It had been a dream since I began my career as an overnight DJ in 1986. At the time, I was President of a small group of stations on Vancouver Island. I could have comfortably stayed in that role, but I couldn’t shake the desire to try it on my own.

More than anything, I believed a small independent broadcaster could compete successfully against the industry’s largest companies. And I had an itch to prove it.

So I set out to write my first CRTC application. That application became the seed for what eventually became Clear Sky Radio.

Over time, that belief proved to be true. But I also came to understand that our greatest advantage wasn’t our ability to compete like the larger broadcasters.

It was our ability to operate differently.

Over the years of operating and growing Clear Sky Radio, I came to understand four advantages our independence gave us.

Agility. I can’t tell you how many times one of our employees brought an idea forward that we executed within a few days. Or how many times we responded to an emergency by shifting programming and focus on the spot. Especially in our early years, giving employees direct access to senior local management and ownership gave us a real advantage.

Relationships.It’s a completely different conversation when a business owner can sit down directly with the owner of the radio station. As an owner of Clear Sky, I made a point of meeting business owners who were clients or potential clients. I recall one example where this won us 100% of the budget from a large local business simply because I took the time to have a coffee with the owner. We had no business getting the entire budget.

We also ensured we had a local station manager in each of the markets we served. Having managers and employees who were known personally by community organizations and local businesses paid for itself many times over.

Culture.This takes deliberate and constant effort no matter how big or small your company is. There are as many companies that have terrible cultures as there with great ones. The advantage isn’t that small automatically creates good culture; it’s that visible, accessible ownership and strong local management can shape culture very directly.

I once hired a seasoned General Manager and my business partners questioned the decision and the expense because on the surface, his role seemed to overlap with our existing management structure. His presence in the building proved to be much more than a number on a budget spreadsheet. Whether he was resolving staff conflicts, saving client relationships or simply representing our company credibly at an important community function, his value went far beyond his salary.

Long-Term Thinking. As a privately owned business, you don’t have to satisfy quarterly public-market expectations. An owner can make an investment that hurts this year’s earnings because they believe it makes the company stronger five years from now.

When the Alberta economy took a significant downturn in 2016, we as owners simply made less profit in the leaner years. Private ownership gave us the freedom to accept lower short-term profitability when we believed protecting our people and operating capacity would create greater long-term value.

Being small doesn’t automatically create an advantage. It only creates the opportunity for one.

If you’re going to accept the disadvantages of being small, you’d better exploit the advantages.

An independent broadcaster can still become bureaucratic. It can still lose touch with its community. It can still create a lousy culture. It can still make short-term decisions. It can still be slow to innovate. I’ve seen it happen countless times.

To be honest, it happened at Clear Sky. We recognized that our culture and focus had changed for the worse and made a serious effort to course correct. I can’t say we got all the way back, but recognizing the problem allowed us to begin addressing it.

The timing wasn’t coincidental. The change in our culture occurred at the same time we were taking on significant expansion—adding a second station in Lethbridge and launching a brand new station in Cranbrook.

I’ve often said publicly that the best time at Clear Sky was when we had just two stations: CJOC Lethbridge and CJCY Medicine Hat. We were laser-focused and life was great. As we grew to more stations in more markets, it was much harder to maintain that original culture.

In hindsight, scale wasn’t the enemy. Distance was. Distance between ownership and employees. Distance between management and communities. Distance between the company’s original purpose and the increasingly complex organization it had become.

I have immense respect for companies operating dozens of stations across the country and appreciate how difficult it must be to maintain culture and connection at that scale.

Of course, being small comes with disadvantages. Independent broadcasters will never outspend the largest media companies. They won’t match their scale, resources or reach.

But they don’t need to.

They can know their communities better. Move faster. Build deeper relationships. Create cultures where people genuinely feel invested in the outcome. And make decisions based on what’s right for the business five years from now rather than what looks best next quarter.

Twenty years later, I still believe a small independent can compete with anyone. I just understand why a lot better now.

Being independent isn’t a disadvantage that needs to be overcome. It’s an advantage to use.