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So a community radio station, CJHR-FM 98.7 Renfrew ("Valley Heritage Radio"), is hosting a radiothon this Sunday afternoon for the local "Sunshine Coach" para-transit service, and I just heard My Broadcasting's My FM 96.1 promoting, on several occasions, CJHR (one of My FM's competitors) and its radiothon. What's wrong with this picture?
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How do they compete?
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I can answer this easy enough. If you know anything about the MYFM team, you know that they always put COMMUNITY first in everything that they do. So the answer is - they want to help raise money for the Sunshine Coach.
I have heard that anytime the Community station has an issue - the MYFM team always helps out. I've been told they once went off the air, and Jon Pole the owner of MYFM showed up with back up gear and put them back on the air. I don't think they worry about the competition at all. The fact that you heard about it on MYFM kind of says it all.
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I look at a community station or College/Campus station as non-competitive.... They do things, and serve audiences that no one else could do, as commercial stations are about making money at the end of the day. No Advertiser is going to run to a community station exclusively, nor is a community station with their licence restrictions, going to ever out perform a commercial station for audience or ads. I think a commercial station helping a community station is great optics to the community, not to mention great PR.
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Certain other broadcasters seem to get a free pass, too. An example in Toronto every year is the CHIN Picnic.
It's a major event that not only promotes a radio station, it even has it in the name. Yet because it's an ethnic format, albeit a commercial one, it's not seen as a threat to anyone.
And every July, it gets lots of publicity on other radio and TV stations, more than it could ever afford to buy.