A tale of the times, Banff Centre Radio is going off air this week thanks to the larger economic turmoil felt by the province.

On Monday morning, it was announced that the art institute would be releasing its licenses for 101.1 FM and 103.3 FM to focus on a podcasting strategy. The last live Rocky Mountain Morning show is set to air on Friday at 8 a.m.

The decision comes after the provincial government informed the Banff Centre of potential cuts to postsecondary institutes, which could affect the centre’s bottom line.

“We’ve been thinking about podcasting for quite some time — that’s not new in the thinking,” said Carolyn Warren, vice-president arts for the Banff Centre.

“We felt that it was important at this time, in an environment of restrained budgets, to really focus on podcasting and digital, because that is a place where we can fully reflect all kinds of different content that comes out of the Banff Centre, from music to other arts to leadership content.”

Banff Centre Radio took over the licenses for failing Park Radio in August 2013 and was launched on June 23, 2014.

With the channels came very strict mandates from CRTC. Although producers found interesting ways to explore mountain culture, the stations were limited to providing information about the parks and made it difficult to highlight some of the work being done at the centre.

“There’s a very broad ranges of activities that happen at the Banff Centre and the mandate of those two stations was very much for visitors to the national park. It was quite restrictive in that sense, talking about the flora and the fauna and skiing and hiking and the types of activities you can do in a national park, which really is not a full reflection of the kind of content we produce here at the centre,” said Warren.

Some of the more successful shows currently being produced by both the English and French language radio stations will migrate to the Banff Centre’s website as part of this new focus.

One of the unique aspects of Banff Centre Radio was their community-based approach. Many shows were hosted and written by members of the Bow Valley, such as Basecamp with Gripped magazine’s editor-in-chief Brandon Pullan or Writers Range with Mojo Anderson from the Banff Public Library.

Although it is still early in the planning stages, Warren said she still sees room for community engagement in the podcast strategy.

The Banff Centre also holds a third license for 107.9 FM, which allows for broader coverage. The station is supposed to launch in August of this year as per CRTC’s contract, but Warren said the centre would be applying for an extension.

“We’re absolutely hoping that we will be able to go forward with that station. We want to do some reassessment and reevaluation this year because we’re not in a position to launch a third station at this point and we want to do a little bit of further study before we fully embark on that. But we’re absolutely considering it for the next couple years,” said Warren.

The Banff Centre will send a formal letter to CRTC asking to relinquish the licenses in the next week or so. Reruns will occupy the airwaves until the station is completely taken off air.

As a result of the closures, four contract employees will not see their contracts renewed.

michelle.ferguson@sunmedia.ca