Bilange's Journal: CRTC shuts down CHOI-FM, welcomes Al-Jazeera

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced they will make the Al-Jazeera TV channel available in Canada. In the same week, CRTC decided to not renew CHOI-FM broadcasting rights, due to:

"the spoken word content, that was the subject of the complaints received, did not reflect isolated incidents, but appeared to be part of a pattern of behaviour by the licensee that continued and even grew worse, over the course of two consecutive licence terms despite clear, unequivocal warnings from the Commission, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council "

CHOI-FM and its owners wanted to correct its errors, and offered many solutions to CRTC such as censoring live shows by delaying it, but the CRTC never wanted to hear this.

Now I, and many of its 380 000 listeners, are wondering how come Al-Jazeera will be broadcasted live (beheading anyone?), while CHOI will be shutdown due to some comments that are by far less rough than Howard Stern's?

Both decisions are being made while there is no Minister of Canadian Heritage, when the labour break is about to start, and when the Parliament of Canada is off-duty for some time in summer.