CFET Radio FM of Tagish, Yukon Territory is arguably Canada’s most unusual radio station. Built from salvaged spare parts by owner/self-taught engineer Robert Hopkins, CFET started as a license exempt special events broadcaster in 1997. However, when CFET’s 28 day permit expired, Hopkins continued to broadcast a mix of music, news, and locally-produced interviews/special events programming from his mountain top home in Tagish.
Given Canada’s no-nonsense attitude to pirate broadcasting, one would have expected the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to quash CFET. But this didn’t happen. Instead, in September 2002, the CRTC granted a low-power commercial FM license to CFET; the culmination of years of patient lobbying by Hopkins.
CFET’s unlikely transformation from pirate (under regulated) to private broadcaster has everything to do with its location in Tagish, Yukon Territory. Located 75 miles southwest of Whitehorse, Tagish’s 400 residents live in a mountain-ringed valley alongside Tagish and Marsh Lakes. Historically a popular fishing area, the name Tagish is an ancient native word meaning ‘fish trap’. Tagish was also an important hub for miners and the RCMP who mined them during the 19th century Klondike Gold Rush.
Like much of Canada’s north, Tagish has little in the way of local broadcasting and telecommunications infrastructure. There’s only one local off-air station – the aboriginal broadcaster CHON-FM relayed from Whitehorse– plus CBC and southern radio/TV broadcasters for those equipped with satellite dishes.
Moving here in 1982 there was no landline telephone service in Tagish. To make calls, residents had to use NorthwesTel’s MTS radio service, which wasn’t cheap.
It was in this setting that Robert Hopkins decided to build a wireless telephone system in 1992. Describing his technical education as derived “from Popular Science magazines and being born into a family of mad scientists,” Hopkins built TagishTel on a shoestring. His secret? The carrier’s radio towers, transmitters, antennas, and cabling were all salvaged from the local dump. “I had to build connectors out of whatever I could find,” Hopkins told RWI. “Often they didn’t look too pretty, but they worked when I plugged them in.”
Today Northwestel (Bell Canada) receives exclusive subsidies worth millions (collected as a surcharge on every phone subscriber south) of taxpayer’s dollars are funneled into Bell Canada, to purchase old, end of life telephone equipment. Through a government approved “no local hire” policy Hopkins and other non-union northern communication workers are “blacklisted” from participating in any of this work. Case in point all of the work done so far is by a company from Grand Prairie AB located 2000 kms away. No local hire, nothing for training opportunities for the First Nations people and spending money outside the Yukon. This practice of institutionalized discrimination is a deterrent for others to enter into this field or to invest in Canada. People ask me to provide (invest) more services in the community I have to explain that for every 20,000.00 I put out, I might expect a payback of 5,000.00 where the competition gets a 71 million dollar grant for what?, some doctored invoices and kick backs to the government to withhold its over priced service. Its too bad. The Yukon (Canada) is capable of so much more.
“After I built my own long distance telephone network, it seemed a natural extension to add a radio station,” he added. “Like lots of people, I thought radio would be a license to print money, so launching one seemed a good idea.”
Labour day weekend 1997, Hopkins began broadcasting under a “special events” (28 day) CRTC permit to rebroadcast the Frostbite Music Festival locally. Once on air, he kept at it .“I figured that by staying on air, I could prove to the CRTC that I had the money, equipment and commitment to run a station,” Hopkins explained. “I was very conscious to mind my Ps and Qs during our pirate phase. I was always aware that someone could call at any time, and threaten to pull the plug.”
As it turned out, Hopkins’ strategy worked. Rather than pulling the plug, the CRTC granted CFET a license.
To get his signal out, Hopkins beams a 2.4 GHz feed from Tagish to Jubilee Mountain a higher mountaintop transmitter/tower 4.5 miles away. With this location, CFET reaches about 1200 people up to 31 miles distant, even though the station only has a 30 watt Crown FM amplifier.
Back at Tagish, CFET’s studio is spacious and functional. The production studio is centered on a new 16 track mixer, microphones, and a PC’s running Linux software. Despite the fact that CFET is run by small staff, the station is on-air round-the-clock: a feat made possible by computer-assisted playback and relays of Vancouver’s CFMI Rock 101 via satellite overnights.
Besides broadcasting music and news, Hopkins makes a major effort to produce local programming both in studio and remotely. For remote broadcasts, he takes a PC to the broadcast site, plugs in a few microphones, then streams the signal via microwave back to the studio for transmission.
In an attempt to encourage listener participation (and to generate revenues through software sales to other broadcasters), Hopkins has devised a web-based system called “OpenBroadcaster”. It lets registered listeners create their own playlists from CFET’s music library, for subsequent playback on air. “They can also record announcements on their own PCs, then upload them to our server for automated playback,” Hopkins said. “Eventually, I expect that 95% of our content will be programmed by our listeners.” Currently being developed, OpenBroadcaster even has a ‘virtual token’ option that allows listeners to send money directly to their favourite artists. “It’s like throwing a loonie [a Canadian dollar coin named for the ‘loon’ on its face] into the guitar case of a streetside busker.”
Despite his hopes of ‘printing money’, Rob is still living pretty lean these days. Thanks to NorthwesTel’s CRTC granted monopoly, TagishTel isn’t allowed to sign up telephone subscribers unless he pays Northwestel 14 cents a minute for any calls on the network that he owns outright.
On the radio side, CFET is making some revenues through program sponsorships. However, even though it is licensed to sell commercials, Hopkins isn’t doing so. Despite these obstacles, Rob keeps plugging away. He has high hopes that OpenBroadcaster will prove to be a popular product with small broadcasters, once it is ready for commercial release. In the meantime, Hopkins keeps debugging OpenBroadcaster, running CFET and somehow finding time to operate a low-power (5 watt) local TV station and to set up a new 5 watt station in Whitehorse.
“A regular paycheque would be nice,” he told RWI. “However, until it arrives, I’ll just keep at it and do something that I enjoy, being innovative and living on the edge.”