QUEBEC – The CRTC’s recent decision to transfer the licence of this city’s troublesome CHOI-FM from Genex Communications to Radio Nord Communications has not gone over well with at least one interested suitor.
MBL Communication Média, which had expressed interest in competing for CHOI’s frequency when it looked like the CRTC would revoke the licence, has filed for leave to appeal the Commission’s approval of the sale before the Federal Court of Appeal.
The company wants the court to require the CRTC to open up bids for CHOI’s much-coveted frequency, as the CRTC originally said it would do in July 2004 when it ruled the licence should be yanked.
In October, with CHOI still on the air thanks to various court appeals, the CRTC decided to accept an application from Radio Nord to purchase the station and take over the licence, despite objections from several companies, including MBL and Astral Media. Radio Nord had reached an agreement in principle to buy the station from Genex last spring.
“I hope the Court agrees to hear this, and I think they will because it’s clearly a matter of public interest. There are fundamental issues involved,” MBL’s owner Marc B. Lachance told Cartt.ca.
“The CRTC handed over this licence without ever giving equal opportunity to others to submit an application,” Lachance said. “If you do that across the country on a regular basis, licences will all end up going to their friends. There has to at least be an appearance of equity.”
Radio Nord applied directly to the CRTC last May to take over CHOI’s licence. MBL objected, arguing that if the Commission were to give its approval, without having issued a call for applications, it would be acting “without jurisdiction, contrary to its procedures, its past decisions, the Broadcasting Act, and the most basic principles of natural justice and fairness."
Astral Media further argued that if CRTC were to approve the application, Genex would have no interest in pursuing its legal challenge of the CRTC’s 2004 ruling before the Supreme Court.
In that eventuality, “the public, the CRTC, and the regulated broadcasting industry would be deprived of the opportunity to obtain a decisive confirmation or denial, from the highest court in the land, of the CRTC’s authority to deny a licence renewal for the reasons set out in the case of CHOI-FM”.
To date, Genex has not yet withdrawn its Supreme Court application.
In response, the CRTC said the law does not require it to issue a general call for applications.
“It was and remains appropriate, and in the best interests of the achievement of the objectives of the [Broadcasting] Act, to have considered the [Radio Nord] application without having issued a call for applications,” it said in its October ruling.
Lachance, who’s been involved in Quebec City radio for about 20 years, first with the former Télémédia network and now in advertising, said he’s long had in interest in acquiring CHOI’s frequency, because it remains the last and best opportunity in a crowded market.
“There are others who wanted this frequency too,” he said, “but I guess I’m the one who’s carrying the torch.”
Glenn Wanamaker is Cartt.ca’s Quebec Editor, based in Quebec City.
