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The Funnel Broadcast and Frameline

Weekly on CKLN-FM 88.1, Toronto, 1986-2008

>> May 2008 news about Frameline <<
The weekly, half-hour radio program about film
was suspended in May 2008 after 20 years of broadcasts, 1988-2008,
Fridays, 2:00-2:30pm, on CKLN-FM 88.1, Ryerson University, Toronto.
Frameline's timeslot is being filled by the friendly expansion to an hour,
2:00-3:00pm, of Cinephobia - an off-shoot program of Frameline.
The suspension is related to internal political strife at CKLN,
so Frameline's fate will be in the balance for the duration.
May 14th news report from the Resist! Collective.

^^^

A Brief History of Frameline by John Porter, July 2008

CKLN-FM 88.1 is a non-profit, volunteer-programmed radio station founded by and based at Ryerson University (formerly Ryerson Polytechnical Institute) in downtown Toronto, augmenting Ryerson's popular School of Radio and Television Arts.
In 1986 CKLN boosted its signal from a campus-only 13 watts to a city-wide 250 watts under Station Manager Adam Vaughan, who is currently a Toronto City Councillor. He said of CKLN, "We are not here to satisfy a majority audience" and joked that it's "uneasy listening".

In 1986, The Funnel Broadcast, Wednesdays at 2:30pm, was initiated and hosted by filmmaker Mike Hoolboom as a new outlet for The Funnel Experimental Film Theatre (1977-1989) where he was an active member. The Funnel was also non-profit and its philosophy was to serve experimental film artists only, including super 8 filmmakers and film performance artists, and excluding the all-consuming crowd of conventional filmmakers. The program was promoted as "films for the blind" - a collage of sounds, music and talk, including audio pieces, soundtracks and interviews with film artists.

Hoolboom later passed the program on to another active Funnel member, Sharon Cook, but by 1988 The Funnel was crumbling and Cook was unceremoniously replaced by CKLN with three new co-hosts - Andrew Munger, Sara Evans, and Cameron Bailey who is now a new Co-Director of the Toronto International Film Festival. They renamed the program Frameline and introduced a more conventional format of interviews and reviews of more conventional films, including little talk of super 8 and film performance art.

Another later co-host was Bruce LaBruce, now an internationally-known movie director. There have been many co-hosts of Frameline, serving varying lengths of time, but the longest-serving by far is Barbara Goslawski who began in 1989 when she was also the Experimental Film Officer at the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre (CFMDC) in Toronto, and who was still a co-host in May 2008 when Frameline was suspended due to internal political strife at CKLN.

In January 2005, Frameline co-host Stuart Andrews initiated his own off-shoot, weekly, half-hour program - Cinephobia, immediately following Frameline at 2:30pm, and when Frameline was indefinitely suspended in May 2008, Cinephobia expanded to one hour for the duration.