Matt Galloway’s career in radio started in an attic.

When the host of CBC’s Metro Morning started as an English and political science student at York University in 1989, he had no idea he was bound for a career in radio. In fact, he only discovered the campus radio station because it was in his residence building.

There, he learned to cut tape, operate the studio, organize the record library, and put together newscasts for a tiny station that didn’t broadcast further south than St. Clair Avenue. After moving downtown, he had to make the long trek to York’s Keele campus for his 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. Monday night broadcast. 

After the show finished, he would often hoist himself up a ladder and crawl into the record library attic to catch some sleep before class the next day.

“It was probably full of dust and all sorts of horrible bugs, but that was the place to crash,” he recalls. “There was no way that I was going to give it up. You had to make sacrifices. It was just an unbelievable experience to be able to have your own spot on the radio to be able to play what you wanted to play, and say what you wanted to say.”

“It was a real training ground for me in terms of understanding that you were talking not just to yourself, but potentially to a huge audience, even though there might just be you alone in the studio at 1:30 in the morning.” 

Now that Ryerson students voted for the establishment of a new campus-community radio station, it’s possible we might start creating some stories of our own. The $10.35 annual levy once allocated to the defunct CKLN radio station will now be put towards the establishment of a separate, functional campus radio station.

A team of radio and television arts students spearheaded a successful campaign for the “New Ryerson Radio” in October. Once the Ryerson Students’ Union ratifies the vote, the RSU will begin working on an application for the 88.1 FM frequency formerly occupied by CKLN. It must be submitted to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the independent public body that supervises and regulates broadcasters, by Dec. 19, 2011.

If approved by the CRTC, Ryerson would have a chance to improve on the checkered history of CKLN. A new station could be an opportunity to turn Ryerson radio into a campus and community hub similar to the University of Toronto’s CIUT 89.5 FM and York’s CHRY 105.5 FM.

Randy Reid used to drink a lot of cola. When the York communications grad did his first hip-hop radio show at CHRY, it was from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m., and he had a 90-minute commute from Scarborough to the station’s studio on campus. He needed the caffeine.   

“But I don’t even remember that,” he says. “I just remember it being fun.”

So much fun that Reid, aka DJ Manifest, left his job as a segment producer for CBC’s As It Happens to work full time on co-ordinating programming for CHRY.

Both entering their 25th year, CHRY and CIUT offer a mix of music and spoken word content, including talk and news shows. CHRY’s news program, News Now, goes live every weekday from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. and covers hyper-local and campus happenings. 

CIUT has what was (until recently) the only weekly environmental news show in Canada, called The Green Majority.  It is now broadcast on 20 other campus radio stations across the country.

“The mandate of campus-community radio is to provide a level of access to mass media broadcasting for communities that aren’t generally represented,” says Reid, citing the example of French-language shows. Reid says it’s the individual programmers’ link to their community that makes this type of radio successful. 

The ratio of student involvement to community participation is about 40/60 at both York and U of T. Both stations make active efforts to recruit students for roles that range from fundraising, answering phone calls and logging programming to researching or writing show scripts, booking guests and hosting shows.

CHRY also has exhaustive orientation sessions and weekly training that emphasizes that, while fun, volunteering at the station requires the commitment of a job. There’s more to radio than being on air: the work put into preparing a show can take five to 10 hours.

Talia Newman is a U of T psychology student and the host of the weekly CIUT music program The Mixtape Escape, which airs every Friday from noon to 2 p.m.

“The first time I started, I was so nervous that it took me ages to put the playlist together because it had to be perfect,” she recalls. Six months later, she has figured out how to balance the show with her schedule and is considering switching to Ryerson’s RTA program because of her passion for radio. For Newman, it’s the staff and volunteers’ love for the station that motivates her to stay dedicated. 

But Reid says a station can’t survive on fun alone. “It is important to understand that it is a business, by no uncertain terms. It’s important to have management and leadership that’s consistent, and you want to say, experienced,” he says.

This can be a problem when there are too many cooks in the kitchen who want to push a personal approach rather than an agreed-upon vision, he says, noting that full-time staff should be responsible for managing the business side of the operation. 

Reid’s position as program director is paid, along with Danae Peart’s job as CHRY station manager, and several part-time positions. All contracts for paid staff are subject to yearly renewal by the board of directors.

Reid says the board should include students, faculty and community members, and their roles should be separate from those in charge of day-to-day programming. 

Station managers need to have a wide grasp of studio production so they can support all types of programming, Reid says, and a level of experience to deal with diversity.

“It’s challenging to give a voice to disparate groups without having discord,” says Peart, a York communications grad. “We don’t allow for being sidetracked; the aim is to do radio that connects to people, so as long as we’re connecting to people, we’re being relevant,” she says.

CKLN started broadcasting in 1983. At its pinnacle, it had about seven staff and more than 170 community and student volunteers. It was known for providing high quality alternative radio programming, such as The Fantastic Voyage, Canada’s first hip-hop show, run by DJ Ron Nelson in the 1980s.

However, between 2007 and 2009, CKLN succumbed to such strong internal division that three simultaneously competing boards of directors emerged. In the absence of a single board recognized as legitimate, the station accrued a debt of over $200,000 from unpaid fees and bills.

At one point, one group changed the locks to the studio, prompting a break-in by another faction seeking to occupy the station. As a result, the landlord barred everyone’s access to the premises for seven months in 2009, forcing the station to play pre-recorded programming and thus violating CRTC requirements.

CKLN was nominally a campus-community radio station, but in reality had little to no student involvement. Out of about 50 shows on the station, one previous programmer can recall only five having any student participation.

The CRTC decided the station’s ongoing failure to file financial and programming records, the state of the board of directors, and the lack of paid staff and student representation — among other violations — meant the station was breaching the terms of its licence. Seeing little hope of CKLN becoming compliant, the commission revoked the station’s licence in February of this year.

The demise of CKLN diminished the campus-community radio sector, says Ken Stowar, station manager and program director at CIUT. “What in effect happened is the community lost a lot of content, a presentation that nobody else is going to be able to pick up.”

Licence compliance issues were the main factor behind CKLN’s downfall, explains Shelley Robinson, executive director of the National Campus and Community Radio Association. “It’s easy to believe when you’re making very good radio, that you don’t have to worry about the small details, but the CRTC has made it ever more clear that you really do have to be concerned,” she says. “And that’s not a sexy one, but it is ultimately the reason that the station got shut down.”

Many campus-community radio stations have had vicious infighting, and have still survived, Robinson says, adding organizers should recognize that conflict is a possibility from the get-go, and work around it with solid practices of inclusion.
“The problem is not having the friction, it’s how you deal with it,” she says.

The “New Ryerson Radio” will start brand new with a fresh approach and a focus on Ryerson students and their surrounding communities.

The Ryerson students working towards a new station, led by RTA students Kolter Bouchard and Noorez Rhemtulla, have promised to prevent such a fiasco as the RSU will be writing the terms of a new corporation that will be applying for the licence; requiring the board of directors to have equal representation of students, faculty and community members; and hiring effective management transparently.

  Stowar emphasizes that Ryerson’s application to the CRTC will need positive letters of support explaining why it should receive the frequency. “They’re going to have to illustrate that they are clearly separated from the individuals that were involved in the previous operation,” he says.

An application for a community-based campus radio station involves extensive work. It must detail financial and marketing operations for the first seven years, the plan for representation on the board of directors, copies of all constituting documents (for example, certificate and articles of incorporation or bylaws), and the filing of technical documents with Industry Canada that show maps of proposed coverage boundaries.

In addition, applicants must provide proof of access to a location for studios and a transmitter; a breakdown of programming by language, ethnicity, music and sources; plans for developing local talent and training volunteers; and a sample weekly programming schedule. “It’s a very intense game,” Stowar says.

While a campus-community radio station is not-for-profit, the stakes are high for commercial stations like 103.9 PROUD FM, which submitted an application to switch to CKLN’s vacant 88.1 FM frequency in September. Stowar estimates the frequency could be worth anywhere from $20 to $50 million to a commercial station. He’s also heard reports of other applicants to the frequency, ranging from a 24-hour gospel music station, to a Punjabi station and a southeast Asian interest. But it’s all rumours, as the CRTC refuses to disclose applicants before the deadline.

Stowar is nonetheless optimistic about Ryerson’s chances. “I’m really hoping the commission will do its utmost to ensure that that frequency is held for a community-based radio station,” he says. From his current vantage point at CBC, Galloway says he learned what really matters back during his campus broadcasting days: that even a small station can provide formative lessons.

“It was really important that you understand that people in the community really thought that it didn’t matter whether you were heard across the city,” Galloway says. “You were theirs to them, and so they really relied on you.
“And with the work that we do at CBC, we understand that our community is the city and its many different communities rolled into one, but (CHRY) was a great training ground to understand that radio can be really powerful and effective even if it’s a small broadcast.”