1 of 1- RadioActive
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It's News To CFLZ-FM: CRTC Rules They Have To Maintain Local News
CFLZ-FM is the only radio station specifically licenced to serve the city of Fort Erie. It's a small place and I'm guessing the station probably doesn't make a lot of money. But when Byrnes Communications took it over several years ago, it agreed to abide by the conditions of the previous owner.
One of those was a seemingly modest requirement to provide 54 minutes a week of local news. But the latest owners applied to the CRTC to get rid of that provision, arguing about the "challenges it faces in meeting the above-noted condition of licence arise during statutory holidays and other unique situations such as staff illnesses or a global pandemic. Byrnes submitted that it is unduly bound by both regulatory inflexibility and a lack of competitive parity since the condition of licence places CFLZ-FM at a competitive disadvantage to stations with no similar requirement."
They also noted the company took over the place from an owner who was frequently not in compliance and called the news commitment 'punishment' for those sins.
But the Commission turned them down outright, noting that 54 minutes of local news a week isn't an onerous requirement and because it's spread out over seven days, they don't have to have someone in on stat holidays or when the pandemic forces staff outages.
The result: request denied.
Perhaps they can use this as one of the headlines in their next local newscast. Whenever it comes.
CRTC's CFLZ-FM Decision
- radiokid
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Re: It's News To CFLZ-FM: CRTC Rules They Have To Maintain Local News
I don't understand even during a pandemic that they can't pre-record the news, and load it remotely. It works for other stations... It can technically be loaded remotely from another market (like woodstock where they have another station) as long as it's local.
- RadioActive
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Re: It's News To CFLZ-FM: CRTC Rules They Have To Maintain Local News
I don't know for certain, but my guess would be they just don't want to go to any expense or effort to fulfill the promise made by a former owner.
My favourite part of their entreaty though, is that local news is a "penalty" imposed on a previous regime.
News as punishment. Maybe that should be their new slogan out of every forced local update! ("And that's the news. Our next punishment will be at 5 PM, on More-FM, the voice of Ft. Erie...")
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Thread Starter- rawkgurl
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Re: It's News To CFLZ-FM: CRTC Rules They Have To Maintain Local News
I don't even understand why this is hard for them. Works out to just under 8 minutes a day. Their FB page has a bunch of news stories today. Talk to the mayor, once a week, for 10 minutes, followed by regional Council and a non profit.
- MJ Vancouver
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Re: It's News To CFLZ-FM: CRTC Rules They Have To Maintain Local News
rawkgurl wrote:
I don't even understand why this is hard for them. Works out to just under 8 minutes a day. Their FB page has a bunch of news stories today. Talk to the mayor, once a week, for 10 minutes, followed by regional Council and a non profit.
I wonder if this is being spurred by advertisers. I remember a couple years on this board reading about a station in Orillia that was asking the CRTC permission to drop some specialty programming (I believe a Sunday night blues show), and they had a lineup of local advertisers, with copies of letters addressed to the CRTC, demanding the removal of this programming from the schedule.
For all of us who like news on radio, there are many others who do not want news or other talk on radio; they tune to a station specifically for the music and aren't interested in anything else. I see this a lot with my demographic (under 45), and I can't help but wonder if advertisers had evidence of this and were telling the station they wanted a reduction in news.
Last edited by MJ Vancouver (May 11, 2021 5:32 pm)
- RadioAaron
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Re: It's News To CFLZ-FM: CRTC Rules They Have To Maintain Local News
I don't even understand why this is hard for them. Works out to just under 8 minutes a day. Their FB page has a bunch of news stories today. Talk to the mayor, once a week, for 10 minutes, followed by regional Council and a non profit.
It is, of course, not difficult, but they needed to come up with a reason. Because telling the CRTC something more truthful like "We think we can be competitive in Buffalo and local Eerie news doesn't help that" will get them super-double-denied.
Last edited by RadioAaron (May 11, 2021 6:15 pm)
- paterson1
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Re: It's News To CFLZ-FM: CRTC Rules They Have To Maintain Local News
So if this station did three, 3 minute newscasts a day, they would be over performing on the news commitment. If this small amount of news makes them somehow uncompetitive or unprofitable, time to surrender the license. It amazes me how unprofessional some broadcasters are. At times the CRTC must feel that they are dealing with children. The fact that that the owners would try and get out of this miniscule obligation is pathetic...yeah drop the news and watch sales and ratings take off....yup...
- turkeytop
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Re: It's News To CFLZ-FM: CRTC Rules They Have To Maintain Local News
I don't know for certain, but my guess would be they just don't want to go to any expense or effort to fulfill the promise made by a former owner.
It's called due diligence. Know what it is you're buying, before you buy it.
When I was working for the Union. one of the Companies wit whom I did business was sold.
The new owner whined that he shouldn't be bound by a collective agreement entered into by the previous owner. He was.
I started out with nothing and I still have most of it.