The proliferation of shoddy Vancouver-related junior companies that trade on the unruly OTC Bulletin Board in the U.S. has now reached the stage at which they are permeating mainstream radio.

Every Saturday morning, CKNW 980 broadcasts an hour-long show called Market Matters that features junior companies trading on the bulletin board (a U.S. trading forum that has little regulatory oversight) and the TSX Venture Exchange. The program is broadcast on 13 other stations across the country owned by CKNW’s parent, the Corus Radio Network.

Market Matters is hosted by well-known financial commentator Michael Levy, a former broker who provides regular market reports for the station. As the show’s host, he tosses lob-ball questions at officers and directors of junior companies that are willing to pay $6,500 each for the exposure the program provides.

But there is a double edge to all this. Some of the featured companies are riddled with Howe Street promoters who were embroiled in previous stock market scandals. One is Lexington Resources Ltd., a Vancouver company that trades on the bulletin board.

On June 3, Levy interviewed Lexington’s investor relations director, Gino Cicci. “You have arguably some of the best acreages around for coal-bed methane and for drilling,” Levy said. “We certainly do, Michael,” Cicci agreed.

Levy asked nothing of Cicci’s or the firm’s officers’ or directors’ backgrounds. According to securities records, the B.C. Securities Commission stripped Cicci’s trading rights in 1995 for six months and prohibited him from acting as an officer or director of any British Columbia public company for three years after he was caught disseminating misleading information about a local junior company.

Lexington chief financial officer Vaughn Barbon pleaded guilty in 1991 to embezzling $2.2 million from his former employer, Montreal Trust Co. of Canada, and was sentenced to two years in jail. Lexington consultant Brent Pierce was banned from trading shares or acting as a director or officer of any B.C. public company for 15 years after he was found to have committed serious securities offences in 1993.

Company director Stephen Jewett, a chartered accountant who is described as “the audit committee’s financial expert,” was barred by the B.C. Institute of Chartered Accountants in 1993 from auditing the books of any company after he audited statements for a Vancouver junior that turned out to be materially false.

Market Matters is owned and produced by a Vancouver company called Blender Media, owned and operated by Amir Adnani. Blender buys the hour-long time slot from CKNW and sets the program lineup: “We don’t just bring on anybody,” Adnani insisted in a recent interview. “We really do our due diligence.

“We are very clear at the beginning of the show that it is a paid advertisement,” he adds.

But listeners must be quick to catch that disclaimer. It is just a few seconds long, and it is repeated only once more, at the show’s very end.

The same day that Cicci appeared on the show, Levy interviewed Adnani, not as the president of Blender Media but as the president of another bulletin-board company, Uranium Energy Corp. “Good day. Thank you for having me on the show,” Adnani said to Levy, failing to tell listeners that it was his show.

Levy asked the usual soft questions and, when the interview came to an end, issued another less-than-earnest disclaimer: “Terrific. And, again, go to your broker, your financial advisor. This is the speculative part, but, let me tell you, I like this story.”

There are, however, many reasons not to like this story. Many of the same questionable characters are in Uranium Energy, including Jewett and Pierce, but none of this information was revealed to listeners.

“Let’s put this in perspective,” Levy said in a later interview. “I am paid a nominal amount to ask questions. I do not have the opportunity to do due diligence on every single person who comes on the show.”

CKNW general manager J.J. Johnston admits that the backgrounds of some guests are “not completely known. There’s nothing illegal about having those guests on,” he says. “But our reputation is very important to us. We have to do better due diligence, and we will.” IE