Louis Lemieux, former weekend morning host at RDI, is the new morning man at “Radio 9”
Radio X is officially dead in Montreal. As of Tuesday, 9/9, the station at 91.9 FM is known as “Radio 9“.
The rebrand of the RNC Média-owned station comes with several personalities leaving and several others joining on. Dominic Maurais’s Maurais Live remains syndicated from CHOI Radio X in Quebec City. Caroline Proulx also sticks around, hosting the midday show.
The station, which finally got approval in April to become a mainly talk station and drop jazz music, follows a similar schedule from the Radio X days, with original talk programs only during the day on weekdays.
Jean-Charles Lajoie hosts the afternoon show, which is now completely focused on sports, clearly trying to fill the void left by the disappearance of CKAC Sports in 2011, a station Lajoie worked for in those days.
Evenings feature repeats of Proulx and Maurais. Overnights and weekends are rock music, according to the schedule (though I’m listening to it at 12:30am and I’m hearing repeats of talk shows).
Though management insists this isn’t a right-wing station, its programming is clearly supposed to be populist. It reminds me of what was done at 940 News after the all-news format failed. Hopefully it won’t have the same fate.
Stories about the rebrand at La Presse, Canoe and the Huffington Post.
With commentators such as Gilles Duceppe, RNC is clearly targeting the station to leftist boomers.
It`s about time ! It was either that or the keys were about to lock the door for good.
Two major mistakes were made when opening CHOI in MTL and honestly i do not know why someone who knows a bit about radio would do what they did.
First you do not put a bunch or Quebec city`s personalities in MTL and the opposite is also true. It`s just not the same mentality .
Secundo trash radio does not survive in MTL as it thrives in Québec.
I believe that there is a place for a radio station that stirs up the pot . 98.5 by far leads the ratings and will not do anything bold to change things and Radio-Canada is …well…Radio-Canada… So there is a place for a different talk radio because there are not much of those for a big city like Montreal.
I had time on my hand (maybe too much ) and went to see the profiles of listeners that were complaining about the changes over the last weeks and the picture is so clear. Same age group,same preferences,males,not much married people or girls but lots of MMA,video games,Rothweilers and cars. And they even look alike it`s scary !
It just goes to show that they could not survive on such a poor listeners pool and had no hope for growth. It`s not as if you become a trash talk fan that easily and not the kind of radio you listen to when it`s familly time !
The choice of new hosts seems a good variety Louis Lemieux comes from RDI week-ends morningss and comes as advertised . He has his own style that had it`s share of succes on tv . Lajoie`s sport show on the late afternoon show is a wise choice because 98. 5 does the same with Michel Villeneuve who is a bit passé and expectable…
The two other main hosts Maurais and Proulx are from Quebec city but are probably on a short leash .
Remains now to see how it will do ratings wise and if they will put enough advertising money to have radio listeners to give them a trial run…With a 3% market share after 2 years it was just not enough to survive as was and i think that now they have a chance.
I think a mistake for Radio-X was taking right away, the area of Montreal instead of taking a more careful approach by taking on the surrounding regions like Trois-Rivières, Shebrooke, Joliette, Granby first. The former and late station Generation Rock at Sherbrooke (Cogeco offered it for sale but decided to close its door instead) was a missed opportunity.
What didn’t help if they been constantly plagued with the image of Jeff Fillion who isn’t at Choi Radio-X since 10 years.