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A federal regulator says it nonetheless hasn’t discovered what it is searching for after a broadcaster switched a traditional Calgary radio station to a chat format.
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Corus Leisure’s transfer to rework its Q107 FM from rock music to a simulcast of its 770 CHQR AM information and speak reveals was performed final month with out the required transmitter and license, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Fee (CRTC) says.
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“Based on fee information. . . there aren’t any rebroadcast transmitters licensed to simulcast the programming of economic AM station CHQR Calgary,” reads a Jan. 24 letter despatched from CRTC senior radio analyst Laurent Robillard-Cardinal to Karen Gifford, the broadcaster’s senior director of regulatory compliance and licensing.
“The licensee has not utilized for a license modification to request that CFGQ-FM be licensed to function within the specialty format.”
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The letter goes on to say that Corus solely owns the licensed transmitter to simulcast its information/speak format 24/7 in Banff.
And because it stands, the FM station can solely simulcast its AM counterpart’s content material 42 hours per week, the CRTC says.
To adjust to federal rules, Corus was requested to submit info to seven questions — together with “dDoes the licensee intend to maintain each stations operational?” — and to reveal what number of hours of the information/speak format per week the broadcaster expects to broadcast on the FM station.
It gave Friday because the deadline for the requested info to be submitted to the CRTC, and a cutoff for “extra interventions” was set for February 13.
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Final December 16, it was revealed that QR107, which has broadcast traditional rock music for the previous 19 years and whose predecessors date again 4 a long time, would change its format in early January.
In typically emotional farewells, the station’s fired DJs signed off by enjoying nothing however listener requests that day.
With appreciable fanfare that included congratulations from political figures, on January 9, CFGQ FM started broadcasting content material that was additionally broadcast by its sister AM station.
Nowhere in Robillard-Cardinal’s letter does it say that CFGQ FM ought to cease broadcasting, however it concludes by saying: “Within the absence of a response out of your facet by the desired deadline, the licensee will likely be in a state of affairs of obvious non-compliance with federal rules.
On Friday, CFGQ FM was simulcasting its ordinary information speak content material.
As of early Friday afternoon, neither Corus nor the CRTC had responded to requests for remark.
BKaufmann@postmedia.com
Twitter: @BillKaufmannjrn
