BY JOSH COHEN

Radio, to me, has meant different things at different times. (I can only
refer to the stations | listened to while growing up in Toronto, but pretty
much everyone will have their own equivalents.) The various signatures
and themes of CBC’s morning shows are permanently associated with
images of my Dad shaving, naked, the mirrors fogged, as I went in to
say goodbye before heading off to grade six. A couple of years later, my
sisters would religiously tune in to CFTR every Saturday at noon to hear,
and write down, the week’s top 30. On Sunday nights I would listen in

CO-OP Radio

bed to ‘Theater of the Mind’ on CHUM, which rebroadcast melodramatic
pre-WWII radio plays. Somehow these sound events were all the more
vivid because they permeated the fabric of my life. They formed a sonic
backdrop to other activities and thus became enmeshed with them. At
the same time they stood on their own as gateways into other worlds
and other experiences.

In the mid-eighties, before baseball was widely televised in Toronto,
every Blue Jays game could be heard on CJCL 1430. The announcers,
Tom Cheek and Jerry Howarth, were full of irritating trivia and often
reduced each other to helpless laughter with seemingly innocuous wise-
cracks. But they were also able to convey the actions and rhythms on
the field with amazing evocativeness. I could gauge simply from the
intensity and pitch of their voices whether a given crack signified a rou-
tine grounder or a double down the line, and the mounting hysteria of a
crucial home run (“It’s back...way back...AND THERE SHE GOES!”) never
failed to produce in me a visceral thrill that was close to being sexual.
Later, when the games were on TV, I would watch with the volume off
and the radio on.

It’s helpful to recall these pleasant childhood memories when I
become obsessed with the notion that commercial mass media is an evil
horrible monster bent on stamping out all traces of human diversity and
creativity in the process of reducing us to mindless automaton con-
sumers. It’s still true though. The vast majority of the airwaves are used
to pump out standardized, sanitized babble. This inanity lies not only in
content, but in rigid format. Murray Schafer describes how “radio has
become the clock of Western civilization, taking over the function of
social timekeeper from the church bell and the factory whistle.
Throughout the day, events are shaved off to the split second. The news
comes at eight on the way to work, at five on the way home, at 11 on
the way to bed”. In between is a continuous flow of advertising inter-
spersed with snappy patter and three minute songs.

The few exceptions are usually college and community stations. In
high school, | started listening to CKLN 88.1 on Friday nights, to hear
Reggae Showcase, full of synthesized sound effects and incomprehensible
interviews with Jamaican musicians and DJs who, at eleven o'clock, had
not yet even contemplated heading out for the show they were to per-
form that night. I was also fascinated with the mellifluous rumblings of
Milton Blake, who signed on for his Sunday afternoon show ‘the Musical
Triangle’ with a dub poem of his own creation (“black music/from the
motherland/to this land”) and the promise of “commentary on the black
experience at five”. Blake, a former JBC announcer, was atypically slick
for CKLN; most of the programmers spoke in monotone voices punctuat-
ed by awkward silences. It didn’t matter much, though, because they
played the best and most widely varied music of any station in Toronto.
CKLN was (and still is) also one of the few media forums for political
activists and was an excellent source for alternative news.

Thus, upon arriving in Vancouver, I searched out the community sta-
tions here, and found CFRO (102.7 fm). Unique in English-speaking
Canada, CFRO is a cooperatively-owned and run community station with
no links to any university or college. They were first granted a license in
1975, in an atmosphere thick with high hopes for the potential of com-
munity-run and public mass media. Accounts of their origins suggest an
energetic and innovative convergence of people and ideas. Twenty years
later they are still kicking. The world around them, though, has changed
dramatically. How have they changed with it? How have they kept the
station going? How successful has their cooperative structure been, and
what are the challenges associated with it? How successful have they
been in making real an alternative vision of mass media? What are the
opportunities for people with new ideas? I had these intrepid questions
in mind when | approached program coordinator Ian Pringle for an
interview. What follows are excerpts from a 90-minute conversation,
edited for concision and clarity.

°_s»
JOSH COHEN: What is the mandate that you've set for yourselves?

IAN PRINGLE: The station’s mandate was set when the station first went
on the air. There have been some changes to the mandate, but basically
it’s to provide access to the community, and in particular to provide
access to groups that don’t really have any access to media. That can
mean a whole variety of different things: communities whose first lan-
guage isn’t English, immigrant communities, who aren't going to have
any other service in their own language; Social movements, who don't
generally get access as social movements, like the women’s movement,
the gay and lesbian rights movements, the trade unionists, the peace
movement. On a commercial radio station you'll never see a program

Novemper 1995 / Emny 3

done by members of the peace movement, or a
program that’s done from the perspective of a
social movement, because they don’t work that
way. It’s a very different idea to give access to
social movements rather than access to profession-
al journalists who're going to make commentary
on social movements.

Another part of our mandate is to give access to cultural forms that
don’t receive a lot of media outlets: poetry, sound art, creative use of
sound no matter what it is; also, types of music that are not commercial-
ly successful in the way that pop rock or dance music or country are,
those areas that don’t get any exposure or don’t have an outlet. That’s
not hard: when you look at the radio soundscape in Vancouver you
could have ten Co-op radios that specialize in things that nobody else
does. So on the broadest level the station’s mandate is to provide an
alternative to what else is out there, and that’s always going to be
changing. Some other objectives are to provide an outlet that’s anti-
racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, anti-ageist, anti-ableist. Also, to
provide some thing that’s local. It’s people from the local community
who're doing the programming, supporting the station, so the program-
ming should deal with local issues.

JC: Like you said, if Co-op was to try and provide an
alternative outlet for every group that wasn’t include
on mainstream radio, you could have ten Co-op
radios. So not everyone that wants access can get
it.

WARNING:

IP: No. And that’s not why we're here, either,
just to provide access to anybody. We’re not a
public broadcaster in the sense of a public
television station, or even a community t.v.
station. Community t.v. is required to be there
by the CRTC, it’s a requirement that they are
there to provide some balance in the system,
but there’s no_requirement that a co-op commu-
nity station exist. | think a lot of people come here
thinking that we’re a community station, therefore it
was created through some kind of legislation, therefore
they have a right to be here. That’s simply not true, they don’t

have a right to be here. Nobody has a right to be here. The station is
owned and operated by it’s members. We’re cooperatively owned, but
we're privately owned...So yeah, we make decisions and we turn people
away, there’s just not enough airtime. You go through a fairly rigorous
process to get a show approved, you're going to be waiting a while, and
in and of itself the fact that there’s an application process that takes a
couple months is enough to turn an awful lot of people away, unless you
really want it.

This article

is long.

°_s

IP: We're always on the brink. Somebody once said Co-op radio is radio
that’s always at the crossroads. And it’s true we’re always at the cross-
roads, we're always at some pivotal point, but yeah, we’re at more of a
pivotal point than we've ever been before.

JC: Is that because there aren’t enough people involved?

IP: No, actually the membership last year was up by about twenty per-
cent, so there’s more support in the community than ever; and I think
the station had a better year than ever, in terms of being able to reach
those people and articulate to them the model that we use to run this

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kind of media. But unfortu-
nately, while membership
was up, everything else was
down. And we don’t run
exclusively on membership dollars. We'd like to, and the station would
be very effective if it could, but we’ve never really done better than
about seventy percent. So thirty percent of our revenue comes from
other sources. It’s very unpredictable where that [30%] is going to come
from year to year, and last year it just didn’t come.

JC: Is any of that 30% from government?

IP: A little bit, about 4% of our operating budget comes from the city of
Vancouver, with a yearly operating grant of about eight thousand dol-

lars. So it’s not a lot, it’s not a big factor in being able to run the station.
continued on-page 18
interwiew

Radio, to me, has meant different things at different times. (I can only

refer to the stations I listened to while growing up in Toronto, but pretty
‘much everyone will have their own equivalents) The va
and themes of CBC's moming shows are permanently asso
Images of my Dad shaving, naked, the mirrors fogged, as I went in to
say goodbye before heading off to grade six. A couple of years later, my
sisters would religiously tune in to CFTR every Saturday at noon to hear
and write down, the week's top 30. On Sunday nights I would listen in

CO-OP Radio

bed to “Theater of the Mind’ on CHUM, which rebroadcast melodramatic
pre-WWII radio plays. Somehow these sound events were all the more
‘vivid because they permeated the fabric of my life. They formed a sonic
backdrop to other activities and thus became enmeshed with them. At
the same time they stood on their own as gateways into other worlds
and other experiences.

Inthe mid-eighties, before baseball was widely televised in Toronto,
every Blue Jays game could be heard on CICL 1430. The announcers,
‘Tom Cheek and Jerry Howat, were full of irritating trivia and often
reduced each other fo helpless laughter with seemingly innocuous wise-
cracks. But they were also able to convey the actions and rhythms on
the field with amazing evocativeness. could gauge simply from the
intensity and pitch of their voices whether a given crack signified rou-
tine grounder or a double dovin the line, and the mounting hysteria of a
crucial home run (‘t's back..way back..AND THERE SHE GOES!) never
failed to produce in me a visceral thrill that was close to being sexual.
Later, when the games were on TY, | would watch with the volume off
and the radio on.

Its helpful to recall these pleasant childhood memories when I
‘become obsessed with the notion that commercial mass media isan evil
horrible monster bent on stamping out all traces of human diversity and
creativity in the process of reducing us to mindless automaton con-
‘sumer. It’ still true though. The vast majority ofthe airwaves are used
{to pump out standardized, sanitized babble. This inanity lies not only in
content, but in rigid format. Murray Schafer describes how “radio has
‘become the clock of Western civilization, taking over the function of
social timekeeper from the church bell and the factory whistle
‘Throughout the day, events are shaved off to the split second, The news
comes at eight on the way to work, at five on the way home, at 11 on
the way to bed’ In between isa continuous flow of advertising inte
spersed with snappy patter and three minute songs.

‘The few exceptions are usually college and community stations. In
high school, I started listening to CKLN 88.1 on Friday nights, to hear
Reggae Showcase, full of synthesized sound effects and incomprehensible
interviews with Jamaican musicians and Dis who, at eleven o'dock, had
nt yet even contemplated heading out forthe show they were to per-
form that night. I was also fascinated with the melliluous rumblings of
Milton Blake, who signed on for his Sunday afternoon show ‘the Musical
‘Triangle’ with a dub poem of his own creation ("black musieffrom the
‘motheriand/to this land”) and the promise of “commentary on the black
‘experience a five’ Blake, a former JBC announcer, was atypically slick
for CKLN; most ofthe programmers spoke in monotone voices punctuat-
ced by awkward silences. It didnt matter much, though, because they
played the best and most widely varied music of any station in Toronto.
CCKLN was (and stills) also one ofthe few media forums for political
activists and was an excellent source for alternative news.

‘Thus, upon arriving in Vancouver, I searched out the community sta-
tions here, and found CFRO (102.7 fm). Unique in English-speaking
Canada, CFRO is a cooperatively-owned and run community station with
no links to any university or college. They were frst granted a license in
1975, in an atmosphere thick with high hopes for the potential of com-
‘munity-run and public mass media, Accounts of ther origins suggest an
energetic and innovative convergence of people and ideas. Twenty years
later they are til kicking. The world around them, though, has changed
dramatically. How have they changed with it? How have they kept the
station going? How successful has their cooperative structure been, and
what are the challenges associated with it? How successful have they
bbeen in making real an alternative vision of mass media? What are the
‘opportunities for people with new ideas? I had these intrepid questions
in mind when | approached program coordinator Ian Pringle for an
interview. What follows are excerpts from a 90-minute conversation,
edited for concision and clarity,

JOSH COHEN: What is the mandate that you've set for yourselves?

‘on the air. There have been some changes to the manda
its to provide access to the community, and in particular to provide
access to groups that don’t really have any access to media. That can
mean a whole variety of different things: communities whose first lan-
‘guage isnt English, immigrant communities, who aren't going to have
any other service in their own language; Social movements, who don't
senerally get access as social movements, like the women’s movement,
the gay and lesbian rights movements, the trade unionists, the peace
movement. On a commercial radio station you'll never see a program

Novawer 1995 | Ean 3

done by members of the peace movement, ora
program that's done from the perspective of a
social movement, because they don't work that
way. I's a very different idea to give access 10
social movements rather than access to profession=
al journalists who're going to make commentary
‘an social movements.

Another part of our mandate isto give access to cultural forms that
don't receive alot of media outlets: poetry, sound an, creative use of
sound no matter what iti; als, types of musi that are not commercial=
ly successful in the way that pop rock or dance music or country ar,
those areas that don't get any exposure or don't have an outlet. That's
not hard: when you look at the radio soundscape in Vancouver you
could have ten Co-op radios that specialize in things that nobody else
does, So on the broadest level the station's mandate isto provide an
altemative to what ese is out there, and that’s always going to be
changing. Some other objectives are to provide an outlet that’s anti-
racist, ant-sexist, anti-homophobic, anti-ageist, anti-ablelst. Als, to
provide some thing that’s local. I’s people from the local community,
who're doing the programming, supporting the station, so the program-
ming should deal with local isues.

JC: Like you sad, if Co-op was to try and provide an
alternative outlet for every group that wasn't include
‘on mainstream radio, you could have ten Co-op
radios. So not everyone that wants access can get
it

WARNING

This article

IP: No. And that’s not why we're here, either,
just to provide access to anybody. We're not a
‘public broadcaster in the sense of a public
television station, or even a community tv.
station. Community tv is required to be there
by the CRTC, its a requirement that they are
thereto provide some balance in the system,
but there's no.reguirement that a co-op commu-
nity station exist. think a lot of people come here
thinking that we're a community station, therefore it
was created through some kind of legislation, therefore
they have a right to be here. Thats simply not true, they don't
hhave aright to be here. Nobody has a right to be here. The station is
‘owned and operated by i's members. We're cooperatively owned, but
we're privately owned.-So yeah, we make decisions and we turn people
away, there's just not enough airtime. You go through a fairly rigorous
process to get a show approved, you're going to be waiting a while, and
Jn and of itself the fact that there's an application process that takes a
couple months is enough to tum an awful lot of people away, unless you
really want

is long.

IP: Were always on the brink. Somebody once said Co-op radio is radio
that's always atthe crossroads. And i's true we're always at the crss=
roads, we're always at some pivotal point, but yeah, we're at more of a
pivotal point than we've ever been before.

LI: Is that because there aren't enough people involved?

IP: No, actually the membership last year was up by about twenty per-
cent, so there's more support in the community than ever; and I think
the station had a better year than ever, in terms of being able to reach
those people and articulate to them the model that we use to run this

ate Cohen

kind of media, But unfortu-
nately, while membership
was up, everything ese was
down. And we don’t run
‘exclusively on membership dollars. We'd like to, and the station would
be very effective fit could, but we've never really done better than
about seventy percent. So thirty percent of our revenue comes from
other sources, It's very unpredictable where that [30%] is going to come
from year to yea, and last year it just didn't come,

IC: Is any of that 30% from government?

IP: A tittle bit, about 4% of our operating budget comes from the city of

Vancouver, witha yearly operating grant of about eight thousand dol-

Jars. So its nota lot, i's not a big factor in being able to run the station.
continued on page 18