MUNSU Director says CHMR will have a full opportunity to be an independent community run radio station

Nathan Gillingham says the executive has been having ongoing consultations for years now and it all started with audits outlining a significant deficit of MUNSU at $300,000 deficit.

MUNSU’s Director of External Affairs says a decision to vote on the closure of the campus radio station CHMR did not come lightly. Nathan Gillingham says the executive has been having ongoing consultations for years now and it all started with audits outlining a significant deficit of MUNSU at $300,000 deficit; alarms have been sounded by auditors for years now putting them in a critical point. 

Gillingham says over the last week and a half they have been receiving a lot of feedback from community members and students. MUNSU operates several services and Gillingham says one thing they’ve assessed in a changing media landscape is that young people aren’t listening to radio as much as they once did.

Gillingham says CHMR has a magnificent history with the amount of awards and journalists but students are spending money on a service they don’t utilize and CHMR has a deficit of about $200,000. He says all services are being assessed and the executive committee of MUNSU has decided that CHMR will have a full opportunity to be an independent community run radio station. 

Gillingham says he’s received over 100 emails recently on this matter and CHMR they will continue to receive the media levy that students pay for, totalling about $51K. MUNSU has an operating budget of more than $2M a year.