Mark Carnes, shown at the kickoff of the spring campaign directed at listener donors, is calling today on governments to play a role in ensuring CKUA survives and thrives.
A staple of listener-supported radio with strong ties to rural Alberta turned to its audience today to help convince elected officials to contribute to its survival.
CKUA, which has operated almost continuously since launching over nine decades ago, wants supporters to light up their keyboards in a letter-writing campaign to attract federal dollars and avert a financial crisis.
Although the campaign singles out Ottawa, the province could also do more, CEO Mark Carnes told the Local Journalism Initiative.
“We have something unique in that we’re a public broadcaster that is contributing to the development of arts and culture in this province,” Carnes said. “That’s got to be worth something to the government of Alberta and other governments.”
CKUA’s rural connection goes back to the station’s origins in 1927 on the University of Alberta campus. The university envisioned the station as a connection to rural Albertans for extension courses and other resources and information.
“We started very much from the roots of the province.”
Carnes took to the airwaves earlier today to announce the letter-writing campaign. It is designed to help the station fill a funding gap that falls out of an earlier loan necessary to refurbish and purchase an historic Edmonton hotel.
The Alberta Hotel — where Leonard Cohen wrote the song Sisters of Mercy — is one of two sites CKUA broadcasts from to 16 transmitters and the internet. The other site is the National Music Centre in Calgary.
The station estimates it reaches about 470,000 listeners a month in Alberta alone. About a third of its listeners reside beyond the greater Edmonton and Calgary areas. Regular Alberta listeners likely number between 110,000 and 130,000, said Carnes.
On April 17, the music, arts and culture station known for its eclectic playlists publicized a need to raise $3-million by Sept. 30 to keep the lights on. A spring campaign for listener support followed, raising close to $1.7-million in 13 days.
“Listeners more than doubled our original target in 10 days. We have a lot of momentum coming out of that,” said Carnes. “So we want to maintain that momentum.”
The listener campaign total is now closing in on $1.8-million, meaning the station is about $1.2-million short of the survival number it announced earlier.
A station news release calls the new campaign a “resounding message” to government from CKUA listeners: “We’re doing our part. Where are you?”
Carnes said on-air: “I’m inviting you today to get out your pencils, pens and keyboards and join us in an important letter-writing campaign. It’s time to use our collective voice to let the decision-makers and influencers in Ottawa know what CKUA means to each of us, and especially to you, as a proud Canadian.”
Back in 2013, the station moved into the refurbished Alberta Hotel, which it purchased for $12.5-million. The final cost at the time was estimated at $17.5-million.
The City of Edmonton and the province recognized the value of preserving the landmark and contributed $5-million each. CKUA expected a matching grant of $5-million from the federal government — but instead got just $500,000.
To meet its financing obligations, the station relies on commercial and retail leasing. But that dried up during the COVID-19 pandemic, and many costs, like they have for all individuals and organizations in inflationary times, increased.
Carnes told listeners: “CKUA’s ask of the federal government is to correct historical wrongs, slingshot us out of a perfect storm, and invest in another century of serving Canadians. CKUA is not looking for a handout — we are looking for fairness.”
Joe Ceci, the NDP’s arts and culture critic, said more support is needed from the Alberta government. In a Local Journalism Initiative interview, he called CKUA “a consistent cultural voice” that connects Alberta to the larger world.
The station aligns with the provincial mandate for arts and culture, and an annual operating payment of $57,000 is not enough, he said.
The annual payment “is a pretty small amount of money to address a pretty major part of the minister’s mandate letter” from Premier Danielle Smith. “And it hasn’t changed in years,” Ceci said.
“I just think CKUA is really good value for money. So more money should be going to it, because if we lose it, which is quite possible, we lose the investment in Alberta’s voice through music and culture,” Ceci said.
“It’s just a presentation to everybody about what Alberta artists are, and they’re top notch. We need to nurture that, not give it short shrift.”
Tanya Fir, the provincial minister of arts and culture, told the legislature last month the UCP government does not support debt servicing. “Significant portions of CKUA’s challenges relate to debt obligations. Capital grants are intended to build new assets or enhance the productivity of Albertans,” she said.
She did concur, however, that CKUA is “an important institution that has helped preserve and promote Alberta’s unique culture and heritage.”
Fir noted the $5-million grant for the Alberta Hotel in 2012 came from a past conservative government. And she said the UCP has provided $450,000 in funding to CKUA since 2019.
Carnes said CKUA is a steward of the Alberta Hotel and much of the province’s cultural history, classifying it as an unofficial wing of government archives.
The station preserves a recording library and archive of a century’s worth of recorded music on multiple platforms. CKUA is home to 130,000 physical pieces, 13,000 digital album holdings and nearly two million songs.
Slated for digital preservation are thousands of hours of analogue interviews and programs that span decades and feature prominent Canadians and artists.
CKUA has become a unique part of the cultural fabric of the province, one that’s difficult to pigeonhole for funding programs, Carnes said.
“We define ourselves as a cultural institution that uses broadcasting as our means of building and connecting community. And that’s what creativity is all about: shared experiences.”
“That’s how we look at it. We don’t play a broadcaster game, we play an arts and cultural organization game, and we leverage all the tools that we have to connect the province and connect the country.”
Letter-writing campaign information and tools are available at www.ckua.com.
