The CRTC has denied a request by the owners of CHRY (aka Vibe 105.5) for an extra transmitter to cover blank spots of its signal in Scarborough. The station insisted it needed the additional coverage to remain financially viable and was looking to take up another spot on the dial with a 92-watt nested stick at 105.3.
 
The application was opposed by a host of others, including the existing CIUX Uxbridge (which operates at 105.5) and the mostly Tamil low power outlet CJVF-FM which is also located in Scarborough. But maybe the most interesting intervention came from CKFG (G98.7), the Fitzroy Gordon outfit that comes closest to mirroring CHRY’s format.
 
In the end the Commission didn’t buy any of the former Radio York’s argument that it can’t survive as things are now and it will have to continue on as normal.
 
I have to confess I never listen to CHRY, but many here will well recall the day they fired all their volunteers and suddenly went commercial. I never really understood how that was allowed to happen. Weren’t they supposed to be a campus radio station licenced to serve York University and its students? How can they justifiably try to compete on a commercial basis with everyone else on the dial? And why did the CRTC let that happen?
 
Obviously what they did wasn’t illegal or it would have been stopped by now. But students pay for this thing in their fees, and according to Wikipedia, they also are able to attain grants through a charitable status. Really? CHRY a charity? It's a specialized license holder that continues to act as though it was a commercial entity. And no one, especially not the CRTC, has said anything.

For reasons like that, it remains, to me, one of the strangest of Toronto's radio format flips.

CRTC Denies CHRY Nested Transmitter