You hear it all the time: radio is dead. It’s only a matter of time before artificial intelligence eclipses the human curator and we are completely at the mercy of the music streaming algorithm.
Marc Carnes is having none of it. The CEO of CKUA Radio Network is convinced there will always be a place for thoughtful music programming — and that young people especially are hungry for it.
“We had a huge demographic jump over last year with listeners between 18 and 34, because we’re offering something human and authentic,” he says. “In every category, we’re bucking the trend.”
Despite the growth and passion of its loyal audience since its founding at the University of Alberta in 1927, CKUA is fighting for its life yet again. In a heartfelt plea to listeners last April, Carnes laid it on the line:
“We must raise $3 million by Sept. 30. Without it, CKUA’s cash reserves will be depleted, and we will be forced to shut down after 96 years of serving Albertans.”
It’s a bracing reminder of the vulnerability of one of Alberta’s great cultural institutions. And yet CKUA’s current dire straits have nothing to do with its lack of success, says Carnes; the network simply found itself in a “perfect storm” of volatile economic circumstances following the COVID pandemic.
The immediate response from listeners was nothing short of astounding. In just 10 days, 6,800 donors raised $1.8 million during the spring fundraising campaign, says Carnes, and the fund now sits at about $2 million. The network is also about to launch a multimillion-dollar capital campaign to “set us up for our next 100 years.”
“It’s been a sensational response,” says CKUA on-air host Grant Stovel, “far beyond what we could ever have imagined or have experienced in the past — even in our many storied occasions of pulling off the impossible result.”
Stovel was introduced to radio at the U of A’s campus station CJSR after his father Bruce, a U of A professor of English, invited him as a teenager to co-host a weekly blues show more than 30 years ago. Grant still co-hosts “Calling All Blues” with Graham Guest to this day. The show just received an award for best blues programming from the National Campus-Community Radio Association’s annual Community Radio Awards in Broadcast.
At least half of CKUA’s 33 on-air hosts — among them Andy Donnelly, Tom Coxworth, Amy van Keeken, Dianne Donovan, Mark Antonelli and Orest Soltykevych — cut their teeth at CJSR, established in 1946 to fill the gap after CKUA left the U of A campus.
Industry insiders say there is nothing quite like CKUA anywhere in the world. There are some great curated, community-oriented radio stations elsewhere, says Carnes, pointing to WWOZ “the sound of New Orleans” and KEXP in Seattle — the station that broke grunge music — as two shining examples.
CKUA’s hosts present music in almost every genre imaginable, including blues, roots, country, jazz, folk, soul, bluegrass, Celtic, classical, choral and world music. They offer rich context while refusing to bow to the constraints of the top-40 mainstream, providing an eclectic mix unmatched in Canada, says U of A music professor Brian Fauteux, author of Music in Range: The Culture of Canadian Campus Radio.
“There are stations in the campus sector, and the CBC does a bit of that work, but it’s responsible for maintaining a national mandate. But for CKUA to have a radio network with two studios (in Edmonton and Calgary), with 16 transmitters broadcasting across the whole province (and globally over the internet) — that is unique in Canada.”
Sometimes people forget that CKUA owes much of its character, mission and community spirit to its roots at the U of A. Shortly after the university’s founding president, Henry Marshall Tory, established the Department of Extension (now Continuing Education) in 1912 to “carry the University to the people,” radio emerged as an exciting new technology that could enlighten, educate and inform populations across a wide geographic region.
Tory and Department of Extension head Albert Ottewell seized the opportunity, first arranging to broadcast evening lectures on Edmonton’s CJCA, Alberta’s first radio station, in 1925. Two years later, CKUA hit the airwaves as Canada’s first public and educational broadcaster with the now legendary greeting from the station’s first studio director: “Good evening, everybody. This is your university station CKUA — H.P. Brown announcing.”
As Marylu Walters writes in her 2002 book, CKUA: Radio Worth Fighting For, programming was directed towards a mainly rural audience. Listeners would hear farming advice, a “Question Box” with university experts responding to various queries, or a lecture by oilsands technology pioneer Karl Clark expounding on how bitumen could be used to pave roads. There were also lectures on beekeeping and “The Greek Idea of Democracy.”
In those early years, the station also featured cultural content such as the CKUA Radio Players, the University Radio Orchestra and the Rainbow Toddle Orchestra.
In the years since, CKUA has cycled through numerous owners and operators — Alberta Government Telephones, the provincial government-controlled Alberta Educational Communications Corporation (ACCES) and the non-profit CKUA Radio Foundation. In 1997, the station faced an existential crisis, going off the air for five weeks because of political squabbles and poor financial management.
But through all the turbulence, it has remained true to its founding roots and to Tory’s vision for serving the public good — perhaps more today than ever, says Carnes.
“In some ways we’re actually closer to our origin story than we have been in a long time,” he says.
“We’ve been transforming the organization for the last five or six years, and we’re now here to provide enlightenment, positivity and community — all of those things that I don’t think were quite the same when we were with the government.”
CKUA now defines itself as “part broadcaster and part arts and culture institution,” with 126 hours of new, diverse and vibrant music programming each week. Beyond entertainment, it educates listeners while fostering provincewide community connections in a way that transcends political divisions, says Stovel.
“We’re really in that same position as when we started, where people are yearning for community connection, information as well as solace and entertainment that means something to them — programming that’s lovingly curated by an actual human being.
“The world has never seemed less coherent or connected than it is right now, and that’s something CKUA is able to provide, just as it did in 1927.”
The network has also helped launch and sustain the careers of countless artists who may otherwise receive little airplay, and who have now “taken to the streets with their own grassroots campaigns,” says Stovel.
Popular singer-songwriter Corb Lund has been vocal about CKUA’s role in his development since his early days in Edmonton with the rock/metal band The Smalls, says Stovel. And the Alberta-born international superstar k.d. lang has gone out of her way to champion the network.
“She’s a huge CKUA booster, and has talked about looking at a sunset and listening to what she described as esoteric music while growing up in Consort, Alberta — just having a moment of beauty that made her a CKUA fan for life.”
Local jazz vocalist Ellen Doty — also an assistant dean of development in the U of A’s Faculty of Law — gave her first interview to CKUA more than a dozen years ago. After releasing her long-awaited album, Every Little Scene, in the CKUA Performance Space last June, she donated proceeds from the launch party to support the network.
“She said it was important to make that karmic statement and support CKUA in its time of need,” says Stovel.
With such a widely esteemed cultural pedigree, it might be hard to understand why CKUA again finds itself on thin financial ice. But according to Fauteux, its specialty commercial licence doesn’t adequately cover its mandate, making funding difficult. It isn’t really commercial radio, nor does it meet the CRTC’s narrow definition of public radio, so when it comes to qualifying for government funding, it falls through the cracks.
“Not being a public broadcaster, and having that specialty FM licence, CKUA seems like the kind of broadcaster that’s perhaps easy for the government to not prioritize,” he says.
Despite licensing limitations, Carnes is determined to put CKUA firmly on the federal government’s radar, partly through a letter-writing campaign to provincial and federal elected representatives.
But he also wants to remind them where it all started — in the mind of an enthusiastic university president and his Department of Extension colleagues intent on seizing a new technology to “uplift the whole people.”
“We have to make the case that we’re actually the blueprint for the CBC,” says Carnes. “We’re the original public broadcaster, so how about you recognize us as such and create a special class for us?”
Fingers crossed, says Stovel, CKUA will survive its current cash crunch and will proudly celebrate its origin story with the U of A three years from now.
“I’m sure the centennial celebration will be one of the most amazing, joyous and historic things ever done in broadcasting in Canada,” he says, adding that if CKUA gets past this crisis, he has no doubt it will live to see another 100 years.