CHHA-AM

On April 17, Father Hernan Astudillo, on behalf of San Lorenzo Latin American Community Centre, was awarded a licence for a new Type B community AM station in Toronto. The station would broadcast ethnic (primarily Spanish) programming at 1610 kHz with a power of 1,000 watts.

CHSL 1610 began testing in the autumn with reduced power of 250 watts.

The station officially launched on November 21 with full power of 1,000 watts. The first broadcast included an Ecumenical Mass at 12:30 p.m., followed by the blessing of the studio and tower at 2:30, a media conference at 3:00 and best wishes from local authorities and dignataries at 3:30 p.m. Studios and transmitter were located at the community centre, San Lorenzo Church, 2901 Dufferin Street in Toronto.

CHSL changed calls to CHHA.

On January 25, San Lorenzo Latin American Community Centre was given approval to relocate CHAA’s transmitter site. Coverage would be decreased significantly and displaced to the south of the present contours, as a result of the relocation. CHAA indicated that Industry Canada had requested that San Lorenzo cease broadcasting from the existing transmitter site by November 30, 2006, due to interference problems from San Lorenzo’s transmissions.

In February, CHAA began transmitting from its new transmitter site.

On August 19, the CRTC denied an application by San Lorenzo Latin American Community Centre to change the authorized contours of the Type B community radio station CHHA Toronto. The licensee had proposed to change the station’s authorized contours by decreasing the daytime transmitter power from 10,000 watts to 6,250 watts and by increasing the night time transmitter power from 1,000 watts to 6,250 watts. San Lorenzo provides programming to Toronto-area residents in the Spanish, Tagalog, Italian and Portuguese languages. The licensee stated that the proposed changes would result in a better quality signal to listeners located in the northwest part of its licensed area, who were now experiencing poor reception of CHHA. The Commission noted that the population within the 15 mV/m contour would decrease from 1,315,982 to 1,067,284 in the daytime and increase from 194,073 to 1,067,284 in the night time. The population within the 5 mV/m contour would decrease from 2,828,585 to 2,409,869 in the daytime and increase from 500,010 to 2,409,869 in the night time. The Commission noted that the licensee may have failed to comply with section 9(2) of the Radio Regulations, 1986 in regard to the requirement to file annual returns for the broadcast years 2005 through 2007. After examining the present application in light of the applicable regulations and policies, the Commission considered that the only issue to be addressed in its determinations was the licensee’s apparent non-compliance with its regulatory requirements.

On July 15, the CRTC approved the application by San Lorenzo Latin American Community Centre to amend the broadcasting licence CHHA to change the authorized contours by modifying the antenna radiation pattern from non-directional to directional and by modifying its transmitter power from 10,000 watts day-time and 1,000 watts night-time to 6,250 watts day and night. The licensee stated that such a change in transmitter power would allow the station to regain lost listenership resulting from the night-time power reduction and that the change in antenna radiation pattern would protect other AM stations from skywave interference.

On August 31, the CRTC administratively renewed the licence for CHHA-FM to December 31, 2011.

On August 28, the CRTC administratively renewed CHHA-FM’s licence to December 31, 2012. On December 21, the licence was renewed to August 31, 2018.