Broadcast area Metro Vancouver Frequency 1200 kHz (AM) Format Multicultural | Branding Spice Radio First air date November 25, 2006 | |
City Vancouver, British Columbia | ||
CJRJ (identified on air and in print as Spice Radio) is a Canadian radio station in the Metro Vancouver region of British Columbia. It broadcasts at 1200 kilohertz on the AM band with a power of 25,000 watts from a transmitter in Richmond, and its studio is located in Burnaby, British Columbia. The station is owned by I.T. Productions Ltd., which is owned by Shushma Datt.
Initial approval for a new ethnic radio station was granted on 21 July 2005 by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to serve the South Asian communoity in the Vancouver area. The station was licensed to broadcast with a power of 25,000 watts. Terms of the license included a stipulation that all programming in each broadcast week must be ethnic in nature. The station is required to provide programming in at least 17 different languages, targeted at no less than 11 different ethnic groups, with 95% of this programming to be in "third languages". 73% of this programming must be in the Punjabi and Hindustanti languages. An additional term of the licence, as per an intervention by Fairchild Radio Group (CJVB-AM, CHKG-FM Vancouver), is that CJRJ will not target Vancouver's Chinese community.
The station's sister station, Rim Jhim, continues to operate on the subsidiary communications multiplex operation (SCMO) subcarrier of CJJR-FM.
Programming
CJRJ's programming is primarily South Asian (Hindi and Punjabi), however it also airs some Bengali, Gujarati, Filipino, Italian, Malayalam, Persian, Tamil and Sinhala programming on weekends.