OttawaCHUO 89.1 FM will cease live programming Dec. 15. One host compared hearing the news to getting ‘hit by a freight train.’ CHUO 89.1 FM will cease live broadcasts Dec. 15, recorded programming to continue until MarchNathan Fung · CBC News · Posted: Dec 10, 2025 10:56 AM EST | Last Updated: 2 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 3 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.Station manager Parujee Akarasewi confirmed CHUO will cease live programming Dec. 15. (Supplied by Parujee Akarasewi)After 50 years, CHUO 89.1 FM is preparing for its final broadcast.The University of Ottawa’s campus radio station will cease live programming Dec. 15, station manager Parujee Akarasewi confirmed to CBC. CHUO will continue airing pre-recorded content until March to fulfil its contract with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.The station had been trying to raise $150,000 to keep its doors open, but Akarasewi said CHUO’s board of directors decided Monday night to end the campaign and shut down.News of the impending closure comes two years after University of Ottawa students voted in a referendum to end a special levy that funds the station.Akarasewi, who co-hosts the CHUO show Asianfluence, first joined the station as a volunteer in 2016 and said for her, the closure is personal.”Everybody to me is like brother, sister,” she said. “I don’t have family here in Canada. I think the only place that I can like literally go to to talk about everything is CHUO.”Shows broadcast by the station include Black on Black, which covers the Afro-Caribbean community, Radio Irava, a Persian and English program focusing on Iran, the Ethiopian Show, the Somali Show and more. Jack Coen, president of the University of Ottawa Students’ Union, said he was disappointed by the decision to close the station.”I especially think about our international student community and … the wide variety of content that CHUO has done a great job in recent years of platforming to reach all students,” he said.The campus station was first established in 1975 as CHOR when the students’ union got an AM licence. The station moved to the FM dial in 1991.Michael Assivero, co-host of the weekly show Caribbean Flavor, has been involved with CHUO for nearly 30 years (Submitted by CHUO)’People need a voice’Some of the station’s hosts are still processing the news of the impending closure. Sarah Onyango, who co-hosts and produces the shows Black on Black and Afrika Revisited, said she learned the news in a group chat with other CHUO volunteers.”I feel like I’ve been hit by a freight train,” she said. “It’s pretty devastating and it’s really sad to think that … this era ends like this.”Michael Assivero, who co-hosts Caribbean Flavor, had a similar reaction.”It’s like you go to sleep and everything is OK and someone flicks a switch and you wake up and your world is upside down,” he said.Assivero has been involved with CHUO for 29 years and even proposed to his wife over the airwaves. He said he wants to end his last broadcast on Saturday on a positive note.”I don’t want the last thing our listeners hear from us to be, you know, crying and tears,” he said.Akarasewi she said she wants to find a way to keep doing community radio after CHUO shuts down.”Because I see that right now people need voice,” she said.LISTEN | Sarah Onyango and Michael Assivero on All in a Day:10:11CHUO hosts have been told they have one more week before their shows come to an endWe talk to Sarah Onyango and Michael Assivero about suddenly going off the air after each being with the station for the better part of 30 years.ABOUT THE AUTHORNathan Fung is a reporter with CBC Ottawa, with a strong interest in covering municipal issues. He has previously worked as a reporter in Hamilton and Edmonton. You can reach him at nathan.fung@cbc.cawith files from CBC’s All In A Day
After 50 years, University of Ottawa’s campus radio station to go silent
