The Utilities Consumers’ Group recently obtained a Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission licence for a radio station at 92.5 on the FM dial.
“What we’re going to do is this summer, we’re going to be doing a test run,” Roger Rondeau, the group’s president, said an interview this morning. “And then by fall, we plan on going on the air (permanently).”
The station, he said, will be used as an educational tool to teach people how a station operates, as well as help non-profit groups get their message out to the public. There’ll also be some music played on the station. The station will operate out of the studio in a building at the corner of Second Avenue and Strickland Street, thanks to help from Rob Hopkins, who’s donating his radio equipment to the group. Some of the plans still have to be worked out. “We haven’t got all the things settled yet because we’re having a meeting next week – the consumers’ group – on all the nuts and bolts,” Rondeau said. The group came up with the idea to run a radio station because it wanted to get its message out and increase membership.
“We figured this might be a way to do that,” he said. So far, the endeavour hasn’t cost the group anything with Hopkins’ donation of time and equipment, which has worked out to be a good deal for the group, Rondeau said. While there’ll definitely be advertising offered on the station for free to non-profit groups, whether the station will seek out advertising dollars from area businesses is still unknown. “I don’t know whether we will go that route or not,” he said. Because he was out town earlier this month, Rondeau hasn’t heard any feedback about the station yet.
So far, there are about six volunteers willing to work on CJUC-FM, an endeavour that will be entirely volunteer-driven.
A test run this summer will determine the hours of operation for the station when it goes on the air full-time in the fall, Rondeau said.