( photo - Razvan Caliman / flickr Creative Commons )
For those of you just tuning in, here’s the story so far:
I discovered that Golden West Broadcasting Ltd. had proposed a new “classic hits” radio station for Fort Saskatchewan, a suburb of Edmonton, with a CRTC hearing scheduled for mid-September. At that point I felt it necessary to submit an intervention opposing the application. In particular, I was opposed to the format they had chosen, when that genre – rock / classic rock / classic hits – is already way over-served in an overly-competitive radio market, when there’s at least a handful of niches which a new radio station could have all to themselves. You can read my full intervention here.
So now that you’re all caught up, Wednesday I received Golden West Broadcasting Ltd.’s “Response To Interventions”. I laughed at first when I saw who it was too, because – apparently – the only others that submitted interventions were a bunch of the local radio corporations trying to protect their own backyard – Rawlco, Rogers, New Cap, Astral, and Fort Radio. No surprise.
The content of their response could be summarized in one pretty concise statement, even though it rambled on and on for seven pages: they’re going to service Fort Saskatchewan, with “hyper-local, relevant content, community information and surveillance”. They barely mention the type of music they plan on playing, and in fact downplay it significantly, saying it’s not that important. An overly effusive letter from the Mayor of Fort Saskatchewan accompanied GW’s comments.
I do understand that Fort Saskatchewan could use a station to focus on it, instead of Edmonton proper, and discuss events of note in the bedroom community, and that GW apparently has a decent track record of doing what they say in these instances.
However, given that their sole focus is on Fort Saskatchewan, and that the actual musical choices aren’t even that important, I challenge GW, and the CRTC, to choose one of the two following options:
- Choose another musical format that isn’t completely overflowing with other entrants – namely, as I suggested in my initial intervention – folk and folk rock; new music and indie rock; or jazz.
- If your entire focus is on Fort Saskatchewan, you shouldn’t need a transmitter that covers anything other than the community, so the operating license should restrict the size of the transmitter to do just that.
That is all for now. Thanks, and have an awesome weekend.
