used as a new service for Toronto. Furthermore, the 91.9 repeater is placed outside the area CHIN-AM is licensed to serve, outside of Toronto, to extend service in the northwest part of the CMA, which is where CIAO-AM is located.

8551 CHIN is well entrenched and can handle any problems they say they might experience better than any other ethnic broadcaster in the country. There may be other ways to solve CHIN's problems than to give them frequencies that will cause severe damage or to the exclusion of others.

8552 Thank you.

8553 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Ms Laurignano and Mr. Currie. You are satisfied that you have had an opportunity to participate in Phase II?

8554 MS LAURIGNANO: Absolutely; thank you. We appreciate the break to gather our thoughts.

8555 THE CHAIRPERSON: Mr. Secretary, please.

8556 MR. LEBEL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

8557 We will now ask Infinity Broadcasting Inc. to intervene at this time.

INTERVENTION

8558 MR. NEETI RAY: Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Commissioners.

8559 My name is Neeti Ray and with me is Renu.

8560 We are here on behalf of Infinity Broadcasting to say that we have no intention of intervening against any other applicant and we would, if necessary, defend our application during Phase IV.

8561 That is all. Thank you very much indeed.

8562 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Ray.

8563 Mr. Secretary, please.

8564 MR. LEBEL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

8565 We will now ask San Lorenzo Latin American Community Centre to intervene.

INTERVENTION

8566 MR. PLUNKETT: Good afternoon, Commissioners.

8567 With me is Father Hernan Astudillo, Chairman of the San Lorenzo Latin American Community Centre. I am Wayne Plunkett, consultant for the application.

8568 We are certainly not intending on intervening against any competing application even though we are fully aware of another applicant for our same frequency of 1610.

8569 I simply would reiterate what has been put on the record, that there are three expanded AM frequencies available. If the Commission saw fit to license both applicants for 1610, the engineering certainly could be worked out without too much trouble, in my opinion.

8570 Second, I want to emphasize that I was happy that the Commission questioned the last applicant this morning, Geethavaani, about the engineering part because I think there has been this misconception of a new AM station in Toronto needing an extremely complicated array and being very costly. I think it was pointed out that it could be done relatively simply with a small antenna.

8571 I will limit my comments to that. Thank you.

8572 THE CHAIRPERSON: That is the end of your intervention?

8573 MR. PLUNKETT: Yes; thank you.

8574 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Plunkett and Father Astudillo.

8575 Mr. Secretary, please.

8576 MR. LEBEL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

8577 We will now ask Magic 1610 Markham Radio to intervene.

INTERVENTION

8578 MR. ROGERS: Good afternoon, Madam Chairperson and fellow Commissioners.

8579 THE CHAIRPERSON: Good afternoon, Mr. Rogers. You have come from the York Region.

8580 MR. ROGERS: Yes, I have; thank you.

8581 I choose not to intervene on any application with the exception of Item 7. In principle, I support what they are trying to do but oppose, for obvious reasons, the frequency they chose, 1610.

8582 The reason is that I feel the frequency 1610 should be used for a higher powered commercial station to serve the needs to as many of the population both English and the ethnic communities within the Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area.

8583 Thank you.

8584 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Rogers.

8585 Mr. Secretary, please.

8586 MR. LEBEL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

8587 I will now ask A. Fitzroy Gordon to intervene.

INTERVENTION

8588 MR. BLYTHE: Good afternoon, Madam Chairman.

8589 To correct the record, my name is Delford Blythe, representing CARN.

8590 CARN was very careful in its choice of frequency as we believe strongly that we would like to complement rather than compete for the very limited frequencies in the Toronto area.

8591 With that in mind, we have no interventions against any of the other applicants.

8592 Thank you.

8593 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Blythe.

8594 Mr. Secretary, please.

8595 MR. LEBEL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

8596 I will now ask Radio 1540 Limited to intervene.

INTERVENTION

8597 MR. LOMBARDI: Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Commissioners.

8598 CHIN Radio does not wish to intervene but will return during the reply phase. We will be available then to answer any questions you may have.

8599 Thank you.

8600 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Lombardi.

8601 Mr. Secretary, please.

8602 M. LEBEL: Merci, madame la présidente.

8603 Nous demanderons maintenant à la Coopérative radiophonique de Toronto d'intervenir à ce moment-ci.

INTERVENTION

8604 M. DAOUST: Bonjour, madame la présidente, mesdames, messieurs les commissaires.

8605 Je me présente, Paul Daoust, membre de la Coopérative radiophonique. A ma droite vous avez M. Yvan Pineault, un employé de la Coopérative.

8606 Voici les points que nous aimerions souligner.

8607 Concernant la demande Humber, nous voulons rappeler aux membres du CRTC que leurs revenus sont modestes et que leur programmation ethnique est sur fin de semaine seulement alors que ce n'est pas vraiment assez pour cette fréquence. Dans le fond c'est une radio éducative à diffusion très limitée.

8608 Deuxièmement, au niveau de CHIN nous voudrions d'abord leur rappeler que nous avons de l'équipement et que l'utilisation de 50 watts est une mauvaise utilisation de la fréquence et que leur marché est déjà bien desservi.

8609 Troisièmement, concernant les deux propositions nous voulons juste réitérer encore que c'est une mauvaise utilisation des ondes publiques tandis que notre projet en ferait une utilisation optimale.

8610 Quatrièmement, nous voulons aussi souligner que si le CRTC favorise soit CHIN ou Humber, d'après nous ça ne respecterait pas votre avis public CRTC 2001-10, lequel dit que :

« Les nouvelles fréquences devront refléter clairement la diversité ethnique ainsi que la réalité multiculturelle et multiethnique de la région du Grand Toronto ».

8611 Notre demande est la seule qui est francophone et au sein de notre francophonie, comme nous l'avons si bien expliqué, nous reflétons clairement une grande diversité multiculturelle et multiethnique francophone.

8612 En dernier lieu, nous appuyons le projet du Canadian Multicultural Radio, CMR, parce que leur optique multiculturelle se rapproche beaucoup de la nôtre et aussi, comme ils l'ont mentionné, nous avons déjà une entente de collaboration avec eux pour que nos talents locaux que nous identifierons iront participer dans leurs propres concours.

8613 Merci beaucoup.

8614 LA PRÉSIDENTE: Monsieur Daoust, votre position aux demandes de CHIN, est-ce qu'elles se limitent à celles sur 91,9 qui est exclusive avec la vôtre techniquement ou aux trois demandes de CHIN?

8615 M. DAOUST: Nous nous opposons à leurs trois demandes.

8616 LA PRÉSIDENTE: Merci. Merci, monsieur Daoust.

8617 M. DAOUST: Merci.

8618 THE CHAIRPERSON: Mr. Secretary, please.

8619 MR. LEBEL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

8620 We will now hear the Korean Community Radio.

--- Pause

8621 MR. LEBEL: I am not seeing anybody. I presume they do not wish to participate in Phase II.

8622 We will now ask Sur Sagar Radio Inc. to intervene at this time.

8623 MR. PANNU: Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Commissioners.

8624 I am here not to intervene anyone. So I am very happy to hear everyone is praising each other.

8625 Thank you very much.

8626 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Pannu. I haven't heard any compliments about us yet though.

--- Laughter / Rires

8627 THE CHAIRPERSON: Mr. Secretary, please.

8628 MR. LEBEL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

8629 The last applicant is Geethavaani Inc.

8630 MR. MOHAN: Madam Chair, Commissioners and Members of the Commission.

8631 I heard you loud and clear, Madam Chair. There are no interventions and it makes your job a little easier.

8632 Thank you very much for this opportunity.

8633 THE CHAIRPERSON: We have no problems with interventions. We just want this stage to be used for interventions.

8634 The tendency is always to praise your own application once more instead, but it's not that we don't want to hear interventions. We want them to be interventions.

8635 I haven't intimidated anybody so easily for a long time.

--- Laughter / Rires

8636 MR. MOHAN: Yes, and I also should add that I had the opportunity of watching numerous applicants presenting their case and I believe each of one of them has pitched their case very well.

8637 That is their part. Now it's up to you.

8638 Thank you very much.

8639 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

8640 MR. KUMARAKULASINGHAM: Thank you.

8641 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

8642 Mr. Secretary.

8643 MR. LEBEL: Madam Chair, this completes Phase II.

8644 THE CHAIRPERSON: We will then adjourn until tomorrow morning at 8:30 at which time we will begin to go through Phase III of the interventions.

8645 I you have an opportunity to please warn the intervenors who are coming on your behalf, who may not be familiar with our processes, to leave their cellphones and their pagers at home.

8646 Thank you.

--- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 1500, to resume

on Wednesday, September 25, 2002 at 0830 /

L'audience est ajournée à 1500, pour reprendre

le mercredi 25 septembre à 0830

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