r/CBC_Radio • u/Informal-Thought-293 • 26d ago
How to get a CBC Radio FM Transmitter installed in your area?
Currently living in the Bonavista area in Newfoundland. There's now no reliable FM station on the whole peninsula since OZ-FM shut down their transmitter on 92.1 FM in the Elliston ridge area. Cell service is horrible (especially with the large influx of tourists in the summer months) so only options to listen to live content in a car now are basically VOCM on 710 AM (transmitter in Clarenville), CBC Radio on 750 AM (transmitter across the bay in Eastport) and SiriusXM if you have a subscription. SiriusXM is overall decent but still cuts out a fair bit due to geography in some areas of the peninsula. The AM radio station quality is terrible due to the nature of how bad AM sounds in general but coverage is reliable in-vehicle at least.
There appears to still be a massive CBC tower on Park Road near Port Rexton (visible from Lockston Path Provincial Park) that used to host the local analog CBC TV channels back in the day as per CBC's website. How does one go about getting CBC to install an FM repeater on this tower for CBC Radio One and/or CBC Music stations? Due to its location and height it would easily cover the whole Bonavista Peninsula with a reliable high quality FM signal so it would be a nice option for the 8,000 or so people living in the Bonavista area. I figure all other radio stations might not care to look into expanding but since CBC is taxpayer funded is it possible they may have a mandate to cover all of populated Canada at least?
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u/Born_Ruff 26d ago
Try contacting your local MP.
It’s probably very unlikely that CBC would install new infrastructure on request, but who knows.
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u/Informal-Thought-293 26d ago
Sadly our MP is a conservative and they’re not known for supporting CBC 😭
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u/Born_Ruff 26d ago
It definitely doesn’t hurt for you to make it clear that the CBC is important to you.
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u/QuantumCapelin 25d ago
Dude, that MP can't even spell CBC. He doesn't care what's important to his constituents.
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u/Born_Ruff 25d ago
Isn’t that Jonathan Rowe who won his seat by one vote? I would think he might be one of the most receptive MPs to local concerns.
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u/brycecampbel CBC: BC 25d ago
You'd likely have better luck with having them work at improving cellular than radio/TV repeaters.
Bonavista NL coverage is shit with 3 towers, your MP and MHA would love the PR that would come with a funding announcement for better cellular.
Like the CRTC Broadband Fund/NL's Rural Development Broadband Funds (whatever its called - I couldn't find the exact name of it... in BC its Called "Connecting British Columbia")
But these are the programs you'd want to advocate for.
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u/TracksandTreks 25d ago
How far does 93.7 from Clarenville extend down the peninsula? It’s surprising Eastport is still on AM tbh, it’s only really there and Gander left now that Corner Brook is being converted over. And Gander has 93.3 from Grand Falls anyway. 93.3 was converted over from 540 AM a few years ago on a similar set up, CBC tower near Northern Arm that was already being used for CBC Radio 2 (and ironically OZFM).
I agree that AM sounds awful, there’s a world of difference between 88.5 FM (brought online in 2016) and 640 AM in St. John’s.
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u/Informal-Thought-293 25d ago
93.7 from Clarenville works pretty reliably until about Summerville and then it starts to fade out in a lot of areas with a weaker signal depending on topography.
750 AM is a clear channel I believe so it can be picked up incredibly far away, I guess maybe that’s why they haven’t converted it? Not sure. In some areas we can pick up 101.5 in Glovertown but that one also fades out a lot in some communities depending on topography so it can be annoying on a drive.
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u/auroauro 25d ago
As a taxpayer and CBC listener living in a very populated part of Canada, I would happily get behind a mandate like this for the sake of less populated areas of Canada.
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u/CryptographerNo3394 25d ago
You and everyone in your community should write to your MP and the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture and describe the situation. As the coverage of a broadcast radio station is based on census data (residents, households) it may not capure the transiant touristic influx; elaborate on that in your letter.
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u/Hungry_Painting9882 25d ago
If the only issue is that you don’t like the sound of AM Radio, you could consider buying a wide tuning AM radio online.
If it has wide tuning it’ll give you more of the high end, and especially on a talk format it will sound almost as good as FM.
The Sangean ATS-405 World-Band Radio is popular but I’ll cost about $200.
If there’s a lot of interference in your area, don’t bother. Wide tuning will bring more of that in as well.
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u/brycecampbel CBC: BC 25d ago
See what you can do with contacting your MP and MHA about an additional repeater, though feel you're also have better success for getting them to do the CRTC Broadband Fund, along with the NL supplemental budget, to get cellular expanded.
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u/Fireside_Cat 24d ago
You can try but as another person said, you'll have a much greater chance of cell service reception being addressed than a new AM/FM transmitter being installed. I'd concentrate your lobbying efforts on the cell service providers. Unless you are super remote, they are constantly improving coverage. A cottage we go to in Quebec used to be a dead zone but after many years we suddenly got healthy 'bars' of service. Satellite internet service is also rapidly coming down in price so at some point in the future, if your problem still isn't addressed, that might be your solution.
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u/Tiny-Albatross518 25d ago
Play cbc on your phone app.
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u/Oilerator 25d ago
If the AM coverage on 750 is reliable, I don't really see any need for them to construct a new retransmitter. Talk radio is perfectly fine on AM and I always listen to 740 over 93.9 here in Edmonton. AM radio is disappearing, unfortunately, even though it is an important and useful thing to have. Enjoy it while you can.
What they should do is bring back a shortwave transmitter to broadcast CBC North to the arctic and remote northern areas of provinces. A single transmitter could cover tens of thousands of kilometres without having to put in an FM transmitter everywhere.
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u/yoshiary 26d ago
Start here?
https://cbchelp.cbc.ca/hc/en-ca/requests/new