Christians attacking indians again...

It's only been a thousand years... but the Christians won't layoff.

I am very sympathetic to the native Americans. They want to build casinos... let 'em. They are more deserving of reparations than any other minority group. So when a satcaster christian outlet tries to take a native American owned radio station to court, I don't care if they're Canadian or American. I know whose side I'm on.

This is a battle between a Vancouver, Canada based Aboriginal Voices Radio Inc., and KWPZ-FM Lynden, Washington owned by Crista Ministries. [KWPZ recently changed called from KLYN]

Crista argues that they are losing listeners they should reach rightfully within their protected contour. Their contour crosses the U.S./Canada border. They of course have no rights north of that border. None. They also argue that it will cause interference within the US portion of their coverage area. This may have some truth, BUT they Also own KCMS 105.3 which blankets the entire Seattle market with one 63,000 watt signal and three repeaters. This signal is in no danger of any kind. None-the-less KWPZ mustered more than 7,000 listeners enough to file interventions opposing the the application.

Aboriginal Voices argues that the 50,000 native Americans in the Vancouver market (not the U.S.) deserve a broadcast media voice. That and KWPZ is not entitled to receive the same technical protection in Canada as Canadian services get. The Aboriginal Voices radio website is here.  The CRTC found in favor of AVR of course.

But there is a magic detail here. In 2001 AVR filed not for 106.3, but for 90.9. In the CRTC's own language "in the Commission’s view, the use of 90.9 MHz by AVR did not constitute the best possible use of that frequency. " You can read it here. And what's adjacent to 90.9 near Vancouver? nothing. nothing at all. So four years ago the CRTC made a chess move to pick this fight pretty knowingly. 106.3 isn't' even that great a signal. It's second adjacent to Canadian public radio outlet CBU 105.7. More here. I don't know why, but I can say that Canada has a totally different approach to defending their RF border than Mexico does.