CRTC Reads Riot Act to 31 Community/Campus Stations
Lest you think that the CRTC is just being a hardass on companies like BCE and Astral, let’s not forget that they had no trouble revoking the license of Toronto community station CKLN for non-compliance to broadcast regulations. That 88.1 frequency was recently awarded to a new commercial entity which will start broadcasting an indie rock format sometime in 2013.
But notice this CRTC post from back in August (courtesy the SOWNY forum). More than 30 community and campus stations are on the carpet for non-complance. How many of these stations are in danger of their licenses being revoked? And don’t think that the CRTC won’t do it.
They also are "reading the riot act" to commercial stations and CBC. There seems to be a lot up for renewal, and there are lots of compliance issues across the board. However, the CRTC now has a practice of taking each non-compliance issue case-by-case, weighing the seriousness and frequency, and actions taken to correct the issues. the big one to look out for is "show cause" proceedings. That's when you are really defending the existence of your licence. In the CKLN case that the article sites, it was through a show cause hearing that the CRTC chose not to renew the licence.
The CRTC needs to be either disbanded, replaced, or completely overhauled from the ground up. Its a joke of an organization; going out of their way to screw over the little guy, keeping Canada 5-10 years behind the times at the rate its sorting out the digital rights 'problem', and all while being in the pocket of Rogers and Bell. Fail.