Notes obtained from Red River College through access to information laws, reveal that repeated claims the so-called 'Executive Committee" held a formal meeting on November 2nd about Kick-FM programming or The Great Canadian Talk Show are false.
RRC Creative Communications department chairman Larry Partap serves as Secretary on the Board of the non-profit radio licencee, Cre-Comm Inc. A FIPPA application forced him to turn over handwritten notes about an urgent meeting held by Partap and RRC Dean of Business Graham Thomson with station manager Rick Baverstock on November 4th.
It was exactly 2 weeks after Thomson assured RRC President Stephanie Forsyth that TGCTS could be knocked off the air "without too much trouble ... through a chat with Rick".
Although Thomson told the National Post in a November 17 story that a meeting of the "Executive Committee" took place on Nov 2nd, "where four voting board members unanimously decided to cancel Mr. Gold's show ... but without any outside influences", Partap's handwritten notes about the discussion with Baverstock tell a different story, and that it was indeed trouble for Forsyth's agents to convince Baverstock to play along with their censorship game.
Partap's notes, entitled "Mtg w Rick & Graham Nov 4th/2010" shows a couple of unrelated financial matters were discussed, before Partap turned to the "Nomination mtg with Chris Stevens & David Wiebe".
That was a different committee of the station which had no possible authorization from the Board to discuss programming -- or make policy decisions about anything other than finding candidates for Board membership at the upcoming AGM.
The Nomination Committee consisted of Wiebe of Golden West Radio, Stevens of CHUM Radio Ltd., Partap, and College vice-president Cathy Rushton, who had previously told Partap and Thomson the falsehood that Mayor Sam Katz had complained about Marty Gold to former College president Dr. Jeff Zabudsky. It also included a fifth member, former CHUM executive Bryan Stone, who was absent.
- The four members who attended the Nomination Committee meeting are also, allegedly, the members of a mysterious, undocumented committee of the Board called the "Executive Committee".
- There is no record a meeting of that Committee was ever called or held on November 2nd, although those 4 members met for a different purpose that day.
- No minutes of an Executive Committee meeting on November 2nd have ever been produced, despite the legal requirement to turn them over under the Freedom of Information legislation.
- Four people bumping into each other in an elevator would not constitute a formal meeting of any committee those people belong to.
- Four people meeting for one specific purpose, cannot transmute that gathering into a meeting of a completely different Committee on a completely different issue, without due notice that a meeting has been called.
- Furthermore, the Board was never informed of this alleged meeting, contrary to their own declared process.
There is not a word about Marty Gold recorded in the minutes of that Nomination Committee meeting. But 2 days after, station manager Baverstock was informed The Great Canadian Talk Show was being targeted.
It wasn't the chairman of Cre-Comm Inc who met with Baverstock, it was 2 representatives of Red River College, including Graham Thomson, who internal documents proved was informed that President Forsyth wanted the show deep-sixed, and Larry Partap, who parroted Forsyth's reasoning.
- Partap wrote that he talked about:
"Marty to sell ads";
"Marty not a grad & during prime time";
and then, the real reason for silencing the show slipped out of his pen.
"Marty - mainstream media bashed; we offend the very community we serve".
Who is the "we" Partap refers to?
He was speaking as a representative of Red River College, and not as an officer of Cre- Comm Inc, which had never received a formal complaint about the show from anybody.
- His notes itemize the station manager's defence of TGTCS, including that students were already heard on prime time within the format, which he had lauded to Free Press reporter Bartley Kives as "unmatched" in the country; and that "Rick spoke to Marty about 1 year ago" and no formal complaints were ever filed before or afterwards.
- Thomson jumped in, probing for an angle to force the prime time slot vacated, starting with:
"Buy your own station"
"How much money does Marty make from this"
and
"Marty gets a "lot of attention" - is this our mandate?"
Thomson, as Dean of Business, had been on the Board since its inception. One would think he would have known the station mandate under the CRTC regulation by November.
- Days later the College helped invent a meeting of the mythical "Executive Committee".
An hour after TGCTS was axed, the College's vice-president of Finance tried to create a record of that fateful meeting that was otherwise undocumented - and which you can now see, never actually took place.
"Dear David and Chris" wrote RRC vice-president Rushton to the two radio executives "... based on the decision at last week's Executive Committee meeting, we have canceled The Great Canadian Talk Show, hosted by Marty Gold, effective immediately."
That would be the "decision" made at a formal meeting of the "Executive Committee" that did not happen, and for which there are no known minutes.
She then provided a copy of the now -discredited cover story that had been read out loud to Gold and Baverstock by Graham Thomson an hour earlier, beseeched Wiebe to handle media inquiries, and added "We just want you to stick to the message above."
Once again, the question has to be asked, who is "we" ?
- It may surprise readers to learn that Red River College has a strict ethics policy (under P Series).
http://www.rrc.mb.ca/index.php?pid=4523
Despite numerous complaints from Kick-FM listeners that they, the National Post, and other media were deliberately misled about the mysterious "Executive Committee" and the actual reason for the TGCTS being eliminated, College officials have not commenced a single investigation into the written complaints about alleged ethical breaches and questionable conduct of the Dean of Business, Graham Thomson.
Next: How the CRTC defines "the community that campus radio serves" may surprise the "Executive Committee" and Stephanie Forsyth.
