CKUA radio needs government support to survive
By Lethbridge Herald on October 26, 2024.
Editor:
I discovered CKUA in April 1997 – for anyone in the know that’s the brief time when the station was off the air. It was just after I’d moved to Lethbridge from Ontario and I was bitterly lonesome. Someone told me that there was an incredible radio station that would have helped me, but it’d gone off the air.
I stumbled on it after its jubilant return as a donor-supported station a few weeks later and promised myself if I ever moved to Edmonton, I’d volunteer. I have since been a donor, a volunteer in the pledge room and a CKUA ambassador at functions around Edmonton.
To think that CKUA is a good radio station is to say that Taylor Swift seems popular these days. CKUA is an Albertan institution that has taken on the mantle of preserver of history in the form of records, audio tapes of its beginnings –where else can you find Robert Goulet and the great Tommy Banks — and increasingly digital archives. The knowledge of the hosts is unsurpassed anywhere. CKUA gets approached by groups wanting their history safeguarded for the future in archives and it is struggling to take on these privileges amid the financial realities of modern radio.
Marc Carne, CKUA’s CEO, has been frank in the last six months of the fragility of their situation without government funding at the provincial and federal level. That their landlord is being allowed to hasten their paying their lease to add to their financial burden is unconscionable.
CKUA’s vision is “to create a better world connected by music, arts, and culture, and we are committed to providing this for anyone who wants to listen, regardless of their age, location or circumstance.”
What they do to connect musicians and artists to a community is life saving to artists, and not hyperbole to say, a lifeline for me. During COVID, the familiar voices and music were a beacon in a scary world. CKUA is my soundtrack and my constant companion and I know I am not alone.
I ask all Albertans to go to ckua.com or their app for 10 minutes. And then tell our politicians that Alberta and Canada needs CKUA and right now, CKUA very much needs Albertans and Canadians as well.
Liz Greenaway
Edmonton
11-10
Indeed, CKUA a unique eclectic radio station from Alberta, listened to by many who tastes varied from jazz, blues, CandW , folk, classical and even hard rock.
The likes of Lark Clark and Cathy Ennis two bright stars amongst many others and who in all likelihood, one could bump into at various folk festivals and not just in Alberta. Andy Donnelly was often seen amongst the crowds at the South Country Fair.
As with the CBC , public broadcasting gives so much to the community and as with CBC, CKUA has struggled recently with funding. Government funding has trickled down , once the lifeblood of CKUA , now relying on fund raising in order to survive and provide Albertans and elsewhere with unique programming.
I would endorse the request in this letter to help keep the station on the air.