TORONTO — Renegade TV broadcaster Jan Pachul is going toe-to-toe with Canada’s broadcast regulator after he refused to pull his unlicensed TV station, Star Ray TV.
The Canadian Radio-television & Telecommunications Commission has called Pachul onto the carpet, ordering him to appear at a Sept. 19 hearing.
He is broadcasting to part of Toronto via his small, quirky community station, Star Ray TV, despite being turned down for a low-power television license (LPTV) a year ago.
Pachul appears to be primed for the David-and-Goliath challenge. A retort on Star Ray TV’s Web site read: “This corrupt federal government agency has taken years to turn down two attempts by Star Ray TV to become a legal station. A group of big corporate broadcasters objected to our last application, and the majority of CRTC commissioners invented nonexistent reasons to reject our application.”