LITTLE CURRENT—It has been a long steady slog to build the award winning country music station 100.7 The Island, but now Craig and Kelly (KT) Timmermans, the driving forces behind that station and the popular country music festival Country Fest, are seeking to expand their repertoire with a new dance music station.
The plan, according to Mr. Timmermans, has always been to have two radio stations on the Island. “It was always in my dream, my plan, to have two stations,” he said as he announced that his company has secured the 103.1 frequency from Canadian public broadcaster CBC. He explained that the CBC has been divesting itself of unutilized frequencies across the country. “I think it is part of their cost-cutting and streamlining of their operations,” he said. “They had originally secured frequencies for both French and English stations. But there are areas where they don’t have enough French audience and others up North where they don’t have enough of an English audience. “We bought the frequency that was slated for the French language broadcasts in this area.”
The Timmermans have applied to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for leave to move their current country station at 100.7 to the new frequency of 103.1 and rename it Country 103, while changing the format of the 100.7 frequency from country to, perhaps, dance music. “It’s still a work in progress on that,” said Mr. Timmermans. “We were thinking of calling the new station Glow 100.”
The process of building the stations has been long and arduous, admits Mr. Timmermans. “Hey, if it was easy everyone would be doing it,” he quipped. “We have been on a long learning curve and we have made some mistakes along the way, but we have learned from them and things are going forward pretty well now.”
Mr. Timmermans said that he now has much of the infrastructure and expertise in hand to handle two radio stations and that some of the new technology he is putting into place for the new station will result in a dramatic improvement in signal quality for his stations.
“One of the new things is placing the transmitter and the computers right on the antenna,” he said. “Instead of having the equipment in the studio and then having to send the signal to the transmitter, with the degradation that results from that, we send the material to the transmitter and it goes out right on the antenna.”
Combined with a splitter that would allow the two FM signals to be transmitted from the same equipment, the economies of the process will be very much improved.
Mr. Timmermans said that most of the process has been put in place. “What we are waiting for now is the word from the CRTC,” he said. That preliminary decision is expected sometime in November. “KT and I are planning to go to Quebec when the decision is being made,” said Mr. Timmermans. “We have been working on this for a long time and we felt it was important that we be where the decision is being made.”
