Small-town N.S. radio station has licence renewed for another short term following continued non-compliance

A community radio station in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia has been issued a short term licence renewal from the CRTC, despite consistent non-compliance with regulations, due to the small town’s lack of radio alternatives. Valid from Sept. 1, 2023 to Aug. 31, 2026, the new licence for Parrsboro Radio Society’s CICR-FM is the latest in a long string of short term renewals running all the way back to when the station was first established in 2008. Since then, the station has been non-compliant in every licence term. “The commission is concerned that Parrsboro’s list of non-compliance lengthens with every new licence term, with little improvement,” wrote the regulator in its decision posted on Monday. Conditions that Parrsboro Radio Society failed to comply with included providing a program log, self-assessment report and music list for the broadcast week of Oct. 3 to 9, 2021, a report setting out the station’s internal policies and procedures, information regarding its compliance with regulatory requirements, and broadcasting an announcement about its previous non-compliance issues. The station has been in non-compliance with all of these regulations multiple times, some of which it has never been in compliance with. In its defence for not providing a program log, and submitting an inaccurate self-assessment report and music lists, Parrsboro Radio Society said it mistakenly thought all required documents were submitted and that the months in question were very busy for the station. The mandatory report on the station’s policies and procedures was submitted four months past the Oct. 16, 2020 deadline. The CRTC’s notice says the station acknowledged the delay but does not say why it occurred. When asked to provide certain information as part of its performance evaluation, the station failed to meet the required deadlines, even after they were extended, and some of the information was insufficient, incorrect, or missing. The station blamed the non-compliance on staffing issues, a lack of clarity in requests from the CRTC, technical failures at the station, and the commission allegedly misplacing information. Regarding the announcements on-air that licensees with previous cases of non-compliance, like CICR-FM, have to make, the station broadcasted them after the required deadline and outside of the required time windows of 6 a.m. to 10 a.m, or 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. “Given the licensee’s responses to the many instances of non-compliance, the commission is concerned that Parrsboro does not understand its obligations or that it does not care to understand them,” said the notice. However, with a population of about 1,327 people according to 2021 census data, the CRTC explained that punishing the station by pulling its licence would have a “significant impact” on the small community’s access to local information. “Accordingly, in the absence of an alternative source of community radio programming for Parrsboro, the commission is disinclined to remove the community’s access to CICR-FM,” it stated, urging the station to take the necessary steps to comply with the rules over the next licence term. The decision comes off the heels of several other short term renewals for non-compliant stations, including one in Montreal and two more in British Columbia. – Reporting by Phalen Tynes-MacDonald at pcreed@thewirereport.ca and editing by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca.

Small-town N.S. radio station has licence renewed for another short term following continued non-compliance

Broadcast | August 21, 2023

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Small-town N.S. radio station has licence renewed for another short term following continued non-compliance

Broadcast | August 21, 2023

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