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Making airwaves

By Bernadette Johnson

RyeSAC wants to do it live.

RyeSAC VP administration Angelo DeLuca submitted a proposal to campus radio station CKLN for a weekly half-hour show to cover issues on campus life at Ryerson surrounding universities.

He says he was prompted to create this kind of show because Ryerson is now well represented on the airwaves.

“CKLN doesn’t always reflect campus community,” says DeLuca. “[The show] will involve life and all students and address all campus life issues.”

DeLuca’s application for the half-hour weekly program was submitted before the winter break.

CKLN programming director Vivian Barclay says their mandate “doesn’t say we have to give shows to students,” but she’s interested in the concept.

She says the show should be easier to fit in than many others because it is only a half-hour long and it won’t duplicate any existing shows.

The station tries to serve everyone in the community including students, says the station’s Music Director Joanne Gairy, but their programming extends as far away as Buffalo.

DeLuca agrees CKLN must mention all aspects of the community but says its listenership is high among Ryerson students, and that should be reflected in the programming.

This was the “biggest beef” for the former VP of finance, Patrick Hynes.

“You rarely heard the word ‘Ryerson’ let alone something like CKLN supported by the students of Ryerson, or ‘CKLN broadcasting from the basement of Ryerson.’ Ryerson should get some sort of recognition,” Hynes said.

DeLuca said he’s heard ‘Ryerson’ mentioned on air a few times, but would definitely like to see the school mentioned more often.

Gairy disagrees. “We play carts that say we are coming from Ryerson at least once a day, in fact we play it more than we have to,” she says.

Hynes, who sat on the Board of Directors for CKLN last year, thinks the station should show more interest in Ryerson, since the school pays one-third of it’s operating budget.

Full-time Ryerson students pay $8.03 from their tuition fees for the station. This works out to be more than $115,000, based on the office of the REgistrar’s estimate of 14,500 students.

For now DeLuca’s proposal will go into the filing cabinet with all the others waiting for approval and time slots.

But some changes might have to be made before the show can be approved to go on-air.

“The station is not mandated to have talk shows because there’s not 10 second delay [in the case of profanity],” says Gairy. She says CKLN is primarily music-based.

DeLuca says that didn’t stop the station from running news information before, but if the station wants music, he’ll work around it.

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