Cabin Radio files new FM licence application

Cabin Radio has submitted a fresh application for a commercial FM licence to serve the Yellowknife, Northwest Territories market.

Inspect the application for yourself! Click here to access documents filed as part of our application to the CRTC on May 4, 2023. (Be warned: it’s more than 200 pages long.)

Here’s a message from Ollie:

This is obviously an extremely important step in our ongoing efforts to secure space on Yellowknife’s FM dial.

We filed our first application in 2019. The CRTC waited until early 2023 to return that application, unopened, saying there wasn’t enough space in Yellowknife for two commercial FM stations.

We have already stated that we believe the CRTC’s interpretation was incorrect and demonstrated a real lack of understanding – both of the Yellowknife market and of the public interest.

In March, we made clear that we would quickly return with a new application. In our opinion, the application filed this week is, if anything, significantly stronger than the one filed in 2019 – which was already a strong application that deserved to be read and evaluated.

Now, four years later, we can point to years of lived experience operating an internet station, news service and entertainment hub that has thrived as a business while supporting the community of Yellowknife and backing northern and Indigenous performing artists.

There can be no question that Yellowknife is already sustaining Cabin Radio alongside all other existing media groups. Our new application includes fresh feedback from the city’s retail community, in which many Yellowknife businesses express an appetite to advertise on Cabin Radio as an FM station over and above their existing advertising commitments elsewhere. That’s important: local businesses are saying they’ll advertise with us on FM without doing so at the expense of anyone else.

Our 2023 application includes nearly 400 letters of support from the community. We are extremely grateful for this extraordinary level of support in a city of 20,000 people. (Note that we haven’t published those letters here as we did not seek the permission of letter-writers to do so, but they are expected to appear as part of the CRTC’s file on its registry at a later date.)

We’re asking the CRTC to be procedurally fair, take into consideration the concerns we’ve set out about its February decision, and open our new application within the reasonable period of six months following its receipt.

We’re excited to be on Yellowknife’s FM dial, and we’ll keep you updated as we go.