Toronto's Urban Radio Map

Toronto listeners will never forget 88.1 FM, but the old CKLN FM Radio that hosted so many famous urban shows for so many years is no longer. Toronto lost one of the best Canadian campus radio stations ever when in 2011, CKLN Radio was stripped of its broadcasting license by the CRTC, Canada’s regulating body for all of radio and television stations. The famous and precedent setting Ryerson campus radio station broadcasting since 1983,  was was forced to close shop and permanently go off the air. 

Being a past CKLN programmer and former BOD chair, I can only credit the loss of the station to the efforts of a few ‘bad-seed’ programmers driven by a wicked and vengeful agenda to take the station down at all costs, all heavily financed by unknown sources. The CRTC hearings that followed became an opportunity for these same parties to expose to the CRTC panel, all of the embarrassing stories of the infighting, lawsuits, intimidation, threats, disruption, failures of promise of performance, and so forth that was going on behind the scenes at the sinking station.

Despite community stations being a place of imperfection where mistakes are made and lessons learned, the CRTC decided it was best just to dissolve CKLN in order to clean up the mess. The opposing parties were successful in painting a picture to this regulating body, that would result in the permanent removal of the CKLN Radio operating license. The testimonials they had heard was over the top for their CRTC standards, criteria and bars. When the dust settled and the smoke cleared, Toronto witnessed a local case of power corrupting then absolute power corrupting absolutely. 

Gone from the CKLN 88.1 FM frequency are memorable urban shows like The Fantastic Voyage Program, Dave’s Dance Music, Friday Night ReggaeMania, the list goes on. CKLN was nowhere near full-time urban, but it was the most credible, reputable, political and popular of the three Toronto community stations, offering brave and cutting edge programming 24-hrs around the clock. Today, Indie88, an alternative radio station operating out of Liberty Village, Toronto, occupies that spot, sporting programming with no other urban flavours whatsoever.