One solution for CHCH?

Earlier in the week, I wrote about the joke that Hamilton's CHCH has become and whether it might be time to just shutter the station.

My blogging colleague Alexandra Kitty has a very interesting suggestion -- turn it into a true community station, owned by McMaster University. It's an interesting proposition, I have to admit; after all, many PBS affiliates in the States are linked to public or private universities. Not sure how the regulations would work here, for years college and university campus radio stations had been hampered by a rule that they could not have advertising that amounted to soliciting a sale of a product or service (I don't know if that rule still applies) -- they could only say such and such business existed, or run PSAs.

With the right kind of hands-on management and general editorial independence, the station could thrive again. If the station is to survive, find someone who will actually make the station mean something for a change. Maybe community ownership is what is needed, I don't know. Certainly the Aspers, and WIC before them, made the station pathetic beyond belief.

But some loans at CanWest are coming due any day now, and some of their unsecured debt is reported trading at about 20 cents on the dollar meaning bond traders are fully expecting a CCAA filing (i.e. bankruptcy protection). Then anything goes -- and it won't just be CHCH that goes down for the count. (Incidentally, I agree with Alexandra: You just don't loan $4 billion to a company when the advertising market is stretched even in the best of times, especially in the 500 channel universe that now exists.)

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