Cabin Radio has been granted the right to broadcast on FM radio in Yellowknife. Now what?
This week’s decision gives Cabin Radio permission to launch a commercial radio station at 93.9 FM on the Yellowknife dial, but that won’t happen overnight.
Here’s a guide to what happens next.
How soon will broadcasts begin?
It’ll take some time to get the equipment in place.
There would have been no point having expensive transmission equipment ready to go if the CRTC had said no.
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Now we know the decision is a yes, we’ll go and acquire the final pieces of equipment we need – and install them.
That’ll take some time, as some of the equipment is specialized and has to come from other parts of Canada.
We’re anticipating we’ll need at least a few months, maybe longer. Some of that timeline is out of our control.
Inside one of Cabin Radio’s engineering rooms. Ollie Williams/Cabin Radio
The good news is that we’ve been a fully operational, round-the-clock broadcast service since 2018 (online and through our app) so we already have studios in place and you can listen online until the FM broadcasts begin.
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Compared to most newly licensed radio stations, we’ve done much more work. We only need the equipment to get our signal onto FM – everything else already exists.
How far will the FM signal stretch?
It’ll cover the Yellowknife area. You should be able to get Cabin Radio’s FM signal roughly anywhere in and around Yellowknife that you can already pick up any other FM station.
In the future, we’d like to expand our broadcast area to cover the Ingraham Trail and potentially more of Highway 3 west of the city, but our focus for now will be getting on FM in Yellowknife itself.
We are also excited to expand to other NWT communities in the future, once we have the Yellowknife signal in place.
We’ll have more to say about that once we have Yellowknife figured out and after we’ve spent some time assessing the economics of providing FM broadcasts in other communities.
Why 93.9?
Unlike most places in southern Canada, large parts of the FM dial in Yellowknife are still open, so we had a lot of choice. 93.9 simply seemed relatively far from other existing frequencies and easy to remember.
Why the call letters CJFC?
We will never tell, but it’s a good story.
Will Cabin Radio sound different on FM?
Our basic day-to-day programming won’t change. We’ve already been running as though we were an FM station since 2018, so all of the shows and music we already broadcast will be pretty-much the same on FM.
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The main improvements we’ll look to make are:
adding more news updates throughout the day, so that you can get a quick snapshot of our news coverage at regular intervals; and
adding more current affairs coverage, mostly meaning more interviews about whatever’s making the news in Yellowknife and the NWT.
That said, our main reason for existing on FM is to broadcast great music, so you’ll mostly hear a selection of the best tracks from the past 60 years with an emphasis on northern and Indigenous performers and the best new Canadian music.
We also have on-air hosts with a collective 98 years of experience broadcasting in the NWT, so the voices you’ll hear will be northern and Indigenous broadcasters who know the territory really well and are great at what they do.
You can already listen to all of this online and through our app to get a taste of what you’ll hear on FM.
So what kinds of music will you play?
Here’s the 2pm hour broadcast by Jasmine Nasogaluak on Wednesday as an example:
The Heavy: Curse Me Good
Reuben and the Dark: Yes
Ian Thomas: Painted Ladies
Hozier: Someone New
Toto: Africa
Father John Misty: “Real Love Baby”
The Strumbellas: Wars
The Strokes: Reptilia
Sam Cooke: Another Saturday Night
Jule$ (Tulita artist): What It Seems
The Band: Chest Fever
Barns Courtney: Glitter and Gold
Filter: Take a Picture
Rob Thomas: Hard to be Happy
Rush: New World Man
And here’s Ollie Williams’ 10am hour from Monday:
Justin Bieber: Daisies
Kings of Leon: Fans
Space: Female of the Species
George Ezra: Budapest
Lana Del Rey: Bluebird
Nelly Furtado: Honesty
Riit: ataataga
Amy Winehouse: You Know I’m No Good
Lenny Kravitz: Again
Coldplay: Paradise
Queen: I Want It All
Lost in Japan: Won’t Let You
Love Inc: You’re a Superstar
You’ll also find classical music, jazz, soul, EDM and metal all have designated homes on Cabin Radio throughout the week, while Jay Bear anchors a show dedicated to new music, Out of the Bear Cave, every Tuesday at 6pm.
Will you just magically appear on FM one day?
For the next little while, 93.9 FM will be dead air while we get the transmission equipment in place. Then you’ll hear a test signal on 93.9 first. (We’re figuring out what that test signal will sound like.)
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After a while, the test signal will become Cabin Radio. We will make it very obvious when that happens and give it a lot of build-up, so you don’t miss it.
Once you’re on FM, will you still broadcast online?
Yes, the app and the ability to listen online won’t change at all.
Why is FM so important?
Yellowknifers still love radio. People – hundreds of people! – have told us it’s easier to listen to FM in their car, or at the work site or even in the office or at the store.
Some advertisers also prefer the idea of FM broadcasting to online, because they better understand it and are used to it.
From our perspective, if it helps us reach more people and helps our advertisers reach more people, then it sounds like a good idea.
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