ARCHIVED -  Transcript / Transcription - Toronto, Ontario - 2002-09-27

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

FOR THE CANADIAN RADIO-TELEVISION AND

TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION

TRANSCRIPTION DES AUDIENCES DU

CONSEIL DE LA RADIODIFFUSION

ET DES TÉLÉCOMMUNICATIONS CANADIENNES

SUBJECT / SUJET:

Multiple broadcasting applications /

Demandes de radiodiffusion multiples

HELD AT: TENUE À:

Four Points Hotel Hôtel Four Points

105 King Street East 105, rue King Est

Kitchener, Ontario Kitchener (Ontario)

October 28, 2002 le 28 octobre 2002

Volume 1

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.

Canadian Radio-television and

Telecommunications Commission

Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des

télécommunications canadiennes

Transcript / Transcription

Multiple broadcasting applications /

Demandes de radiodiffusion multiples

BEFORE / DEVANT:

Joan Pennefather Chairperson / Présidente

Stuart Langford Commissioner / Conseiller

Barbara Cram Commissioner / Conseillère

Jean-Marc Demers Commissioner / Conseiller

Ron Williams Commissioner / Conseiller

ALSO PRESENT / AUSSI PRÉSENTS:

de l'audience

Pierre LeBel Secretary / Secrétaire

James Wilson Legal Counsel /

Conseiller juridique

HELD AT: TENUE À:

Four Points Hotel Hôtel Four Points

105 King Street East 105, rue King Est

Kitchener, Ontario Kitchener (Ontario)

October 28, 2002 le 28 octobre 2002

TABLE OF CONTENTS / TABLE DES MATIÈRES

PAGE / PARA NO.

PHASE I

PRESENTATION BY / PRÉSENTATION PAR

Rogers Broadcasting Limited 5

Global Communications Limited 104

Telephone City Broadcast Limited 178

Kitchener, Ontario / Kitchener (Ontario)

--- Upon commencing on Monday, October 28, 2002

at 0930 / L'audience débute le lundi

28 octobre 2002 à 0930

1 THE CHAIRPERSON: Order, please, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning and welcome to this public hearing to examine competing applications for an FM station in the Kitchener-Waterloo area.

2 Bonjour, mesdames et messieurs. Bienvenue à cette audience publique dans le cadre de laquelle nous examinerons des demandes concurrentes pour une station de radio FM dans la région de Kitchener-Waterloo.

3 Je m'appelle Joan Pennefather et je vais présider cette audience.

4 I'm Joan Pennefather and I will be presiding over this hearing.

5 Joining me on the panel are my colleagues and fellow Commissioners, Stuart Langford, Barbara Cram, Jean-Marc Demers and Ron Williams.

6 CRTC staff members assisting us in this hearing are our legal counsel, James Wilson, our hearing manager, Peter Foster, and our hearing secretary, Pierre Lebel. Please don't hesitate to contact them on any procedural issue.

7 On December 21, 2001, the CRTC issued a call for applications following receipt of an application for a broadcasting licence to operate an FM radio station in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. Over the course of this hearing, we will examine the responding applicants.

8 The applicants should clearly demonstrate to us the need for, as well as a market for, the proposed use of the frequencies concerned in accordance with the Commission's radio policies.

9 Among other issues, we will address the contribution each service would make to achieving the objectives of the Broadcasting Act; the means by which the applicant will promote the development of Canadian local and regional talent; an analysis of the markets involved and potential advertising revenues, and evidence of the availability of financial resources consistent with the applicant's business plan.

10 We expect to complete this hearing on or before Friday, November 1. We will sit Tuesday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to approximately 5:00 p.m.with a one-hour break for lunch.

11 The proceedings will be transcribed and added to the public record. To ensure that the people responsible for recording the transcripts are able to provide an accurate record, I would ask that when you speak you activate the microphone in front of you. I would also like to ask that you turn off all cellphones and pagers while in the hearing room.

12 Je vous demanderais également de désactiver vos téléphones cellulaires lorsque vous êtes dans la salle d'audience.

13 I will now ask the hearing secretary, Pierre Lebel, to provide any further detail with regard to procedures and to invite the first applicant.

14 Mr. Lebel.

15 MR. LEBEL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

16 Before we begin I have a few housekeeping matters. First, I would like to indicate that the Commission's examination room is located in the Kitchener Suite, No. 1 room, which is down the hall to the left of the hearing room.

17 Secondly, there is a verbatim transcript of this hearing being taken by the court reporter at the table to my left in the centre. If you have any questions about how to obtain all or parts of this transcript, please approach the court reporter during a break for information.

18 If you want to have messages taken, we will be happy to post them outside the public examination room. The phone number in our public examination room is area code 519-741-3680. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact me or the hearing examination room officer and we will be more than pleased to assist you where we can.

19 Now, Madam Chair, we will proceed with items one through to 11 on the agenda. These applications are competing and we will proceed as follows.

20 First, we will hear each applicant in the agenda order. Each applicant will be granted 20 minutes to make its presentation. Questions from the Commission will follow each presentation.

21 In Phase II the applicants reappear in the same order as they presented their application to intervene against the other applicants. Ten minutes are allowed for this purpose. Questions from the Commission may follow each intervention.

22 In the third phase, the other appearing intervenors listed in the agenda make their presentation to the Commission. Ten minutes are allowed for the presentations. Again, there may be questions from the Commission.

23 Phase IV provides an opportunity for each applicant to reply to all interventions submitted to their application. Applicants appear in reverse order than when they presented their application. Ten minutes are allowed for this reply. Again, questions may follow.

24 We will now hear the first applicant which is an application by Rogers Broadcasting Limited for a licence to operate an English language commercial FM radio station in Kitchener.

25 The new station would operate on 97.9 megahertz, channel 250B, with an effective radiated power of 3,720 watts.

26 The applicant is proposing a Contemporary Hits Radio music format.

27 Appearing for the applicant, Mr. Gary Miles. Mr. Miles will introduce his colleagues. You have 20 minutes to make your presentation

PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION

28 MR. MILES: Good morning, Madam Chair, Members of the Commission.

29 I am Gary Miles, CEO, Rogers Broadcasting Limited. With me today on my left Gavin Tucker, General Manager of our CKGL-AM and CHYM-FM radio stations here in the Kitchener-Waterloo region; Julie Adam, Program Director, KISS 92 FIVE FM in Toronto; to my right, Sandra Stasiuk, Vice-President, Finance and Steve Edwards, Vice-President, Corporate Engineering & Technology.

30 At the back table we have, starting from my left Gina Lorentz, News Director, CKGL-AM, Alain Strati, Director, Business and Regulatory Affairs and Sandy Sanderson, Executive Vice-President, National Program Director.

31 We are pleased to appear before you today to present our application for KISS 97 NINE. With its Top 40 format and its unique total station personality, we believe KISS 97 NINE will appeal to younger radio listeners in Kitchener-Waterloo and will establish a voice for young people in this community.

32 Rogers Broadcasting has a commendable record of local radio service in this region. We are particularly proud of our programming policy of investing in and development of radio formats.

33 In CKGL, radio listeners in Kitchener-Waterloo have access to a vital local news and information programming service. Through both of our stations we have fostered a significant sense of involvement with and commitment to this local community.

34 With a population of over 430,000 people, the Kitchener-Waterloo region has now surpassed London as the tenth largest census metropolitan area in Canada. With its technology businesses and its large university population of well over 35,000 students, this is a fast growing and dynamic market with a disproportionately younger population.

35 Although the market is served by a number of local radio stations, these stations attract less than half of the 12-plus audience share. A majority of local radio listeners still tune to out-of-market radio stations. The loss of younger audiences at the local audiences is even more prevalent among younger demographic segments.

36 This tendency is difficult to combat. Out-of-market stations offer choice in the form of more focused, niche formats that are not otherwise available from local stations.

37 Of equal concern, teens and young adults also form the core demographic of users who access, listen to and download music from the Internet. With no local radio station, many would-be listeners are instead tuning to the Internet for Top 40 music or information about their favourite artists.

38 KISS 97 NINE will directly address the needs and interests of the underserved younger listeners in this region, offering them a high quality local alternative to out-of-market radio stations and Internet music services.

39 KISS 97 NINE's popular Top 40 format and strong local programming perspective will repatriate younger listeners back to this market. In doing so, KISS 97 NINE will certainly benefit from our market-proven experience with the launch of the new-to-this-market Top 40 radio stations.

40 Kitchener-Waterloo is also quite a unique radio market. Not only is it in proximity to other large Canadian markets, it is situated quite centrally amongst all of them. The availability of a number of stations from a number of different markets results in a very congested radio spectrum.

41 Given such congestion, we appeared and we tried to make a creative approach by proposing to what essentially amounts to making another frequency available in this market. 97.9 is not an FM frequency that is otherwise available. Use of it would create interference within the protected coverage area of our sister station CHFI which uses frequency 98.1 in Toronto.

42 In 1994, Rogers Broadcasting acquired two long-established local radio stations, CKGL AM 570 and CHYM 96.7 FM. Since then in the face of intense and increased competition from out-of-market radio stations, we have invested substantial resources to enhance the programming formats of both these stations and further our strength and our ties and our commitment to the community.

43 With CKGL we were not content to simply use the station as a music-based AM service. Even with news and information programming available from two Toronto stations and a Hamilton station, we launched NewsTalk 570 for this market and have invested significant amounts of resources to provide a station with a distinct local news and information programming format.

44 Gina.

45 MS LORENTZ: CKGL has served this community for over 50 years. Although using many different formats over those years, CKGL was most recently a country music station when we purchased it in 1994. By then a music-based AM Station like CKGL was losing market share as listeners were turning to FM radio for its higher audio quality.

46 We saw the potential for CKGL to become an important source for local news and information programming in Kitchener-Waterloo. As a result, in 1997 we converted CKGL's format from country music to news/talk.

47 Since then we have invested over $2.6 million into the operations of NewsTalk 570 to ensure that it has the resources necessary to provide a high quality local news and information service.

48 Given Kitchener-Waterloo's proximity to other, larger markets, residents here have access to a multitude of media sources. However, many of these sources are from outside of the market and often do not provide residents with a sense of local reflection and interaction.

49 We believe that news and information is vital. News/talk radio is key to a community's sense of identity. Today, NewsTalk 570 is an important and trusted source for news and information in this community.

50 Together with comprehensive news segments, local breaking news and traffic and weather updates, talk programs such as "Sturgeon in the Morning" and "Vanlith Live" provide residents with a unique, local perspective on issues that affect and interest them.

51 An AM radio format focused on news and information is very expensive to operate, especially if serving a market of this size. However, we remain committed to this format and continue to financially support its growth and development.

52 Gavin.

0945

53 MR. TUCKER: CHYM-FM is the heritage radio station in Kitchener-Waterloo. First launched as CKCR-AM in 1929, today CHYM is a full service local FM radio station with an adult contemporary format.

54 Our willingness to invest in high quality radio programming has made CHYM the leading in-market radio station among almost all demographic groups. The station is particularly successful in attracting listeners in the 25 to 54 age group, the group towards which our AC format is principally directed.

55 Both NewsTalk 570 and CHYM-FM have long-established track records of community involvement and leadership in the community.

56 In 1996, NewsTalk 570 launched the "Share the Warmth" program in partnership with the Salvation Army and is closely aligned with the Volunteer Action Centre in Kitchener-Waterloo.

57 For the past seven years, the "CHYM Cares" program has worked with community leaders to identify important social issues of concern to local residents. Each month the program provides free promotion and assistance to local organizations. Coming up in November of this year we will be working with Smokers Anonymous. In December it's the Family and Children's Services of Waterloo Region.

58 Staff at our radio stations are also actively involved in the community and have established strong working relationships with local educational institutions. For example, I currently serve as Chair of the Professional Advisory Council of the Broadcast Radio and Television program at Conestoga College and have been a member of that council since 1996.

59 Twenty members of our staff or approximately one third of our total are Conestoga graduates. As guest speakers and lecturers, some of them regularly participate in the education programs at the college. We also continue to provide internships and placements for Conestoga students.

60 As with all Rogers radio stations, NewsTalk 570 and CHYM-FM maintain close connections to the community through our Local Advisory Board. Members of the Board include prominent local citizens with a clear commitment to the success and betterment of life in this region.

61 Given the youth-oriented focus of our proposed station, we will appoint a young person as a representative to serve on our existing Advisory Board. This will ensure that the views of young people are given full consideration as part of an established community consultation process, not only for KISS 97 NINE, but for all three of our radio stations in Kitchener-Waterloo.

62 We will also develop and establish a Youth Advisory Council with student representatives from local high schools, colleges and universities. We will rely on this Advisory Council to keep us plugged-in to local issues and provide us with feedback on our programming.

63 Gary.

64 MR. MILES: We are proud of the success of CHYM-FM and we believe that its resources have allowed us to invest in NewsTalk 570. Having an AM/FM group in Kitchener-Waterloo provides us with the economies of scale and scope that allow us to meet the challenge of an expensive news/talk format in a small market. The addition of a third station will provide more economies to protect this valuable service in the face of increased competition.

65 We are recognized in the industry for our radio programming expertise and for our willingness to invest in innovation and diversity. We led the emergence of FM radio broadcasting in the 1960s with the success of CHFI-FM in Toronto. We also introduced the all-news radio station format to Canada with the launch of 680 News. Both stations are now market leaders and are among Canada's most successful radio stations.

66 We have also gained operational experience and programming expertise in Top 40 format radio stations. In 1999 we successfully launched KISS 92 FIVE in Toronto. A few years later we also launched Hot 103 in Victoria. Just recently we launched a new Top 40 station in Calgary.

67 In each case our new station provided much-needed local radio programming, directed specifically to younger listeners. In each case our Top 40 station successfully carved out a niche format and expanded the overall diversity of radio programming available in each of those markets.

68 Julie.

69 MS ADAM: I'm lucky enough to have been the Program Director at KISS 92 FIVE in Toronto since its launch as a Top 40 station in 1999. We launched KISS because we knew there were a ton of young listeners in the market that were not being served by existing Toronto radio stations.

70 We wanted to start a station that would not only play music for this audience, but a station that had a personality and a purpose.

71 Although we knew there was a hole in the market, none of us expected the absolutely unbelievable response we have received from KISS 92 FIVE listeners. It was and still is simply amazing.

72 I always tell my on-air DJs that KISS 92 FIVE is more than just a radio station. It's a lifestyle. It's a being. And it's because we have the best listeners in the world. KISS listeners connect with our music, our DJs and our events.

73 We take great pride in what we do at KISS 92 FIVE. Our motto -- we actually have a sign in the control room -- is to "be nice and answer all the phones".

74 As silly as it might sound, we actually believe at KISS that we can do our part to change the world a little for the better, and KISS listeners confirm this for us every day.

75 After September 11 we received the most prolific and passionate e-mails from KISS listeners. They were scared and they wanted to talk about it, so we did, on the radio. We talked about how the world had changed, what it was like to go to school and be afraid because you were of a different colour or cultural background. It was a very emotional time, but we got through it together, with our listeners.

76 Currently we are working on a project for War Child to help kids affected by wars overseas and we also work together with the Toronto School Board on a program that teaches self-esteem to young women.

77 We do all this because of our listeners. They contribute in their own way every day. Of course, it's not always serious at KISS 93 FIVE. We spend a lot of time playing requests, doing shout-outs and there's also the usual resetting of our phone lines after the circuit has been blown by kids trying to win Eminem or Nelly tickets.

78 Without question, all of this is what makes Top 40 radio the best format in the world to program. This is exactly the kind of station we want to launch with KISS 97 NINE. Like our experience with KISS 92 FIVE, we know there is an audience waiting for this type of programming.

79 We want to bring the same excitement, energy and enthusiasm to Kitchener-Waterloo and build a Top 40 radio station that becomes a way for young people to express themselves in this community.

80 Gavin.

81 MR. TUCKER: KISS 97 NINE will appeal to younger listeners, primarily to those in the 12 to 24 age group. Unlike out-of-market radio stations, KISS 97 NINE will connect younger listeners with their local community. Through news segments in peak listening periods, local surveillance information, community events and activities and, most of all, a whole lot of entertainment, our listeners will really feel plugged-in to their community.

82 Of course, with KISS 97 NINE there will be a lot of music and a lot of fun. Whether it's the "Top 7 @ 7 Countdown" or the "5 O'clock Traffic Jam", KISS 97 NINE will serve up the very best in Top 40 music.

83 On weekends, KISS 97 NINE will broadcast live from local clubs, showcasing the best local DJs. Great morning shows, hilarious programming segments and a fresh, youthful perspective, our station will have it all.

84 KISS 97 NINE would certainly not be complete without our very own station Web site. It's crucial we feel for us to establish an effective presence on the Internet.

85 The KISS 97 Web site will enhance the radio listener experience with informative and entertaining interactive elements. Whether it's through the "KISS Club" or "On the Street" information, KISS listeners will be able to communicate with us or with each other on everything from the latest Rascals CD to the latest on the Kyoto Accord.

86 Gary.

87 MR. MILES: Highlighting our commitment to the Top 40 format and to the local community, we have proposed to make a substantial contribution of $2 million to local and regional talent development.

88 One million dollars will be directed to FACTOR to increase the level of support for the production, distribution and marketing of Canadian Top 40 artists. Further to our request, FACTOR has agreed that half that amount would be reserved solely for Top 40 artists located in southwestern Ontario.

89 An additional $500,000 will go directly to FACTOR's Tour Support Program. FACTOR's program supports the domestic and international touring activities of Canadian artists. Touring is a key component in the development of a strong market presence for new Canadian recording artists.

90 Following that theme, the remaining $500,000 will be allocated equally to the University of Waterloo to support its existing "Canada Day Celebration" and to Wilfrid Laurier University to support its existing "Homecoming Concert". Our funding commitment will provide the resources necessary to increase the range and diversity of Canadian talent featured during these two events.

91 Steve.

92 MR. EDWARDS: Thanks, Gary.

93 We are proposing that our new station use Channel 250B, 97.9 megahertz, transmitting from a site to the west of the City of Kitchener.

94 Kitchener-Waterloo is surrounded by a number of large urban centres; London to the west, Cleveland to the south, Hamilton and Buffalo to the southeast and Toronto directly to the east.

95 With so many large markets and so many radio stations in the area, radio spectrum in Kitchener-Waterloo is very congested. Testament to that fact, all of the channels applied for in this hearing are limited Class A or Class B frequencies, with many specific protection requirements.

96 The 97.9 megahertz frequency proposed for our new station is not available in this market. The use of 97.9 at anything more than a very low power level would create interference within the protected coverage area of a first adjacent frequency, 98.1 megahertz, used by our sister station CHFI in Toronto. Industry Canada rules and regulations would specifically prohibit the use of 97.9 without the express consent of the affected broadcaster.

97 In preparing our application, we determined that accepting a certain area of interference with CHFI would provide the opportunity to licence KISS 97 NINE as a new station in this market. By using a frequency that would not have otherwise been available, we also ensured that our application would not reduce the number of usable frequencies in this marketplace.

98 Our decision was not taken lightly and is not without some risk. CHFI is our flagship station in Toronto. Although we can attempt to predict the extent of any interference between our proposed new station and CHFI, we cannot be sure of the true impact of the use of 97.9 until it goes on the air.

99 We have also analyzed the availability of other frequencies in this market and have prepared a summary to that effect. We have provided the Commission with copies of the summary and have reproduced it in the charts before you.

100 Gary.

101 MR. MILES: Madam Chair, Members of the Commission, we believe that approval of our application for KISS 97 NINE would best serve local listeners and would directly contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the commercial radio policy.

102 KISS 97 NINE will, one, benefit from our demonstrated commitment to the local community of Kitchener-Waterloo;

103 Two, directly address the needs and interests of under-served younger listeners by offering them a much-needed local alternative to out-of-market radio stations;

104 Three, strengthen the Kitchener-Waterloo radio market by repatriating listeners to local stations;

105 Four, benefit from our market-proven programming expertise with the launch of new-to-the-market Top 40 radio stations;

106 Five, ensure a continued high level of service for local news and information by providing economies to support NewsTalk 570;

107 Six, make a substantial contribution to local and regional Canadian talent development through direct expenditures of $2 million over the term of the licence, and,

108 Seven, make the best and most effective use of a radio frequency as approval of our application will further improve the diversity of local radio programming without creating technical barriers to the Commission's consideration of other applicants.

109 For all of these reasons we believe the approval of our application for KISS 97 NINE would be in the public interest.

110 We would look forward to the questions.

111 Thank you.

112 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much, Mr. Miles, and team.

113 I realize that being in the radio business, you are all very smooth with technical glitches and I appreciate your patience.

114 I am wondering if we could just take a couple of minutes to be assured that we have solved the problem. I am getting some nods from the technical chap in the back, so we will proceed and hopefully we will still be on-air so to speak smoothly.

115 Thank you for your presentation.

116 I do have a few questions. I will be proceeding with the questioning of your application. I will be using your presentation this morning, the application itself and some references from your letter dated May 22 in response to deficiencies.

117 The first area then is programming. In fact, you have discussed at length and in some interesting detail -- thank you very much -- I think it's Ms Adam, the nature of your programming choices and your programming expertise in this particular application.

118 I would like to talk about the format you are proposing. Indeed, in your application on page 24 in your supplementary brief, you do make the reference that:

amongst other points obviously, but you do make that point.

119 I think the first series of questions is to understand this format choice a little more clearly.

120 In your application you propose a station which would be a contemporary hits format to serve Kitchener's youth and young adult audience of 12 to 24 years. You have identified this demographic as being currently underserved by local radio.

121 Now, two other applications before the panel are both seeking to reach -- serve the same general youth and young adult audience. One is proposing Rythmic CHR, a contemporary hit radio, and the other and Urban Top 40 format.

122 I noticed this morning in your presentation you are now referring to yourselves as Top 40 format as opposed to CHR. Therefore, I wonder if you could help us understand more clearly how the contemporary hits format differs from Rhythmic CHR or from Urban Top 40.

123 In saying this morning that you are Top 40 format as opposed to CHR, is it as opposed to are we talking about the same thing? If you could help us be very clear about that because you did say, I think, as well this morning that one of the impacts of out-of-market station is niche formatting.

124 I would like to be as precise as possible in discussing what format we really are looking at when we are looking at your application.

125 MR. MILES: Thank you, Madam Chair. I certainly am going to turn this over to our programming expertise and we have a lot of it on the panel.

126 Gavin has programming experience from across Canada, has been in the market for nine years. Julie Adam, of course, runs our flagship Top 40 radio station and we have Sandy Sanderson here to sort of talk about the nuances of the format.

127 Before I get into too much trouble about the nuances of the format, we indicated it to be Top 40 because we thought that was the more common terminology for variances upon the scene as it were. So within the Top 40 format there are many different routes that you can take.

128 We have chosen to take a rhythmic top 40 approach in Calgary, for instance, whereas it's more general in Victoria because we actually repatriate an awful lot of listening from out-of-market.

129 I don't know whether we are going to talk about the out-of-market tuning, but perhaps I could just touch on it and if we wish to come back to it, we can.

130 The fact of the matter is that approximately 75 per cent of the tuning for this format is done out-of-market currently. The station that has sort of the most to lose is CHYM-FM which through its ties to the community attracts an awful lot of it. It's important to put that into context of where it is that the niche format is going to fit into it.

131 From that I am going to turn it over to Julie and then I will end up with Sandy Sanderson.

132 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Miles. You did refer to CHYM-FM as also being affected because they are currently running adult contemporary format, if I understand. This allows us again another way to distinguish what's new in your proposal as to what you currently offer through CHYM-FM, for example.

133 MR. MILES: Well, if I could just talk about that for a second. CHYM-FM is a female-based adult contemporary format. While it appeals to 25-54, the heavier listening certainly is well past the 25 age group. It's actually a 35-54. It is more of the softer side of it and will have no relationship whatsoever to the Top 40 radio station. There are two distinct features just like we do on CHFI and KISS 92 FIVE.

134 THE CHAIRPERSON: So on the contemporary adult as opposed to the younger demographic --

135 MR. MILES: You're in the younger part, we wish. You're in the younger part of it, the contemporary adult format.

136 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

137 MR. MILES: In fact, we even say cross-over.

138 THE CHAIRPERSON: I think that's the case in my case. Carry on, I'm sorry.

139 MR. MILES: Julie.

140 MS ADAM: I think it has been handled very well, by the way, Gary. That's a tough question to ask when a woman asks it -- to answer when a woman asks it.

141 I think it's a great question to ask to differentiate between Top 40 and CHR. There are so many variations on the format. It's one of the really great things about this format that it is so diverse.

142 I think Top 40 is perhaps just an easier way of saying contemporary hit radio. What it really means is playing the biggest hits of today.

143 The key with all of this is, you know, the audience we want to speak to has to be spoken to in a very special way. That's what we want to do in Kitchener. We want to talk to this youthful audience on their terms and in their own way. It's what we do in Toronto, Calgary and Victoria.

144 The music that we play will be determined based on the popular hits on the charts and most specifically the popular hits in the community. So you really can't, you know, come up with a play list for a radio station and run it throughout the whole country. You have to make it specific for each market.

145 I think it's one of the things that Rogers does very well. We are not going to program a Kitchener station from Toronto. We are going to program it from Kitchener and we are going to play the hits, the most popular hits, for the youth that are in this market.

146 THE CHAIRPERSON: Could you then give me an example. I will say that contemporary hits CHR, which is in your application, is really Top 40 CHR. Can you give me some of the artists that you are referring to that you would be trying to reach with your new station?

147 MS ADAM: Sure, absolutely. The most popular ones today would be Nelly, Jennifer Lopez, Eminem, Destiny's Child, individual members of Destiny's Child. On the Canadian front, the Rascals, Snow, Jarvis Church. We would be talking about Missy Elliot, Cam Ron, Justin Timberlake.

148 THE CHAIRPERSON: If I asked you to do the same on what's a Hot AC format, which is what is carried into the market, although granted a lower share by CIZN-FM, 92.9, would it be different artists?

149 MS ADAM: Yes. I would probably turn it over to Gavin because he's the expert of AC for us, but yes. In all radio formats there's some sharing of artists, but it would be a very different list.

150 MR. TUCKER: Madam Commissioner, I think the point is this. There are a number of radio stations in this market, three FMs, targeting 25-54 and adult contemporary and the Hot AC format. The lines sometimes blur.

151 I would like to go back to something Gary mentioned and just make sure that we are not confusing the CHYM-FM success in the younger demos with what we are proposing here on KISS 97.9.

152 CHYM-FM in 12 to 17 and 12 to 24 age groups is the number one local station in town. It's not because we are targeting the younger demos. We are targeting women 35-44, the narrow target, but probably more descriptive 35-54.

153 The question is why then are we having the success in the younger demos. It's because we are plugged into the local community. CHYM I think, I would suggest with respect, is a pretty special part of the fabric of Kitchener-Waterloo.

154 These younger kids, the younger demos, need to know what's going on in their town. They will come to CHYM for that information.

155 We have been in this market for a long time. I personally have been here for nine years. A lot of my staff grew up and are raising families in Kitchener-Waterloo. Being plugged into the community, we are exposed to the promotional opportunities and the public service needs that we can deliver and some of them to the younger demographics.

156 We look forward in taking our knowledge of Kitchener-Waterloo and which makes this community tick because we know the players, we know the advertisers, we know the charity groups.

157 Taking that knowledge and combining it with the Rogers experience in Top 40 in providing a younger local radio station, that will work very well.

158 THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes. Thank you. You raised the point of CHYM-FM. I did find that in your application. I quote:

159 If I were proceeding down that line, I would want to ask why a new station because you are already serving that particular market called the teen market. You yourself have just said "We want to address the needs and interests of the younger audiences by offering a much-needed local alternative".

160 It would appear from what you are telling us as the leading station in the market for this demographic that you are already there, that you are already doing it. I guess we want to look a little bit more carefully at what is different about the new station that is being proposed.

161 The first line of questioning clearly is the music. I think with your help we can begin to understand what the different artists lists would be. There is also the whole component of the local programming which you just mentioned and what that means.

162 You used the term frequently in your application "to increase choice and diversity for local listeners". I would like to explore just a little bit more what that means and come back to some of the points you have raised.

163 Looking beyond music, I would like to know a little bit more about the kind of spoken word programming you will be doing and how many hours per week will the new station devote on average to broadcasting local station-produced programming.

164 You both made the point about the importance of not just the same play list, but how it works here. You have made the point about your history in this community.

165 For this new proposal, how many hours per week on average will the new station devote to broadcasting local station-produced programming?

166 MR. MILES: The answer to that is 24 hours a day seven days a week. This is a local radio station we are proposing and it will be a local radio station that will be staffed here in Kitchener and produce programming from here.

167 What we do find with our expertise in the Top 40 programming is the ability to take ideas that have worked well across the country on other stations and say "Here's the basis for an idea. Now let's put it into Kitchener and actually do it directly".

168 In terms of the actual content with regard to what's on the air, I think Julie started to describe mostly what happens which is a spontaneous development of audience reaction through our Web site, through chat rooms. It's picked up by the local personalities on the radio station and repeated back through to it. There is always constant promotional activity going on.

169 This is a very vibrant radio station in which as much as the radio station is in how the records are melded together as compared with what the records actually are, although they are distinct and different from an AC radio station such as CHYM. There is no question that there is a distinct different kind of format.

170 Just to come back to that earlier point for a second, CHYM-FM is an AC radio station. In fact, there are three of them in this marketplace that probably appeal to 25-54. What the Commission has done over the past while by the addition of licences and through consolidation is allow companies and radio stations and formats to become more niche programs.

171 While there is a station, CHYM, that appeals to a wide broad 25-54 in Kitchener, the fact is that all of the radio stations in Kitchener only account for 42 per cent of the listeners. Fifty-seven per cent of the listeners are from out-of-market and of that some 75 per cent are actually out-of-market tuning to this kind of a Top 40 radio station.

172 It's not that CHYM itself has this big vast teen audience. There is the sort of mother and daughter effect on to it and there is some spillover, but it has more to do with the tying in of its resources as compared with the music and the format that we do.

173 THE CHAIRPERSON: We will take each of those points as we go through I'm sure.

174 MR. MILES: Sure.

175 THE CHAIRPERSON: You have gone through a couple of very important aspects of this and we will come back to them.

176 I am interested now in what we are hearing. The CHR is largely a music driven format. I want to focus a little bit more on the breakdown of music to spoken word ratio. If you could give me a sense of what the music to spoken word ratio is on your proposed station as an average daily basis over the broadcast week.

177 MR. MILES: I will start off with Sandy and then I think Gavin will end up with the specific programming features that we have.

178 MR. SANDERSON: Thank you, Gary.

179 It will be a music-driven format. There's lots of places in the market if you are talking about news, certainly local news, we will talk about that, but we won't be dwelling on it because this audience is more interested in music, but on the local artists and the local clubs and what's going on in their world.

180 KISS in Toronto is a great example. I have worked in a lot of Top 40 stations and I have never seen a station that connects so well with their audience as KISS where there is a sense of community.

181 It's not just because they answer every phone call, which they do, and it's not just because they answer every e-mail, which they do, or have chat rooms on the Internet where Julie will partake and the talent will partake. It's a style, it's an approach of connecting to the audience. I think that's the key to making it a local station.

182 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. I appreciate that. This is a competitive hearing, so I would like to be a little bit more precise. It's so much of a standard question music-spoken word, what's the breakdown on your proposed station, the average daily basis throughout the broadcast week, the breakdown between music and spoken word as understood in the typical application and the expectations of our policy?

183 MR. MILES: Are you looking for a percentage breakdown?

184 THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes, that's correct, or hours.

185 MR. MILES: Or hours.

186 THE CHAIRPERSON: Music versus spoken word. As you know, there's a minimum which is a standard condition of licence. I was wondering if you wanted to comment on what the breakdown would be for your proposed station.

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187 MR. MILES: Certainly. Gavin will give you the breakdown in terms of the news and the actual rest of the thing we may have to file with you later.

188 THE CHAIRPERSON: Okay.

189 MR. TUCKER: Our new station application, Madam Commissioner, calls for newscasts in peak listening hours, that being six, seven, eight o'clock in the morning as well as four and five on the drive home. There will be traffic information on both rush hours.

190 I think it's important that we present this in the context that we are targeting a younger audience here, a younger demographic. Our experience with Top 40 elsewhere in our company -- elsewhere in the country, has taught us that this demographic expects the news that affects and probably most important at a local and maybe a regional basis.

191 I'm speaking now of issues that would affect our demo, 12 to 24 year olds. I'm thinking of education issues, health and fitness. We are hearing some disturbing statistics lately that young kids today are in horrible shape as opposed to a generation or two ago. I think the radio station can help get that message out.

192 Other issues that come to mind off the top of my head would be anti-drug education, perhaps some safe sex education and serious issues like racial tolerance, violence, anti-violence campaigns in the schools.

193 As my colleague Julie has told me more than once, we have to be careful we don't beat this demographic over the head with what could be very easily seen as propaganda from the radio station. We have to present it in such a way that it's meaningful to them and have a feel.

194 MR. MILES: Madam Chair, the spoken word context, of course, is interwoven throughout the entire broadcast programming. Traditionally, there are less records played in the morning drive period at times when "The Morning Show" personalities interweave all of the things that Gavin and Julie and Sandy have just described.

195 If you had a record list of approximately 12 or 13 per hour, it would probably be down to six or eight songs. That's certainly what it is at KISS 92 FIVE. That's between six and nine in the morning.

196 As we move into nine o'clock until four o'clock, the record count goes up, but it's still a topical pattern that is woven in there, probably at about 12 records an hour, 12 to 14.

197 Then come the drive time it eases back into more like a morning show thing with a reduction in records down to about eight to ten and more topical talk patterns.

198 Later on in the evening as we get more music intensive with the personalities, probably from some clubs and things like that, the music level goes back up again, but it's more mood determined by the records and the feel of the station as well as the personality himself or herself.

199 THE CHAIRPERSON: So one component of the spoken word programming is the news programming, however. I believe just now and in your deficiency response of May 22 you described that as specifically two minute news packages Monday through Friday, 6:00 a.m., 7:00 a.m., 8:00 a.m., 4:00 p.m., 5:00 p.m., typical drive time periods. We see this is as approximately 50 minutes of scheduled news and information programming per week Mondays to Fridays."

200 Now, if we just take that component, you have tabled with us what you propose as an application which provides something new, which provides an alternative approach to your younger audience.

201 Why do you think this amount of hours will do that?

202 MR. MILES: The unique part of programming of Top 40 radio stations is not tied up at six, at seven, at eight or at four or five in sort of these news packages. It is important to make sure that they are kept up to date with the current events.

203 The unique part of the programming of this radio station and how it really does tie through is what we try to capture in the flavour of the description of 92 FIVE which is what happens between those news packages with the personalities, the topical talk patterns, with the promotional events, with what we are going out, an event happens such as the 9/11. That occupied 24 hours a day. I bet you we hardly played any records at all. We were back into what was going on. It's the talk pattern and the chat rooms and things like that.

204 This is a very fluid kind of radio station and doesn't operate like a news information radio station or even a traditional AC radio station. It's captured in the excitement of the people and the excitement of the kinds of flavours and stuff that we are running on 92 FIVE.

205 THE CHAIRPERSON: Okay. That's helpful. I would appreciate though if you would get back to us with a breakdown of music to spoken word. I understand that spoken word includes your news programming. That will allow us to assess that balance in a little bit more concrete fashion.

206 How would this news and information programming differ from the news programming currently heard on CHYM-FM or on CKGL, both of which you talked about extensively this morning as already filling quite a need in this community? How would the new station offer something different?

207 MR. MILES: Thank you. I am going to end up turning this over to Gavin with regard -- and to Julie actually because she will give you some examples of how we run this on KISS 92 FIVE. I think that's the best way of describing how it's different.

208 Let me start with CHYM. This is a full service AM radio station with news, information, weather, traffic reports and topical talk patterns to radio personalities, male and female, who are in the mid range of our demographic on CHYM-FM. That's a service that is provided to the community.

209 NewsTalk 570 clearly talks about the issues of the day locally. It clearly has far more traffic and weather reports on the ones. It has far more sports. It is a total news and information package. It is set out here as a full service completely, full service talk. It plays no music. It plays no music. It is a news information radio format.

210 When we get down into the patterns of the news and talk things, Julie perhaps has some examples of what we do which would give the Commission a flavour for what those would be.

211 MS ADAM: Sure. I can tell you what we have done at KISS 92 FIVE. First of all, all of this information, the biggest differences, the personality that presents it, you know, the people that work at the station live the lifestyle and are interested in the same things as the listeners.

212 The personality that delivers the news and the production and the music that you run, it's simple as running under the newscasts. It is very different from what we would do here at CHYM here in Kitchener.

213 The other big thing is, you know, if you meet this audience, it's an unbelievable audience. The listeners are so amazing. They really, really want to talk to you and talk to you about things and talk on the radio. They are the most open and active audience I have ever seen.

214 What we do is we really look for spots to talk to them in their own way about the things that are important.

215 Last week on our "Morning Show" we had a guest on, Miss Canada. She was on her way to the Miss World Beauty Pageant happening in Nigeria. Many I think programmers and Top 40 stations would stay away from this kind of guest or content because it's not conventional or traditional.

216 We had this woman on "The Morning Show". The reason this is newsworthy is because in Nigeria they are about to execute a woman for giving birth out of wedlock. It's obviously just a horrible situation.

217 We had this woman on, Miss Canada, who is about to go there talking about it. The response that we got from the listeners on "The Morning Show" was just unbelievable.

218 I think that's the real key to Top 40. You don't have to be a hit machine. Sure, we play the hits and music is the most important thing that we do, but you also have an opportunity because this is so active to talk to them about real things.

219 After September 11 my DJs would come out of the control room weeping. Honestly, I would have to pick them up because of the calls and the e-mails that they were getting from kids in Toronto who didn't want to go to school because of the colour of their skin. It's a really emotional format. The trick is to pick your points.

220 THE CHAIRPERSON: I think on that theme if I could ask you to say -- during your talk about a fully day, different things happening there are specific segments called news. You call them two minute segments at morning and afternoon drive time which sounds fairly typical.

221 How are these going to be different in and of themselves? Will you have different news production on-air staff for this new station from the current station? Will they be separate and distinct news operations?

222 MR. TUCKER: Madam Chair, thank you for clarifying the issue here. The short answer is yes, they will. We will run three distinct radio stations in this market should we be granted the licence for KISS 97.9.

223 I think in answer to your question, to expand on the yes, they will, we will be considering the target audience of the radio stations. NewsTalk 570, as Gary indicated, is a news/talk station. Inasmuch as Kiss 97.9 will be targeting a very unique audience, believe me the News/Talk audience and life group expect a whole lot more than most audiences when talking about news, so we do major news packages at the top and bottom of every hour throughout the day.

224 They are considerably longer than any other radio station out there. Then when the news is done we talk about the news. That's the really great thing about talk radio. It's more than just the news. It's expanding on the issues, it's giving the people out in the community the opportunity to, you know, air their views on the issues of the day.

225 That's our AM station. CHYM, our news is more targeted to women, adult women and their families and the issues that are important to that life group. I think now of parenting issues, health issues, maybe aging parents, you know, the sandwich generation is very often represented in the content of our newscasts.

226 I hope that gives you an indication of the tone of the news on CHYM. I will go back to what I said about our proposed KISS 97 NINE in that the news will be targeted directly at our younger demographics, talking about things like schools and health and fitness for kids.

227 There will certainly be entertainment news, the artists that they are interested in and taking on some of the issues like anti-violence in the school system and things like that.

228 Again, I need to reiterate to you. I understand your questioning. I am very confident in saying yes, there will be three distinct news styles in the market.

229 THE CHAIRPERSON: All right. Moving on from that, let me just ask you then to expand on a point you raise in your supplementary brief on page 24, that:

230 Let's stay with this market. While you say they will be distinct, you say the new station will benefit from operating synergies with the existing stations. Can you describe these synergies and how important are they to the new station?

231 MR. MILES: Thank you. Just to go back to one thing, the part about the Nigeria situation that Julie was talking about. That occupied 57 minutes of topical talk pattern which was different from any kind of news thing. That's the kind of expertise we bring to it.

232 In terms of synergies that we are talking about from Kitchener-Waterloo radio stations, we were talking the financial, the technical and the programming expertise that we have within it to make sure that this is a distinct and unique format opportunity.

233 Naturally we have a very big newsroom because we are supplying news to News/Talk 570 on a 24/7 basis. We will be able to take the basic resources of the newsroom, but it will be done entirely different by a person responsible for the operation of KISS 97.

234 THE CHAIRPERSON: So, Mr. Miles, when you say the basic resources of the newsroom, you are using the same staff, the same on-air personnel, the same researchers for all stations, including the new station, or will you have a separate setup for them?

235 MR. MILES: We will have a separate setup for them. What I was talking about was the ability to gather the stuff into one place, all of the news, because it's fairly technical. We need a tape and we need to get information from all the different sources, so it's that pool of information but no, they will be separate.

236 THE CHAIRPERSON: So what other synergies will there be which will support the new station?

237 MR. MILES: One of the synergies that we really feel very strongly about is at CKGL 570 itself, which was part of our supplementary brief, is a very important service within the community. We have used the synergies and the resources of CHYM-FM to support that one.

238 CHYM-FM is going to be hit by the addition of news stations as are all the rest of the stations with more licensing happening in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. We want to be able to have these resources of our new FM radio station to continue to support the tripartite way of operating within Kitchener-Waterloo so that we can maintain the same high level of promotion, of news-gathering sources, of the people out in the community so that we provide a total package, whether it's for our younger demographic, whether it's for the more male-based news/talk, older demographic on NewsTalk 570 or whether it's for that female-based listeners to CHYM-FM.

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239 THE CHAIRPERSON: Let me make sure I understand. Are you saying to the Commission that your proposed new station is  -- the rationale for it is to support your existing stations?

240 MR. MILES: No. We would never say that. Our rationale for this station is just as we have presented it. We have benefits of $2 million. We believe that we have expertise in this format, Madam Chair, and that we actually know the Kitchener-Waterloo community very, very well.

241 We have got the local advisory board, the youth advisory board of ten people that we are going to do, we have got local advisory boards so we know how to be within the community of the radio station. That's the rationale for the presentation.

242 THE CHAIRPERSON: So again, when you say the addition of a third station will provide more economies to protect this valuable service, referring here to 570, in the face of increased competition, what did you mean by that? That was in this morning's presentation.

243 MR. MILES: Yes. We know that we are going to lose listeners from CHYM-FM. That younger end of the demo is going to go and maybe even the older end, depending on the format for the licence within the marketplace.

244 As a result of that, the share that CHYM-FM, while it enjoys a nice share, it will diminish within the market place. There is going to be more format, more spreading out of the demographic. That all has an effect on what we have looked upon as a market leader radio station in CHYM-FM.

245 We have used these resources. We believe we husband them well within the community. We launched 570 NewsTalk knowing that we had the strength on CHYM-FM, the strength in financial programming, sales expertise, to help build 570 NewsTalk.

246 We are going to use those same kind of resources which are more human, technical and sales to establish and build the 97.9.

247 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. I think we will come back to this point because we will want to come back to discussing the overall market situation and diversity.

248 MR. MILES: Sure.

249 THE CHAIRPERSON: I would like to just continue on programming with a couple more questions and then we will look at a short break.

250 We use the term diversity in the market in terms of ownership. That will be the last series of questions I will have for you. Right now I would like to talk to you about cultural diversity.

251 As you know, in the commercial radio policy the Commission encourages broadcasters to reflect the cultural diversity of Canada in their programming and employment practices, especially with respect to news, music and the promotion of Canadian artists. This is from 1998-41, paragraph 213.

252 What measures would you take to incorporate and reflect the reality of Canada's cultural, ethnic, racial and aboriginal diversity in the following areas: employment practices, news, music and promotion of Canadian artists?

253 MR. MILES: Thank you. We are proud of our record for diversity. Rogers is a founding member of CWC. Forty-seven per cent of Rogers media management practices are not quite meld.

254 In the radio division we have a couple of programs that I wish to talk about. Before I get to that one, OMNI-1 and OMNI-2 I think reflect how we feel about cultural diversity, but let's talk about the radio division and let's talk about this market in here.

255 We have two programs that we started back in 1990. One is the program directors understudy program and the other one is the sales managers university. The program directors understudy program takes people who apply from within the Rogers company all the way across and we teach them the fundamentals of program directors' talents, skills and attributes.

256 The same thing happens with the sales managers university where we take salespeople from all the way across the country. This is a program that lasts about a year to a year and a half with each one of them with specific individual tutoring.

257 Since 1990 the requirement has been for eligible candidates for any class, 50 per cent must be visible minority or females. We have done that since 1990. We have been graduating these people back into our systems and back into our programs. We are very excited about that one and we believe that that shows our commitment to building and growing the radio industry.

258 What we do know on this format is that this format brings cultural diversity. For instance, on KISS 92.5 in Toronto, 30 per cent of the programming staff are visible minorities. In Calgary on 96.9, 65 per cent of our staff are visible minorities.

259 This hiring process and these people on the air address directly the kind of content that happens in the topical talk patterns around those newscasts and putting the music together, about what is representative of these young people.

260 These young people that this format appeals to have a different thought of the world, have different views. Frankly, with 35,000 university people in this area, they represent a far different cultural makeup of Kitchener-Waterloo than the former heritage of Kitchener-Waterloo in terms of its culture.

261 Julie can talk about a couple of examples about how that reflects in terms of the programming, but I just wanted to stop on that one and say has that correctly addressed the employment issue for you?

262 THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes. I am looking at your overall, but I am obviously very interested in what you are proposing for the new station.

263 MR. MILES: Correct. Well, we would certainly have a staffing pattern that would fall somewhere between KISS 92.5 and 96.9 in there. I would assume that our staffing pattern will represent 40 to 45 per cent will be visible minorities on-air staff.

264 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr. Miles. Anything further on this question of cultural diversity?

265 MR. MILES: Just one other thing and that is the youth advisory council. Those are the ten members that we plan on getting from the community. Fifty per cent of that youth advisory council will represent cultural diversity.

266 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

267 One of the aspects of my question was the promotion of Canadian artists. Perhaps I could ask you to weave into your response on Canadian Talent Development some further comment on cultural diversity in Canadian Talent Development. I do have a couple of questions on your proposals for CTD.

268 You indicate in your application and in your 22 May deficiency response that certain agreements are in place or would be sought with FACTOR related to reserving of funding to support the development of southwestern Ontario CHR artists.

269 First question. Can you provide us with a copy of the agreement in which FACTOR stipulates that $500,000 of your $1 million contribution would be reserved solely for assisting CHR recording artists in southwestern Ontario?

270 MR. MILES: Yes. We will file that letter with you. We actually have an e-mail and we will put it off. We have made that arrangement.

271 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Regarding your $500,000 contribution to the FACTOR tour support program, you indicated in your supplementary brief on page 12 that you would request that FACTOR reserve this funding to support touring by Canadian CHR artists in southwestern Ontario.

272 Now, as a point of clarification, are you requesting that money be reserved to support touring by southwestern Ontario-based recording artists or to support touring by all Canadian artists in southwestern Ontario? Can you just clarify that?

273 MR. MILES: Yes. Touring by southwestern Ontario artists.

274 THE CHAIRPERSON: You have proposed to allocate $71,428 annually to support two music festivals run by local universities. Both the University of Waterloo and Sir Wilfrid Laurier would receive $35,714 each to hire marquee Canadian CHR recording artists to perform at these festivals.

275 What type of agreements or arrangements do you have or will you get from each festival organizer confirming that this CTD funding would be used as directed and not used to defray such things as festival infrastructure costs?

276 I think this question was asked in deficiency, but I didn't see that the answer was really to that point. What do you have confirming that the money will go as directed and not to defray festival infrastructure costs?

277 MR. MILES: I apologize if it wasn't answered directly. We are very, very sensitive to this issue that the funding does go directly to the talent and the touring things and Gavin can talk to that issue.

278 MR. TUCKER: Madam Chair, both of these arrangements, that is the one with the University of Waterloo and the Wilfrid Laurier homecoming celebration, have been discussed at some length with the organizing committees at either institution.

279 We are dealing at the University of Waterloo with a bright young woman named Alyson Woloshyn, who is the Manager of Community Relations and Special Events. It has been very positive dialogue. She understands what you just articulated very well.

280 We are not interested in paying security costs or, you know, any of the other costs that would be associated with that event. This money has to be earmarked, and they understand it and agree that this money will be paid to the marquee Canadian talent that we are bringing into either of these events.

281 MR. MILES: So we will get a letter back to that effect. We have made the verbal arrangements and we did not get a more formal letter, but we will do that and it will indicate as you have suggested.

282 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. And you understand the nature of the question then of what everybody intends.

283 MR. MILES: Certainly.

284 THE CHAIRPERSON: Considering the detail work you have done, I would think that would be an important component of this arrangement.

285 I think at this point we will take a 15 minute break and come back with further questions.

--- Upon recessing at 1040 / Suspension à 1040

--- Upon resuming at 1105 / Reprise à 1105

286 THE CHAIRPERSON: Order, please.

287 We are back, as they say on radio sometimes. I would like to now go through a couple of questions on the economic impact of your proposed station.

288 Clearly too here we are looking at what you have described as the out-of-market tuning situation particular to this market. We are all aware of the level of that out-of-market tuning. It is in that context that we are trying to be as well very precise on what exactly this new station will sound like and what its economic impact will be on the market and trying to look at that in the picture of who the players are here in the market as well.

289 Now, if we look at the Kitchener market, it's host to Wilfrid Laurier University, the University of Waterloo, Conestoga College. Do you have any information about the amount of disposable income available to students?

290 I ask this question with a bit of a personal smile on my face because knowing a student of mine, I know what his disposable income is. It's mine. Anyway, back to the question.

291 We are trying to get a sense to see economic viability. You focused on the younger demographic. Clearly a large part of this market is composed of students. What is your information on the amount of disposable income available to students and, based on your experience, are advertisers willing to pay to reach student listeners, listeners who may or may not be actually staying in this community post that academic year and so on?

292 The whole area of the student listener as an advertising force and their disposable income in terms of the interest advertisers would have.

293 MR. MILES: Thank you, Madam Chair.

294 Our experience has been that the format of this radio station is able to attract a group of advertisers to radio, advertisers that in the current context of the players in this market would not normally advertise on radio.

295 As we mentioned before, while CHYM-FM has a set amount of these younger listeners, in actual effect the out-of-market tuning from other formats, other radio stations, in this same format have more tuning of the demographic than CHYM does. So what we want to do is we want to start this targeted programming for 97.7.

296 Thirty-five thousand students go to the universities here, as you have indicated. They are certainly not full-time students. They come in and they go out. The economic impact on the Kitchener-Waterloo market, I don't know whether 35,000 out of 430,000 can be measured.

297 What we do know about the format, however, is our ability to attract advertisers to this. For instance, in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, the retail sales, the highest amount of retail sales is in car and related automobile expenditures, the second highest is in groceries, the third highest is in other durable goods.

298 We would assume that most of them have to eat and most of them certainly need transportation to get around. Certainly there's an awful lot of them that want to buy at the nearest and newest kind of clothing outlets.

299 That amounts to an area that this new station will target and actually bring new advertisers to the radio station. I think we have indicated in our context that we are going to allow for a certain amount of new advertisers to come.

300 There's certainly going to be some crossover from advertisers on radio stations that find now that they can be more directed to it and there's going to be new advertisers such as the snowboard outfits and the younger end of the automotive industry as well as some national advertising that eventually these stations grow in share will be targeted into a younger 18 to 34 buys compared to a 25 to 54 buy which has traditionally bee on CHYM radio.

301 That's where we expect to grow and develop these new kinds of accounts.

302 THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes. I think in the deficiency response you indicate new advertisers, I think it's 10.5 per cent.

303 MR. MILES: Mm-hmm.

304 THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes. You estimate 47 per cent of year one advertising revenues would be garnered from existing local radio stations. You also state that the impact of your new station will be greatest on your FM station, CHYM-FM, of all the local radio stations that currently attract the largest share of listening by young people.

305 Are you able to tell us what percentage of the advertising revenue of the proposed station would come at the expense of CHYM-FM?

306 MR. MILES: Yes. We have targeted $1.5 million with an advertising revenue in the first year. Of that I think $350,000 is national advertising and that has to do with sort of a transfer of shares.

307 If you think that a fair portion of CHYM's current share of tuning level is in that young adult and it gets transferred over to another station, that would account for a fair amount of that $350,000.

308 My experience has been, you know, in terms of advertising revenue that happens within the marketplace that in the first couple of years there is more transferring around of additional advertisers as they start to try a new radio station, see whether it delivers results for them, whether it is the right kind of mix for their current advertising budgets.

309 They may have a large advertising budget that they now say "I am going to split off part of it to an existing station and I am going to move some of it over".

310 It is finally in the second and the third year that you actually start to see the impact and of the tide starting to rise again by new entrants into the radio market. Radio advertising generally in Canada tries to put at 12.8 per cent. In Kitchener-Waterloo, we estimate that advertising to be about 10.4.

311 You would say why is the Kitchener area under the national advertising. I think it is because there aren't a lot of local radio stations. There are only five radio stations that effectively deal with what can be done here. If you put more radio stations into the marketplace, you are going to start to increase the advertising pie for radio.

312 We believe that very, very strongly. We think that some advertisers that are currently in the newspapers will go into there. There will be some advertisers who are currently buying television in southwestern Ontario, because that's the way you have to buy it, will become attracted to radio.

313 That's generally how it happens over the course of a couple to three years.

314 THE CHAIRPERSON: So of the 47 per cent from local market radio stations, what proportion of that would come from CHYM-FM, do you think, approximately?

315 MR. MILES: We said 50 per cent.

316 THE CHAIRPERSON: Fifty per cent?

317 MR. MILES: Yes.

318 THE CHAIRPERSON: I am going to ask you to go back to the point you raised earlier. I may ask this question several ways, so bear with me.

319 The out-of-market tuning is one of the key features of this discussion obviously. You made a claim that you can repatriate that out-of-market tuning. Forty per cent in fact is what you claim would be your take on that.

320 Again, you have chosen CHR format or Top 40, as you said this morning. You have chosen to tell us that you would provide alternative news, for example, to your listening audience. One of the key points you raise is that it is this approach, this music choice and the spoken word choice which will really result in repatriation of listeners.

321 If we look at the out-of-market tuning list, it's extensive.

322 MR. MILES: Mm-hmm.

323 THE CHAIRPERSON: You have made that point. You have also made the point I think that part of that list, a number of players on that list have the adult contemporary Top 40 CHR rock format now. I am blurring the lines a little bit, but generally we are into the same demographic there.

324 Can you tell us first of all if we look at the music format once again, we notice that three applicants proposed a country format for Kitchener and three applicants proposed a CHR or urban Top 40 format.

325 Why do you believe the CHR format is better suited to the Kitchener market than the country format generally speaking and particularly to take on this out-of-market tuning challenge which you have tabled? Why is that particular format going to work best as opposed to the country format which has been the choice of three other applicants?

326 MR. MILES: The country format is a great format. We actually operate country music radio stations and we are thrilled with the kind of audience that it brings. It actually brings a demographic which is somewhat similar to our CHYM radio station format which is predominantly male and female and in the 35-54 range group.

327 We already have a station serving that particular demographic, although not with that particular kind of music, but that would be a duplication of services as far as Rogers is concerned, to put on a country music radio station.

328 What we do believe is that we have great expertise in this Top 40 format programming. We know that our station, CHYM, has a number of these young listeners. Again, we are sort of third when it comes to it. There was a Top 40 radio station which was number one which was over in Berns and it's converted to country. I think everybody's information is in and I'm sure the other people will address that issue.

329 The number two was Orangeville for top radio station and CHYM was sort of third of the 75 per cent of this younger demographic that was tuned to our-of-market listening.

330 We have had experience in repatriating this. In Victoria, for example, when we launched Hot 103, there was a tremendous amount of listening, not only from the United States, but from Vancouver to Top 40 radio.

331 We since have been able to develop a pattern and a listening pattern and this radio station has been very, very successful because in all elements of radio programming, it's local, local, local, local. The people need to have and wrap themselves around the station in the community in which they reside.

332 We believe we know the Kitchener-Waterloo market. We believe our depth and roots into the community both horizontally and vertical will allow us to do this kind of programming format with the addition of the youth counsel.

333 THE CHAIRPERSON: Just then on that. Again you stake your ability to repatriate in what is a very particular -- let's deal with this market where I think most people come in around 57 per cent of market tuning and in the demographic we are talking about, 70 to 75 per cent if I'm not mistaken.

334 To repatriate those listeners, you are assuming that this particular format, CHR, will do that.

335 MR. MILES: Yes, we are.

336 THE CHAIRPERSON: But you are also saying that your news programming will do that. Can you just tell us again what is it about this news programming that will repatriate younger listeners to this new station from your own station, CHYM-FM, and from the other out-of-market stations that play somewhat the same music, adult contemporary through CHR, they have spoken word complement.

337 What is it about the way you will present your news programming which you have told us is about 50 minutes per week? Is that enough? Can you give us a better description of what we are going to be hearing.

338 MR. MILES: We certainly can and I will let Gavin answer that one. I think the differences between out-of-market tuning is that there is no format available for this audience locally. We have found our experience in every one of the markets that we have gone into that when you put a Top 40 format into a market that heretofore was deprived of one, that audience comes back here because of the topical talk patterns around the news thing.

339 It is important for us, not as programmers, not to get too hung up on news being at specific times, but to make sure it's incorporated into the whole flow, such as Julie had described with the Miss Teen Canada.

340 Gavin.

341 MR. TUCKER: With regard to our local news helping to repatriate the market tuning in the teen demographics on our proposed Top 40 station, I think it's important to note that certainly news will be a portion of that success story.

342 A big portion of what we are talking about, Madam Chair, is promotions in the market, executed by people that live in the market, I think in many cases by people that may have gone to school or even grown up with our target audience.

343 I mean the local component we are talking about here in terms of attracting and repatriating this audience, certainly news is a part of it, but we need to talk about promotions and community involvement in general.

344 At the risk of sounding like a broken record here, we know how Kitchener-Waterloo works. That's a big part of what we plan on bringing to this underserved demographic that is tuning in droves to out-of-market stations.

345 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you for that. That brings me to the point of yes, you really have a presence here in this market, so we will look now at the impact of your proposed station on the competitive balance in the market.

346 You are currently the market leader through CHYM-FM. C-H-Y-M I assume is the way we say "CHYM". You will notice I chimed right in, if you will. Commissioner Langford liked that, but he didn't.

347 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: I don't have to approve your humour. You go with it. You are out there alone.

348 THE CHAIRPERSON: I'm trying, I'm trying.

349 CKGL is attracting audience and advertisers to the news/talk format. Those are the two Rogers stations and you have well described their leadership in this community and, in fact, their market leadership in the community.

350 Rogers is also here as itself an out-of-market station in the sense of CHFI-FM and CFTR and if not as well KISS-FM in Toronto, although very, very weak, but there is a certain degree we have on the BBMs, but not the best reception. A couple of other stations do find their way into the BBM listings here.

Let's focus on the fact that CHFI-FM and CFTR are here. Would not giving Rogers another station in this market where you already have your existing stations, one of which is a market leader, and you are already here in terms of out-of-market tuning yourselves with at least two stations, would this not give Rogers too much of a competitive advantage if we approved a new station?

351 MR. MILES: I certainly understand this question and I understand the Commission's concerns. Let me try and work backwards.

352 If we talk about CHYM and CKGL in terms of the context within the 43 per cent of the radio listenership in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, CKGL has a four share. It has been a consistent four share. We repatriated listeners from two big radio stations in Toronto, one of them being ourself, and one from a big news/talk station in Hamilton. Now we are dealing with a far lesser share than that.

353 CKGL I guess could have been an AM-based radio station. We chose not to go that way. We chose to invest a serious amount of money, $2.6 million, to provide this kind of local service to the residents of Kitchener-Waterloo.

354 In terms of the other stations that come in, first KISS 92 or 92.5 does not come into this marketplace with any kind of listening patterns or habits at all. The signal just stops outside of the area.

355 CHFI, of course, is the more interesting one. It is to CHFI that we are penalizing ourselves in terms of the coverage by allowing ourselves to carve out a bit of that frequency so that we can provide the listeners and the marketplace of Kitchener-Waterloo with an alternative format, Top 40, and still allow the Commission some flexibility in licensing other new entrants.

356 It has not been without a great deal of soul-searching to where we have actually done this to where we say CHFI provides this great service throughout the whole southwestern area. We are going to sort of penalize ourselves in order to do this.

357 In terms of the concentration, and you know there are many voices and many choices in Kitchener-Waterloo, we like to think it's an isolated market, but as Steve clearly outlined, there's signals coming in from all over, including the United States.

358 When you actually get down into the amount of concentration of ownership, it isn't that much in terms of the effect. We are quite proud of CHYM-FM. We took a good radio station and through Gavin and the rest of the team here, they built it into a better radio station. I think that's a tribute to our programming expertise.

359 In terms of the concentration, I think it is important to note that Cowan did not intervene against us, a resident and player in the market. Corus did not intervene. While Corus is over in Cambridge, the actual effect of their application which is not appearing for an improvement in the frequency and an increase in the power, it's going to make them another player in this marketplace in the Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge area orn the tri-city area as most of the people determine it when you start talking from a marketing point of view.

360 THE CHAIRPERSON: I will try to continue on this point. I just want to be very clear.

Again, Mr. Miles, could you describe to us what you feel the competitive impact, what will be the competitive impact on your new station in this market as it currently stands.

361 MR. MILES: Yes. We wouldn't expert the news station to achieve a six to seven share. That's probably about the right kind of share for this kind of format. You don't get it at the very first.

362 I'll bet here we are going to lose at least three of our own shares in that younger demographic on CHYM-FM, so three of the six or seven is going to come from our own radio station and it's going to be taken down.

363 The other three shares are going to be out-market-tuning and repatriation because this format doesn't interfere with anybody else's format currently resident within the marketplace.

364 THE CHAIRPERSON: So it is your contention that the Kitchener radio market can support this new station. Can it support both a new CHR station and a new country station?

365 MR. MILES: There are different demographics and they appeal to a different kind of advertisers and different kinds of new advertisers. This marketplace is never going to be the same after this hearing.

366 Again, I mentioned the Corus thing only becaused as a non-appearing item the impact of that is going to change this marketplace as it has done. There are other frequencies. We put them up on the board. It's not for us to determine what kind of licences or how many the Commission should do. We would never ever suggest that.

367 What we have suggested is that based on our expertise as radio operators in the top 40 format, we think we can do this one better than the other applicants, to be quite frank about it. We have carved out our own and harmed one of our own radio stations to provide this opportunity and still allow for additional licensing within the thing.

368 We do not believe we have a concentration of ownership in this particular area. Each local radio market operates on itself and we pride ourselves on operating number one and number two radio stations in every market that we are in.

369 THE CHAIRPERSON: Go back to -- again on the same lines as Rogers position in this market, and look at this from the point of view of the competive agenda, if you will, and the presence of Rogers. You do paint a larger picture in your own application and deficiency response, a very lengthy one in fact on this matter.

370 Can you give us a sense of why you think the new station will offer diversity in this market? I think this is very key. You are here already, as I said already, through your existing stations and through those stations that come in out-of-market.

371 You are here as well with CFMC and Omni which you know -- Omni 2 -- which you note in your own application.

372 MR. MILES: Yes.

373 THE CHAIRPERSON: We could even say that you have a voice in this market through your other Rogers presence in terms of the cable network, et cetera.

374 When we look at the issues before us, obviously what we are trying to understand is what new voice you will bring, what diversity will bring in terms of your music programming, in terms of your spoken word programming. We want to balance this obviously in terms of the larger picture vis-à-vis the various competitors in this market.

375 You made this statement this morning when I talked about it earlier and you raised it as "strengthening the Kitchener-Waterloo market by repatriating listeners to local radio stations".

376 You have posed that your efforts at that are not only going to be good, but they are essential to the radio market. I think you just said this hearing will change this market, although I would like to go back to that because I'm not sure if you didn't contradict that a little earlier saying "We will have no impact on the market with our application".

377 Can you tell us what your thoughts are, what your opinion is, on the balancing act we have to play between assuring diversity of voices in the market, new players because, yes, with different stations, different formats, but it remains part of the Rogers group.

378 As you have said, there are other major groups in this market, Corus and CHUM. The balance between offering that diversity and the development of the larger companies, I think I tabled with you my question about your point as to whether this new station was part of bolstering or, I think the word you used is ensuring a continued high level service for local news and information by providing economies to support NewsTalk 570.

379 That to me says that this is also about supporting Rogers' presence in this market, the corporation. What is your response to obviously the choices we have to make? Why do you feel it's important for you to get this new station as opposed to the diversity of voices we may be looking for in the market?

380 MR. MILES: Let's address the Rogers issues first because I think they are important. If you talk about OMNI-1, OMNI-2, there is no local programming or editorial presence within the marketplace. The cable company has community programming, but it is a far different venue and genre than any of the radio stations.

381 CHFI does get down to a certain extent within this marketplace, but I think I have talked about that with what our frequency 97.9 will do within that area.

382 The Kitchener-Waterloo marketplace has a great many voices and choices. There are a number of newspapers that come into this on a very regular basis. There's television into this thing.

383 The whole issue of consolidation within the radio industry and the licensing of new players I think has been an important factor in the last three years of what sort of happened in the radio business. I hope I make sure I answer your question, but if I don't -- I would like to just talk about that for a second.

384 We talked about diversity within the marketplace, we talked about impact on Canadian music and Canadian artists and things like that. Over the course of the last two or three years there have been 25 new licences granted to FM licensees granted by the Commission. If you take into account the conversion of AMs to FM, the number is up around 35.

385 That has happened at the same time as consolidation within the groups has happened. What this has caused is an awful lot of movement of the audience in each one of the markets. There is nothing wrong with that, but it has really caused and really has affected diversity in programming.

386 If there were no new licences granted, would CHYM continue to serve a younger audience as part of its demographic? Sure. Would they be satisfied with what they are getting on that station? No because there is not one crossover artist between CHYM's play list and KISS 92.5 at the current time, not one crossover. It's not about the music. They want to have their own particular part of programming.

387 By allowing more licensing of things, the Commission has actually got into diversity in formats and we have allowed ourselves to go deeper with talent, deeper with Canadian artists instead of wider and more horizontal.

388 Our application before you today is based on four premises that I believe the Commission needs to be satisfied within making the decision.

389 First of all, that their application stands to benefit the Canadian Broadcasting Act. Yes, it does. We are contributing $2 million towards Canadian talent. We have expertise in the Top 40 radio market and we believe this market can sustain a Top 40 radio station that is run by people who know how to run Top 40 radio stations in other markets.

390 We have proven we can repatriate listeners and currently there is a big hole for that as well as for country in this marketplace.

391 We have come before you to take a frequency that is not available in this marketplace. How we have come by that one is we have said we are going to take a hit on our listening which really speaks to the address of what will happen to CHFI. It won't be heard as much down in this marketplace as it was before.

392 We balanced off this more concentration of ownership by saying we are going to take this from ourselves and we are going to have a material impact on its audience and its share of tuning down here in order to provide new listening programming for the Kitchener-Waterloo area and at the same time still allow the Commission, if it so wishes, to address the other applicants on all of those issues as well and, if it so desires, grant some more frequencies.

393 When I said that the course was going to change the marketplace, every time that you allow a new entrant into the marketplace, whether it's from consolidation or through conversion of AM to FM, it changes the audience patterns and the listening and the tuning habits.

394 That's what I meant about that as compared with are they going to come in and take a whole bunch of money from the area. I don't know the answer to that. We won't know until we hear it, but I do know that they are improving their signal and they are increasing their power.

395 Just by that alone this marketplace is not going to have the same five people sharing the audience and hopefully that 57 per cent that are out-of-market tuning is going to get reduced, as we saw in Victoria when we did the same thing.

396 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Those are my questions.

397 MR. MILES: I was just wondering whether we had answered your question completely with programming diversity in the musical groups. I was just concerned that I may have let that slip by focusing too much on the employment thing.

398 THE CHAIRPERSON: You are welcome to go ahead if you wish.

399 MR. MILES: I would like to address it in two ways which is to talk about the programming diversity through what we are doing on KISS 92.5 and then come back into programming diversity which we are also doing in this marketplace on CKGL.

400 First of all, Julie.

401 MS ADAM: Sure. The Top 40 format, another reason why it's such a great format is because it is so diverse. It begins with the music. Everything starts with the music in Top 40. I calculated that well over 60 per cent of the current play list on KISS 92.5 is from artists that are from different cultures. That's where everything begins with Top 40 radio, through the artists and through the music.

402 As Gary mentioned, KISS 92.5 and CHYM don't share one artist on the play list. Certainly this music is going to bring a diversity to Kitchener-Waterloo.

403 It's really important with Top 40 radio, and I don't know if I was clear enough when I talked about the news aspect on KISS, but I don't look at it so much as news as I do content. The content in 92.5 goes well above and beyond just news packages. We do standard news packages in "The Morning Show".

404 We run different productions, different music under those news packages than we would do on any of our other radio stations. That is the main difference between news on KISS and news on, say, an AC format.

405 The other thing we do differently, sometimes the stories are different. Obviously with September 11 that's a story that is going to be the main headline and probably the number one news story on all radio stations, but we may take a different angle on KISS 92.5 than say our sister station CHFI would do or 680 News would do in Toronto.

406 News is done with the standard news packages and then we also look at content. Content is probably the number one way that we do different types or get a chance to address different issues in the community. That's where we are able to talk about Miss Canada. It's where we are able to cover Pride Week and do things for the gay community in Toronto. It is where we are able to run fundraisers for Sheena's Place where we do the Go program in which our "Morning Show" host Billie goes out and speaks to young women about once a month and talks about self-esteem and how to have self-esteem and more self-awareness.

407 That is all content. That really comes through the personalities at the radio station. It really comes through finding your place and your point. When you get an opportunity to do something out of the ordinary that really affects the community, you take it and you run with it.

408 MR. TUCKER: The diversity in programming issue here in Kitchener, thank you for bringing that up. We are very excited about the story we have to tell here.

409 First of all, on CKGL the really neat thing about doing talk radio is, and this may sound simple, but we can talk. We talk a lot. We talk about the issues and give our listeners and our audience the opportunity to contribute as much as they want on the issues of the day.

410 With that privilege, if you will, comes a responsibility that we take very seriously. That's that all our news programming and all our talk shows strive to tell both sides of every story. In some cases there is more than two sides to a story. We try to get every angle we can on the air, if not from our people, certainly from our contributors and the public at large that takes part in our talk shows.

411 To go back to September 11, Julie talked about that, but I want to talk about the experience here in Kitchener-Waterloo.

412 There were people that were unfairly persecuted just by nature of their religious beliefs, sometimes as simple as the colour of their skin. I think we did a really good job on NewsTalk in getting their story on the air.

413 There was a mosque in Waterloo that was vandalized shortly after September 11, the horrific effect that that could happen in our community, but of course it did. It happened all over North America.

414 We had the people from that organization, that religious group, on the air talking about it. We thought that was very important, to give them as much time as they feel they needed to get their message across that "Please, don't paint us all with all one brush".

415 The Islam community is well thought of in the market here. We do our best to represent them and all the other ethnic backgrounds.

416 Our talk show hosts, we seek cultural diversity in their guests and their contributors. Dave Sturgeon locally is the host of Sturgeon in the morning, a news/talk. Dave has a great roster of really contributors to its show.

417 Among them are people like a well-known businessman in the area here named Shawky Fahil. Shawky is a local businessperson in our community, a terrific guy. He was born in Israel. He immigrated to Canada in 1968 in search of education and better opportunities.

418 Dave goes to Shawky as a Middle East expert. I mean who better qualified to explain to people in this market the complex goings-on in the Middle East than a well-known community person here in the market?

419 Another contributor to Dave's show is Andrew Ye, the science guy. Andrew has developed a little bit of a subculture here in town in that his style and his ability to explain complex scientific things really makes for entertaining radio, if you can imagine that.

420 Andrew is an expert on all things scientific and has a passion for outer space. It makes for good radio in the morning. Andrew happens to be of Asian descent, so he is a big part of Dave's show week in and week out.

421 Our mid-day talk show is called "Vanlith Live". Ken Vanlith is the host and Ken has at times called on a Guelph lawyer named T Sher Singh who again has an uncanny ability to explain context legal matters in a way that just makes sense to our audience on NewsTalk 570. We had Mr. Singh on a number of times explaining the negative impact of racial profiling in the Islamic community.

422 A regular feature on CKGL is called "The Legal Minute". It's a local attorney by the name of Victor Hussein who was born in South Africa and has immigrated to Canada, again a great flare for bringing home these legal matters in a way that the average person can understand. It's a pretty popular feature on our AM station.

423 On the CHYM side, we don't have the liberty of talking as much as we do on the AM side. We are a very music intensive format, but diversity is not by any means ignored. We accomplish those objectives on the CHYM side a little differently.

424 In terms of promotion and public service, I would respectfully submit we are probably the most active station in the market on those fronts. Scarcely a day goes by that CHYM isn't doing something that in some way betters the community, again I would respectfully submit.

425 Anyway, these good deeds, these programs that we start up on CHYM very often benefit again different ethnic communities and diverse cultural backgrounds.

426 We are the presenting radio station of the Kitchener-Waterloo multiheritage festival. We help promote the event. We draw huge crowds to Kitchener's Victoria Park every summer. We also provide MCs for the day, all free of charge of course, as a contribution to our community.

427 We are the presenting station of the Aga Khan Partnership. We received commendations from the Aga Khan people. We were involved in this project from the get-go back in the early nineties. Our partners in this are local immigrants from developing world countries. The money raised locally through this partnership walk is part of the Canada-wide effort. It goes to humanitarian causes in these developing world countries.

428 CHYM is the presenting station of the annual Kitchener Dionysia Festival. That's a wild weekend I can tell you. It's a great festival regarding the Greek and Dionysia culture. It's food and drink and music and games and dance, all from the Greek Cypriot communities in Kitchener-Waterloo. We are proud to be a part of that.

429 A discussion of diversity would be incomplete if we didn't talk on the CHYM side of things with regard to the work we do with women's causes and women's organizations in our community.

430 We are huge supporters of a couple of women's shelters in town, Mary's Place and Selma House. We present a "Take back the night" march on a yearly basis. We have provided MCs for that.

431 We support women's athletics. We are looking forward to an event coming to town next month which is The Four Nations Cup which is the four best women's hockey teams in the world, Canada among them. A neat I would argue spin we have put on it is we have provided an autograph session with these world-class female world hockey players for the young girls and the young women in this town. We see them as being great role models.

432 Whether this fits into our discussion of diversity or not, I would argue it does. We are very proud of our support of women's causes on CHYM-FM.

433 I think in Kitchener it can be summed up like this. Diversity, cultural diversity on the news/talk side, takes the place of content. On the CHYM-FM side, it's a promotion in the public service we do.

434 MR. MILES: And just to finish off, Madam Speaker, if I could. We believe in cultural diversity because it's good business. It makes good sense. It makes sense to reflect the way the community is represented in communities such as Kitchener which has a more European cultural background, similar I guess to Winnipeg in the early days.

435 There is that aspect of what is really happening in the university section. There is a far more multicultural society and that's what these radio stations -- that we do on these Top 40 radio stations, whether it's Victoria or Calgary or Toronto and hopefully Kitchener are able to represent on it.

436 We also believe that we have got to reach out even further in that regard, so we have taken that step into markets that we are not even -- the Indigenous Peoples Leadership Conference is coming up in January. It's the first of its kind. It's in Edmonton.

437 We are not represented in the Edmonton market. We are a principal funder for the programming that is going to go on for this three day event on the stage. The Satellite First Nation group is actually doing the funding of it.

438 We are starting now even to take from our own marketplaces and further extend it out into the rest of Canada.

439 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much for that important review of your approach with your existing stations. As usual, this is the kind of discussion which also requires very specific steps and some action at all levels.

440 You can understand why we are trying to understand too the approach for the new station and what will be different.

441 That completes my questions, but I think my colleagues have some questions, beginning with Commissioner Cram.

442 COMMISSIONER CRAM: Thank you.

443 I found the concept of this station very interesting if I can sort of describe it as an interactive and responsive kind of thing.

444 You also talked about on the phone be nice and answer all phones. I assume that is going to be transferred here. Hopefully there is no voice tracking. If somebody phones in, I assume they phone in to be on air and have a discussion. Anybody can phone at any time, so therefore there would be no voice tracking done.

445 Is that what's happening at KISS?

446 MS ADAM: KISS in Toronto we do some voice tracking. It's pretty limited. We also have a run at the station where we have entrants from schools who want to get into the radio business. They come in and they answer the phone for us. They handle some of those duties.

447 When we are live from clubs, we don't have an announcer and a controller to answer the phones. We have part-time people that come in and answer the phones.

448 It would be my absolute dream come true if every single phone call that ever came into the radio station was answered. That is impossible because there are times -- not a lot of times but some times when we don't have somebody in the control room. It is usually between three and five in the morning, so the phones aren't really ringing off the hook at that time. When they are ringing off the hook, we do our best to staff the control room. Even if there is a DJ in there, we put part-time people in there to answer the phones as well.

449 COMMISSIONER CRAM: So voice tracking on KISS is only between three and five in the morning.

450 MS ADAM: Yes. It's actually between two and five before the morning show starts.

451 COMMISSIONER CRAM: That would be the proposal for here?

452 MR. MILES: And the same pattern will be here, yes, Commissioner.

453 COMMISSIONER CRAM: When you were talking about your increase in share as a result of this station, it appeared to me because of the out-of-market share that you propose to get that the Rogers radio share net would go up 3 to 4 per cent in this market.

454 MR. MILES: Yes, it would. Yes, that's right.

455 COMMISSIONER CRAM: And what's the share of your talk radio in Toronto?

456 MR. MILES: Oh, it's less than here. We had our best ratings last spring when we had a 3.8, so it's gone 3.2, 3.8 -- it's not as good as this -- don't tell those people in Toronto.

457 COMMISSIONER CRAM: Okay. Thank you.

458 Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

459 THE CHAIRPERSON: Commissioner Langford.

460 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Thank you.

461 I would just like to press you, Julie Adam, just a little bit, not in the sense of cross-questioning but just for my own information. I am part of the geezer demographic and have not had the privilege of listening to your radio station. Also, I don't live in Toronto and that makes it hard as well.

462 I'm trying to understand just factually what I would hear. I guess what I am hearing is that there are set newscasts of a couple of minutes and then there is a lot of time for reaction. Would it be fair to say that you don't have specific talk shows, chat shows, phone-in shows, but you do have a lot of that that goes on as a matter of course? Is that the way the format works?

463 MS ADAM: Absolutely. We do news in "The Morning Show", so that's six, seven and eight. It wouldn't be two minutes. It probably would be 60 seconds, produced packages.

464 However, in "The Morning Show", their mandate and the vision for that show is to be much more than just a music show. We play a considerable amount of music in "The Morning Show", but really the vision and the mandate for them is to come in every day and talk about things that relate to the audience, talk about their personal lives and their personal stories and how that relates to the audience and to talk about what's happening today.

465 I think that's why this format is so exciting. We certainly format the station and there's certain rules that we have. We play a certain amount of songs an hour and we run production in certain places, but the really, really fun part about being a program director is that you can throw all that out the window.

466 It's at those times that my job is really exciting because when something big is happening, all you have to do -- my office is right next door to the control room. I just walk in, open the door and say "Guys, let's get on this" and we are able to do that.

467 The interaction, and I do have a mandate at the station that, you know, they are answering these phone calls, they are also putting these people on the air and taking requests and having interaction with them through contests and giving away tickets and also just to talk to them. There are people on there all the time saying "Hey, what are you doing today" and they talk about cutting classes, although their parents don't listen. Right?

468 It's fun. It's a really fun environment. So it does go absolutely above and beyond the regular news packages.

469 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Could I be really boring though for just a couple of minutes. You are transporting this here somewhat. I'm just trying to get a sense of what it would be. I know you are having more fun in life than I am but. I think 99 per cent of the world is, so that doesn't make you special.

--- Laughter / Rires

470 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: What I'm trying to figure out is let's assume I turn on your radio station between say eight and nine or seven and eight and the world hasn't ended, it isn't September 11, there isn't anything huge going on. It's kind of a normal time.

471 I guess at eight o'clock I would get one of these 60 second news items.

472 MS ADAM: That's right.

473 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Let's assume it's a couple of days ago when they pumped the gas into the Moscow Theatre and saved as many people as they could. Would that be the lead story or because you are trying to go for a demographic that is much younger, would it be something completely different?

474 MS ADAM: Well, a few days ago the lead story would have been the sniper, so that was certainly on the news. The Moscow event or the Russian event would certainly be on the news.

475 We start with our demographic. I should say we start with the biggest world events and then we go to our demographic. We also cover sports and entertainment news as part of that, but we don't avoid --

476 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Sorry, is that all in 60 seconds?

477 MS ADAM: Yes.

478 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Wow.

479 MS ADAM: Yes. You know, the trick with this audience is you have got to keep it tight and running. They may do four or five things at a time, right? They listen to the radio, they surf the Internet, they watch TV.

480 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: We're talking the sniper caught, theatre saved, Anaheim in the series. We are moving right along here.

481 MS ADAM: You have got a job with us tomorrow.

482 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Okay. How about those Blue Jays? All right. Then we have two happy people who then come on. I don't want to sound pejorative here, but there are two sort of peppy peoople I guess come on. Do they talk then for a while or do we get right into music?

483 MS ADAM: Out of the news package we run a top hour music piece that has a music bed in the CD dig mat when Billie comes on.. They will talk --

484 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Doesn't Mad Dog?

485 MS ADAM: Mad Dog and Billie, a guy and a girl. They will come on --

486 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Is Mad Dog the boy or the girl?

487 MS ADAM: You will have to tune in to find out. You have got to phone the Web site. Mad Dog is a boy, yes. They will just come on and they will talk about what's coming up in the hour, they music they are going to play, if we are giving away any tickets if there is any special concert that is just going on. It is sort of a 30 second fiat of what's to come and then some station production and then into the first song of the hour.

488 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Okay. I won't take an hour top do this, Madam Chair. I am trying to figure out just roughly if we do an hour and a minute, if we go from eight to 9:01, we are going to get two one minute newscasts and I think you said seven or eight songs rather than 12 or something like that.

489 MS ADAM: Yes.

490 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: So how much time in music? How long is one of these songs generally?

491 MS ADAM: They are a couple of minutes each, so --

492 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: They're long.

493 MS ADAM: Yes.

494 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Okay. So we have got about half an hour of music.

495 MS ADAM: Mm-hmm.

496 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Then how much advertising is there on a normal day?

497 MS ADAM: On a normal day on "The Morning Show", about eight minutes.

498 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Okay. So we are at what, about 40 minutes now?

499 MS ADAM: About 38 minutes.

500 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: In the 61 minutes we are at about 40. We have done the news, two newscasts. So the rest of it is Billie and Mad Dog interfacing with each other or do they take phone calls as well?

501 MS ADAM: It changes every day. It depends on what's happening. Sometimes they have guests in. The guests may be entertaining guests or they may be local guests. Sometimes it's all phone calls, all interaction. Sometimes it's contests, so we are giving away tickets to a concert in Toronto.

502 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: So you don't have the sort of, I don't know, guest of the day type of thing we might find in an older format where tomorrow we are going to be Miss Canada. That just comes in on one of these hours and Billie and Mad Dog -- Mad Dog -- Billie and Mad Dog speak with Miss Canada. Is that the way that works?

503 MS ADAM: Yes, that's right. There's a bit of a formula to all of this. We try to keep it open so we really plan tomorrow's show today and today's show yesterday so that we can be up to date and as topical as possible.

504 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: And your other shows that aren't in these so-called prime times, will they have a host as well or two hosts?

505 MS ADAM: They have one host. At nine o'clock our mid-day announcer comes in. She works from nine until two. Then at two o'clock Tarzan Dan comes in and he works from two until seven and then we have a host in the evening that actually not only hosts the program, but he also plays -- spins all the music on the vinyl, so he is a DJ that mixes all his own music, does all his own production and also hosts the show. That's a heavily intense music program, tons of music, tons of phone calls, lots of interaction, all requests.

506 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Tarzan Dan and Mad Dog are different people, are they?

507 MS ADAM: They are.

508 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Has anyone ever seen them together?

509 MS ADAM: No. Don't blow my cover.

510 THE CHAIRPERSON: And that's basically the approach that would be brought to Kitchener-Waterloo.

511 MS ADAM: Yes.

512 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: It will be something like that or very close to that.

513 MS ADAM: Yes. I think it will be -- the personalities can be different. I think we have to look for the personalities that will fit into Kitchener. The music will vary depending on the market, but I think -- I mean I certainly would like to take the approach of answering all phones and answering all e-mails approach because, you know, I think that's what you need to do to be successful, to talk to this audience and how we execute it is going to depend on the program director in Kitchener.

514 That approach I think is the approach we take with all the Top 40 stations in Rogers. Then we leave that to the people in those markets to program exactly the way they want to program it.

515 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: That has been very helpful to me. We have had some fun, but it has also been very helpful. I was having a little trouble listing off the page precisely how kind of the talk/music worked and that helps me a lot.

516 Thanks very much.

517 MS ADAM: Thanks for letting me talk about it. I will talk about it all day if you want.

518 MR. MILES: Madam Chair, if I could just add to that for a second because I think it is important to understand a bit of our program philosophy, to understand how we get excited about this kind of a radio station.

519 We have done that. We started in Toronto, we did the same thing in Victoria, the same thing in Calgary and we are going to do here if we get permission. We don't do anything the same. What we do is the same concept, the same ideas, what we call best practices which is why we have the program directors understudy programs so that people like Julie can take this programming expertise and IQ and put it down to more people within our group.

520 That's the exciting thing about it, particularly with an audience that's so different from the rest of the kind of normal programming, if you could call it that, than radio traditionally does because they are people that at any given time, as you will know, Madam Chair, they are on the Internet, they are on the phone, they are beeping somebody, they are talking to this, they are yelling at the door and they are borrowing the car, if I understand correctly.

521 It's all going on at once and that's what this programming reflects. It takes people who understand this kind of programming to make it work. We believe we have that expertise.

522 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. Thank you to you and the team.

523 Counsel.

524 MR. WILSON: Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have a couple of brief questions.

525 If I can take you to page 10 of your application, specifically question 6.5. I will just give you a second to turn to that. In question 6.5 of your application you indicated that your proposed station would be located in a single station market. I am assuming that was an oversight in the application.

526 MR. MILES: Yes. We wish it were so, but it's clearly not.

527 MR. WILSON: Given that it's not a single station market, then do you undertake to refrain from soliciting or accepting local advertising for broadcast during any broadcast week when less than a third of the programming is local?

528 MR. MILES: Yes. We have no problem doing that because it will all be local.

529 MR. WILSON: I have one other question. In the course of questioning from the Chair, you have undertaken to file information through another document. I would like to confirm that that information will be filed by the end of the hearing.

530 MR. MILES: Correct.

531 MR. WILSON: Thank you.

532 Those are my questions, Madam Chair.

533 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

534 That concludes for this morning. We will now break until after lunch when we will have the next applicant.

535 Mr. Secretary, any announcement?

536 MR. LEBEL: That's fine, Madam Chair.

537 THE CHAIRPERSON: At one o'clock we will reconvene.

538 Thank you.

--- Upon recessing at 1200 / Suspension à 1200

--- Upon resuming at 1300 / Reprise à 1300

539 THE CHAIRPERSON: Order, please.

540 Mr. Secretary.

541 MR. LEBEL: Thank you, Madam Speaker.

542 We will now hear the next application which is an application by Global Communications Limited for a licence to operate an English-language commercial FM radio station in Kitchener.

543 The new station would operate on frequency 91.5 megahertz, channel 218B, with an effective radiated power of 3,600 watts.

544 The panel will be introduced. You have 20 minutes to make your presentation.

545 THE CHAIRPERSON: Any time you are ready.

PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION

546 MR. NOBLE: Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon Madam Chair, Commissioners and Commission staff.

547 My name is Gerry Noble. I am the President and Chief Executive Officer of Global Television Network. In a moment, I'll have Charlotte introduce our panel, but first I would like to take a moment to talk about our recent entry into radio in Canada and how this proposal fits within our overall corporate strategy.

548 Recent approval of our application for a new Jazz station in Winnipeg opened a new chapter for us by allowing CanWest to expand its Canadian media holdings into radio. This represents the first building block for what we hope will eventually lead to a new radio voice for Canadians across the country. Currently, we are preparing for the launch of that station, CJZZ-FM, in early March 2003.

549 We are here today looking forward to continued growth in the radio sector with our proposal for a distinctive new radio station to serve Kitchener-Waterloo with "The Beat", a rhythmic contemporary hit radio station.

550 Beyond meeting our corporate objectives, this application reflects our commitment to serve and support local communities and local talent in every market we serve.

551 By approving this proposal, you will help us to create a forum to nurture and expose artists in the rhythmic music genre and at the same time provide underserved listeners in this market with the music and information programming they clearly asked for in response to our survey.

552 Overall, the licensing of this service will help strengthen the radio marketplace both on a local and national level.

553 In the coming days you will hear a wide range of proposals for new radio service in a variety of formats. There are many applicants in this proceeding because there is a huge void in local service in this market -- our research confirms this.

554 But clearly, the most underserved audience in Kitchener-Waterloo is in the 15 to 34 demographic and we have specifically designed our proposal to meet their needs.

555 We have fully met and in many cases exceeded your licensing criteria. This includes our significant commitment to develop Canadian talent, which we will discuss further in our presentation.

556 If licensed, this station will provide a new window for Canadian CHR talent as well as provide training support for the radio broadcasters of the future in many ways.

557 We are eager to provide an alternative radio service for Kitchener-Waterloo and look forward to discussing the details of our proposal with you.

558 I would now like to ask Charlotte Bell, our Vice-President of Regulatory Affairs, to introduce our panel.

559 MS BELL: Thank you, Gerry.

560 Commissioners, we are pleased to appear before you to present our proposal for "The Beat". With us today, to my left, is Del Sexsmith. Del, the General Manager of our newly licensed Jazz radio station in Winnipeg has spent more than 23 years working in this sector.

561 Among other things, Del has worked as Program Director for CJOB and operations manager for both CJOB and CKIS-FM in Winnipeg. Many years ago he also worked as Promotions Director for a CHR channel in Winnipeg.

562 We are pleased that Del has joined our corporate team and that he is working with us in developing our radio strategy.

563 Behind me to my far left is our senior financial analyst, Katherine Browne, who has appeared before the Commission on many occasions.

564 Next to her is Liz Janik who we consulted in developing our programming and music strategies. Among other things, Liz has had extensive experience in programming radio stations in Canada and the U.S. and began her career in radio in Kitchener as a teenager who was eager to work in this sector.

565 Next to Liz is Jim Moltner, our technical engineer.

566 At the side table, to my far right is David Oakes, President of Oakes Research, who conducted our format and demand survey.

567 Sitting next to David is Ken Goldstein, a well-known broadcast economist and CanWest's Chief Strategy Officer.

568 Commissioners, we began this exercise with two goals in mind. First, to determine what was missing in the market in order to ensure that our proposal would add maximum diversity and, second, to cause minimal disruption to incumbents and ensure that the station would be sustainable as a stand-alone.

569 While there are local radio stations in Kitchener-Waterloo, more than 30 out-of-market stations account for almost 60 per cent of the hours tuned in this market. To a large extent this is due to the fact that only five local stations operate in this market. Given the void in local service, listeners find themselves seeking other alternatives to find their favourite music.

570 When we looked at the local listening trends, we found that the format attracting the highest out-of-market tuning by far was CHR. In fact, until its recent change to country, Hamilton's CING-FM (Energy) ranked third in terms of total hours tuned in this market despite the fact that it was not a local station.

571 With that in mind, we assessed the music interests of local residents in order to develop a proposal that would specifically meet the needs of the most underserved demographic.

572 The research confirmed strong demand for a CHR format that would focus on rhythmic music styles to meet the needs of an exceptionally large and vibrant community of young people who have been forced to search for alternatives to hear their favourite music.

573 Demand for this service is evidenced not only by a high level of out-of-market tuning and the results of our research, but by the overwhelming support we received from more than 700 young people who signed letters of support, providing a strong basis for demand.

574 I would now like to turn the discussion over to Del.

575 MR. SEXSMITH: Thank you, Charlotte.

576 Commissioner, Rhythmic Contemporary Hit Radio is a relatively new format that is emerging in markets with a particularly large base of young adults because it specifically responds to their music interests. It does this by blending a variety of music styles that share a common element -- they have a rhythmic beat.

577 These music styles range from dance music, the latest hits, soft R&B, to rap and hip hop, but do not include, rock country or adult contemporary styles heard on many other radio stations. While this format includes some urban music styles such as rap and hip hop, it incorporates a much wider range of music that appeals to a broader audience.

578 In fact, the blending of all forms of dance styles allows this format to appeal to the widest possible audience within the 15 to 34 demographic. The diversity of artists represented in this blended genre includes Jennifer Lopez, Moby, David Usher, Lil Bow Wow and Remy Shand.

579 To help our audience develop a deeper understanding and appreciation of music, we will also schedule special features that will include daily and weekly countdown shows.

580 The music that appeals to young adults has a powerful influence on their lifestyle. It extends to their taste in fashion as well as their passion for live concerts and dance clubs. This demographic is the most active of concertgoers and they want to be kept informed of what's happening on the local scene.

581 Thanks to our daily "Street Beat" segment, we will keep young audiences abreast of local cultural and entertainment information and events in Kitchener-Waterloo. They will know who is appearing at local clubs like "Revolution" on the weekend and what concerts will be coming up at the "Aud" in the coming weeks.

582 At the same time "Street Beat' will serve as a training ground for a new generation of radio professionals. Through a cooperative initiative with local post-secondary institutions in the area, our "Street Beat" reporters will be additional eyes and ears on what's happening locally. At the same time, students will obtain firsthand radio training under the supervision of our news department.

583 We will also provide local high school students with an opportunity to work with our team of radio professionals as on-air hosts for daily segments highlighting the activities and achievements of the region's many secondary schools on a daily basis through our "School Beat" reports.

584 Finally, our approach to news and information will be of specific relevance to young adults who have a demonstrated interest in this type of programming. Our newscasts will be designed to meet their interests.

585 While news segments will cover the top stories of the day, they will emphasize issues of importance to young listeners, told from their perspective, including environmental, health, technological, financial and political issues.

586 MS BELL: Beyond this, our application boasts the highest program and Canadian talent development spending of any applicant before you with our commitment to spend $2.1 million over the term of the licence to help develop and expose Canadian artists in all rhythmic styles.

587 Our plan includes a local talent search that will result in the creation of 35 professionally produced CDs by the end of the licence term, a local dance festival to provide free concerts to showcase the finalists of our talent search, training for emerging radio talent and a significant contribution to FACTOR to help fund the rhythmic artists on the local and national scene.

588 As well, our commitment to devote 40 per cent of our music selections to Canadian content surpasses current regulatory requirements.

589 We have proposed a music format that embraces cultural diversity. As such, we will ensure that the station promotes openness and inclusion of cultural differences through its music, spoken word programming and community support.

590 As part of our Canadian Talent Development initiatives and specifically our local talent search, we will encourage participation from artists representing a variety of cultural groups and will ensure that our judging panel is representative of the cultural community.

591 We will also ensure that at least one of the three annual scholarships to attend the Harris Institute of the Arts will be awarded to a visible minority student.

592 Finally, we have obtained a commitment from FACTOR that ensures that all of our annual $70,000 contribution will be dedicated to rhythmic artists of all kinds. FACTOR has recently developed a new program for urban music artists that we will help support through these funds. We have a letter from FACTOR describing the program and confirming its enthusiasm for our support.

593 Commissioner, this proposal fully meets your licensing criteria and meets the needs of an underserved audience in search of their own voice in Kitchener-Waterloo. Our short video presentation will give you a glimpse of what the station will sound like.

--- Video presentation / Présentation vidéo

594 MS BELL: Thank you for your attention. We are now prepared to answer your questions.

595 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

596 Commissioner Langford, please.

597 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Well, I am going to just cross off all my questions about Mozart and Beethoven because obviously that doesn't work.

598 Thanks for the video. It helps me. I'm beginning to understand where Mad Dog and Tarzan Dan fit in in Toronto.

599 My questions really are going to be pretty general. Your application is very complete and has a lot of detail in it and the survey information speaks very much for itself.

600 I think really what I am going to try to be working on here is just a little more understanding for myself and perhaps some of the ancient Commissioners on either side of me.

601 This is a little bit of a new world for us, some of this music. I hear it coming out of my daughter's rooms. I tend to try to ignore that. I guess I should have listened a little more closely.

602 I think we might as well start with format. That's where you started. I know we don't regulate format any more, but it does go to questions like diversity and trying to understand what precisely you will be adding that is new.

603 I do need a little help in that area personally. As I said, it's not something I consider myself an expert in. I have to be honest. I might as well admit that before you figure that out.

604 I guess where I would like to start is just this whole sense of rhythmic CHR, as you call it, and try and get a sense for what's different in what you are going to offer in comparison to what is already on offer, both locally and I guess in the out-of-market tuning.

605 You did mention that the Hamilton station was pretty well offering what you put before us and now they have switched to country. Perhaps we can get to that a little later when we talk about your survey results, why they would make such a move. It seems counterintuitive after reading your survey.

606 If I were to, for example, listen to the Top 10 or the Top 40 countdown on a rock station, how much of what I would hear there would be what I would hear in listening to your Top 40 countdown? Is that a fair question?

607 MS BELL: It's a very fair question. You generally won't hear the same music at all because rhythmic is not going to play any rock music at all.

608 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: So what's closest then? I have heard -- even I have heard of Jennifer Lopez. I assume there are some crossover artists here. What is closest to what you are offering?

609 MS BELL: In fairness, I think that you would find a little bit of crossover with a Hot AC station, for example, and artists in fact like Jennifer Lopez. Rene Shand is also someone who has played on adult contemporary radio stations.

610 If I can just back up, when we started this exercise, as we said in our opening remarks, we asked ourselves "Let's go find out what's in the market already and what's not there". That is exactly what we did and that is why we undertook the survey that we did and asked Mr. Oakes to survey the marketplace.

611 This type of music is really not being heard very much in this marketplace. There is a tiny bit of overlap with Rogers AC station and there was a station in Hamilton which was attracting about 70,000 people from this market who were listening to that station because they were looking for this type of music, obviously because it wasn't present locally.

612 Now that station is gone so that music is not very much present in this market.

613 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Can you speculate, because I understand it would be speculative, but why would they have switched out of this format if its' -- you know, you are bringing before us a survey which basically says there is an urgency almost in the sense of young people's need for this type of music. Why would they switch?

614 MS BELL: Well, we can't speak for them, but what I can say because we asked ourselves the same question, we actually obtained a press release that Corus released in advance of making format change. According to Corus, this change came about because they did research in southern Ontario, including the Toronto market, the Hamilton market, and found that there was a void.

615 I think, the way the press release reads, they were trying to reach a larger audience and that the station wasn't necessarily targeting the Kitchener market.

616 MR. MILES: Commissioner Langford, if I could speculate and I don't know Corus's marketing plans. As a marketer, intuitively I would say that what we are attempting to do in a lot of these formats, certainly in Toronto and now with this Hamilton change, is to go after a male-dominated demographic. Country is certainly that.

617 With their Mojo offering in Toronto, it would appear to me that perhaps what they are doing is putting a package together in their markets in southern Ontario to go after that specific male 35 plus market and offer to advertisers a very attractive male dominated marketing package.

618 That would be my speculation.

619 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: And yet we have more than one applicant here today that's looking for New Country and sees that as the missing link, if I can call it that, or certainly one of the missing opportunities here in this market and your own survey results must have revealed similar appetites.

620 Did you toy with the idea of going the country route?

621 MS BELL: We surveyed, and perhaps Mr. Oakes can fill in after I have done, but we in fact tested a number of musical genres. Of course country was one of them because we knew going in that CHR and country were not present in this market.

622 The interesting thing is that, as we said before, the third ranking station in terms of hours tuned in this market was CHR and number eight I think was CIDC which is based in Orangeville and the Toronto area which is also CHR. The sixth format according to the last BBMs was country.

623 In our own research I think it revealed that there was a high interest in modern country which crosses over a lot with music that is played on some adult contemporary stations.

624 We felt that country format wasn't in the market. It was a larger void with CHR and greater underserved demographic.

625 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Mr. Oakes, do you want to add anything to that?

626 MR. OAKES: About all I can add is when I looked at the results for country, I was concerned because if you do a modern country station, it's going to take a part of CHYM's audience off. What we tested for, New Country, Modern Country, was the biggest artists, but if you look at the market, most of the people that want that type of music are listening to CHYM right now.

627 It was my recommendation that we look elsewhere because there is just not enough diversity there.

628 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: That's kind of a nice corporate approach. You wouldn't be damaging the existing players as well. Is that part of your thinking?

629 MR. OAKES: Yes, exactly.

630 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: One of the points that you made through your applications and supplementary briefs, and of course all applicants make it, is that they intend to be part of this community and they intend to contribute. Obviously that's a laudable goal.

631 It's difficult to phrase the question. I am going to try now. Just forgive me if I don't get it right.

632 This type of music may appeal to a niche of young people. We saw some of them here. It doesn't appeal to other people. In fact, I think there's a considerable swath of society that is almost threatened by some of this music. We have seen instances where communities have been so upset by some of the rap music and what not that they have actually pressured the stations to play less or not at all.

633 How are you going to deal with this problem if the problem I perceive exists? If it doesn't, tell me, but if it does, how are you going to deal with it?

634 MS BELL: Well, I'll start and perhaps Liz Janik, who has had experience programming radio stations, can fill in.

635 What you are describing is really no different than what all of you and myself went through growing up when your parents didn't approve of the music you were listening to, didn't approve of the lyrics, thought it was strange and weird. "Turn that noise down". You know, you walk by your daughter's room and don't want to hear.

636 Our parents all did the same thing with us, so it's not a new phenomenon.

637 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: There's some that go lopsided though. Maybe every generation says that, but some of the lyrics have actually been published by public figures who have just said "This has gone too far".

638 MS BELL: And you know what? At the end of our day 10 per cent of our schedule is going to be related to rap, hip-hop music. In fact, we have already discussed this issue. For all of those music selections that have caused controversy, there are edited versions available.

639 First of all, we would not be playing anything that's unedited. We would only play edited versions that don't include the controversial lyrics that you are speaking of. Anything that is a little edgier would be played during the evening after 9:00 p.m.

640 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: So you do have a response to this. You have given it some thought then.

641 MS BELL: Absolutely.

642 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Okay. Now, you spoke about the global empire almost at this point -- it's getting bigger -- diversifying and branching out and you are in radio now. Why would you move so quickly to another format when you haven't even launched your very first experience in this which is smooth jazz in Winnipeg?

643 Why wouldn't you come here with smooth jazz, for example?

644 MS BELL: Commissioner Langford, radio is intensely local. Our approach and our strategy, because we have thought about it very carefully, is in responding to calls for applications first of all and as we started off telling you in our presentation, we look at every market individually and identifying and pinpointing exactly what is missing in that market and where the void is and then going in with something that makes sense for that marketplace.

645 Every market is different. The demand is going to be different. The demographic makeup of each market is different. Kitchener has a particularly large base of young people. It also has access to some of that music on some of the other stations that come in. CJRT I think creates a one share in this market.

646 In fairness, the approach that we are taking is not to launch a jazz network across Canada, but in markets where it makes sense we will apply for jazz licences.

647 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: And you are going to continue to apply for licences. Will they be market driven, each one?

648 MS BELL: Yes, they will.

649 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: So you are not going to become the king of smooth jazz or the king of rhythmic CHR.

650 MS BELL: No.

651 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Speaking of young people, though there area lot of young people in this area, many of them leave over the summer months. University students, many of them will go away, some will stay, many will leave. How do you factor that in when you talk about the need for this type of a service?

652 MS BELL: We also thought about that. Mr. Goldstein could probably add some information in terms of the demographics, but I think by and large you have between 80,000 and 100,000 people in that age group. A lot of the post-secondary institutions actually have co-op programs or classes during the summer. Some students stay over the summer months and work part-time. Hopefully some would stay and work at our station.

653 We did not feel that it would make a huge difference, but perhaps Mr. Goldstein can add some information here.

654 MR. GOLDSTEIN: Kitchener is one of the youngest markets in Canada. It has a median age which is significantly lower than Canada generally. If you go all the way from 15 to 34, you are probably closer -- I'm using the 2001 census now -- to about 120,000 people here in that age range.

655 In addition to that, of course, some of the students don't show up in the census because the census date is May 15.

656 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: I beg your pardon, Mr. Goldstein.

657 MR. GOLDSTEIN: Some of the students, the people who are here from September until the end of April or just until the first week of May, might be back home already when the census was taken. The census date is May 15 --

658 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: May 15, that's what I thought.

659 MR. GOLDSTEIN: 2001. So that represents, as you have correctly pointed out, for eight or eight and a half months a year there is an increase on top of an already young population.

660 We have obviously looked at that in terms of the potential, but we have been very careful. If you go to our schedule 13, you will find a line in there called the "Demographic discount". We couldn't think of anything else to call it. It's not because we are discounting the demographic group. We are very committed to the demographic group.

661 We have taken a factor of 10 per cent off to adjust for the comings and goings, so it's all fully integrated into the plan.

662 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Just to take the question to its extreme though, if all of the university and college students were to leave in the summer, which of course is ridiculous, but if they did, would it still be a feasible format?

663 MR. GOLDSTEIN: Oh, yes. You would still have 120,000 year-round. I think it's probably most reasonable to assume that of the 35,000 post-secondary students figure, half of them, you know, if you run all of the numbers, you come out pretty much where we came out.

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664 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Moving right along, you committed to a 40 per cent Canadian content, but at the same time in your -- I'm not sure if you used this word in your application, but you certainly used it in your introductory statement today.

665 You talk about this format as the new format. I think that's the word you use. Is there enough Canadian content that is that new?

666 MS BELL: Yes, there is. We have a list of about 350 Canadian artists who perform in this genre and/or within those music styles. Obviously some of them are more well known than others, but nonetheless there is a fairly large base.

667 In fact, as I was saying to you, FACTOR has just recently developed a new program for urban music and that has a lot to do with the fact that those music styles are developing in this country. There is also a large number even in southwestern Ontario of Canadian artists.

668 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: I think you used the figure 80. Isn't it 80 groups or something?

669 MS BELL: No. There are actually more.

670 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Actually more. Eighty and growing.

671 MS BELL: Yes.

672 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Every basement in every bungalow in every city is reverberating as we speak I'm sure.

673 So 40 per cent is feasible in your view.

674 MS BELL: Yes, it is.

675 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: And therefore I assume you would be willing to commit to that as a condition of licence.

676 MS BELL: Yes, we would.

677 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Thank you. Moving right along to what you call local production. As I said at the beginning, there is a lot of clarity in your application. I am just trying to hit points where in my mind I need a little more information.

678 I want to talk to you about the shall we call it the non-music programming, verbal news, information, your "Street Beat", your "School Beat".

679 I don't know if you were here this morning and listening to the Rogers presentation. I am certainly not trying to play one of you off against the other. That's what you do. We just spectate.

680 I couldn't help but notice that they have a very distinct way of doing it in their existing station where they blend it all and there is very what we could calls separate programming. There is their minute of news and still lots of non-music programming all blended in with -- what was that guy's name? Mad Dog. Yes, Mad Dog. Billie has got to get herself a name. I mean Billie is just -- Bad Billie or something.

681 Anyway, Mad Dog, Tarzan Dan and Bad Billie interview people and that seems to work for them. If I understand your application, and I may not, you seem to be a little more traditional in your approach, that you will have more news spots, more or less but slightly longer. I think they are two minutes each. Did you not say two minutes? Have I got that wrong?

682 MS BELL: They are a little bit shorter than two minutes.

683 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Okay. Longer than a minute?

684 MS BELL: Yes.

685 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Bigger than a bread-box.

686 MS BELL: That's right.

687 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Smaller than a Buick?

688 MS BELL: With no Mad Dog.

689 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: No. No Mad Dog? I'll talk to you in three years. You may change. I will attempt to bring this back to earth before the Chair hits me with something heavy.

690 It seems a little more traditional, that you have some programs that are sort of scheduled. Perhaps we could just talk about it a little. Let's make sure that we understand precisely how you are going to do it.

691 Perhaps first news. How are you going to handle news?

692 MS BELL: I am going to ask Del Sexsmith to take you through our spoken word programming.

693 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: That's probably who I should have asked. Thank you.

694 MR. SEXSMITH: Thank you, Commissioner.

695 First of all, as sort of a strategic and programming move, what we would like to do, as you have read, is do 50 newscasts per day Monday to Friday, plus scheduled newscasts on the weekend.

696 The newscasts Monday to Friday will be in drive periods, which is morning and afternoon where 14 of them fall, will be 91 seconds to coincide with the frequency, "The 91 Second Update" is what we will call it. That will all be sub-category 11 news.

697 Taking that 6:00 a.m. and 6:30, for example, an hour, that equates to three minutes of news in the course of an hour, but done in 91 second parcels.

698 In addition to that, outside the news content, we would do surveillance material which is weather and traffic in 20 second reports, so we would do five of those in the busy hours, in the drive hours. We would also do 20 second sportscasts.

699 In total, that would get us to five minutes in a drive hour of spoken word content that would fall into the areas of news, traffic, weather and sports.

700 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: And will you be pitching that news towards your audience?

701 MR. SEXSMITH: Absolutely. I guess I should talk about style. I heard a great deal about it this morning. The key is basically letting a younger demographic speak in their own terms to each other.

702 Usually I find with young people in my house they speak a lot more quickly than I do and they listen a lot more quickly than I do. That means their style is punchier, more direct headlines, very topical lines. Topicality would be featured and would touch on issues that are really important to them.

703 I would think in 91 seconds you could quickly do -- I gather from sources this morning we could talk about the fact that the death toll has increased in Moscow, that there is more discussion of Kyoto being a federal responsibility, that there is going to be a by-election here November 25, that Wilfrid Laurier has got a strike happening and they are picketing the Chairman's home, that there was a woman inside who survived a house fire in Kitchener and the Premier of Ontario is hinting we might get a hydro rebate.

704 That took less than 91 seconds, but that's the style with a little more entertainment and a lot more than fun than I did it. I think it could be done in a 91 second update.

705 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: And when we get to special occurrences, provincial elections, federal elections, will that vary? Some of these people are old enough vote.

706 MR. SEXSMITH: Yes. We took into account the fact that there is a very high university population here, of course. Those people are driven by a need for higher education and we think with that comes the interest in such things as elections.

707 We propose five new staff, including a news director. Accordingly, "The Beat" is going to be paying attention to things like elections, especially where there is a local impact.

708 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: So if you have five people and a news director and you have one person reading 91 seconds every hour -- am I right on that?

709 MR. SEXSMITH: No, 91 at the top of the hour and 91 at the bottom of the hour.

710 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Okay. That's right. Three minutes an hour approximately. What do the other five do?

711 MR. SEXSMITH: Essentially, one of them is a news director, one of the five, and you would need somebody in the station in the morning to do all the morning content and someone in the afternoon to do all of the afternoon content. That's essentially reading and preparing. That's three people there.

712 That provides two other reporter-journalists who are assets to the station who also are responsible partly for weekend coverage, but partly for gathering information and reporting on it to the station.

713 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Are they out and about then in a van, or are they just pulling wire copy and assembling three minutes per hour?

714 MR. SEXSMITH: Well, wherever possible, the best idea would be to get them out and about. It all depends on the nature of the story. Sometimes the story can be built by the telephone and in some cases, of course, it's better go and do the interview in person.

715 Particularly for younger people, there may be individuals travelling through town, entertainers, people of interest to do with the environment, so on and so forth. You have a choice. You can do the interview by telephone or perhaps you can go and see them in person.

716 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: And where do we work that sort of thing in? Obviously it's not going to be a ten second clip. Otherwise it would hardly be worth doing the interview. Are we going to work that into the programming itself somewhere interspersed with music?

717 MR. SEXSMITH: The interview with the entertainer, say, or the politician --

718 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Sure, it's an election.

719 MR. SEXSMITH: When it comes to entertainment, we also have our "Street Beat" reporters which is where we want to work with Conestoga College and other campus radio people to basically help and develop the entire entertainment programming.

720 There's people who will be in touch directly with entertainers in the area and will have their own separate reports which will be a two minute report and would air four times daily.

721 There's a package of information into which both the newsroom and the "Street Beat" reporters can provide the material, but as you pointed out, if there is something of interest that would fit into surveillance, especially if it suits the younger demographic, it can be blended into the entertainment in the entire day.

722 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: So "Street Beat" is four two-minute reports or segments daily or is it one two-minute segment reported four times?

723 MR. SEXSMITH: It's repeated four times.

724 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: One two-minute segment?

725 MR. SEXSMITH: Yes.

726 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: And what about "School Beat"?

727 MR. SEXSMITH: "School Beat" will be done in conjunction with local high schools. The station will be approaching instructors at the schools and asking them to nominate a male and a female to work with the station gathering information.

728 Each school would be given a given day when they would provide a report and update on sports, dances, local entertainment, special events and a feature which would air after six in the evening would contain information from at least three schools and would be five minutes in length.

729 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: And is it repeated?

730 MR. SEXSMITH: At this point, no, but it could be. It's just a case of negotiating with the actual teams and the schools where they think the best time is. At the moment it appears six o'clock would be the best time but it could be repeated.

731 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Excuse me. Let me see if I have got this right. I don't think the times were in your application. I'm not sure about that. I have just been making notes and I have also been trying to listen. Keeping in mind walking and chewing gum and all those different things, I may have gotten this wrong.

732 Non-music segments, if I can call it that, guaranteed no matter what might happen if something like Miss Canada pops into town or whatever, if I could call them guaranteed non-music verbal programming at this point, I have under news 15 91 second segments per day, 14 of those in drive times.

733 MR. SEXSMITH: You are correct except the fifteenth is at noon and it's three minutes. We do one newscast at noon, so 14 ninety-ones and one three minute.

734 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: One at noon, three minutes, and 14 drive times 91 and no news after that?

735 MR. SEXSMITH: Other than those times, no, except on the weekend. On the weekend the news schedule would feature nine two-minute newscasts. They would be from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and at alternate hours 2:00 p.m., 4:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m., plus a three minute newscast at noon.

736 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Okay. And then going back to weekly, we would have one two-minute segment of "Street Beat" repeated four times and one five-minute segment of "School Beat", not repeated.

737 MR. SEXSMITH: That's correct.

738 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: So can you give me a total time because I haven't done my -- I guess that's about --

739 MR. SEXSMITH: I have totals if you need them.

740 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Oh, I would love to have totals. If I do this in a public place and I get it really, really wrong, I am going to be even more embarrassed than I am now. Yes, give me totals, please.

741 MR. SEXSMITH: Some category news Monday to Friday would come to 138 minutes and weekends would come to 42 minutes, so the total news subcategory 11 would be 180 minutes per week. Subcategory 12, other, which is surveillance, the weather, traffic and sports of which I spoke, would be 146 minutes per week and then the subcategory 12, other material, "Street Beat" and "School Beat" would total 65 minutes per week. Those three blocks would come to 391 minutes per week.

742 In addition to that, we would guesstimate that our announcer entertainment, the rolling discussion and blended things we talked about would be two minutes per hour, would be 252 minutes per week. The grand spoken word total would be 643 minutes per week or 8.5 per cent of original programming 6:00 a.m. to midnight.

743 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: So this is going to be very different from what we heard this morning, isn't it? I mean we are not going to have a lot of Mad Dog and Billie talking. They are only talking two minutes per hour around the music is what you estimate. I assume that could change, but that is sort of the plan at this point.

744 MR. SEXSMITH: I can't really speak for Mad Dog or Billie --

745 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: I don't think any of them can actually.

746 MR. SEXSMITH: Ours is more of a short burst of information package. There is still room there for nine to ten songs per hour in the busiest hours. There's still room there for up to 12 minutes of commercials. It's a very fast paced, highly active type of format and is in fact typical of a lot of contemporary style music stations, but I think would fit this station appropriately.

747 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Is there a station that you patterned it on anywhere in the States or Canada that would give us some guidance as to what the final product would sound like or is this a brand new concept?

748 MS BELL: I don't think we patterned it according to anything. I do think it would sound fairly similar to what Rogers did propose or what other CHR rhythmic stations would do. Very fast paced. We don't have any plans for talk shows or open line programming. It's a fast-paced style of programming.

749 We might have a little bit more spoken word, but at the end of the day, it's still a different beat than what you would hear on CHFI or on an adult contemporary station or on CBC or any of those services.

750 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: There's not as much connection though, is there, between sort of the community and the station. You are putting it out and they are taking it in, it sounds to me anyway. I don't say that critically. I am just trying to define it. There isn't as much of a bond it seems between the actual listeners. You transmit and they receive. Is that fairly accurate?

1350

751 MS BELL: Actually I would say that that's not accurate at all. I think the way we have designed the station is to go out and to have people in fact from the community participate and be announcers and work with us, you know, throughout our "School Beat" and "Street Beat" reports.

752 The reason we incorporated those into the programming mix in fact is because we heard from our survey that they are very interested in local information and entertainment updates. They want to get involved. They are very enthusiastic about the music.

753 We will have young people introducing music selections in our Top Countdown shows, so I think they are going to be very involved with the service.

754 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Let's get into some of this involvement because I am not seeing it, to be perfectly honest with you, yet, and I hope that you can get it up on the record so that I can see it.

755 "Street Beat" is done with volunteers. How do you manage that? Who is in charge of the volunteers and how will it work?

756 MR. SEXSMITH: Well, "Street Beat" we do see as an extension of learning broadcasting and journalism. That's why we have undertaken to speak to Conestoga, Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier about involvement, particularly Conestoga.

757 We see it as internship, an opportunity to work very long hours and learn a real working situation, exactly how professional news material is gathered and put together for a radio station and allow them to have their point of view and their voices on the air. We see that as total involvement.

758 At the end of the day we are hoping to negotiate a course credit from the college for that exact program.

759 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Does that mean you are going to have just one person you will choose from the college? What I don't quite get here is at the end of the day this is a two minute segment, so how many people will get a course credit for this? How many people will work on it?

760 MR. SEXSMITH: Our plan is to look at two students per semester and each student brought along to the point by the end of the semester where their level of competence has earned them a course credit and a degree of confidence.

761 The amount of material they provide in two minutes will be substantial. In an environment we have a 91 second news update which, you know, goes from Moscow to a by-election. An awful lot can he profiled in two minutes.

762 Plus, to do an original feature every day for a student is a fair amount of work. It is quite a workload and I think is one to be proud of. There is no sense burdening them. It is better to give them something that they can really get a hold of and work hard at.

763 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Will two of them be working at once or one for a while and then another one?

764 MR. SEXSMITH: No. The two will be working together and they will be under the supervision of the news director. I believe you asked that earlier.

765 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Right. There will be one professional, two students, and they will be responsible for putting together a two minute segment. And what about during the summer?

766 MR. SEXSMITH: Well, one of the bonuses is that by the end of the actual period of the actual university term as we get toward summer, there are people who can then go on to do the work because they can be part-time employees in effect.

767 They have the opportunity if it has worked out well and everyone likes the idea, and wants to continue on-air on a paid basis, then they can maintain that feature for us through the summer.

768 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: And the "School Beat" at the high school level, how many would be involved in that five minute segment? How many volunteers or students?

769 MR. SEXSMITH: The idea is that we would have a male and a female reporter from each high school. Two to three high schools would be profiled each evening in the feature. Each high school would be given one night a week at which time they would know to listen for the entertainment and information in its own school presented by its own people.

770 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Are there five high schools here?

771 MS BELL: There are 21 actually in the region.

772 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: So you take three per night seven days a week.

773 MS BELL: Exactly. And I should say we did speak with representatives at Conestoga. We also talked to people at local high schools. The feedback we got was very positive. In fact, the local high school said "You know what? No one comes out to cover anything, our events, our achievements".

774 In fact, one of the high schools we spoke to had just been awarded an award for multiculturalism the night before and no one in the local media had covered the story. It's not because the local media is not involved in the local community, but in fairness, none of the stations are targeting this demographic. There is just so much you can do.

775 This is our way of reaching out to our target audience and making them a part of the station. It's our way of joining in with the community and really getting the pulse of what's important at the high school level and post-secondary because they are a large portion of our target audience.

776 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: And will you have a host for this "School Beat" who will then go to the different schools or will the students come to the studio or how will that work?

777 MR. SEXSMITH: Essentially the news director and assistant news director would work with the students at the studio. It's best to bring together groups and train them at one time and make them aware of the particular tools of the trade. That's the vision for now.

778 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: So we are getting kind a third of two minutes less host time and introduction for each group of students, each pair of students. They do what, everything from this sort of an award to football scores to what dances are on?

779 MR. SEXSMITH: Sure. It's a five minute feature by the way, but yes, they do introduce each other on the show, et cetera.

780 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: I apologize, it is a five minute section. So they do get quite a long time. Would they comment on the music as well or will there be music during that segment or will it be all spoken word?

781 MR. SEXSMITH: That will be entirely spoken word.

782 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Thank you for that. That helps me a lot. I think I have got enough information. I think I understand that. Is there anything else? Perhaps I should just put it generally that I haven't touched on. We touched on news and "School Beat" and "Street Beat" and weather and driving conditions. Is there any other non-music programming that I haven't touched on?

783 MS BELL: No, I don't think there is.

784 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Then I would like to move along. Are we still all right on time, Madam Chair? I would like to move along, if I may, to just a very few questions I have on Canadian Talent Development, and as you pointed out, the total being $2.1 million over the licence term, which even with my limited arithmetical skills seems to work out to $300,000 a year.

785 There are a couple of areas of it which I just don't quite understand. They may seem minuscule in terms of this large amount, and I am not trying to in any way just bypass it. It is very clear. The amount is clear so I don't have any questions about it. There are a few just very tiny ones.

786 For example, you speak of a $35,000 annual scholarship for three scholarships. Then you say in one of your deficiency responses of May 22 -- you need not turn to it -- that each scholarship is estimated to be $11,500. Could you give me an exact number on that or is there a reason why it can only be estimated?

787 MS BELL: Sorry. That's just a bad term that I used. That is the number. That is the amount.

788 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Okay. As I say, it may seem needlessly picky, but the job here is to try and clarify any questions and that was one of them.

789 MS BELL: That's fine.

790 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: You speak as well about the Canadian Dance Music Festival's initiative and that there will be a $70,000 annual commitment to that.

791 And then I get a little confused about the $40,000 that are going to be used to fund additional stages. I'm just not quite sure how that would work, these additional stages and the $40,000 funding. What do you mean by that?

792 MS BELL: I think we're trying to build on an event that is relatively small right now that's organized by the City of Kitchener. It's a one day festival celebrating life in Kitchener, so you are looking at food. They have had in the past local DJs and artists perform. We would want to expand on that and set up stages and provide free concerts as part of that event.

793 We have spoken to a local business club owner actually who is also interested in getting involved in the event. We haven't had discussions with the City of Kitchener.

794 We are trying to estimate how much it would cost to put on such an event, so we have given you an estimate in terms of what are the costs. We haven't broken it down in detail.

795 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: But we are actually talking physically about setting up additional stages, platforms on which additional groups can construct their stuff.

796 MS BELL: That's right.

797 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: And that's what the money is going to. Do you have some sort of an agreement in place that spells this out?

798 MS BELL: No, we don't have a formal agreement in place. In fairness to the city, I think they supported a number of applicants that felt uncomfortable about entering into anything with any specific applicant at this time, so we have not had detailed discussions with them.

799 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Now, Ms Bell, you have more experience in this than me. You will know that there is many a slip between the cup and the lip as they used to say. What these sorts of funding arrangements are intended obviously to do is to fund talent development and not music -- sorry, not the food booths. I'm certainly not indicating that that's what they would do.

800 Certainly at some point we would need something firmer. Now this is a small part of a very large commitment, but I think you will agree that at some point we would need something a little more concrete, something that we can place in a file. I don't know how you would give us any comfort in that area.

801 MS BELL: We would absolutely be willing to give you something if we were awarded a licence. We would give you something confirming exactly how the money is going to be spent.

802 The whole idea here, Commissioner Langford, is to put back into the community, to provide an outlet for local artists to be heard. It would give an opportunity to the ten finalists for a talent search, another opportunity to be exposed and to play in public and to be compensated for that also.

803 This $70,000, no matter how you slice it, it's going to be spent entirely in doing that.

804 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: I think what we would require, and you can understand it because this is a Canadian talent development. It isn't free breakfasts all around and you all come out. We have to ensure somehow that we have something there.

805 Another example in the same area is that there is $30,000 earmarked for performance. We would like to know how that will get from your pocket to the performers and what other pockets it might through en route and make sure that it does get to the performers.

806 That's in no way trying to cast aspersions on anybody's bookkeeping or whatever. It's just something that has to be done in order for it to quality. I'm sure it's something you want done too, so if you can give us some comfort at an appropriate time on that, I think we would be happy.

807 MS BELL: Commissioner Langford, there is no problem. Just a clarification for myself, are you asking us to file something more specific with you this week?

808 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: It doesn't sound like you can, so I am going to leave that with counsel and perhaps he can arrange something. It sounds to me like everybody's intentions are honourable, but the festival is perhaps in a position where they can nail it down from what you are saying.

809 I want to be guided by Mr. Wilson on this. Perhaps he can pick up that thread after I am finished or if you want to go ahead now, James -- do you want to give that some thought.

810 We will do it after, in the fullness of time.

811 MS BELL: Thank you.

812 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: It sounds like you may have difficulty filing something that soon. Obviously we are not going to try to press you into trying to do the impossible.

813 Moving along to the five contest winners, and again we are looking at small amounts, but they are amounts where I do have some questions. In your talent search initiative you are going to have five winners who will get a cash prize of $20,000 and then you suggest that these funds could be combined with funds from other sources such as FACTOR.

814 I guess we are just trying to figure out how precisely you see this kind of recording initiative that comes out of this working. If they don't get the matching funds or other funds and if they do get the funds, it's a little vague in my mind as to how you are going to administer this $125,000 budget and how we ensure that in fact CDs come out of the burner at the end of the day.

815 Can you give me a little more information on that initiative?

816 MS BELL: Well, Commissioner Langford, I think that you can produce a CD for anywhere from anywhere between a couple of thousand dollars to $50,000, even more. This is awarding $20,000 per person. If they wanted to obtain additional funds from other sources to produce a CD, they could do that. It could be combined with other funds. It doesn't necessarily have to be.

817 We would be ensuring that that $20,000 is paid directly to the studio that would be producing the CD to make sure that the money is going where we intended it to go.

818 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Would they be producing it with your facilities?

819 MS BELL: No, they would not, although there is a label. I can ask Liz Janik to provide a little bit more information. High Bias Records has actually approached us and is interested in distributing the CDs for the five recipients, but I would ask Liz to add some information there.

1405

820 MS JANIK: With FACTOR funding, they can match funds that the artist puts forward, but most of these artists have absolutely no funds, so it's hard to match the funds that FACTOR offers.

821 The relationship with High Bias Records is to offer our artists a label and a national distribution system through which they can release their record and get it distributed throughout Canada.

822 What we would like to see through this initiative is absolutely five new CDs every single year from artists who are based in the Kitchener-Waterloo area.

823 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: And I assume you will be playing these CDs once they are produced.

824 MS BELL: Yes, we would.

825 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: That's a good thing.

826 One final FACTOR question if I may. There's $70,000 that you directed to FACTOR and you have asked them to support artists in this particular genre, the CHR rhythmic. Do you have an agreement with them or is it just a verbal understanding at this point?

827 MS BELL: We have a verbal understanding that they would direct 50 per cent of the funds to southwestern artists, southwestern Ontario artists, and we have a written agreement that they would support rhythmic artists, so we could file that letter or we could have them revise the letter.

828 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: I think I will leave that one to Mr. Wilson as well. He does much better with revising and filing than I do.

829 MS BELL: All right.

830 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Fine. Those are my questions in that area. I wanted to move on fairly quickly to the revenues and expenses side of this whole world, noting that of all the applicants, I think if I have got this right you anticipate the highest revenues and the highest expenses.

831 I'm not sure whether that's indicative of anything really other than your best marketing and business planning, but I'm wondering if any one of your group could add anything to that observation.

832 MS BELL: I would ask Katherine Browne to go through that with you.

833 MS BROWNE: I'll start out with some of the specifics of how we came to our projections and then I might ask Ken Goldstein to expand a little on specifically our revenue projections.

834 We looked at the potential advertising market within the Kitchener-Waterloo area historically and then obviously came up with our projections for the entire market over the seven year term and through David Oakes Research came up with an estimate of a best seven share with our rhythmic CHR format.

835 Once I have gone through this process, I will ask Ken to expand a bit further on the market potential within Kitchener-Waterloo.

836 Essentially we have factored in, as Ken already explained, a demographic discount as well as what we refer to as our new entrant adjustment for the first couple of years. What we do anticipate in the second year of our licence term is that by bringing in this new format we will be repatriating dollars that are now currently going to stations that are targeting other markets.

837 That's how we see a lot of the dollars getting back into the Kitchener-Waterloo market from the second year beyond within our licence term.

838 On the expense side, I have also seen what you have seen, that our expenses are the highest. Where we have focused a lot of our dollars are in the sales advertising promotion area as well as in programming. Obviously we feel pretty strongly that these are the two key areas where we need to invest our dollars in order to make this work.

839 As well, not having a radio infrastructure we don't have the same kind of synergies that possibly some of the other stations would have in these areas. That aside as Del talked about, we are looking at building a local news group, we are looking at launching the station with a fairly good promotion budget to really support the new genre in the local market.

840 Those are the key areas where we focused our spending.

841 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Mr. Goldstein, did you want to add to that?

842 MR. GOLDSTEIN: Just very briefly. I think that the projections reflect our assessment of a very good radio market. As a matter of fact, in the projections that I did in the report that is part of the supplementary brief, we actually were too conservative. It is actually now running about $600,000 a year ahead of that point. We have the latest TRAM results and we, of course, have your results.

843 As you are aware from your own results, you have got a PBIT margin here now over 24 per cent, but the real story I think is on that base, that we are committed to the market and we are committed to the format.

844 We are saying "Look, this can be a very successful station if we really make the commitment" and that's what you see in the projections for expenditures and that's what you see in the projections for revenue.

845 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Obviously there is lots of scope for getting revenues without hurting anyone, which is always nice, but even this morning's applicant admitted that they would hurt themselves a little, that there always is some leakage from existing players even though, you know, so many listeners are going outside of the market in some way, whether through CDs or through outside stations or through the Internet to get what they want.

846 Still there will be some pain. Where will the pain be felt? Who will feel the pain if you are to get the gain?

847 MS BELL: Mr. Goldstein will answer that.

848 MR. GOLDSTEIN: I think the pain, and I might say this is a very short-lived pain, the pain in the very first year amounts to about 5 or 6 per cent of the revenue of the current stations. It would be felt to one degree or another across all of the music based stations, less so obviously in the talk spoken word based station.

849 The key thing is, and again we put it in the second year, to be essentially conservative it takes a little bit of time to build up a station and get ratings and published and so on. By the second year of the operation of this proposed new station the total revenues of the other stations would be greater than what they were the year before the new station started.

850 There is a little bit of pain. We think the cushion is there. We think it is very short-lived.

851 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: And what if we were to license two but non-competing formats? Take, for example, a country and western or a new country as they call themselves and your application, how does the pain work out then, Mr. Goldstein?

852 MR. GOLDSTEIN: Well, first of all, using our application as the basis for making this calculation is, of course, the right way to go.

853 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Well, I did want to ask you a question that you could answer. Let's just put it that way. Since you are not Mr. Rogers, I thought it best to stick with your file. You are to read nothing more than that into it.

854 MR. GOLDSTEIN: Oh, okay. You know, radio is a very optimistic business.

855 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: So is regulation, I can tell you that. Starry-eyed some would say.

856 MR. GOLDSTEIN: Clearly it would have to be a non-competing format, as you have correctly pointed out, and probably it would have to be a country format because that is the other, if you will, available slot.

857 We think that would stretch the process out a little, but keep in mind that that would also involve repatriation. Given that that is the case, we think it's doable.

858 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: And rather than year two, when do you think the pain would stop?

859 MR. GOLDSTEIN: Probably year three.

860 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Well, now that we are on a roll and we are handing licences out by the bucketful, let's give out a religious one as well or a Christian one. I'm sorry, I can't remember. Christian music I think they call it.

861 Now you know the applications, you have read them all. We are handing out yours and we are handing out one of the new country and we are handing out one of the Christian. How is the pain now? I'm throwing you to the lions to borrow a Christian story.

862 I don't expect this to be an exact answer.

863 MR. GOLDSTEIN: No. I was restraining myself.

864 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: I'm just looking for your reaction in the sense of what this market can absorb. I find this a kind of an interesting experiment. You may find it more painful than I do, but I can afford to be more academic.

865 MR. GOLDSTEIN: I would think that licensing one of the Christian stations would not have a material impact on -- based on their published, you know, -- based on their applications. I think that they have generally targeted themselves differently.

866 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: So just to be absolutely clear, if we were to license your application and a Christian alone, the pain would stop in two years and if we were to license your application and CHR, three years. If we were to license all three -- sorry, not CHR, new country -- if we were to license all three, still three years. Is that a correct assessment?

867 I know this isn't scientific, but is that your seat-of-the-pants reaction?

868 MR. GOLDSTEIN: Approximately.

869 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Well, thank you for that. That's very, very helpful.

870 Now, I want to talk to you just a little bit about the notion of cross-media ownership, perhaps your least favourite subject in the world. I will try to be gentle. I must say to you that from the answers you have already given me on the form that your newscasts will take and what not, my own predisposition -- I can't speak for the other Commissioners at this table -- at this point is it doesn't seem to be a huge problem, and yet it's there.

871 So you are new in radio, but you are certainly not new in television and you are certainly not new in -- well, you are fairly new in newspapers, but you are a presence as well, though the one non-Canadian on your Board of Directors is not with us any more.

872 What I would like to know is what kind of protective barrier you think might be necessary so that we aren't getting kind of a party or a global line across the board, particularly keeping in mind that we have a very young audience and perhaps not sophisticated news viewers, readers and listeners.

873 MR. NOBLE: First let me start by saying, Commissioner, yes we do have global television broadcasting to this region through its Paris transmitter, although we don't focus our news in this region. We are licensed for Ontario. CH broadcasts in Hamilton and focuses its news in the Hamilton, Halton and Niagara region.

874 Although we own four community newspapers in the region, the tri-city region, that's four of 30 in the total community newspapers in the area. Indeed, those community newspapers are currently among our group of other assets which are being offered for sale to other parties.

875 In terms of what we could offer the Commission and indeed our listeners to ensure that the news that they are hearing on the radio station is indeed directed at the local level is what we have offered in our Winnipeg application, which is to keep the newsroom, have its own news director and from a commercial point of view, the news that this radio station is going to collect and broadcast will be very local indeed. It necessitates that it has to be of local interest to those young viewers.

876 I think with the separate newsroom, a station with its own news director should suffice.

877 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: And would you consider it an affront if I asked you whether you had given any thought to the notion that we might request a COL on some sort of newsroom independence or editorial independence or would you be willing to look at something like that?

878 MR. NOBLE: We would be willing to look at it. We wouldn't see it as an affront. We would see it as a normal regulatory concern on this issue.

879 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: We don't want to offend anyone here, but we do want to set up, you know, reasonable firewalls where people -- and they might do you as much good as anyone else. I will leave that to Mr. Wilson to come up with something interesting that he can run by you when I finish my questions, which I almost have by the way.

880 I think we are almost down to really the ones where you get to wax poetic here and the real feel-good stuff from your point of view. I think what I would like to do is sort of tee you up as to what the next two are.

881 I'm going to ask you to share your cultural diversity plans with us. You have a little bit in your opening statement, but this gives you a chance to fly a little. Finally, I am going to ask you why your "Beat the beat" would be the best use of this frequency, this scarce public commodity.

882 If we could start with cultural diversity.

1420

883 MS BELL: Thank you. In terms of our cultural diversity plans, as you said, we have talked a little bit about it in our opening remarks. Basically our approach to this with this station is that the format that we have chosen embraces cultural diversity as you saw it from our video, not only our large number of artists who play this type of music from a variety of cultural backgrounds, the students in universities are also very diverse.

884 The mere fact that we have chosen this format is going to force us obviously -- it's a fait accompli that the station will be diverse with a target audience of young people and the work we are going to be doing directly with students at post-secondary institutions and high schools. We will be getting feedback from them which is one of the reasons why we did not establish an advisory committee.

885 We felt that there are a number of ways that you can reach to the community. The way we chose to do this was through this program with "Street Beat" and "School Beat". We are very excited about it. As I said, we have received very positive feedback from those institutions, so we are getting a bit of feedback from the students, from teachers and other adults who are working at educational institutions, providing feedback, giving us guidance in terms of how we should be approaching those questions in our programming.

886 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: I'm not in any way suggesting that cultural diversity plans and strategies aren't necessary. I think they are. But has it reached the stage almost where it would be just stupid business not to have a cultural diversity plan?

887 MS BELL: I think you are probably right. We have a cultural diversity plan for the Global Television Network. We will be launching a mentorship program for Global in January. There are a number of initiatives that we have underway that should we get the licence, the radio station would join in that plan also.

888 Yes, you are absolutely right. It makes business sense. However, I would point out to you that we looked at the demographic breakdown in this marketplace and there is less than 9 per cent of the community that belongs to visible minority groups, so we are going to be going into the community and working with those groups in particular.

889 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Perhaps before letting you speak on the best use of the frequency, if I could just ask one question or just open one line of inquiry.

890 You have spoken about particularly things like "School Beat" and "Street Beat" and obviously with some of your development funding plans this will happen naturally. On a day to day basis or perhaps week to week, month to month, season to season, you pick however you want to do it, how do you plan to become a member of this community? What kind of things are you gong to do to become a member of this community? What do you see yourself doing in general terms?

891 MS BELL: Well, the first thing is we would have a radio station here. We don't have a local media outlet in this community at present. Of course, "Street Beat" and "School Beat" is part of it. We are going to be working with local with the local clubs. There are seven venues in this market who have facilities to do live music. We would be working with them very closely.

892 I would also ask Del to perhaps give you some other examples.

893 MR. SEXSMITH: Obviously the material that is reported on by "The Beat" makes your presence in the community and invites participation. In addition to reporting, there is the entire concept of the sale and production of music.

894 We talked about weekly countdowns. There's a way that individuals can be involved by telephoning the station and identifying their favourite music selections, hear themselves introduce the music selections on the air.

895 This leads to business opportunities for record stores that cannot currently move as much product as they would like. Now that it's being promoted, you develop relationships with people through your promotions that are connected to your sales department.

896 Restaurants, clubs, special events, you become a force in the community on campus, universities, high schools. Our presence basically by virtue of the music and the style of entertainment we have, you become a very important part of the fabric of the community.

897 MR. NOBLE: And if I could add, Commissioner, one of the most obvious ways that we get involved locally is that we will be hiring local executives to run the station, local talent to voice the station.

898 Part of the Global and CanWest philosophy is that those managers get involved in local charities, in community-type organizations. They are encouraged to do it. The station will have one of the -- one of the Global and CanWest normal donations policies where we contribute to local charities in air time, in cash and executive time.

899 All of that will come as a package under CanWest ownership. Outside of normal programming, that's the corporate philosophy in terms of our connection with the community.

900 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: Thank you. The last one, best use of the frequency, why you?

901 MS BELL: Well, to answer your question, the competing applicant for the same frequency is an applicant from the Brantford market whose application is premised on serving the Brantford market, not on serving Kitchener-Waterloo.

902 We feel that in terms of making the best use of the frequency, this frequency is actually going to cover the entire Kitchener-Waterloo. It gets into Guelph, it gets into Brantford, Cambridge, the entire area.

903 We have proposed $2.1 million in Canadian Talent Development. We have exceeded the Canadian content requirements. We feel that the Commission, as it usually does, awards frequencies based on the contribution that you make, that applicants are making.

904 We feel that we are making a great contribution to the Kitchener-Waterloo marketplace and to the Canadian broadcasting system as a whole. It's not that we are against the licensing of that station. We also asked our engineer to look at alternative frequencies for the Brantford applicant and he has prepared a report which we can file with you, and has identified three alternatives.

905 COMMISSIONER LANGFORD: We would like to have that report. Thank you very much.

906 Madam Chair, those are my questions.

907 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

908 Commissioner Williams.

909 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Good afternoon, panelists. My questions are intended to proceed a little further down the path that Commissioner Mad Dog Langford's evolving tight bright questioning style has established.

910 Given that 76.5 per cent, according to the Micro VBM Fall 2001 Report, of the 12 to 17 age group that is tuning to out-of-market stations, perhaps Mr. Oakes can elaborate as to where and to what type of music this demographic is getting what they want now, focusing on the balance of their core audience of 15 to 24 and, of course, on your overall target of 15 to 34 and to what extent are each of the segments of your target audience tuning to the rhythmic CHR format of your business proposition?

911 MS BELL: Can I just start by saying that we have only access to the BBMs for last year. We don't have the current ones -- sorry, from the spring BBMs. We don't have current BBMs since the Hamilton station switched to country which I think would make a difference in terms of where they are tuning.

912 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay. So let's assume that the information is correct, 76.5 per cent of the 12 to 17 age group is tuning out-of-market. Where are they going and what are they listening to?

913 MR. OAKES: Now, that figure, is that after August this year?

914 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: That's fall 2001.

915 MR. OAKES: Okay. Well, up until August I would say that 90 per cent of that audience was tuning out-of-market to Energy which used to be the Corus CING out of Hamilton/Burlington and they had a PHR format. As has been discussed, they are new country now.

916 Approximately 70,000 listeners in this area tune to this station. They had a seven share and about a 20 per cent reach share, 7 per cent share of hours tuned.

917 If you look at the musical pick of these people, 15-24, 12-24, without question our rhythmic styles are, with the exception of -- no, I would say all of them are right up there with that as their most preferred styles.

918 Where are they going now? Well, Z103, which is the old HITZ 103.5 from Toronto CHR station, that one they probably are going to right now on radio. I would say that of that 70 per cent, probably 50 per cent are trying to get and listen to Z103. It's the only station around that provides the music that they want.

919 Some of those people will tune to CHYM. They always have. They are CHR listeners that have some other tastes and with some of those people 25 per cent of that 70,000 people would listen to CHYM. They might be listening a bit more to CHYM.

920 I wish I could give you some exact figures on this. All I can do is talk about my own survey that I did and we don't have any BBM to back this up. I am going to estimate that 50 per cent of the hours tuned of those 70,000 people are now being serviced by their own record collections. Perhaps 25, maybe more, are going to Z103, but the signal is not perfect up here. In some areas, K-W, it's not easy to get.

921 A certain number will be going to CHYM, a much smaller number to CHYM and probably CFCA, the current rock station in the market.

922 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Is the programming you propose sufficiently broad that it can cover the 12 to 17 and the 18 to 24 and the 25 to 34? It seems it is a fairly wide demographic for some of your business plan.

923 MR. OAKES: Yes. There are obvious difficulties with it, with any format. If you did a country format and did 25-54, you would run into some of the same problems that we are going to run into, but less so with this because there is only one real style out of the five styles that we isolated that causes a problem. That's rap and hip-hop and it's primarily with people over 24 -- 25s to 34 have problems with it. We are looking at playing perhaps under 10 per cent of all music which would be that.

924 There is quite a bit of homogeneity to the taste. The nature of CHR is that -- well, if you go back to the original ones, you would hear Elvis Presley, Guy Lombardo, Little Richard, completely, totally different styles, yet it pulled together an audience.

925 The world has changed a bit with CHR now. You could never do a CHR station like that right now. I'm sure someone is going to come up to me afterwards and say "Well, we are going to do it in whatever". In smaller markets you might be able to get away with an extremely wide play list, but when you are talking to people 12 to 34, you really do have to narrow that down.

926 I don't see a major problem. I see just the normal problems you would run into with competibility with a CHR station.

927 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay. Thank you very much.

928 I have no further questions, Madam Chair.

929 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

930 Mr. Oakes, can I ask you -- you said 50 per cent of that 70,000, so you are talking about this market in terms of listening to one's own record collection. Would you say that's a general trend right now, that half an audience in other parts of the country, about half a typical radio audience are now listening to their own collection sitting on their own computer?

931 MR. OAKES: With younger listeners, yes. If you are looking at 12 to 24, certainly 12 to 17s, they only tune a week just over ten hours a week. I think it's somewhere around 12 hours whereas the national average is about 21 hours a week.

932 They don't listen to radio as much because they have never -- certainly for many years have never had the music on the air that they really desire. Until the rules were changed and hit to non-hit ratios were changed and their P-factor was changed, it made it extremely difficult to do a CHR station on FM.

933 I helped develop one of the first, Z95 in Vancouver. We worked with 18 spins per week for a song. Now it's probably an average of 50 for CHR and you really need to do that to introduce the music.

934 Yes, by and large people of that age, certainly up to 24 feel disadvantaged and go off on their own and tend to play more music out of their own record collection than they do listen to radio.

2435

935 THE CHAIRPERSON: I'm sure that's something that has therefore been factored in. It is certainly an important point if you are looking at the demographic that you and other applicants are looking at.

936 I have one clarification on the Canadian Talent Development $20,000 towards the CD proposals. I understand how it's supposed to work. It's basically matching funds. I think you made the point of how difficult sometimes it is to match funds with FACTOR or another group if you don't have the cash at hand.

937 Just for clarity, if the CD doesn't get made, what happens to the $20,000?

938 MS BELL: The CD has to get made.

939 THE CHAIRPERSON: So the money is only at the end of the exercise, not up front?

940 MS BELL: The money is being paid directly to the studio doing the CD. It is being made.

941 THE CHAIRPERSON: Okay.

942 MS BELL: Or we will sic Mad Dog on them.

943 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

944 Counsel.

945 MR. WILSON: Thank you, Madam Chairman. I have a few questions.

946 Just to stay on the issue of Canadian talent development for the moment. If you were awarded the licence, would you be prepared to file with the Commission copies of any agreements that you reached ultimately with the city with respect to the dance music festival?

947 MS BELL: Yes, we would.

948 MR. WILSON: And additionally, would you be prepared to file with the Commission annual reports giving a detailed breakdown of how the Canadian Talent Development moneys were spent?

949 MS BELL: Yes, we would.

950 MR. WILSON: Then moving on to the issue of the agreement with FACTOR, would you be prepared to file a copy of that agreement with the Commission by the end of the week?

951 MS BELL: Yes. It's not an agreement. It is just a letter, but yes we would. Yes.

952 MR. WILSON: Thank you.

953 No further questions.

954 THE CHAIRPERSON: That's it?

955 Thank you very much. Thank you for your presentation.

956 We will now take a 15 minute break and then hear from the next applicant, Telephone City Broadcast Limited.

957 We will reconvene here at about ten to three.

--- Upon recessing at 1440 / Suspension à 1440

--- Upon resuming at 1500 / Reprise à 1500

958 THE CHAIRPERSON: Order, please, gentlemen.

959 Mr. Secretary, please.

960 MR. LEBEL: Thank you, Madam Chair.

961 Item 3 on the agenda is an application by Telephone City Broadcast Limited for a licence to operate an English-language commercial FM radio station in Brantford.

962 The new station would operate on frequency 91.5 megahertz, channel 218B, with an effective radiated power of 4,000 watts.

963 Gentlemen, you have 20 minutes to make your presentation.

PRESENTATION / PRÉSENTATION

964 MR. BUCHANAN: Madam Chair, Commissioners and Commission staff, I am Richard Buchanan, the President and General Manager of Telephone City Broadcast Limited, the applicant for a new County FM station to serve Brantford at 91.5 FM. Our stations CKPC-AM and FM I am proud to say have been in our family since the 1920s.

965 Before presenting our application to provide additional service to the people of Brantford and to Brant County, I would like to introduce you to members of our team.

966 On my right is Peter Jackman, who has been General Sales Manager of the station for the last four years. Peter has a long broadcasting career, including seven years as General Manager and President of CKO Radio Network and more recently ten years as General Manager of CKCO-TV in Kitchener.

967 To Peter's right is Vic Folliott. Vic is the Program Director of our stations and has worked in radio in southwestern Ontario for over 30 years. He has been the Program Director of Country FM stations in both Kitchener and in London and he helped launch BX 93 in London, Ontario, when it started off as a country station.

968 On my left is Tim Symons, the News Director of our stations. He has worked in our newsroom for 18 years and has a total of 21 years broadcasting experience.

969 With us also is Gordon Elder, our consulting engineer.

970 We are in a different position than almost every other applicant at this hearing. We are not here to convince you to grant us a licence to have access to the lucrative Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge market. We are here to ask you to grant us a third radio licence to serve Brantford and Brant County, the community that Telephone City Broadcast Limited and my family have served for almost 80 years.

971 We are not proposing a service for Kitchener-Waterloo. Our expertise is radio in Brantford. Unfortunately, we are competitive with an applicant for Kitchener, but only on a technical basis. We have no wish to compete with them or with any other applicant for the Kitchener market.

972 We would like to make four points to you today if we may. Firstly, Brantford is underserved with local broadcasting outlets and the people of our city deserve a new local listening choice.

973 Secondly, as you have seen by the number of positive interventions, CKPC-AM and FM provide an outstanding local service to the Brantford area. Our service is based on the coverage of local news, sports, community events and information.

974 Thirdly, the growth in the number of signals coming into our market and the large number of format choices have made it more and more difficult to retain audiences other than during information programming. This threatens our ability to continue to provide the high level of service that our community has become accustomed to.

975 Fourthly, we propose a quality country FM station to serve the country music fans of Brantford and Brant County. The station will provide the best of Canadian and international country music and it will also allow us to expand our local service even more than at present.

976 Brantford is an underserved market. The chart on the opposite page compares Brantford to other Ontario communities in terms of population and the number of local commercial broadcast outlets.

977 Our market is made up of 105,000 people and is served by our two radio stations. We could compare that to Kingston, Belleville,

Peterborough and Thunder Bay. Kingston is a market of 132,500 people and is served by five commercial radio stations and a local TV station.

978 The Belleville-Trenton market has 82,000 people. It has five local commercial radio stations while Peterborough with 90,000 people has four local radio stations and a TV station. Thunder Bay's population of 111,000 is served by four local commercial radio stations and a twin-stick TV.

979 The people of these other cities have more local format choices than Brantford providing them with local news and information as well as a full range of musical formats. Brantford residents must dial to out-of-market stations to hear country music, top 40 or rock stations and yet this is a strong and growing market which can support a third station if it is housed with an existing operation.

980 If I may, I would like to tell you a bit about our company. We began in 1923 in Preston when two enterprising hobbyists developed a radio station that would transmit for about a one or a two mile radius.

981 During the first year or so of this experiment, my grandfather, Cyrus Dolph, purchased the equipment and he launched CKPC. He moved the station to Brantford in 1932 and in the ensuing years we have grown from a low power AM station to 10,000 watts. In 1947 we added a low power FM station which has now grown to 50,000 watts.

982 My family has been continuously involved in the station with my mother and father taking over from my grandfather when the station was moved to Brantford.

983 During the second world war, my mother, Florence Dolph Buchanan, took over the running of the station and then I became the sole shareholder in 1972, but my connection to the station actually dates back to 1949 when I did a high school radio program and I have been associated with radio ever since.

984 Our stations' growth and success have been largely due to our devotion to serving our community. We have always prided ourselves on our news and our newsgathering. We have always been active in support of community activities, including significant amounts of fundraising.

985 From relief for the victims of natural disasters to help for individuals who have lost their homes to fire or for farmers who are suffering from drought, we have always been there for our listeners.

986 On the cultural front, we played an important role in the redevelopment of the Sanderson Centre, a heritage site well known in theatre circles.

987 Our listeners are much more than numbers in a BBM report. They are our friends and our neighbours and we have a responsibility to serve them.

988 I would now like to ask our News Director, Tim Symons, to talk a little bit about our news coverage.

989 Tim.

990 MR. SYMONS: Thank you.

991 Good afternoon, Commissioners.

992 Most other radio stations have one or two person newsrooms with BN news outside of drive time and no one other than voice mail to call with breaking news on the weekend or in the evening. We have a full newsroom of seven people that is always staffed, including evenings and weekends.

993 Our AM station drives the news operation. Our news centre provides over 10 hours of news per week with newscasts on the hour each hour of the day and on the half-hour as well during drive periods. On average we provide 17 to 20 local and regional news stories daily.

994 As you might expect, the home of Wayne Gretzky is a hotbed of sports. In fact, Brantford calls itself the Tournament Capital of Ontario. CKPC is probably one of the few smaller market stations with its own Sports Director, Al Pooley.

995 Our contribution to keeping Brantford informed is supplemented by full service Doppler Weather and Skywards Traffic as well as by a large number of features throughout the broadcast day.

996 While our FM station is music driven, we do not neglect community service on FM 92.1. It provides over eight hours of news per week with an hour and a half of sports and, of course, weather, traffic, community events and even an agricultural report.

997 The news on FM is not a simulcast of the AM news but rather a complete newscast edited for the younger listeners who listen to our adult contemporary format.

998 We look forward to providing the same excellent news and community coverage on Country 91.5. To explain further here is Peter Jackman.

999 MR. JACKMAN: Thank you, Tim.

1000 Our community involvement is what has made us successful over the years. The many interventions from community service groups, elected representatives, the business community and individuals attest to our role as a community leader.

1001 While this devotion to service has paid dividends for us in terms of listening and revenues over the years, the addition of many more signals has diluted our listenership.

1002 In the Fall 2001 BBM report, 23 out-of-market radio stations drew at least 1 per cent each of the hours tuned in the market. In fact there are over 40 good radio signals received in our market.

1003 The variety of formats available means that if a classic rock fan wants our local news and information packages, when he or she wants their favourite music they can dial to an out-of-market station that focuses on that music.

1004 Today Brantford listeners have three contemporary hit radio stations, an urban station, two classic rock stations, at least one modern rock, about five variations on adult contemporary, a commercial classical music station and two jazz stations to choose from.

1005 Little wonder that with two formats and one of them on AM we have seen slippage in our share of listeners. The chart on the following page shows that in 2001 our stations drew only 17 per cent of the hours tuned in our market while out-of-market stations drew a staggering 83 per cent of the hours tuned in Brantford. But it was not always so.

1006 The chart on the following page shows that our combined stations have gone from 555,000 hours tuned in 1985 to 448,000 in the fall of 2001. The problem is not on FM where we have been able to hold our own and increase listening. As the third chart shows, our AM station dropped from 486,000 hours to 113,000 hours in the same period.

1007 In fact in 2001 Corus without a station licensed to serve our market drew 35 per cent of all tuning in our market from the many signals it puts into Brantford. We are "spill" for most of the stations coming in.

1008 We recognized the opportunity that the Commission's new ownership policy presented to us. We could add a third format that would bring back some of the out-of-town tuning at an incremental cost much lower than someone having to launch a new station could do.

1009 While our research shows that some of the tuning will come from our own stations, a country station will bring us back to about 25 per cent of the tuning in Brantford with representation in all of the demographics that interest local retailers.

1010 We then asked Elder Engineering to look for a frequency that would meet our coverage needs, Brant County. We also preferred to use a frequency that would work from our existing site so that we could implement a solution in a cost-effective way.

1011 Gordon Elder found only one frequency that would work for us, 91.5. It is the third adjacency to our existing FM station at 92.1, but co-siting minimizes any interference.

1012 Our difficulty then became which format would best serve our market while repatriating listeners to our stations. The research filed with the application would initially lead you to think that some variation on the rock format would be the most likely to succeed, but when you look at the options, you can see that there is a multiplicity of rock formats in the market.

1013 If we chose a general rock format, there would be a classic rock and modern rock formats on either side of us, not to mention the other straight ahead rock stations.

1014 We chose country for two reasons. The research we commissioned from Oakes Research showed a substantial interest in country music in our area. Moreover, the only station programming country music with tuning in Brantford at the time was an AM station from Hamilton, CHAM.

1015 We believe that a locally-based station with country music on FM would be successful by attracting new listeners or those forced to listen to country stations from out-of-market.

1016 Now to describe our modern country format, let me introduce Vic Folliott.

1017 MR. FOLLIOTT: Thank you, Peter.

1018 Country 91.5 will provide a modern country format aimed at an audience 25 to 64 with the bulk of the audience in the 35 to 54 age group. The audience will be made up of slightly more women at 55 per cent. The station will do well in the central market with 10 per cent of hours tuned and we expect that it will perform even better in the full coverage rural area in Brant County.

1019 The play list will be predominantly from the most recent era of country music. Approximately 90 per cent of the music will be recordings released since 1990. In fact, 25 per cent of the music will be recent releases -- within six months -- and another 25 per cent recurrent, released between six and 24 months.

1020 While the gold play list will be largely from the 1990s, we will not ignore the roots of country music. We will provide a Sunday night Country Memories show featuring the classic artists of country music, people like Wilf Carter, Hand Snow, George Jones and Loretta Lynn.

1021 We will spotlight Canadian artists above and beyond playing 35 per cent Canadian content. Each week we will feature a Canadian artist throughout the week with a special program on that artist each weekend. We will feature their recordings, provide biographical and interview information and focus on upcoming concerts.

1022 To the extent possible, we will coordinate this with the artists' touring schedules so that we feature them in the weeks leading up to an area concert.

1023 We will also feature a three hour weekly Canadian Country Countdown with at least 35 per cent Canadian content Saturday nights and a repeat on Sunday mornings. Also to add diversity of our sound, we plan to air a Sunday Morning Country Gospel Show.

1024 One of the hallmarks of CKPC-AM and FM is that we are always live. Twenty-four hours per day, seven days a week there is someone at the station on-air to provide information and that personal touch. Country 91.5 will continue this tradition.

1025 We will hire five new programming staff to our existing 12 programming people. We will hire four new broadcast journalists to complement our existing seven.

1026 In all our three stations we will have 17 full-time programming staff and 11 full-time newspeople. This full staff complement will continue to ensure that no one calling our station at any time has to leave urgent news on the voice mail to be picked up the next day.

1027 All of the new employees will be focused on Country 91.5. In the case of the newspeople, they will be responsible for the on-air news broadcasts as well as their duties as journalists. They will operate as part of the existing newsroom and allow us to expand the diversity of our coverage.

1028 The next page is the schedule for news programming for the proposed station. As you can see, news and information will feature prominently in the schedule with major five minute newscasts on the hour during drive period, at noon and at ll:00 p.m. and three minute newscasts at other times.

1029 News will also play an important role during the weekends and will be supported by local newspeople on duty.

1030 We believe the people of Brantford and area will benefit with a full service country station and even fuller coverage on our existing stations.

1031 MR. BUCHANAN: Commissioners, we are here today to ask you to grant us a licence to provide a new programming choice to the people of Brantford with an FM country station at 91.5.

1032 In today's broadcasting environment, increasingly dominated by large broadcast conglomerates, local news and community involvement has declined.

1033 Most of the larger players have rationalized their news and other services by downsizing. We have continued to provide a large newsroom to ensure contact with our community. Our application continues that emphasis.

1034 The last chart on the next page, based on our financial projections in the applications, shows that we will devote two thirds or 66 per cent of all revenues received by country 91.5 to programming expenditures. This compares to the national FM average for English stations of 22 per cent of revenues to programming and the Ontario FM average of 21.6 per cent of revenues.

1035 We are facing a challenge, one that increases day by day as new stations add new format choices to the dial. We want to stay in radio as a full service broadcaster and we want to grow the service we can provide, but we can only do this if we can remain economically sound through the addition of our proposed FM station.

1036 At present, 83 per cent of the hours tuned to radio in Brantford go to stations from other markets with news and other services not intended for our community. While there are only a few out-of-market stations soliciting local advertisers in Brantford, national advertisers do make their choices based on listening in the market.

1037 By adding a third station we can bring some of that listening back to our community, strengthening our ability to serve Brantford and hopefully increase our revenues.

1038 Brantford needs and can support a third commercial radio station. With the large number of outside stations fragmenting listening, it would be difficult for a new licensee to be viable in our market.

1039 However, given our capacity to share resources with two existing stations, we know that we can operate a new full service country music FM station at a reasonable cost. We can maintain service 24 hours per day and seven days per week and we can strengthen our service to our community.

1040 Thank you for your attention. We would be pleased to answer your questions.

1520

1041 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

1042 Commissioner Williams, please.

1043 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Good afternoon, panel. Thank you, Mr. Buchanan, and other panel members.

1044 I will go through a variety of questions today. Some may seem repetitive from both information that you have provided us and information that was just in your oral presentation, but we will cover all the bases to make sure that we have a full and thorough record of your application.

1045 Maybe before I get started into this list of questions we can spend a bit of time on frequency issues that Mr. Elder identified. Global, the previous applicant, indicated there might be other technical options for your operation by way of alternative frequencies.

1046 Do you have a comment on this new information? That can be made either now or at some time further on in the process. Perhaps known as the station from the home of Wayne Gretzky, you may be fortunate enough to get 99 FM.

1047 I'm also from a community that Wayne Gretzky called home during the glory days of the Edmonton Oilers. It seems that we all want a piece of him. Wayne Gretzky Drive is the main road up to the coliseum where he played hockey in Edmonton, for example.

1048 Getting back to the frequency question, do you have comments that you wish to make on that now or would you like to talk about it later?

1049 MR. BUCHANAN: We had anticipated some questions to that and had asked Mr. Elder to check out every applicant and frequency for those applicants for Kitchener-Waterloo to see if in fact any one of them would be workable if you like in our marketplace.

1050 The response from Mr. Elder was that he had checked them all out and in fact found that none of them were suitable for the application that we were applying for. If you would like, he could explain that more fully. He is in attendance here.

1051 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: That would be most appropriate. Please proceed.

1052 MR. ELDER: Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Commissioners.

1053 Some of this is repetitive I'm afraid, but it's basic logic. Two years ago we conducted an intensive frequency and site search for Telephone City Broadcast Limited to provide a new FM service to Brantford and surrounding region.

1054 The FM band occupancy is extremely high in southern Ontario, of course, including the Brantford and Kitchener-Waterloo area. There are no vacant allotments in Brantford. Very few new drop-in frequency assignments are possible simply because Toronto, Hamilton and other stations provide .5 millivolt per metre secondary service in parts of the Brantford-Kitchener-Waterloo area.

1055 Protection of these contours by the new assignment is difficult or impossible. Encroaching on or limiting the service area is prohibited and seldom technically accepted unless stations licensee or the administration has approved it as a special case.

1056 Our detailed study produced 91.5 megahertz as the only frequency that would meet our client's objectives. Several alternative tower sites were considered from Global's Paris tower. The three millivolt per metre contour could not reach Brantford because of CHOW Welland's protection requirements.

1057 Shared use of CKPC FM's present tower was satisfactory, probably the only possible satisfactory location and it is proposed. The 91.5 megahertz class B assignment has a directional antenna for protections in easterly directions.

1058 A search of the FM band taking into consideration Industry Canada's proposed rule changes indicates that 99.5 megahertz is still -- well, that was until last week when I really got my pencil sharpened -- 99.5 is still the only alternative frequency to 91.5. However, it would be an unsatisfactory substitute.

1059 We thoroughly evaluated 99.5 megahertz last year. Its coverage is severely limited by protection requirements towards CJBC 4FM London and CKFM Toronto. CBLA Toronto and I quote channel interference from WDCX Buffalo, New York.

1060 The recent changes to Industry Canada's second adjacent channel protection requirements permit minor improvements, but the 99.5 coverage would remain much poorer than that of 91.5 and would not meet Telephone City's coverage objectives.

1061 The population within the three millivolt and interference-free coverage contours would be reduced by over 65 per cent, down to 84 per cent. It would be reduced by that much. That is point five. In addition, a new tower and site would be required, resulting in increased capital and operating costs.

1062 Five other frequencies were proposed by others for Kitchener-Waterloo or Cambridge between 93.9 and 107.5. In most cases a Class A assignment is proposed. We are doubtful if any of them would provide satisfactory service in Brantford, either as proposed or with improvements and also comply with Industry Canada's protection rules for technical approval.

1063 I did receive Global's report, two page report, at 3:00 p.m. this afternoon. These frequencies that are listed here we have already studied. Instead of -- this is another option which is complex and I think is impractical. I won't even read it to you.

1064 I think that summarizes the situation.

1065 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: My next question was going to be would you be prepared to examine their suggestion and comment later in the process, but I think you just answered that.

1066 MR. ELDER: If I have any further positive comments, I will do so later in the hour.

1067 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay. Thank you very much. I am going to move to a different line of questioning now.

1068 The objective of the next series of questions will be to determine the level of editorial and programming independence the proposed station would enjoy under the common ownership model that you propose.

1069 You have indicated that if licensed, programming commitments associated with the new station would require that you hire five new full-time programming staff and four new full-time journalist/announcers.

1070 I note on pages 11 and 12 of your supplementary brief you describe these positions as being added to existing staff. I assume by existing you were referring to programming and newsroom staff associated with the operation of your other two radio stations.

1071 In your 11 June 2002 deficiency you offered some clarifications regarding how new staff would be allocated and touched briefly on the types of programming synergies that both the new station and your existing stations would enjoy.

1072 I would like to take this opportunity to discuss in more detail three areas related to the type of programming you would offer on the proposed station.

1073 (a) multiple station ownership in a market speaks to the availability of synergies in many operational areas, including programming. What assurances can you give the panel that, if licensed, your new country formatted station would enjoy editorial and programming independence from both CKPC FM and CKPC AM?

1074 MR. BUCHANAN: From a news point of view, if I am understanding that as being part of the question or the question, the AM station and the FM Station are entirely differently programmed from a news standpoint as it is at the present time.

1075 As to the additional people, we have seven people in news at the present time. It is our full intent to put four more people in news. They would primarily be news reporter/journalists if you like for the country station as proposed. They would be part of the overall newsroom as we currently have it, but would certainly be able to add a different perspective to that news department.

1076 To elaborate perhaps a little bit more on that, perhaps Tim Symons could answer a little bit of that.

1077 MR. SYMONS: As far as the lineup of our news AM station, obviously it is a smaller area because it only covers -- it's more focused on local news and builds out to regional news. Our FM station, a larger audience, it goes in reverse. It is more a regional focus newscast, but will shift back into local as well.

1078 It's our thought that the new station will be kind of a mix of both, depending on the nature of the news that day. It would be regional some days, depending on what your top stories are. Other days it would be a local-driven newscast with regional coverage as well.

1079 Our reporters obviously on our stations contribute to each station as well, so the four new people will be focused on FM on the new country station. Their services will also be benefiting our AM and FM -- existing FM station.

1080 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: In your supplementary brief you indicate to us that nine new full-time staff would be hired, five for programming and four for journalists. It said it would be added, we assume you meant to CKPC-FM and CKPC.

1081 In your June 11 deficiency, you seem to clarify that these new staff would in fact be dedicated to this new FM undertaking.

1082 If your application were to be approved, can you confirm that the nine new staff will be dedicated to serving the new station or would they be pooled with your existing programming and newsroom staff to serve across all of your stations?

1083 MR. BUCHANAN: No. Our intent is to use that staff specifically for this station. They would be pooled, in effect as Tim has pointed out from a news standpoint, newsgathering, but the four additional newspeople would be dedicated air people to the new station.

1084 The five programming people would be dedicated to that new station. Any ancillary objectives that might come from having them would certainly be additives to the existing stations, but for all intents and purposes their employment would be for the new station.

1085 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: So the synergies would come from which part of your operation?

1086 MR. BUCHANAN: Well, the synergies involved obviously would take in the capabilities of sales to be able to contribute to a third station. Our traffic department would handle the third station. We are capable of that. We have two people in traffic at the present time.

1087 Our accounting department would be able to handle a third station. Our sales manager, Peter Jackman, would be overseeing the extra station. Hopefully we would have to at some point bring additional help in to assist him, but initially I certainly would intend to be the General Manager of that station. Tim would remain as the news editor of that station.

1088 I think the synergies are there through that area. Our engineering department, we have two people in engineering at the present time on a permanent basis which is somewhat unusual for stations of our size. We can easily handle that.

1089 Those are the synergies that we were alluding to if you like.

1090 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Buchanan.

1091 From both the programming and marketing perspective, the radio industry has traditionally viewed a country audience as being somewhat distinct from audiences that prefer pop, rock or dance formatted stations. You acknowledge this fact yourself on page 3 of your 11 June 2002 deficiency.

1092 Can you describe for the panel how the programming needs and expectations of a country audience differ from the needs and expectations of let's say CKPC-FM's adult contemporary audience or your classic hits audience at CKPC.

1093 If licensed, how will you ensure that your news and information, spoken word programming would reflect and meet the needs and expectations of your target country audience? How are they different and how would you approach that difference?

1094 MR. BUCHANAN: Are you speaking from a revenue-generating standpoint?

1095 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: I think from a programming and marketing perspective.

1096 MR. BUCHANAN: I think then I would like to have Peter Jackman answer that question, please.

1097 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay.

1098 MR. JACKMAN: I think the major differences with a country audience vis-à-vis an AC audience, they are very, very passionate about the music. I know we have heard a couple of times today that if a country fan can't find their particular format, they will go to an AC station. I think that's true, but I'm not sure how thrilled they are with it. Any of the country people, the real core audience of a country radio station that I talked to, they are very, very much passionate about the music.

1099 I would certainly have our people -- the people I would hire would have that passion as well and would also have an awful lot of artist information. I think that's one of the differences.

1100 I think as Tim has also outlined, as far as our news coverage, I think we will also reflect in the programming area in that they will be looking at a lot of the rural issues that are going on with things like farm reports or just some of the unique things that happen in small town Ontario, and we certainly have a lot of smaller towns like Burford and Waterford and a lot of places, especially down at the south, that have a different view of life compared to people in the urban area.

1101 I think as well country music, not to have it stereotypical or anything, but I think they are more of the blue collar listener, so I think we would attempt as well with news coverage and on air information, I think we would try and reflect that as well and very, very focused on the family as well. You only have to listen to a couple of the country lyrics to know.

1535

1102 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: A little bit of that love and hurtin', gambling, truckdriving and mom stuff. Right?

1103 MR. JACKMAN: Although that certainly has changed. That's more of what the new country is talking about. It's just life in general that I think everybody can relate to. I think certainly some of the traditional music that we will be presenting on the radio station will maybe reflect some of that old style, but I think that needs to be done and I don't hear it happening on a lot of other country stations that I listen to anyway.

1104 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay. You are proposing to offer a minimum of four hours per week of news programming on your proposed station.

1105 Although we probably touched on this earlier in discussing editorial independence, would your news and information programming be separate and distinct from that heard on your other two stations and, if so, what mechanisms would you have in place to ensure that this is so?

1106 MR. SYMONS: Basically we would have a separate news team working in the morning. They would be working side by side with the other two announcers obviously in the morning, so I'm sure they would discuss amongst themselves what aspect, how they are taking it, their tack that morning.

1107 I would leave it up to -- we would have to have a discussion, you know, with the new staff, what our audience is going to be and what their interests are -- Vic was talking about more rural aspects of the news -- and develop a strategy of attacking daily stories of that day.

1108 Further to that, with the added reporters we could get out into the community more and develop those stories from a rural aspect that we can't do right now with our limited staff, you know, covering all the council meetings and such we are pretty well stretched as far as covering on-air shifts and council meetings as it is.

1109 They would be able to go out and develop a distinct new sound, getting more out in the community, interviewing the people affected by, you know, daily happenings and such.

1110 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: It's different slants on similar stories. I guess it wouldn't just be two reporters taping a news segment and playing the identical one on all three stations, for example.

1111 MR. BUCHANAN: No. If these were dedicated to the newsroom, to the new station, they would be -- obviously the other station would benefit from anything they can come up with, but primarily their focus would be on developing that rural country feel for the newscast.

1112 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Could you talk about programming synergies that could be realized between your existing and the proposed station? What would these programming synergies be and how would they impact on the proposed station's ability to deliver local station produced programming that would reflect and meet the needs and expectations of Brantford CA's country listener?

1113 MR. BUCHANAN: I think Vic may be more appropriate to answer that question.

1114 MR. FOLLIOTT: Certainly we have expertise, and obviously I can't get into these decisions that haven't been made, but we are fortunate in that we have a number of people on our existing radio stations that have considerable expertise in the country music area.

1115 I can mention one fellow, Randy Owen, who could either become a part of the new staff or could be a contributing person to some of the specific Top 30 countdown, that sort of thing, so there would be some synergies there I think.

1116 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay. Thank you. I will move on to a new area of interest now. The objective of the next series of questions will be to determine if the applicant would broadcast any specialty category three country music programming and, if so, with commitment with respect to category three, Canadian content labels.

1117 The first question is the number of modern or contemporary country formatted stations across Canada complement the regular music programming with specialty music programming, often consisting of either traditional, blue grass or old-time country or some combination of both?

1118 Are you contemplating offering any of this specialty type music programming under your proposed station over the course of the licensing term?

1119 MR. FOLLIOTT: Very much so. I think that's one of the things that really distinguishes this particular country station from an awful lot of others. As I had mentioned earlier on, we have a hall of fame show that will run on Sunday nights that will feature some of the artists you just don't hear any more, Johnny Cash, back to Wilf Carter, the Mercy Brothers and Anne Murray and folks like that.

1120 That certainly will be one of the major areas. We will also have a country music countdown that will feature interviews and so on with some of the country artists.

1121 We also have recommended or say that we will be presenting a feature on a different Canadian artist throughout the week each week. Then we will do -- that will include interviews and music by that particular artist and, whenever possible, if that artist is appearing in the area, we would have them in for interviews and so on and so forth, and would also feature a 15 minutes segment on our countdown, the Canadian countdown that would give a lot more in-depth information on that particular artist.

1122 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay. Thank you. As you may or may not be aware, traditional blue grass and old-time country music, you know music recorded before the 1950s, qualifies as category three music under the Commission's current music definition as set out in Public Notice CRTC-2002-14.

1123 The current minimum weekly regulatory requirement for Canadian content in category three music is 10 per cent. What would your minimum weekly Canadian commitment for category three music be?

1124 MR. FOLLIOTT: It would be 10 per cent.

1125 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Ten per cent. Thank you. Okay we are going to talk about Canadian Talent Development.

1126 You state in your supplementary brief that you will ask FACTOR to ensure that your entire $4,000 annual CTD contribution be allocated to support the development of Brantford area country talent. Have you approached FACTOR with this request since the filing of your application and has FACTOR agreed to this request?

1127 MR. JACKMAN: Yes we have and FACTOR has sent us a letter confirming that they will be capable of handling our request.

1128 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay. Thank you. We talked a bit about your business proposition. About 83 per cent of tuning in the Brantford radio market is to out-of-market stations. Would you be able to estimate the amount by which this level of out-of-market tuning is reducing the amount of radio advertising revenue available to the market?

1129 MR. JACKMAN: As we indicated in our opening remarks, we don't see a large outflow of local dollars. The majority of the stations -- nearly all the stations that come into our market say "I don't solicit local retail advertising dollars". We are at approximately 90 per cent of our total advertising revenue in local dollars.

1130 Nationally we see some effect, not a significant amount of effect, but we do see national dollars not coming to our market, being spent on some of the larger conglomerates that surround us and, therefore, being able to avoid specifically spending the money in Brantford.

1131 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: I guess why I'm asking is that research indicates, say for the Kitchener market where we have some research, indicates that the amount of radio advertising revenue available to market with 60 per cent out-of-market tuning is about 50 per cent of the amount would be available if the local radio stations accounted for 75 per cent or more of that total tuning.

1132 That could work out to be a significant amount.

1133 MR. JACKMAN: I don't think it would be a significant amount, but I would see an opportunity attached to us if we had a third licence. There would be an advantage financially to us.

1134 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay. Thank you. You estimate that approximately 80 per cent of the hours tuned by your proposed new country FM would come from out-of-market stations. Would you be able to identify the out-of-market stations from which you expect your proposed station would garner tuning?

1135 Eighty per cent of the hours tuned by your new country FM would come from out-of-market. Which ones?

1136 MR. BUCHANAN: We would suggest when we initially put this together that it would be coming from CHAM in Hamilton, to a smaller degree perhaps BX 93 in London from a listener standpoint. In either respect we would be talking about listeners as opposed to advertising dollars coming back from them.

1137 Of course, the increased listenership would result in dollars, but not necessarily from those individual markets. I think what we are talking about is repatriating listeners who have for one reason or the other not been satisfied with the choices of the two stations in Brantford.

1138 Most of them, hopefully, that we are going to bring back will be from country-oriented stations, but we are also very hopeful that they will come back from other stations that are sort of mixing their music a little bit better or a little bit more differently if you like than ours.

1139 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Plus you have the 24/7 staffing and community programming commitments.

1140 MR. BUCHANAN: Yes, we are 24/7, always have been and I have no intention of changing that.

1141 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Speaking of advertisers, do you have any evidence that there's demand amongst advertisers to reach listeners in the Brantford market?

1142 MR. BUCHANAN: Sorry?

1143 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay. Do you have any evidence that there is demand amongst advertisers to reach country listeners in the Brantford market?

1144 MR. BUCHANAN: Not documented as such, but from speaking to advertisers, potential advertisers, current clients and clients that are not current, we have ascertained that they were certainly prepared to add to budget and/or introduce themselves to radio because they are not using it now for the various reasons that they don't think the type of radio we are performing meet the demands of their particular product.

1145 In some instances they would be related to perhaps the motor sports, if you like, tractor pulls. Those would be very insignificant, but I'm thinking also of the agricultural end of it where people are more inclined to think that the country music, the blue grass approach is more in keeping with their product, whether it's the work wear or commodity produce or what.

1146 So yes, we have heard that and from that of course is what we are counting on. We are looking to increase revenues as well as the listeners.

1147 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Thank you. The last area of questioning, and I have a couple of questions. We started in this area as well, so we are back to it. It's the use of frequency and alternatives.

1148 I note that Mr. Elder left the room and returned. I was wondering if he had new information to add from when we last spoke.

1149 MR. ELDER: I'm afraid I have new information, but it's not encouraging because the second and third options that Mr. Moltner provided me with on behalf of Global are really no better than 99.5.

1150 The third one is the one that I discussed with my associate in the office. He brought everything up on the computer. It's subject to a severe limitation area in the same way as 99.5 is. For example, from two co-channel stations, a class B station in Owen Sound and another one in Dupuis, New York, which is only 115 kilometres away, WBLK.

1151 It's not a viable alternative.

1152 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay. These last two questions are your last couple of opportunities I guess to speak on this same topic.

1153 What in your view are the compelling reasons to grant you the requested frequency?

1154 MR. BUCHANAN: I think it's essential to the continuance of our radio stations performing the service that we are performing in the community to be able to have a third station so that the people have a third station choice within the locale and not having to go to the outside markets, if you like.

1155 Of course the main reason that we are here today is because 91.5 is the most viable and doable signal for Brantford. We feel Brantford is deserving of it.

1156 1550

1157 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: And I guess that kind of answers the last one. In which ways does your proposal constitute the best use of frequency spectrum?

1158 MR. BUCHANAN: We certainly believe that it is the best use and the only use that we can have for Brantford.

1159 COMMISSIONER WILLIAMS: Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Buchanan and team.

1160 That concludes my questioning, Madam Chair.

1161 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

1162 There are questions though from other Commissioners.

1163 Commissioner Demers, s'il vous plait.

1164 COMMISSIONER DEMERS: Thank you, Madam Chair. I will try to look that way and speak that way. Look east and speak west.

1165 My question relates to your present operations and the coverage they have. The AM station has a 10,000 watt. Could you describe briefly the coverage it has less in technical terms but more in geographical terms.

1166 MR. BUCHANAN: Geographically, daytime-wise it has a circular pattern which would go probably 40 miles from Brantford which would include Kitchener-Waterloo, would include Simcoe and Port Dover to the south of us on the shores of Lake Erie. It would go down to perhaps St. Catharines and the Niagara Peninsula.

1167 To the west of us it would go to somewhere between London and Woodstock, which are about 25 miles to the west.

1168 In the evening it becomes a directional signal and is pulled in dramatically to the south of us to a point where it's about five miles outside the city to the south, but again we do enjoy a northerly attitude, so it does not affect necessarily the Kitchener-Cambridge area.

1169 That area has been affected more by electronics than certainly signal, but that is the type of signal that we have. It is a relatively large signal, keeping in mind that 1380 has been part of our association for many, many years.

1170 COMMISSIONER DEMERS: Thank you. And if we compare that coverage with your present FM station, the 50,000 watts, does it cover approximately the same territory?

1171 MR. BUCHANAN: The FM station?

1172 COMMISSIONER DEMERS: Yes, your CKPC-FM.

1173 MR. BUCHANAN: No. CKPC-FM has a much larger coverage. We would go probably 90 miles to the west of us up towards West Lawn and Chatham way. To the east, we would be the other side of Oshawa, which would be 75 miles perhaps. To the south of us we are into Pennsylvania. To the north of us we go into the Bruce Peninsula.

1174 COMMISSIONER DEMERS: From listening to you and trying to understand why, as you indicated in your presentation, your use of -- you really want to be a local station where you are and you cover quite a large area in AM and FM at the moment.

1175 Why is it to date that your local area would now have the service of a station which from what I understand with a lot smaller coverage? Is there a relation between your operation today and the addition of what appears to be a smaller operation or a smaller station, smaller coverage?

1176 MR. BUCHANAN: I think the coverage, with all due respect, was determined by the frequency. Certainly it does have the area that we are very concerned about, which is Brantford-Brant County and the area to the south of us if you like to the Simcoe area.

1177 It does not go to the south to the extent that the AM does during the daytime and certainly not to the extent that the current FM does now.

1178 It would give us the areas that we are primarily concerned in serving which are basically the areas that our FM or our AM station is now serving, but would allow us to do it with a second format, to the AM that is.

1179 COMMISSIONER DEMERS: And if I understand correctly, you would use the site that you already use for CKPC-FM for the new FM.

1180 MR. BUCHANAN: Yes, that's correct.

1181 COMMISSIONER DEMERS: And the explanations or comments that you or Mr. Elder made are due to the fact that you want to serve your community from that particular site. Is there a relation between the site that you have decided that you would use that frequency from?

1182 MR. BUCHANAN: The determination of that is because it is 91.5 and our other FM station is 92.1, so we can work from our own tower with that array.

1183 COMMISSIONER DEMERS: And is it the maximum power or average wattage that you can get from that site on that frequency?

1184 MR. BUCHANAN: I believe it is. I think again it was a requirement as to the frequency. What we were trying to achieve as far as the coverage of Brantford and Brant County and the upper portion of Norfolk County to the south of us that determined that.

1185 We certainly couldn't go any higher than what is applied for there, sir.

1186 MR. ELDER: The power, maximum, is 10 kilowatts. The average is 4 kilowatts and the easterly power is roughly 50 watts for protection purposes to Welland and Toronto. We also have to protect, for example, a CBC station northeast in Orillia.

1187 COMMISSIONER DEMERS: Thank you.

1188 Thank you, Madam Chair.

1189 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

1190 Commissioner Cram.

1191 COMMISSIONER CRAM: Thank you, Madam Chairman.

1192 I was interested in you talking about your choice of format. I recognize we have little to do with changes in format if you got the frequency.

1193 I was intrigued by the fact that you think you could increase the in-market tuning from 17 per cent to 25 and yet -- have I got this straight? The decision to go for country was made before CING changed to country in Hamilton? Is that right?

1194 MR. BUCHANAN: Yes, it is.

1195 COMMISSIONER CRAM: Does that change your estimates of the change in in-market tuning?

1196 MR. BUCHANAN: No, nothing.

1197 COMMISSIONER CRAM: And your reason for that?

1198 MR. BUCHANAN: We made the presentation and the proposal for country based on what we considered the needs of Brantford and Brant County at that time. We don't see any additional intrusions if you like from Hamilton other than what was there before simply because of the amount of community service, the local news, the regional news that we perform that we know other stations and other markets for whatever reason don't do it.

1605

1199 COMMISSIONER CRAM: Then would it be fair to say that a third radio station, regardless of format, would bring the same kind of change in in-market tuning?

1200 MR. BUCHANAN: I don't know that it would, depending on what the other format would be, keeping in mind that at the present time we have a Hot AC CHR format on one and we have classic hits on the other. Those would really be the two choices. It wouldn't be opportune for us to come in with another classic hit station if you like and compete against ourselves.

1201 Thank you very much.

1202 Thank you, Madam Chair.

1203 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

1204 Mr. Buchanan, I would just like to continue along the same line just a little bit and clarify if we can the choice you have made to pursue a new station.

1205 I think in your application and further questions you made it clear that you looked at other options, inclusive one of converting your current AM to FM, but you opted to go for a new station.

1206 Now, pursuant to the Commissioner's questions and looking at the situation of 83 per cent hours tuned to out-of-market stations, that's quite a challenge. I understand that you are saying here by adding a third station we can bring some of that listening back to our community, which relates to Commissioner Cram's points about which format you have chosen to do that.

1207 If we then listen to Mr. Elder's comments we are looking at a situation where the frequency that you are maintaining is the frequency for you to do this is 91.5. What I think we need to understand a little more clearly is how important is this new station to you? Why did you choose this option of a new station as opposed to converting from your current AM to FM?

1208 Commissioner Demers was asking you a little bit about the coverage along those lines as well. Since, as I take it from Mr. Elder, you are not going to look at other options that have been tabled, it's important for us to understand the importance of this new station to your current stations and how you think that this new station will bring back enough out-of-market tuning from that 83 per cent to really make a difference.

1209 MR. BUCHANAN: Well, Madam Chair, we did take a look at the opportunity of perhaps letting the AM station go if you like and flipping to an FM station. That would be obviously the one option that probably would be apparent to most people.

1210 We feel very strongly that our AM station is serving a need for the people in our area and our community. I wouldn't want to take that need away. I feel that we are performing a duty to the public. That's what we are licensed for. I feel very strongly that our AM station notwithstanding BBM figures if you like is doing a tremendous job.

1211 Financially, it is a reversal from what it was 12 years ago when the FM station was down below and the AM station was the producer. It certainly has flip-flopped that way, but it is still maintaining its own.

1212 We just feel that it is a very viable situation and we also feel that it is a necessary part of the community. That's why we are asking to add a station of relevant -- leave ourselves in the same position, but still only end up with two stations for Brantford and Brant County. We just feel that they are deserving of a third station.

1213 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much.

1214 Any questions, counsel?

1215 MR. WILSON: Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have two questions.

1216 Firstly, in the Commission's commercial radio policy in Public Notice 1998-41 the Commission encouraged broadcasters to reflect the cultural diversity of Canada in their programming and employment practices, especially with respect to news, music and the promotion of Canadian artists.

1217 What measures would you take to incorporate and reflect the reality of Canada's cultural, ethnic, racial and aboriginal diversity in the following areas: employment practices, news, music and promotion of Canadian artists?

1218 MR. JACKMAN: We anticipated that question and I do have a response for you.

1219 Before starting out, I would like to point out the limitations that fall upon a small broadcaster in a medium size market like ourselves. We have a small work force, fewer than 40, and the new station will bring us to approximately 50 people.

1220 Moreover, we only have the Brantford stations. We don't have access to staff and programming from a bunch of other stations that we own like the conglomerates. We tend to not have a lot of staff turnover and with many of our staff being with us for over ten years.

1221 Finally, I would note the principal areas of cultural diversity in our city are ethnic diversity and the presence of the First Nations community of Six Nations Reserve just outside of Brantford.

1222 Brantford has some degree of racial diversity, but in no way at the same level as cities like Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton or even Hamilton.

1223 With regard to employment practices, we are an equal opportunity employer. Forty per cent of our work force is made up of women. We also have employees with disabilities and we have had aboriginal employees.

1224 It should be noted that since the First Nations community has its own community radio station, there is a very strong tendency for qualified and interested aboriginal staff to wish to work in their own community. Nonetheless, we make efforts to reach out in our employment opportunities by going outside our own staff as much as possible to bring in new people.

1225 Vic is on the advisory board of the Mohawk College broadcast program. We are in regular contact with both Mohawk and Conestoga Colleges in our employment searches as well as using the other regular industry centres.

1226 We propose that for the new station we will open an aboriginal broadcast placement program to bring in aboriginal broadcast students for summer placement. We are hopeful that this will allow us to expand the pool of employees in the industry.

1227 I would also note that hiring of new employees to staff up the station provides us an opportunity to broaden the diversity of our work force and we are looking forward to doing that.

1228 With regard to news and other programming efforts, Tim Symons outlined the extent of out news commitment earlier. This kind of large newsroom permits us to reach out to all communities we serve.

1229 You may have noted that we have a number of supporting interventions from public and community organizations and the Six Nations. They note the outreach that we have done to cover the issues and concerns. In fact, we believe that the new station and additional staff will allow us to direct a new person to cover Six Nations to a greater extent.

1230 The largest celebration of ethnic diversity in our community is the annual International Villages Festival. We cover the festival extensively, both in the lead-up and during the festival. This coverage provides a good reflection of what's going on in our community.

1231 We also run a weekly four-hour German language program to serve the German-speaking community in our immediate community and surrounding areas. That runs every Sunday night.

1232 While it's difficult to say how a country music station will fully reflect Canada's racial and ethnic diversity in its music program, we would note that this would provide a new format in our community and provide access to the many fine Canadian country artists from across Canada.

1233 If any forms of music reflect the regional diversity of Canada, we think it's country. From Ontario, artists like Jason McCoy to the Celtic sounds of Atlantic Canada to the cowboy stylings of Ian Tyson from Alberta or the more folk-oriented music from B.C., country provides a good range of regional music.

1234 In addition, there are a large number of successful and popular aboriginal country artists from Tom Jackson to Laura Vincent. We will be playing them.

1235 We provide strong promotion of Canadian artists on our existing stations with some features on new artists and other attempts. Our Saturday night folk show is usually focused on Canadian folk artists and heavily promoted on both our stations.

1236 We expect to develop similar strong shows for Canadian artists, including the feature artist of the week and the other programs outlined by Vic.

1237 We are proud of the contribution to diversity we make and at present believe a new station will help us just strengthening that role further.

1238 MR. WILSON: Thank you. I have one further question. In answer to a question from Commissioner Williams, you mentioned that you had received a letter from FACTOR with respect to your Canadian Development initiatives.

1239 Would you undertake to file a copy of that letter with the Commission by the end of the hearing?

1240 MR. JACKMAN: Yes. I have it with me.

1241 MR. WILSON: Thank you.

1242 I have no further questions, Madam Chair.

1243 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, counsel.

1244 Commissioner Demers.

1245 COMMISSIONER DEMERS: Thank you, Madam Chair.

1246 Maybe I didn't listen to your answers and I'm sorry if you have already answered that question. You indicated that you felt loyalty to all the people you serve at the moment on the AM, for example, which has a large coverage, larger than Brantford.

1247 My concern, and I would like you to give some thought to that, is why you have only concerns for those in the City of Brantford for this application.

1248 MR. BUCHANAN: I'm sorry, Commissioner, that is not the intent, nor was that the intent of my answer. What I was trying to say to you was that our listeners are more than numbers to us. They are our friends and our neighbours whether they are in Brantford, Brant County or whether they are in Waterloo County which some are, but that's certainly not the area we are looking at.

1249 We are looking at Norfolk County to the south of us and Oxford County perhaps to the west of us, but we count every one of our listeners our friends. I'm sorry that you took it as an allusion to Brantford and Brantford people.

1250 COMMISSIONER DEMERS: Well, I was certainly not trying to be unfair to you, but it was my way of bringing into the discussion the fact that many of the present listeners to your stations, many from what I can see, will not have the benefit of the new proposal that you have today.

1251 MR. BUCHANAN: Some of the listeners may not have the benefit, but I would think that the majority would. Certainly just through the diversification of our news reporting, which will be local and regional, the opportunity that will be allowed us to be able to go into other communities to be able to garnish more information from them and they will certainly be done as an expansion of what we are doing now.

1252 We would like to think that we will satisfy the needs of the majority of the listeners.

1253 COMMISSIONER DEMERS: If you were to move the proposed antenna site, you could improve the power of your service, from what I understand and I may be wrong, and therefore serve more people with your new -- with the proposal of today and may cover in a sense more people than you already cover with your two other services.

1254 MR. BUCHANAN: I don't believe that that would be possible because of the restrictions on the proposed 91.5. Gordon Elder could better answer that, but I'm not sure that it is even workable at another location other than the current transmitter site.

1255 MR. ELDER: That is correct, Mr. Buchanan.

1256 Mr. Commissioner, the problems with the 91.5 assignment are that the easterly protections of Welland, Toronto and Orillia mean that the radiation to the east right from northeast to southeast must be limited, particularly towards Toronto and Welland. Therefore, if you move the site further west, you are reducing the coverage of Brantford too much. Therefore, it ceases to be a primary Brantford service.

1257 COMMISSIONER DEMERS: Thank you.

1258 Thank you, Madam Chair.

1259 THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you very much. I think that's it for our questions.

1260 Thank you, gentlemen.

1261 That concludes our work for today. We will be back here at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow morning. We will hear from Aboriginal Voices Radio Inc.

--- Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 1617, to resume

on Tuesday, October 29, 2002 at 0830 / L'audience

est ajournée à 1617 pour reprendre le mardi

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