Phonothèque
québécoise
A Sound Archive |
The History of Community Radio |
Community radio on
campus
One thing stands out in
considering campus
or student radio stations across Canada. While French-language, Quebec
and
Acadian community radio is mostly associated with community stations,
community
radio in English-speaking Canada is primarily campus-based. Is this
another
expression of the distinct society or is it rather due to Quebec
government
policy in this area? One way or the
other, student radio has a long history in Quebec, dating back to the
1970s,
when Radio Centre-Ville in its beginnings shared the same cable channel
as
Radio McGill. A similar situation prevailed in Quebec City, where CKRL, Laval University’s campus radio
station, was granted the status of experimental radio at about the same
time, a
label given to community radio before 1975.
The first community radio
stations in
English-speaking Canada were Wired World (1973) and Vancouver
Co-op
Radio (1974). The movement they launched soon moved to the
university
campuses, where English-language community radio developed a model
aimed as
much – some would say more – at the neighbouring communities as at the
student
body. This movement, headed by NCCRA, the National Campus and
Community
Radio Association was organized mainly around social configurations
of young
people, radicals, the marginalized, the avant-garde, in short the
protest
movements that were already present at the birth of community radio in
the 1960s
and 1970s.
In Quebec, the CRTC granted
licences to
the student stations CKUT (1987) and CISM (1991), the one associated
with
McGill University, the other with the University of Montreal.
Since they are associated with
universities, these stations are usually found in urban and regional
contexts.
They enjoy a certain amount of independence with respect to public and
commercial structures because, as campus stations, they are financed
directly
from student fees. This arrangement also brings with it obligations, of
course.
With a staff that is not always representative of the student body,
even though
it may include a large number of students, the typical campus-community
station
is constantly caught between the needs and interests of campus life,
with its many
extra-curricular activities, and those of the diverse communities it
serves.
The latter are not particularly interested in the details of university
life.
The administrative structure of campus radio includes members of the
university
community, as is required by the CRTC.
Campus radio was initially
conceived as a
teaching and training activity, having taken its first steps within
different
university departments such as engineering, communications, etc. The
opening to
the community followed. It was only later that these stations,
broadcast
initially over cable, found enthusiastic users and promoters among the
activists. The subsequent evolution of campus radio stations would
bring them
closer and closer to the community movement.
The campus-community model is
characterized by a network of institutions and practices distinct from
those
typical of French-language community radio. This is true in particular
for
financing, where university fees replace subsidies from government aid
programs.
With so few obligations towards
the government
or the corporations, campus-community
radio has a “sound”, so they say, even more eclectic than its urban
community
cousins. The campus-community stations give pride of place to access to
the
means of communications, reasoning that this access will in itself take
care of
programming, since volunteers will be part of the production process.
In a
model like this, the whole debate about “quality” programming is put
aside,
since the responsibility for programming falls first and foremost on
the
volunteers who produce it. In fact, volunteers produce almost all of
the
programming and a vast array of communities find themselves represented
this
way.
With all of these
characteristics, it is
clear that campus-community radio in no way resembles public or private
stations. While French-language community stations are proud to be
among the
first to discover a little-known musician, before she becomes the
darling of
the private stations, campus-community radio is proud instead of
playing music
that is not heard and will never be heard on the private airwaves.
There remains nonetheless a
degree of
interest in professionalism or at least an interest in the profession
within
this model since, as in the case of French-language community radio,
“graduates” of campus-community stations may be found on the radio and
in other
media, both government and private.
The Phonothèque | Inventories and Databases | Projects |
All rights reserved
URL http://www.phonotheque.org/.../Radio-universitaire-eng.html