Is your podcasting service free?

In a word, no. We offer a low-cost service, but it’s not free.

CFRC is dedicated to getting the many varied voices of the Kingston and Queen’s community into the media — and podcasting is one of the ways we do this.

The station is structured as an FM radio station. We’re appropriately staffed and funded to run a great FM radio service! The requirements of podcasting, though, aren’t something in our core service model or our budget: it requires sharing studio equipment that has to be bought and maintained, staff time to book and supervise the facilities, etc.

Cost recovery is required for the project to survive!

As a new and unfunded project, our podcasting wing runs on a cost recovery model. 

Podcasters remunerate the station either with money, in the form of fees for studio bookings (currently $60/hour), or time, as volunteers at the station.

Following podcast application and approval, we’ll sit down with you to see which model fits your proposal best. We aren’t running this to make money, but we require both income and volunteers to keep the lights on and the engines running.

How do you decide who can podcast with CFRC?

We welcome any Queen’s University or Kingston-area person or institution that wants to create content that conforms with CFRC’s mission and mandate.

CFRC is licensed by the CRTC to provide programming that essentially fills gaps that commercial broadcasters don’t cover. We provide a voice for groups that are often voiceless and aren’t represented in major media.

This means — all things being equal — we are mandated, by the government agency that grants us our license, to prioritize voices and approaches that can’t be found in the commercial system (it’s also something we’re proud of).

Applications are welcome, and we do our best to accommodate all comers. Allocating our time and equipment, however, must serve the people who get the fewest opportunities to be heard.

Does CFRC have an official policy on its podcasting service?

It does, and you can read it here.

What podcast services to you distribute to?

As of December 2018, every major service (Apple, Google Play, Stitcher and Spotify).

Can you provide direct links to the podcasts you post?

The podcast service distributes to all major podcast platforms — Apple, Google Play, Stitcher — and as such is available on almost every podcast app. We can provide direct subscription links on a per-platform basis. Since we’re built on top of a blogging platform (WordPress), each episode is also a post with its own distinct link.

To use the example of local podcast The Kingstonian, you can see a series of direct links to podcast services (for subscribing) on its home page: https://podcast.cfrc.ca/the-kingstonian/. If you want to link to individual episodes, each one is its own blog post, linked here as a list (https://podcast.cfrc.ca/category/kingstonian/) and with individual episode posts like this: https://podcast.cfrc.ca/2018/10/the-kingstonian-peter-kingston-community-involvement/.