Media Beat: A Community FM Punching Above Its Weight (Column)

One doesn’t often hear praise for the penny-pinched community radio stations that serve rural communities in Canada, and yet there are more than 150 of them that are largely supported by local advertising, memberships, fundraisers and the small number of grants available through the Canadian Radio Fund of Canada (CRFC).

Many of these FMs are the source of local news and current events in the community as weekly newspapers have mostly gone the way of the dodo bird. Complicating their reach is Meta’s blocking of news content on Facebook and Instagram.

One community FM that has excelled in recent years is 99.3 County FM (CJPE) in Prince Edward County, Ontario. Launched in 2014 with the help of former broadcasting exec Jim (JJ) Johnston who hung up his spurs in the private sector to put his all in creating a voice for the community to which he and his family relocated.

Now serving as Chair of the FM, the station has an impressive Board of Directors that is responsible for the operation and finances of an outlet that is now is now one of the largest community radio stations in Canada. It’s tough work without pay and requires a big commitment to the community.

It's also an FM that sits in a community of about 25K that in recent years has been inundated with urbanites who have sold their city homes to retreat to a slice of rural paradise on the shores of Lake Ontario, bringing with them a fleet of late model SUVs and expectations of fine pastries, gourmet meals and bargain prices (which perhaps explains why the local Giant Tiger does gangbuster business in the county’s largest community of Picton). The once small town community has become a playground for retired urbanites and it's devestatingly impacted affordability for many locals.

According to data compiled by the township in 2023, The County as a nationally identified vacation destination, saw seasonal residents in their second-home properties increase to 25% of the population. Exacerbating affordability for local workers, online booking platforms offering short-term accommodation in residential properties grew to over 900 active licenses in 2023.

Suddenly the Colgate gleam of ex-urbanites started to show distressing fault lines in a community that was once a sleepy hollow.

It was this societal disorder that led County FM to embark on an exhaustive work-intensive and not wholly affordable eight-part documentary podcast series entitled Voices from the Shadows - Homeless in a Rural Community.

Explaining the project, County FM GM Craig Mills said volunteers from the radio station interviewed more than 60 individuals in and around the local homeless community and the organizations that serve them. “The documentary represents the voices of homelessness, past and present, and the people trying to help them today.”

It was no small project. The documentary production team consisted of scripts by Astrid Young and interviews by Phil Knox, Dave MacKay and Mark Rodgers. Wendy Mesley, host Jim JJ Johnston, Andrew Dailey and Chuck Dailey handled narration and the Project Manager was Gillian Carson. Other production and research was done by Pat Larkin, Craig Mills, Liz Simpson, Lorraine Wilson, Cliff Prentice and Larry Richardson. Lenni Stewart provided some of the music for the project.

Mills proudly tells me that “the mighty team of volunteers are a caring bunch,” adding that “some of the interviews were tough physiologically on the volunteers.”

What 99.3 County FM accomplished with this heartfelt, well-researched documentary is to tell a story about people shunted off by societal change. It’s a story that has parallels in most towns and cities in Canada, and the team’s dedication to giving a voice to an issue that has spun out of control in recent years is admirable.

In June at the NCRC Annual Conference in Sydney, Cape Breton, the National Community Radio Awards recognized the FM in its annual citations, naming it as a winner in the best documentary category.

A few weeks later, an all-out radiothon fundraising campaign was successful in raising $72K ($2K over the goal) that was desperately needed to maintain services and update studio equipment.

It’s an admirable story about a little station that cares about its community. And its community cares about it. Mills tells me that there’s no budget to buy market research that can tell it detailed information about who’s listening and when, or how many listen online versus on a radio. But the support and response from advertisers, for now, tells him and the team that The County is listening and willing to support a station that consistently hits above its material wealth.

Here is the direct link to the 8-part series: Voices From The Shadows - 99.3 County FM (993countyfm.ca)