by jon » Sun Jun 25, 2006 12:35 pm
I believe that CJCA Edmonton preceded CKBD, as new owners applied for the CJCA license mailed back to the CRTC after Talk Radio with a theme of "Canadians are Stupid" somehow didn't work in Edmonton.
I believe they signed on as The Light. Original format was split between what you might term a typical music-based format of singles, only the music format was what was then called CCM (Contemporary Christian Music). The rest of the time was block programming, typically half hours, of different religious speakers, mostly paid time, but a few unpaid, because they really drew audiences. One had even passed away some years before, as I recall.
I haven't read that part of the Radio regulations, but, during the '90s, the confusion over religious television stations was the CRTC's policy that denomination-owned stations were not allowed -- only stations that offered non-denominational and/or programs from multiple denominations. I'm not sure if religious stations were allowed to refuse non-Christian religious broadcast material.
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As for the CRTC decision, where would this end if they didn't support the "we don't protect foreign signals coming into Canada"? CHAN-TV wouldn't have been allowed on Channel 8 when they first came on the air at the beginning of the '60s, because Greater Vancouver TV watchers would be deprived of off-air reception of KCTS-9, the lower-powered PBS station in Seattle. Vancouver's KOL-1300 listeners could have intervened against CHQM-1320's increase to 50KW in the late '60s. Edmontonians could have prevented CHQT from moving to 880, because they loved listening to WLS-890 in Chicago. But, the most common case would have been DX'ers who would have complained about virtually any new station, frequency change or power increase, as it would hurt their skywave reception at night.
A serious example that I had wondered about recently, but suddenly understand: why was, in the early '70s, CJJC Langley allowed to move from 850 to 800 with KGMI-790 in Bellingham? Because any Canadian KGMI listeners "didn't matter".