Alberta’s CKUA announces financial status ahead of October fundraiser

Alberta’s CKUA has been on the air across the province for almost 100 years. These past few months, there was doubt that the station would hit the century mark of broadcasting.

In April, CKUA announced it needed to raise $3 million by Sept. 30 or its resources would be depleted and it would be forced to shut down.

CKUA’s CEO announced that it is short by $500,000 of its fundraising goal in September, causing the station to develop some cost-cutting measures.

“We have to cut back on our main schedule with some of our broadcasting systems. So that does introduce a little bit of risk into the system, in terms of local outages or Broadway, but that was just the way for us to do it without taking cuts into the actual programming itself,” said Marc Carnes, the CEO of CKUA.

Despite the funding shortages, Carnes says CKUA is in a continual conversation with several donors to reach the $3 million goal, with certain conditions such as a successful negotiation with lenders and a successful fall fundraiser event coming this Friday, Oct. 18.

One radio host who has been working for almost 20 years, says operating the station is getting harder as it broadens its streams or programming. But he says he believes people will value the station more than ever.

“We’re doing more than ever, and it’s getting harder than ever in media for anybody — let alone for the kind of plucky organizations such as ourselves. I feel like it’s much harder than it’s been, but what we’ve seen is that people are valuing it more,” said Grant Stovel.

The station raised $1.8 million for ten days during its spring fundraising event, and according to a news release, its October fundraising event will be the next test.

“You told us we can’t stop. And with your help, we won’t stop,” said Carnes.