The Canadian Association of Broadcasters is closing its doors. The organization that for some 80 years has represented private radio and television broadcasters said Thursday morning that it will wind down its operations by summer; undone say sources by conflicting interests among its members.

‘For some time the three sectors really couldn’t really agree how to operate,’ says Elmer Hildebrand, the Manitoba-based radio exec who late last year became chairman of the troubled group, which also reps specialty/pay broadcasters. ‘What to present, how to proceed — it didn’t seem to work.’

Hildebrand says when he arrived on the scene in December ‘the track was already set’ though he had hoped to hold the group together. He later thought to ‘peel off’ the TV sectors and reform CAB as a radio-only group, though this idea was abandoned because of practical and legal complications. On Wednesday, the CAB board instead voted to disband. (Know more? Email us!)

CAB members were divided along industry lines — radio’s interests have long taken a back seat to television — though cracks had also formed between the TV members. Independent broadcasters like S-VOX, APTN, and Stornoway do not always see eye to eye with the larger, BDU-affiliated networks, according to S-VOX chief and longtime CAB insider Bill Roberts, a point demonstrated when the indies made a separate presentation during the CRTC’s BDU hearings in 2008.

Roberts and others also opposed a recent policy shift at CAB that saw lobby efforts redirected at politicians over the longer-view policymakers at the CRTC. ‘That was destined to fail,’ says Roberts. ‘Broadcaster interests are longer term. Politicians come and go.’

Hildebrand plans to form a new, radio-only organization and there is talk of another group taking shape for the television sector.