Frequency Swap

Co-op Radio frequency swap to breathe new life into our thirty-five year old station

Background

Over the past three years our radio station has been faced with several hard and glaring technical realities that threaten our core ability to broadcast over the airwaves.  Our transmitter is ancient, even older than the thirty-five years we have just celebrated.  It continues to function mainly due to luck, and the kindness and generosity of engineer, Dan Roach of S.W. Davis, Broadcast Technical Services. 

If the transmitter happens to breathe its last and fails completely, we are without a back up transmitter (which most stations possess) and certainly without the financial resources to purchase a new or even decent used transmitter.  The compounding issue is that Corus Entertainment, from whom we lease transmission-tower space for our antenna and our transmitter shack has put a tight financial squeeze on us by dramatically increasing our leasing rates. 

Gone is the decades-old friendly arrangement with CKNW (now Corus Entertainment) where we paid a few thousand dollars per year for tower lease space.  They have recently demanded “commercial rates” be paid, which they suggest is near sixty thousand dollars per year, but they were willing to give us the “consideration” of “only” paying forty-six thousand dollars per year (an astronomical increase above the five thousand dollars we had been paying.)  Ultimately we were able to hold them off until summer 2012 at a rate of seventy-five hundred dollars per year; however we know that we must make plans to move our antenna and transmitter to another tower.  The costs for the move alone have been estimated at fifty thousand dollars, and future yearly rental costs at twelve thousand dollars per year.

Solution

Facing this doom and gloom situation, which seriously jeopardised the future of Coop Radio, we needed a solution that would support our independent, commercial-free, community radio institution in Vancouver.  Dan Roach of SW Davis Broadcast Technical Services, Ltd., has provided technical service to us for many years, and has been a good and generous friend of Coop Radio.  Dan is most familiar with the state of our equipment and the fact that our license for 102.7 FM theoretically allows for broadcasting at far greater power than we currently operate.  We aren’t able to use this excess permitted power mainly because we cannot afford to operate over our 5K Watts mono signal.  Additionally, unused power (in our case 40K Watts) will likely be taken away from our license in the near future.

Through his work in the industry, Dan Roach recognized that The Peak at 100.5 FM would be able to utilize (and afford) to broadcast at full power if they were at 102.7 FM, and that Coop Radio would greatly benefit from acquiring transmission equipment and tower space currently used by The Peak.  Thus began a conversation between representatives of Vancouver Cooperative Radio and the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group (owner of The Peak 100.5 FM).

Exciting Changes

Ultimately we have negotiated a frequency swap whereby Vancouver Cooperative Radio acquires a virtually new stereo transmitter (including all the other components, station to transmitter link, etc.) and a complete back up transmitter (an essential that we have never been able to afford).  We would move to a new transmitter site with all of our moving costs and our transmitter lease costs for the next five years paid for by Pattison.  The station will not be moved.  Further Pattison would pay for three hundred thousand dollars worth of billboard advertising for us over a five year period and there would be a yearly cash benefit for our station’s operating expenses of one hundred and twenty thousand dollars per year for five years.

Once in a Lifetime Opportunity

This is a chance for our station to save itself from a technical train wreck that could end our ability to broadcast. Also for the first time in our history we would place our station on firm financial ground.  It is purely a business transaction and our station is not beholden to any corporate or government entity as a result of this frequency exchange.  This transaction will allow us to focus on developing our station, our programming, and our web-broadcasting rather than spending the majority of our energy to barely keep our doors open.  When consulted about this negotiation, the chairperson for the Community Radio Education Society (CRES), Peter Royce said, “this is a once in a lifetime opportunity that cannot be passed up”. 

Further to the Left!

Besides insuring our radio broadcast future and stabilizing our financial position, this move of course means we will now be even further to the left, at our new home as CFRO, Vancouver Co-operative Radio, 100.5 FM., in stereo!

We expect that the actual frequency swap will take place in August 2012. Stay tuned to Co-op Radio for updates as the date gets closer!

Feel free to email any questions or concerns to cfro-swap@coopradio.org

We look forward to a bright and stable future for our commercial-free community broadcasting.