About CINA 1650

CINA 1650

CINA, broadcasting on 1650 kHz, is a South Asian community radio station licensed to Mississauga, Ontario, and serving the Greater Toronto Area. Owned by Neeti Prakash Ray through the CINA Media Group, the station airs a mix of community-oriented talk programming, all-news content, and Bollywood and South Asian music, primarily in Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, and Urdu. It signed on in December 2008 after a competitive CRTC licensing process, and its format is modelled in large part on Radio India, the popular 1990s program its owner once hosted on CKTB. Wikipedia lists cinaradio.com as the station's website.

Overview

CINA operates on 1650 kHz as a Class B station with 5,000 watts of power by day, 680 watts at night, and 1,000 watts during critical hours, using a non-directional antenna. The transmitter is located on Eglinton Avenue East at Tomken Road in Mississauga. The call letters are understood to stand for "International" or "India," reflecting the station's community focus.

The format is South Asian community radio: talk, all-news, and music programming aimed principally at Indian and Pakistani audiences in the GTA. Programming is predominantly in Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, and Urdu, with some Armenian and Indo-Caribbean programming on weekends. The station's licensing commitments were specific: at launch, the applicant pledged that 93.6 percent of programming would be in third languages — languages other than English, French, or Indigenous languages — serving a minimum of nine ethnic groups in a minimum of six languages each broadcast week.

History

The station's origins lie in a contested frequency. On April 23, 2007, the CRTC approved the application by Neeti P. Ray, on behalf of a corporation to be incorporated, for a licence to operate a commercial AM ethnic radio station in Mississauga, under Broadcasting Decision 2007-117. At the same time, the commission denied a competing application by S. S. TV Inc. for a Brampton ethnic station — both applicants had sought the same 1650 kHz frequency. Ray, an experienced ethnic radio and television content provider with a background in subsidiary communications multiplex operations, proposed to own 67 percent of the voting interest and exercise effective control, with the board governed under a shareholders' agreement nominating directors through Neeti P. Ray and Renu Ray.

The proposed schedule was detailed: 70 hours per week of programming in Hindustani, 20 hours in Urdu, eight hours each in Bangla (Bengali), Gujarati, Punjabi, and English, and four hours in Armenian, targeting Armenian, Bangladeshi, East-African Indian, East Indian, Gujarati, Pakistani, and Punjabi communities in third languages alongside Guyanese and Trinidadian/Tobagonian communities in English. The new station would operate on 1650 kHz with 1,000 watts day and night. The application committed a minimum of 98 hours per week to local programming — normally, all programming would be local — while allowing non-local exceptions such as World Cup soccer, international cricket, or foreign election coverage. The proposed schedule included 36 hours and 15 minutes of spoken word programming per broadcast week, of which eight hours and 45 minutes would be news (33 percent of it local news). The application also addressed regulatory compliance in detail: ongoing seminars and workshops on abusive comment, balance, and programming standards under the CRTC's open-line policy, a time-delay mechanism for call-in programming, adherence to the Religious Broadcasting Policy on balance and ethics, and a commitment that at least 10 percent of musical selections during ethnic broadcast periods would be Canadian. The Department of Industry granted technical acceptability on the condition that nighttime power not exceed 680 watts, and the new licence was set to expire August 31, 2013.

The station began testing in late 2008 and officially signed on in December 2008. Its format drew directly on Ray's own broadcasting history: she had formerly hosted Radio India, a popular local radio show that aired on CKTB in the 1990s, and CINA's community-talk-and-music approach was based in large part on that program. On March 14, 2011, the CRTC approved an increase in daytime transmitter power from 1,000 to 5,000 watts, under Broadcasting Decision 2011-183; nighttime power remained at 680 watts with all other technical parameters unchanged, giving the station its current 5,000/680-watt profile. The licensee had argued that the increase would significantly improve daytime coverage in Mississauga, delivering a better signal to listeners in the western and southwestern parts of its licensed area who had been experiencing poor reception, and warned that listenership would continue to erode without consistent signal quality across its principal listening area. In 2013, Rick Sargent took over as operations manager; Sargent had managed CIAO 530 Toronto for 12 years until 1998 and later owned low-power stations CFGM-FM Caledon and CJFB-FM Bolton before selling them to Haliburton. The station's callsign is pronounced "Seena."

Programming

CINA's schedule blends community-oriented talk, all-news segments, and Bollywood and other South Asian music. The core languages are Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, and Urdu, with weekend programming extending to Armenian and Indo-Caribbean audiences. The talk programming addresses community issues, immigration and settlement topics, and cultural affairs relevant to the GTA's South Asian diaspora, while the music spans classic and contemporary Bollywood hits. The station's licence application envisaged 36 hours and 15 minutes of spoken word per broadcast week — including nearly nine hours of news, a third of it local — and a minimum of 98 hours of local programming weekly, commitments that shaped the station's community-service character. Open-line and call-in programming operates under CRTC standards with time-delay safeguards, and the station adheres to the commission's religious broadcasting policy on balance and ethics. The station's community orientation — reflected in its licensing commitments to serve multiple ethnic groups across multiple languages — distinguishes it from music-only South Asian outlets. Specific current program titles and hosts are not independently confirmed.

Coverage and audience

As a 5,000-watt daytime (680-watt nighttime) AM station on 1650 kHz with a non-directional antenna from Mississauga, CINA's signal serves the Greater Toronto Area's South Asian communities, concentrated in Mississauga, Brampton, Scarborough, and surrounding suburbs. The daytime power increase approved in 2011 strengthened its reach across the region during the hours when most of its community programming airs; the reduced nighttime power reflects standard interference protections on the AM band. Current audience figures are not publicly confirmed.

Ownership

CINA is owned by Neeti Prakash Ray through the CINA Media Group. Ray co-owns a sister station in Windsor, CINA-FM, extending the CINA brand across two Ontario markets; Hamilton's CHAM is also listed among the group's sister stations. The University of Alberta's Canadian Minority Media Database describes CINA as Canada's first radio station licensed to serve the Indo-Pakistani community primarily, with its head office listed at 1515 Britannia Road East, Suite 315, Mississauga. The station's licensing history reflects Ray's long involvement in ethnic broadcasting, from the Radio India program of the 1990s through the 2007 CRTC application and the station's operation since 2008. The station operates under CRTC commercial ethnic radio licence conditions, including its original commitments to third-language programming levels and local programming hours.

Digital presence

The station maintains an online presence through cinaradio.com, listed by Wikipedia as its website, which carries a live webcast of the station's programming along with station information. Radio directories list the station's Mississauga contact details alongside the stream, and the webcast extends the station's reach to South Asian listeners well beyond the AM signal's daytime and nighttime footprint. The stream is also carried by third-party radio aggregators. A dedicated standalone mobile app for the station is not publicly confirmed.