The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is refusing to renew a Quebec City radio station's licence to broadcast. CHOI-FM has been ordered to shut down by Aug. 31.

The CRTC says the station is in violation the broadcast standards act because its hosts have made repeated offensive comments and personal attacks on air.

The complaints focused primarily on a weekday morning show hosted by Jean-Francois Fillion and included a segment by radio personality Andre Arthur.

The broadcast regulator says remarks by the pair included harassing a rival radio host, making disparaging comments about African students at Laval University, and calling for the euthanizing of psychiatric patients.

"...The station’s hosts were relentless in their use of the public airwaves to insult and ridicule people," the regulator said in its decision.

The owners of the station, Genex Communications, said Tuesday they will go to Federal Court to try to stop the shutdown. They call the regulator's action an unjustified act of censorship.

Genex President Patrice Demers says "380,500 listeners will see their favourite station closed on Aug. 31 because of a decision by some Ottawa bureaucrats."

It's a rare move. Since the CRTC was created in 1968, this is the first time the licence of a Canadian radio station has not been renewed because of controversial comments by on-air staff.

CHOI host Fillion is accused of repeatedly insulting and harassing Robert Gillet, the former morning man for a competing station. Gillet was charged and convicted of paying for sex with a 17-year-old prostitute. He received a year's probation and 40 hours of community service.

Gillet is suing Fillion and fellow radio personality Andre Arthur for defamation of character.

CHOI-FM has received dozens of complaints since 1997. In 2002, the CRTC gave the station two years to clean up the quality of its programming. But 45 new complaints have been filed since. The CRTC says Genex has ignored its repeated warnings.

"The seriousness and frequency of the violations noted, the fact that they were not first violations, the licensee’s general attitude of denial, and the stall tactics that the licensee used in dealing with complaints throughout the current licence term have persuaded the Commission that Genex does not accept its regulatory obligations and is not committed to meeting them," the commission said. 

Five other radio stations have been denied license renewals for varying reasons. The CRTC pulled the plug because the stations either broke from the format specified on their licenses, or did not complying with advertising restrictions.

All the stations were from Quebec.

With CHOI now set to leave the airwaves, the CRTC is making a call for applications for broadcasting licences for a new French-language FM station in Quebec.