Radio station fights for air time in lower mainland

Page 3

A local radio station with national Aboriginal stories is in the works, but awaiting a government decision on which frequency can be used.

Aboriginal Voices Radio (AVR), a non-profit society in Toronto, has successfully obtained licences in three other cities: Toronto, Calgary and Ottawa. The first to broadcast will be Toronto, tentatively scheduled for December.

But in Vancouver, only a partial licence has been granted. That means the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) authorized the AVR application to have a station, but without granting the rights to a specific frequency. In the crowded Vancouver market, that pits Aboriginal Voices' application against two major broadcasting names, Shaw and CBC.

At first, AVR applied for its own frequency, which the CRTC denied. AVR has re-applied to the CRTC to use 92.3 FM in Vancouver as well as 850 AM in Abbotsford. Their reasoning is that they wish to be able to reach the entire community, not just the downtown core.

But according to Paul Stevenson of the Vancouver Metis Association, the CBC opposes the AVR proposal because listeners in South Vancouver will not be able to listen to a CBC station in Victoria. "For me, it's not good enough," Stevenson added.

On Aug. 27, a community meeting was held in Vancouver, where the members resoundingly applauded the radio station's efforts, and told them "not to back down," he said.

Commercial broadcasters such as Shaw could be motivated to fight for these frequencies because buying a licence could cost as much as $50 million, versus a few thousand dollars to start an application process through the government, noted Mark MacLeod of Aboriginal Voices Radio. He said that CBC has been more receptive, and that they have had meetings with senior CBC officials. "They realize that we're not going to go away now," he said.

Once all four cities have radio stations in operation, only one set of programs will be supplied. It can be produced across the country, and then sent to Toronto to be put together in a national feed and sent up by satellite.

The ultimate goal is to have both local and national programming. "We're doing this national thing because we think it is a vital benefit for people in urban centres to be able to talk to each other in talk-shows and round-table discussions, and to hear the same stories and relate to them", MacLeod said.

Right now, programming and operating is taking second place to actually getting the licences. "It's our intention in Vancouver to work with people to get the funding, set up a studio, set up a link from the studio to a transmitter site, hire people and produce programming as we can do that," he said.

MacLeod added that "our kind of feeling was that we had to grab the resource before it disappears," since the last of the radio frequency licences was being offered in the major centres.