[grc] Canadian version of the Healthy Stations Project

[Paul Bame]

Brings a tear to my eye reading this -- similar script used at my former
station KRFC.


Paul (pablito) Bame
Prometheus Radio Project <http://prometheusradio.org/>, Engineering Director
215.727.9620 x505
N0KCL/3



On Tue, Jan 17, 2017 at 8:53 PM, Frieda Werden via grc <
grc at maillist.peak.org> wrote:

> This paper won an award from the regulator.  It begins:
>
> Another One Bites the Dust? The Transition from CHRY 105.5FM to VIBE105
>
> Download this paper in PDF
> <http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/acrtc/prx/2016/mastrocola2016.pdf>
>
>    - By Daniela Mastrocola, PhD Student
>    - York University & Ryerson University | ‘Communication & Culture’
>
> On April 30, 2015, senior management at CHRY Community Radio Inc., the
> campus/community radio station housed by York University, announced the end
> of CHRY 105.5FM’s 28 year broadcast. Volunteer contributors – some of whom
> had been programmers since the station’s inception – were told that none of
> their programming contracts would be renewed as of the start of the new
> fiscal year. On May 1, 2015 a new programming cycle began under the banner
> of “VIBE105” (VIBE, henceforth), the new broadcast division of CHRY
> Community Radio Inc.
>
> Management informed staff about the impending change during a closed staff
> meeting one month earlier, insisting that a drastic change was necessary in
> order to secure the station’s long-term financial sustainability in a
> changing media climate. They identified five interrelated objectives that,
> they argued, could only be achieved under a new station identification
> (ID): (a) an increase in the expectations held of broadcasters to improve
> the overall quality of delivery, in order to (b) combat the perceived
> inferiority of an ‘amateur’ campus/community (c/c) radio station (along
> with suspending the use of the “c/c” title in external communications,
> which was already underway). They hoped this would (c) increase advertising
> revenues and financial sponsorships, in part to (d) stop depending so
> greatly on the York University student levy and diminishing fundraising
> revenue and (e) thereby financially sustain a station that had been
> operating on an unsustainable budget for years. They insisted that the
> long-held commitment to providing non-mainstream content as well as
> free-of-charge media literacy and radio production training to the
> community-at-large would not change, despite the new “urban alternative”
> format.
>
> This paper situates the closure of CHRY and its reopening as VIBE within
> the broader political-economic context of broadcast regulation in Canada in
> order to understand (a) why this drastic change was deemed necessary on the
> part of those who undertook it and (b) what this change means for the
> future of this campus/community radio station. It asks four interrelated
> questions. What challenges did CHRY navigate on a daily basis in order to
> sustain its existence in an increasingly competitive local (Toronto) and
> unsupportive regulatory (national, CRTC) environment? How did these
> challenges evolve alongside the development of the CRTC’s regulation of
> both private (commercial) and community broadcasting, as well as the
> emergence of online media? What are the demonstrated and foreseeable
> consequences of restructuring CHRY in the form of VIBE, in terms of the
> community service values that were core to the former’s functioning?
> Finally, what steps might have been taken – or may be taken elsewhere in
> the future – to preserve this community service sector of Canadian
> broadcasting?
>
> [continue reading at link]
>
> http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/acrtc/prx/2016/mastrocola2016.htm
>
> --
> Frieda Werden, Series Producer
> WINGS: Women's International News Gathering Service www.wings.org
> <http://www.wings.org>
> https://www.facebook.com/wingsradio
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