Rural superfan makes the case for getting behind Alberta's listener-supported radio station

So far, CKUA has raised about two thirds of the $3 million in rescue support it needs, says CEO Marc Carnes. (Pexels/Jean Balzan)

Commercial radio too often bombards your nervous system with overhyped, repetitive and homogenized programming, says a CKUA superfan from his rural homeland in southern Alberta.

But life’s soundtrack doesn’t have to be that way, adds Bob Miller, who lives a 40-minute drive east of Lethbridge in an agricultural community known for sweet corn and sugar beets.

CKUA Radio Network offers music in most genres for most age groups, the Taber resident says.

Can’t find something you like? That’s on you.

“I’m a little judgmental, I guess. If all you want is a hippy dippy weatherman and the same 10 songs that are playing in Arizona and everywhere else, I’m not sure I’m going to want to have dinner with you,” quips Miller, a contractor and family business owner.

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But the baby boomer doesn’t dine alone on his passion. In fact he’s among tens of thousands of rural Albertans who regularly tune in to CKUA.

The station broadcasts from Edmonton and Calgary across the province and around the world, with the help of 16 transmitters and the internet.

CKUA reaches about 470,000 listeners a month in Alberta alone, and regular listeners like Miller account for 110,000 to 130,000 of them, the network estimates.

Those living beyond greater Edmonton and Calgary make up about a third of the listenership.

'Perfect storm' threatens station

Recently CKUA rallied the troops and any newbies it could attract to keep the 97-year-old cultural institution on the air.

CEO Marc Carnes says “a perfect storm” of circumstances swept the station into dire straits.

So far, CKUA has raised about two thirds of the $3 million in rescue support it needs, he told The Macleod Gazette recently, with most of it coming from a supercharged spring donor campaign.

“We’re well on our way,” says Carnes, who is confident listeners and supporters will come through in time to save their station by Sept. 30.

The situation arose from a sagging commercial leasing market in downtown Edmonton, debt costs for the purchase and redevelopment of the historic Alberta Hotel and the failure of the federal government to chip in a full third of expected government grant dollars for the project.

CKUA followed up its spring campaign with a request that supporters set their keyboards clattering to convince the federal government to pay up.

So far, about 900 letter writers have answered the call.

About 70 per cent of CKUA’s annual budget comes from listeners, who make one-time or monthly donations. Sometimes they support specific blocks of programming, giving them access to their favourite hosts and a chance to have personal playlists hit the airwaves.

“I sponsor four shows,” says Miller, before rattling off a typical listening routine.

“The weekends are spectacular. There’s Cam Hayden, of course. And then I roll into Holger Petersen. And I have Terry David Mulligan after that and then I have Lionel Rault and Lionel’s Vinyls. And yeah, I’ve supported Allison Brock before, too. And of course there was the late John Worthington, the Old-Disc Jockey.”

But it’s not just tried-and-true favourites that keep Miller tuned in. Being a CKUA listener opens his world to new sounds too.

“I listened to some drum thing here tonight, on the way in. It got your toes tapping big time and was something totally unique. And then I think we had little Ravi Shankar thrown in to keep you alert. So absolutely my appreciation for music has grown.”

(Pexels/Skylar Kang)

Where personal journeys meet community journeys

That’s also true for Trent Moranz, a fixture in Fort Macleod’s arts scene.

One of the founders and a past president of the South Country Fair, Moranz speaks of a life, a musical journey and a personality inextricably linked to CKUA.

“Anybody who listens to CKUA, you learn to listen differently,” says Moranz. “Music isn’t just wallpaper anymore or, I don't know, bling.”

The South Country Fair, taking place just west of the historic town Friday to Sunday, began as a camping weekend for like-minded musicians, folk music fans and southern Alberta folk clubs in 1987.

“We decided to have this festival to get to know each other. But if there’s going to be music, there’s got to be a sound system. So we started charging 10 or 20 bucks. It was really cheap and a one-day affair, and everybody loved it.

“So that’s how things got started. And CKUA is where I was learning about music.”

The network entered Moranz’s musical consciousness when he was about 17.

“We weren’t sure what it was exactly, because we’d been listening to CBC and I had not listened to commercial radio all my life. I just avoided it.”

Pre-internet, the Macleod area — about 175 kilometres south of Calgary — was remote for a teenager like Moranz. Finding music you enjoyed made you a detective of sorts.

“Sounds would waft in, like pie cooling on a windowsill, and then you’d have to try to track them down. You’d go to the delete bins and see what was there and try things out,” says Moranz.

With the help of CKUA, he got to understand the connection of folk to other musical forms, like jazz and blues.

“We discovered that folk really is, in the end, a form of pop music, with some of it going back to traditional forms, you know. And that's a beautiful thing.”

The way Moranz tells it, after the time CKUA temporarily went dark in 1997, the station notched up its relationship with supporters and creators of the arts and their events. That led to the CKUA of today playing a huge role in keeping the music scene thriving in Alberta.

“I think they realized that they needed to focus on the artistic community in Alberta, because there was so much of it and there wasn’t the support it needed.”

Moranz remembers a Lethbridge bar firing a band for the sin of playing original music.

“Now there are venues everywhere promoting artists that write their own stuff.”

Original CKUA designed for rural reach

CKUA’s rural connection goes back to the station’s origins in 1927 on the University of Alberta campus in Edmonton. The university conceived the station as a conduit to far flung Albertans for extension courses and other resources and information.

“We started very much from the roots of the province,” Carnes says.

Since CKUA’s infamous five weeks of darkness in 1997, the station has continued through a blend of listener support, advertising dollars and limited provincial dollars. (Today, the Alberta government contribution is $57,000 a year.)

Commercial leasing is another income stream, but that’s been suffering since COVID-19 changed downtown economies in urban centres across Canada.

The shutdown came during a bumpy transition forced on CKUA by the provincial government of the day to listener-supported radio. The province refused to rescue the station from a fumbled attempt at commercialization and a pre-Carnes leadership scandal, instead appointing a board to shepherd the station onward.

Over the years came tough decisions like cancelling AM service and an entire news division. But today’s challenges are unprecedented, Carnes says.

“It’s easy to look to the past and look for problems and ways that we could have solved this. But the reality is you make the best decisions at the time. And you don't plan for a world-changing pandemic to throw everything out of kilter.”

But listeners have come through, and CKUA continues to build on the success of its spring fundraising campaign, Carnes says.

“We wound up at just over $1.8 million, which was beyond heartwarming,” he said. “That level of response from the community — we had about 1,700 new donors — was wild.”

Kicking in another $100,000 is a family foundation in Calgary, which so far wants to remain anonymous. Work continues in the background to drum up interest with other potential donors, and the total at the time of the Gazette’s most recent interview with Carnes was just shy of $2 million.

Back in 2012, the station moved into the Alberta Hotel, which it bought for $12.5 million. The final project 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 anticipated a matching grant of $5 million from the federal government — but instead got $500,000, forcing it to turn to borrowing the shortfall.

From deep in the heartland of sweet corn and sugar beets, contractor Bob Miller can’t figure out why anyone wouldn’t trade homogenized programming for CKUA’s quirky offerings. (Supplied)

‘Problems are opportunities’

Carnes is optimistic, saying he has a strong and supportive board with a vision into the next century of CKUA’s life.

“We're a 97-year-old startup. We are agile. We move fast. We are creative on our feet,” he says. “We view every problem as an opportunity, and that’s no different now.”

At the same time, CKUA is doing important, government-like work for the greater good, Carnes and others have noted. It’s an historic society of sorts, preserving the hotel where Leonard Cohen wrote Sisters of Mercy.

It’s an archivist, too, preserving a chunk of the cultural history of Alberta and the rest of the country. It even drives tourism to festivals like the South Country Fair.

But Carnes is clear: independence is crucial.

Some Albertans saw the letter-writing campaign as a call for the station to tie itself completely to ongoing federal funding.

Not so, he emphasizes.

“We don’t want to be held to the bureaucracy of federal funding. But what we are asking is that the federal government just recognize that we do have a unique cultural value in the country.”

Corporate media outlets get government support these days.

“We're just asking for a fair shake and a little bit of help for an organization that has been an exemplary nonprofit model in the media space in this country.”

Carnes and the radio station are also looking ahead to the 2027 centennial of CKUA, to the ongoing need to replace and update equipment, and to building an opportunity fund to react to changing technology and societal trends.

What about duct tape?

When it comes to new technology, Bob Miller might have an idea.

He and his brother own F. Miller Excavating of Vauxhall, a small town not far from his home.

It has a staff of about 15 and a fleet of pickups, transport trucks and other radio-equipped equipment – about 40 pieces in all – continually moving earth and people.

“If I had it my way, every radio in every machine and truck I have would be glued to CKUA,” Miller says. “Staff wouldn't have a choice. It’s either CKUA is on or the radio’s off.”

But he also concedes, “I do get a little forceful at times.”