London could be getting a new FM radio station, borne of the pandemic, the first new one in years, and perhaps the first of its kind in the city.
A group representing London’s Indian and South Asian communities has applied to the federal broadcasting regulator to run a small FM station in the city.
“Malayalam Community Radio aims to enrich the life of the people living in and around London, Ont., through the content created by the people and for the people of Indo-Dravidian/South Asian languages,” states the application to the Canadian Radio- Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)
“This community radio will be serving communities with seven different languages including Malayalam, Tamil, Panjabi, Hindi, Gujarati, French, and English,” and at least five cultural groups, the application states.
The application before the CRTC seeks a broadcasting license to operate a 50-watt ethnic commercial specialty FM radio station in London, with 126 hours of local programming a week and 87.5 per cent of those hours devoted to third languages.
The application to create CIAL-FM, 90.9 on your dial, is scheduled for a hearing at CRTC headquarters in Quebec Sept. 8
Combined, the Indo- and Dravidian-based language families account for almost a billion speakers in India and South Asia, and several thousand in London.
“There are many people migrating from India to this place, so there is a lot of the community speaking the languages,” Manoj Mammen, president of Malayalam Community Radio, said.
But it was the pandemic, not immigration, that kick-started the radio station effort.
People in the Indo-Dravidian/South Asia community were isolated from each other after COVID-19 struck, said Aneesh Joseph, coordinator of the CRTC application. “We struggled a lot. Older people were sitting in their homes and there was no way to communicate with them,” he said.
A group of volunteers set up Malayalam Community Radio, which created an online radio station www.mcradio.ca and online news portal www.mclive.ca
But the group would like to reach more people in the community through a broadcast licence, Joseph said.
Radio Malayalam also would welcome programming in other languages, he said.
“We don’t have ethnic radio stations in London,” Joseph said.
The effort has received support from local politicians and Fanshawe College’s Rob Carver, associate dean in the school of contemporary media at the college and station manager for student radio station, The X.
Carver’s letter of support is included in the application to the CRTC.
The commission wants to make sure new stations don’t impact existing ones, but Fanshawe’s support goes beyond that, Carver said.
“We are very much trying to work with others in the city to promote diversity. So, having another station come on to serve a distinct language group or community would be something we’d support,” he said. “They’re actually going to program in a number of languages, including English. And so, we also talked about sharing content back and forth.”
At the college since 2015, Carver can’t remember a recent application for an FM station in London.
“It doesn’t happen very often,” he said.
Many newcomers to Canada come from countries where radio is a primary source of information and communication, Carver said.
He’s offering to help the new station get on its feet and if necessary help broaden its scope. “Radio today is much more than simply what’s on the dial in your car. All radio is online as well, it has social media components to it, video and then podcasting. So, I’m always glad to see more people getting involved.”