By Emma Prestwich
News Editor
The Canadian Radio-television and Communications Commission (CRTC) has revoked CKLN’s license.
In a Jan. 28 press release, CRTC said the station had violated several regulations and license conditions and had no way of ensuring quality control for its programming.
CKLN had been issued several warnings by the commission to come into compliance with the conditions and had not acted on them.
According to the CRTC, the station was unable to convince the commission that it was capable of staying on air and taking away its license was the only course of action.
The station was unable to meet some basic conditions of license holders such as a program log, the submission of audible on-air tapes and complete annual returns.
This decision follows proceedings from Dec. 8 and 9, 2010 that included public hearings.
The CRTC began investigating CKLN in July 2009 after receiving complaints about its day-to-day operations. management and ability to stay on air. Other complaints included an unbalanced representation on the board of directors. In a notice of consultation last fall, the CRTC said there was ‘minimal’ student involvement.
The organization also has a history of infighting among its staff. In 2009, the station went off-air intermittently for seven months after the Student Campus Centre building manager was forced to lock out staff, volunteers and management for security reasons.
Kiefer Stradling
Good Riddance to bad rubbish.
Mikemp
RSU etc knew that this could and would happen,they were told over 3 years ago what was likly to happen if they and all the other “protestors” tried to “Take over CKLN” a federal corporation.
I am sad that after all the hard work that was put in by many hardworking people to get CKLN into the black and build the new studios.
That it should all come to this shows how without the the right nohow you can ruin everything.
David M.
This is a sad day.
Eric
The closure of CKLN would be a major loss for Ryerson students and the Toronto community. I hope the Eyeopener will give full coverage (rather than just this rewritten CRTC press release) in its next issue, particularly of the dissenting commissioner’s statement, and continue to closely cover the forthcoming campaign to save CKLN.
Paul
CKLN represents a populist voice, and as representatives of the voiceless, we are often wrongly misconstrued as “activists” “leftists”
and other epithets reflecting mid-20th century divisive political polarities.
We at the station have maintained equipment by tape and chewing gum over the past year without any assets at all, students have never been excluded and morale has improved greatly with the removal of the people who are now trying to bring us down with legal pressures from external positions. Anonymous drones are working the media and blogs to give a bad impression of a sincere hard-working group of radio innovators with consciences. We weren’t perfect, but beware future generations: there will be no place to even dare to try this free ideology attitude if the attack on alternative media succeeds.