Ordinarily, the CRTC reprimanding an out-of-town radio station about not meeting its Condition of License (or CoL) wouldn’t make news here. But the story behind the CRTC going after CJMB-FM in Peterborough in 2016 is so bizarre it’s almost too good to pass up. And so are the owners often snarky replies to the rule makers. 
 
The station was licensed as an all-religious format and went through two different owners and bankruptcy, until it wound up in the hands of MyFM, which specializes in highly local radio across Ontario. When it became clear that no one in Peterborough believed in the all-faith format, MyFM changed it to become Canada’s first All Sports FM station.
 
And that’s when the CRTC got on their case about non-compliance. There were several issues, but part of it started when the station aired a filler show called “Stages” that apparently contained four – count ’em – four songs that weren’t classified as “religious.” That violated the CoL that 90% of all its music had to be devoted to religious tunes.
 
The station’s response:  
 
“…there was only an attempt to provide a program that would feature local independent indigenous artists…something we believed was in the spirit of the Broadcasting Act. To keep it in perspective, there were 4 songs for a total of approximately 12 minutes over a 126-hour (7,560 minute) period.”
 
Just how many people were listening to this thing? In what has to be my favourite part of their letter to the Commission, MBC explains how bad things were when they staged a “call in to win” contest over two consecutive days.

“The only action that a listener needed to do was to call the station and they won. This promotion aired over 75 times in the period from 6a-9p for two weekdays. There was not one single call. Based on this it was determined that there were either no listeners or extremely few.”  
 
Talk about not being able to give the place away!   (The prize, by the way, was a free pizza.)

 The CRTC also complained that management listed some spots as “local programming,” which is against the rules. MyFM must have touched a nerve with this reply.
 
“…The Commission has sent mixed messages on this topic to the broadcast industry. For example, the commercials are deemed by the Commission as important enough content for the Super Bowl to be allowed to break the SimSub rule; however, local commercials or messages (paid or not paid), played locally, produced locally now don’t count as local content?”
 
And it revealed something else – while it plays commercials, at least 80% are solely to fill in “holes” in their schedule – and only 20% are actually paid for! And again there’s a snarky response:
 
“We could fill those “holes” with a recording of someone humming and it would meet the “local” content requirements. Instead, we inserted local news, weather, sports, features and commercials (paid or not). We could also fill with Christian music; however, that would seem completely out of place for a talk-sport format.”
 
For obvious reasons, the station wants a change to its license conditions. I know everybody has to play by the rules, but really – 4 songs on a station that’s teetering on the brink, has few paid sponsors and that no one listens to? That seems a bit far, even for the solons in Hull.
 
A decision on all this “non-compliance” craziness is expected later this spring.  
 
And one last thing – the letter to the CRTC was signed by two MyFM execs – one the Secretary Treasurer and the other the President of the company – none other than Jon Pole, who hosts a show every weeknight on both CFRB and CJAD in Montreal.

I’m guessing neither one of those two outlets have ever had problems like this!

If you're curious, you can read all the correspondence on a downloaded .pdf file from the CRTC here.