Jul. 28, 2010 - Issue #771: Young at Heart

Citizen powered

Campus community radio strengthened with new mandate

Over 140 campus and community radio stations in the country can count on some consistent funding. While spending years reliant on the donations of listeners a new Canadian Radio-telecommications Commission policy will dedicate new funding on a yearly basis to campus community stations. In a year-long review process the commission determined that the campus community radio sector will receive a new mandate, new funding and greater support for volunteers.

"It's a huge first step," explains Shelley Robinson, executive director of the National Campus and Community Radio Association. Currently the campus and community radio sector relies on project-based grants, donations from listeners and levies from students at post-secondary institutions. "The money's awesome, but if you worked it out, 140 stations, roughly $750 000, that's about $5000 per station," Robinson says. "It's great that they recognize we need money and [are] giving us the credibility of the fund."

The money will be collected from commercial stations on a percentage basis and distributed to the Community Radio Fund of Canada which was established in 2007, but has only worked off of project-based funding since that time. "Project-based funding is great, but it doesn't address the systemic concerns," explains Robinson.

With budgets ranging from the tens of thousands to half a million, the sector itself is a collection of stations serving communities as diverse as Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, with a population of just over a thousand, to the campus station at McGill University, serving tens of thousands of students and community members. But in the end, the needs of stations were consistent: volunteer training and funding for equipment—outcomes the CRTC policy recognized as vital to the stability of the sector. The role of volunteers was recognized as so central to the functioning of stations that the CRTC review process recognised it needed more time to evaluate their role, and hopes to have a new process for volunteers in time for the 2011 renewal of most stations' licenses.

Robinson points out that volunteers and the community members are the people who have made campus community radio work and for this policy to even come forward. "It's the work of volunteers that makes stations run, and it's that same dedication by volunteers that helped bring about this new policy."

Not only did the commission recognize the centrality of volunteers, but the community surrounding each station. With the new policy comes a new mandate for community and campus stations. No longer defining themselves against others, but defining what stations themelves are: rooted in the community. The policy reads that stations are distinguished by the place in the community reflecting the "communities' needs, values, and the requirement for volunteers in programming and other aspects of station operations. This helps ensure that the programming is different from that of commercial and public radio."

In an odd twist against what many see as the crumbling of traditional media, the changing state of journalism may have made it easier for the CRTC to define campus community radio's mandate. "As newspapers combine and fold, and as commercial radio feels it's not centred in local communities the value of what we do is more evident now that fewer people are doing it," Robinson says.

Robinson is hopeful about this new policy taking effect this fall. "Community radio in Canada is used to being marginal. You're no longer marginal. [This policy] shows people we're here and we're worth giving money and we need to build on that momentum." V

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