QUEBEC – With a stroke of the pen, the CRTC’s battle with Quebec City problem-child radio station CHOI-FM, hooked up to the “judicial respirator” for more than two years, are effectively over.
The CRTC has approved an application by Radio Nord Communications Inc. to take over CHOI’s licence from Genex Communications, whose former talk show hosts (like Jeff Fillion and now-independent Quebec MP Andre Arthur) earned it top ratings and big advertising dollars but also lawsuits and the CRTC’s ultimate sanction, licence non-renewal.
In its decision handed down Friday, the CRTC brushed aside demands that it issue a general call for applications to obtain CHOI’s frequency, saying it is not required to do so.
After reaching an agreement in principle with Genex to buy CHOI, Radio Nord filed an application to take over its licence last May.
The CRTC said that despite objections from Astral Media Radio and several other interveners, “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”.
In July, 2004, the CRTC ordered CHOI stripped of its licence because of its flagrant disregard for broadcast rules and the industry’s code of ethics. Its talk show hosts, Fillion in particular (who is now available on satellite radio service XM), ignored numerous warnings and “were relentless in the use of the public airwaves to insult and ridicule people”. When confronted with the most serious complaints, the station’s owners denied that problems existed, the CRTC said.
Just days before the station was to be yanked from the air, it won a reprieve from the Federal Court of Appeal, which allowed it to continue broadcasting until an appeal of the CRTC’s ruling on its license could be heard.
It subsequently lost the appeal but the Court again extended CHOI’s life pending an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. Last June, Genex’s leave to appeal application was adjourned for a year after Genex said it had an agreement to sell to Radio Nord.
With the CRTC’s decision on Friday, it’s expected that Genex will withdraw its appeal application.
That’s precisely the scenario that Astral Media warned about in its intervention over Radio Nord’s application.
If Genex were to withdraw its leave application, it said, “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”.
Radio Nord’s licence, good for seven years, is subject to several conditions. However, despite CHOI’s past record, complying with a code of ethics is not among them.
The CRTC said that because Radio Nord has submitted a code of ethics governing open-line programming, it “sees no need to require Radio Nord to comply with its code of ethics as a condition of licence”.
In its application, Radio Nord promised to contribute more than $1 million over seven years to promote Quebec music and emerging artists
As well, Genex promised to contribute, prior to the closing of the station’s sale, $813,000 to “Fondation New Rock”, a new project to fund French-language music to be administered by a not-for-profit organization.
The CRTC welcomed the commitment and said the investment in Canadian talent development will provide “significant benefits to French-language vocal artists…and to the Canadian broadcasting system”, that “far exceed the $8,000 per year required under current policies”.
Among the conditions of licence is that Radio Nord demonstrate that the new Foundation is a not-for-profit body and will be independent of Genex.
Based in Quebec City, Glenn Wanamaker is Cartt.ca’s Quebec Editor.
