Rock 101.1 CFMI has gone off the air in Tumbler Ridge.
The last time this happened, they didn’t even notice. This time, it appears to be gone for good.
In 2012, we talked to the Chief Engineer at Corus Entertainment. He told us the repeater set up in the Tumbler Ridge area is not owned by Corus Entertainment, the company that owns CFMI. “Someone else set that up,” said Darryl Enns. “We didn’t set up that transmitter, and we don’t know who owns it or maintains it.”
So we did some research. Here’s what we found out at the time.
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Information on the CRTC website reveals that, CFMI originally came to Tumbler Ridge almost the same time as the town was built.
In 1984, the Commission issued a license to the Tumbler Ridge Television Society to carry on a multichannel broadcast. According to the decision, “This undertaking will distribute the programs of CHCH-TV Hamilton, TCTV Montreal, CITV-TV Edmonton, CHAN-TV Vancouver and CFMI-FM Vancouver, using four low power television transmitters on channels 7, 9, 11 and 13 with a transmitter power of 5 watts each, and one low-power FM radio transmitter on channel 266 with an effective radiated power of 7.9 watts.”
By 1992, the Tumbler Ridge Television Society had been taken over by North East Cable, who applied to the CRTC to take over the rebroadcasting license. Three years later, North East Cable was bought out by Regional Cable TV (Western) Inc.
At this point in time, the licenses become harder to parse, as the principal business for these cable companies was, obviously, cable. After 1992, there is no further mention of an over-the-air broadcast of CFMI. However, the CFMI broadcast kept going, even after the over-the-air television rebroadcasts were dumped.
Regional Cable was eventually bought out by Persona Communications, who maintained the rebroadcast of CFMI until they were bought out by Eastlink in 2007. And according to Industry Canada’s Spectrum Website, the bandwidth is still in Persona’s name.
Nasser Sayah, Western Regional Manager for Eastlink says that he’s been able to find an authorization form, dated 1999, that refers to CFMI, but nothing since then. “I can’t even tell you for sure if the station was passed on to us or not,” says Sayah.
“We might have inherited it when we took over Persona, but I’m not sure.”
At press time, Sayah was still trying to find out if Eastlink was the current licencee.
For now, Tumbler Ridge residents can no longer get CFMI over the air.
These days, cable and internet radio have replaced over-the-air radio, and many newer vehicles are equipped with satellite radio. And, while CJDC, CBC and Rock 97.7 have come to Tumbler Ridge to fill that gap, old time residents still fondly remember when CFMI was the only station in town.
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Shortly after running that story, CFMI came back on the air and remained on the air for the last decade.
Sometime in the last few months, however, it disappeared again.
And in 2023, terrestrial radio holds even less sway than it did in 2012.
Indeed, nobody I’ve talked to is quite sure when the station went off the air. While we have been in contact with Eastlink, they have a new Western Regional Manager, who does not know what happened last time.
But when we check Industry Canada’s Spectrum Website, there is no longer any mention of CFMI.
The only three stations licenced for Tumbler Ridge are CBC, CFGP and CJDC.
Recently, Eastlink stopped broadcasting Corus Entertainment channels on their cable system. And while CFMI is not a TV station, it is a Corus property.
However, it appears that this conflict between Eastlink and Corus is not the cause of CFMI no longer being on the air. Instead, it appears that Eastlink has either let their rights elapse or has deliberately taken steps to get rid of the station.
UPDATE: We contacted ISED; they got back to us after the story appeared in the paper. “Broadcast stations require two authorities to operate: a certificate related to the technical operation of the transmitter which is issued by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), and a licence related to conditions of operation such as station ownership, proposed content and population served by the station which is issued by the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC),” says ISED Media Relations.
“In the case of CFMI, 101.1, the broadcast certificate expired and was not renewed by ISED at the request of the broadcaster in 2021.”
So CFMI has officially not been rebroadcast in Tumbler since 2021. Is it only now that I’ve noticed, or did the station just keep plugging away until the tower failed?
However, an odd thing has happened. 101.1 is off the air, but 102.1 is now on the air.
But there is no official station at 102.1. And there is no station identification, no advertisements, no “the time is now…”. Just music. Songs played from start to finish.
For instance, instead of cutting off the Beatles’ ‘A Day in The Life’, which ends with the sound of an open E chord which rings out for 40 seconds, slowly fading away, then followed by a pastiche of studio babble.
Songs heard on the station have ranged from 1930s blues recordings from artists like Robert Jordan to ‘Chagrin Falls’ by the Tragically Hip, released in 1998.
No one seems to know where the station has come from. It remains a total and complete mystery. However, it appears to be a pirate station.
Pirate stations are stations that broadcast without a valid license. They are illegal in Canada.
The regulations around radio broadcasting are enforced by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED).
ISED says they take “allegations of non-compliance seriously and undertakes appropriate action to investigate and respond as the situation warrants.”
However, it does not appear the station has been reported to ISED or to the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.