A Superior Court judge rejected last week an application by supporters of Windsor's French-language CBC station to save local programming.

Supporters of CBEF 540 AM were seeking an injunction to stop Societe Radio-Canada from cutting local programming at the station. Justice J. Templeton rejected the application on the basis that she did not have the jurisdiction to grant the injunction.

In a recent round of job cuts at CBC and Radio-Canada, CBEF saw its staff slashed from nine employees to two.

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Nicole Larocque, president of SOS CBEF, a citizen's committee working to save the station, said the group is disappointed with the decision.

CBEF serves a francophone community of about 35,000 people, and has an audience of between 1,000 and 2,000 people per week. Local content has already been severely reduced. Before the cuts, the station produced a three-hour morning show. Now, Windsorites get only 20 minutes of local content on the show, which is piped in from Toronto.

"Imagine if our local stations here in English, if all we had were a few windows of local content," said Larocque. "It's not meeting our needs."

Larocque said the group is awaiting a decision from the official language commission on the matter.

© The Windsor Star 2009