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CKLN could be silenced

By Matthew Prescott Oxman

Campus radio station CKLN could lose its broadcasting license this December due to a number of complaints.

“It would be a shame that a university that’s well-known for its radio and broadcasting program didn’t have a community campus station around,” said Andrew Leher, vice chair of the CKLN board.

According to the Canadian Radio and Television Council (CRTC), the complaints include ongoing difficulties with the station’s governance structure, day-to-day management and operations, programming and ability to remain on-air.

A Dec. 8 hearing will pick up where a CRTC hearing in May left off, and will consider revoking the station’s broadcasting license.

Among the complaints against CKLN is an unbalanced representation on the station’s boards of directors. The CRTC said in a notice of consultation that student involvement was “minimal.” According to CKLN’s website, 50 of the station’s more than 200 volunteers are Ryerson students or grads.

Leher said most of the conflicts with the CRTC are from two years ago. The station went off air for six months in 2009 as a result of internal conflict, he said.

“There was a dark period and we’ll have to discuss that in detail with the CRTC, and answer their questions,” Leher said.

CKLN is funded by a student levy, and some students don’t think the station is worth the student fees they fork over.

“If [CKLN] doesn’t advertise itself to students, is disorganized and doesn’t put stuff on the air all the time then they shouldn’t be around,” said Joseph Lee, a first-year arts and contemporary studies student. “It’s kind of an embarrassment.”

Photo by: Chelsea Pottage

11 Comments

  1. vicerin

    You might want to check your facts on this…first of all, I’m pretty certain that that is not the board member’s name…who is Adam Leher? Second of all, from what I understand, CKLN is now running with a new interm board and they are even having new elections at their AGM this coming Sunday. A call for student nominations for that board went out weeks ago.
    And give me a break, students pay something like $2 to $3 in their student fees for the opportunity of having a highly progressive community radio station on their campus. Go and get involved at the station, and take advantage of your paid student fees.
    Whatever is being reviewed by CRTC is regarding the past board of directors, past staff & past management. The CKLN that is on the air now is redeveloping itself solely through volunteers.
    And they could use some support at Ryerson, rather than further chastisement.

    • JT

      It does not matter if the fee is $2 or $200, if a majority of students do not want to support this station they should not have to. It the station goes away and people miss it they will just start it up again, but if noone misses it it will go away for good.

  2. Serge

    Support *at* Ryerson? I would have thought that CKLN should originate *in* Ryerson, given that this is supposed to be the Ryerson radio station and all. People should read these CRTC documents. CKLN is a highly embarrassing mess. The documents sound like it was run into the ground by various factions of petty politicos who will argue any ridiculous point rather than set aside differences to work together. It is quite sad.

  3. Gina

    It’s Andrew Lehrer

  4. Mike

    The problem was when the OCAP “activists” and the local commercial music interests took over the station and drove the students out years ago.

    I have no idea why the Ryerson Student Union and the Canadian Federation of Students supported this attack against Ryerson students.

    CKLN is paid for by students and should be run by students from the journalism, media and electrical engineering programs.

    Either kick out the nonstudents or have students stop paying for it!

  5. Stewboy

    LET THE CKLN SHIP SINK….GOOD RIDDANCE!

    There is only one conclusion….the CRTC must terminate the broadcast license of CKLN. If the CRTC does not act in this fashion then they will have set a dangerous precedent. In essence, they would be saying that it is okay for any radio station to not honour rules, regs and conditions of license. CKLN does not deserve to survive the upcoming review. The station completely ignored its audience because of all of the in-fighting taking place. I would advise all interested parties that would like to start up a new community radio station to begin the process of putting an application together. The CRTC will eventually put a call out for those interested in establishing a new service on 88.1. A brand new day is coming!

  6. Kitty Kat

    “It would be embarrassing”? That train left the station a long time ago. For CKLN to hide behind claims that they should be saved because they represent students or Ryerson is nonsense since they clearly do not. And as for “vicerin”‘s comments; they need to have four token students on the board but that’s all they want, or even legally need for that matter. CKLN has “50 students”? Yeah right. Who are they? What do they do? And the fee isn’t “$2 to $3” it’s $10. Most other schools charge $5, and get better results. CKLN is always crying poor, sounds like they have too much money actually if they have enough to spend in constant lawsuits.

  7. John

    Who cares?

    They kicked us students out of CKLN years ago when the outside radicals took over the station and the RSU wouldn’t do a thing to make it a STUDENT STATION RUN BY THE STUDENTS!

    As alumni my attitude is that if the students don’t run it then the students shouldn’t be stuck paying for it!

  8. Penny Pincher

    Get your facts straight; the student fee isn’t “2 or 3 dollars”, it’s $10. At U of T it’s only 5. And that’s only after they won a referendum two years ago to raise it from the $2.50 they had been paying for twenty years. At most other schools it’s $5.00. So does CKLN deserve twice as much as everybody else? Is CKLN twice as good? Don’t think so. When’s the last time Ryerson or RSU allowed a referendum on this? What are they afraid of?

  9. Geezer

    About 18 years ago, CKLN faced a student referrendum to cut off funding, because (surprise!) CKLN did NOTHING for the student community which funded it. CKLN only survived the vote because of student apathy; since the station did nothing for students, they did not care about it, one way or another. It’s ironic that the very reason why CKLN sucks is what saved it then.

    18 years later, CKLN is WORSE. Not only do they still do nothing for the Ryerson community, they can’t even function. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.

    Cut ’em off. Please….

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