Mackenzie’s non-profit radio station was one of several community institutions that had to move to a new location last year, but thanks to some hard work those listening to the station might not have noticed the switchover at all.
Last year, the Ernie Bodin Community Centre closed due to structural issues, forcing groups like the Mackenzie Museum, Mackenzie Community Arts Council and more to seek new homes.
CHMM 103.5 FM, operated by the Mackenzie & Area Radio Society (MARS), moved into a suite at the Mackenzie Mall where a new studio had been built after spending the previous 21 years at the community centre.
MARS president Jeff Close and station manager Paul Smith told The Citizen that after the Pattison Media station CKMK closed in 2003, residents banded together to create the non-profit station to keep local media alive in the community.
In 2022, Smith said, the station found out that the Ernie Bodin centre would be closing and they would have to move out by the beginning of August 2024.
A former employee at Canfor’s Mackenzie operations, Smith said he saw a listing for the station manager job in 2021 while looking for work after a shutdown.
He’d never worked in broadcasting before, but the listing piqued his interest and his application was successful. Former station manager J.D. McKenzie, who had been brought over from the Pattison station after it closed, showed Smith the ropes.
After a couple of weeks of instruction and advice, Smith said he’s been winging it ever since.
Smith said growing up, he was really into making mixtapes, recording songs off the radio for his cassettes. His favourite part of running the station is cultivating their daily playlist, saying he takes pride in trying to make sure there are as few repeats as possible.
“I love CHMM,” he said. “You never know what you’re going to hear. It can go from Tragically Hip to Taylor Swift to Nine Inch Bails in one breath. I try not to have it that disjoined, but you can get a very, very eclectic mix.”
After finding a space for lease at the mall, they received their keys at the beginning of February 2023 and tore the space down to the studs and started rebuilding it to serve their needs.
That was made possible by the community, Smith said, with more than 30 business and people volunteering their time or donating towards the renovations.
That included a $33,000 worth of grants from the McLeod Lake-Mackenzie Community Forest, a $9,954 grant from Iris Energy, a rent subsidy from the District of Mackenzie, construction help from Nick Roberts and some assistance from Chetwynd-based broadcast technician Ray Semenoff who helped set up the original station back in 2003.
As the society moved its gear out of the centre and into the mall, the society came up with a plan to keep broadcasting during the move without many interruptions in early June 2024.
“We slowly built the station, we did all the wiring, got it all painted and all ready to go,” Close said. “And then in one weekend … we moved the backup on-air computer — that’s where our music is stored — while we ran the station on the main on-air computer from the Ernie Bodin centre.
“We got it running and we figured out that we could transit off of that, so we got it all hooked up on Saturday and then we had made up kind of a loop of canned music to play and we started playing that until we took the main on-air computer offline on Sunday morning.”
By 4 p.m. that Sunday, they were broadcasting live from the new mall studio.
Beyond just renovating the space, the funding the station received also helped CHMM purchase a new FM processor and transmitter. Close said their signal reaches to about 10 kilometres south of McLeod Lake.
Until recently, CBC Radio reception was spotty in Mackenzie but a new rebroadcaster has helped with that. As the only station in town, they don’t just carry music but advertisements, public service and emergency announcements.
“We have a phone manned 24 hours a day, especially during fire seasons, so that if the gas station blows up at one o’clock in the morning, we’ll get a phone call to whoever has the phone that day and they’ll have to go in and make an announcement on the radio.”
Close said that two or three summers ago, wildfire smoke led local to fear that they had to flee town and were lined up at the gas station to fill up. There was even a rumour on local social media that someone had started a fire in a nearby subdivision.
“And so I went on air after I found out what was going on and said to everybody ‘there is no forest fire, there is nothing to panic about, it’s just smoke,’” Close said.
While the new processor didn’t increase the broadcasting range of the station, Smith said it has provided better sound quality and includes an equalizer that can be tweaked for various programming.
During his “Turntable Thursdays” hip-hop and rap program, for instance, Smith said he uses the equalizer the pump the bass up a little bit.
It’s become a popular program over the years, running for 150 weekly episodes.
He said it’s only ever generated one complaint. He listened to a voicemail on the station’s phone line left after one of his first shows.
“It was a clearly inebriated fella calling during the program — I could hear it on sorta in the background — berating the person who was playing that kind of music on the radio,” Smith said.
“He used the hard-r slur on this message. He said ‘I don’t know if you know what area of the country you’re in, but that’s n-word music. I can’t even understand what this fella is singing about. Know your audience.
“The funniest part of the story, I look it up — because I can see what song was playing at what time down to the hundredths of a second — the song he called in to complain about was an Eminem song. A white rapper.”
Other programs broadcast out of the station include More Great Tapes, where host Amy Smith plays alternative, punk and lo-fi rock from across Canada.
CHMM streams its programming online through its website and Smith said he usually notices 20 or more people listening to More Great Tapes, not including those who listen to the radio.
Close has his own show, The Rock Box, on Friday nights. He said he likes to help broaden people’s musical tastes as well as remind them of oldies they might have forgotten about.
The station is always looking for new donors as well as volunteers to host shows on a variety of musical genres.
Those interested in doing so can reach out by email to [email protected] or visit chmm.ca, where their programming can be listened to live.
