See also:

• August 12, 2008 — By-election politicians on Facebook
• July 26, 2008 — The by-election campaign has begun
• July 5, 2008 — ALD for NDP

The CJLO saga goes way back to about 2001, when a real campaign to get it on the airwaves began. A Concordia Student Union vice-president remarked at the time that he expected it to be on the air by the end of the school year or 2003 at the latest. The station submitted its application to the CRTC in 2004 for use of the 1690kHz frequency, and the application was approved in March 2006, giving it 24 months to begin broadcasting (they were granted an extension to Oct. 1, 2008).

The antenna is erected and connected in a mud pit in Lachine, just down the hill from the station’s Loyola home. The station is currently limited to short, 5-minute tests (mostly generated tones to test reception and range) until an inspector arrives to do his thing. Once that’s done at the end of August, the station can begin full testing and launch in the fall.

More from the CJLO AM blog.

Now, does anyone have an AM radio lying around? More importantly, one recent enough to have the extended AM band that CJLO is in?

See also:

• August 13, 2008 — Invisible arms!
• June 12, 2008 — Concordia’s Lowy gets honourary degree
• April 2, 2008 — CUPFA using YouTube

See also:

• November 6, 2007 — Respect? Pleasure? On Montreal radio?
• May 23, 2007 — Everything you need to know about the Montreal transit strike

But if the TQS situation showed us anything, it’s that the CRTC’s programming requirements for station licenses have an unwritten “it’s not making us enough money” exemption. So not only can you slash staff and radically change a format without getting a license amendment, you can do so without consulting the CRTC, and simply ask for a format change after the fact.

Until the CRTC grows some balls, expect more of these kinds of moves: money-losing broadcasters unilaterally switching to cheap, lowest-common-denominator formats and laying off all but a skeleton staff.

See also:

• August 18, 2008 — Trivia is learning too!
• August 17, 2008 — CRTC roundup: Cancon porn, TSN2 and the Rural Channel
• July 28, 2008 — CRTC roundup: Videotron doesn’t want to closed-caption porn

Listeners won’t notice any difference at all, since the streaming is done through a flash player and only the most insanely picky of audiophiles will think high-quality MP3 is too lossy. And those people won’t be listening to the crap music that comes out of 940 or Q92.

See also:

• June 17, 2008 — We never get enough of Rod Stewart
• January 3, 2008 — Info 800 to be stripped of its info
• December 10, 2007 — Corus wants us to shop here

Natasha Aimée Hall, who won 940 News’s Talk Show Idol and was hosting a show on Sundays until the station as a whole went under, is now working for CTV, co-hosting its Entertainment Spotlight program with perennial Mirror Tackiest Personality winner Mosé Persico.

I’ll let her explain the rest:

I shot my first show last Thursday and it will air this Sunday, June 29 at 6:30. Here’s hoping I didn’t do anything really weird on camera! I can only hope because shooting was a total blur. Doing it all again this Friday.

I’ll be doing jazz fest blogging again for the Gazoo (can’t believe that starts on Thursday!) and I’m still waiting to find out what the future holds for me at Corus Quebec.

Natasha blogged the Jazz Fest as a freelancer for the Gazette last year.

See also:

• December 29, 2007 — 940 News announces new lineup
• December 12, 2007 — 940 popularity contest surprisingly produces talent
• August 14, 2008 — CTV Montreal’s $23,600 “clarification”

Official “launch” of the new, crappy station is scheduled for July 1.

Meanwhile, I should mention there have been rather large, visible ads for CBC Radio One and CJAD in the Gazette suggesting that people listen to them for news and information. Hint, hint.

UPDATE (June 18): Mike Boone today has a hilariously scathing review of 940’s new format:

The Mozart Requiem was composed in 1791. But its sombre, funereal tones would be perfect for a radio format that will be DOA.

See also:

• June 25, 2008 — MP3 isn’t good enough for Corus
• June 24, 2008 — Natasha has a new job
• June 6, 2008 — 940 News switching formats, slashing staff

Workers at 940 News (including host Dennis Trudeau above) came in today to find out that the station is switching to an all-music “greatest hits” format as of the end of next week, eliminating its news division and most of its anchors.

18 people, including 14 journalists, will be out of a job.

Apparently the week’s notice they did get wasn’t the company’s idea. They had to spill the beans because of a leak.

Info 690 is unaffected.

UPDATE: Here’s the Gazette story from Paul Delean. Dennis Trudeau is out of a job. And here’s 940’s announcement. And a Canadian Press story.

The change takes effect 8pm next Friday.

UPDATE (June 10): Host Jim Duff says his goodbye.

UPDATE (June 11): From Mike Cohen of the Suburban:

940 Montreal officially becomes AM 940 — the Greatest Hits on Friday night. While the station let a lot of staff go, staying put are program director Chris Bury, newscasters Barry Morgan and Caroline Phaneuf and traffic reporters Greg Charlebois and Sean McMahon. I will miss the talk format, but I look forward to hearing the greatest hits from the 60s, 70s and 80s…

UPDATE (June 13): It’s over. CBC discusses how this move relates to the overall gutting of private broadcaster newsrooms in Canada.

See also:

• June 24, 2008 — Natasha has a new job
• June 17, 2008 — We never get enough of Rod Stewart
• June 8, 2008 — Gazette call centre gets pink slip

Can’t be any worse than what’s already on Quebec talk radio, I guess…

See also:

• August 14, 2008 — Yves Bolduc’s spending spree
• August 12, 2008 — It’s all about sovereignty, obviously
• July 20, 2008 — Ceci est Sparta indépendantiste

That was part of a lineup announcement that included an interesting-obit show hosted by Gordon Pinsent, as well as a multiculturalism identity show hosted by CBC Montreal’s Geeta Nadkarni (CBC’s article calls her “Geeta Nadkami”).

The news about Vogels’s new show comes coincidentally at the same time we hear that Torontonian sex superstar Sue Johanson will be hanging up the dildo and retiring from full-time sex advising and ending her show’s run on the Oxygen network.

Roberts revisited

Speaking of Vogels, her replacement at Hour, Laura Roberts, asked me to critique her column. I admit that I’ve stopped reading Hour and Mirror regularly because they don’t have RSS feeds and have a very small news-to-advertising ratio.

So I perused through the archives, and I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. It’s a bit wordy, a bit opinionative (in the sense of spouting opinions without much analysis or research to back them up), and a bit too focused on the author’s personal life. These are all fairly common for new columnists still trying to figure out what works, and even then it may appeal to others more than it does to me.

In the end, even though it’s been six months already, it’s still a bit too early to tell if the column works or not. It’s definitely not Josey, nor should it be.

See also:

• October 29, 2007 — Josey Vogels leaves home
• July 5, 2008 — ALD for NDP
• June 4, 2008 — Smoke for Hour

I think we’ve found the real reason there was a riot around Crescent St. on Monday night: Bilal and CHOM’s Hockeyville (not to be confused with CBC/Kraft Hockeyville). Time to repent, Bilal…

See also:

• July 10, 2008 — The young’uns come out to play
• May 17, 2008 — 56 rioters and counting
• May 12, 2008 — The Great Canadiens Conference Quarterfinal Riot Song

The Team 990 will air all 15 Impact home games throughout the season and all playoff games, with CTV regular Brian Wilde doing the play-by-play. He’ll be joined by former Impact player Grant Needham and The Team’s Noel Butler, who will also host a weekly, one-hour soccer show beginning in May. The same is the case for the 2009 season. The station is the team’s only English broadcaster. 

Radio-Canada will air 10 games (9 home games and one away game) on TV, online and on Sirius satellite radio. Play-by-play will be done by Claude Quenneville, with Guillaume Dumas on analysis and Marie-José Turcotte, Marc Durand and Andrea Di Pietrantonio hosting. Radio-Canada is the team’s only television broadcaster, and “could” also air the playoffs.
The Impact’s home opener, which will be covered by both stations, is May 19, playing host to the Vancouver Whitecaps. The first game of the season is Saturday at Vancouver.

Home games are also on CKAC and all games available at USLlive.com (if you’re willing to pay for it)

See also:

• June 13, 2008 — No more glass ceiling at RadCan
• May 28, 2008 — The reds are marching
• April 10, 2008 — Mix 96’s solid news judgment

It’s not like anything more important happened or anything.

(I realize nobody’s going to go to Mix 96’s website as their source for news, which just makes me ask why they bother subscribing to Associated Press in the first place)

UPDATE: For good measure, the Team 990’s website’s current top sports story: “Jets agree to long-term deal with Rhodes” (and I can’t find out more details because their website is misconfigured)

See also:

• April 11, 2008 — Team 990, RadCan to air Impact games
• November 6, 2007 — Respect? Pleasure? On Montreal radio?
• September 28, 2007 — Big media mergers remind us of past mistakes

Though you might not recognize the name if you’re not a die-hard fan, you’ve probably heard his voice. McCormick, who has worked in radio for more than four decades, has a booming made-for-radio-news voice that’s given the station an air of authority for years now.

On CBC’s Homerun last week, the final half-hour of the broadcast (after his final news report of the afternoon) was dedicated to celebrating his life and career.

The website has archived both the newscast and the half-hour special for those who want to listen after the fact. Unfortunately they’re in streaming RealAudio format (RealAudio? Seriously?), and my efforts to convert it into something else have failed:

• Frank McCormick’s final newscast (7:39)
• Homerun’s tribute to Frank (22:11)

See also:

• August 18, 2008 — Want to host CBC’s Radio Noon?

The station, CJDV-FM, would broadcast at 1,000W on 100.1 MHz (the station was forced to pick a new frequency after another one, Canadian Hellenic Cable Radio Ltd., was given the 106.3 MHz channel). That power is better than nothing, but you’ll be lucky if you can hear it from the West Island. The further you go south, the more interference problems with WBTZ (99.9 The Buzz) in Plattsburgh, New York, which puts out 100 times more power.

The station will be low-budget, low-power, and the only one based in Vaudreuil-Dorion. Its focus will be on local news and oldies music.

More details in articles last year in Première Édition and L’Étoile.

See also:

• August 18, 2008 — Trivia is learning too!
• August 17, 2008 — CRTC roundup: Cancon porn, TSN2 and the Rural Channel
• July 28, 2008 — CRTC roundup: Videotron doesn’t want to closed-caption porn

You’ll recall DiMonte left CHOM FM here in November for a financially secure job at Q107 which pays him (according to the Herald’s sources) a sweet $450,000 a year, guaranteed for five years. (And really, who wouldn’t eat a steaming pile of dog poo for that kind of cash?)

See also:

• November 21, 2007 — Terry DiMonte leaving CHOM for better offer in Calgary
• April 25, 2008 — The real culprit
• September 28, 2007 — Big media mergers remind us of past mistakes

Légende:

• ROUGE: structures démolis, fermés ou qui vont être remplacés
• JAUNE: structures dont la ministère a décidé de faire des travaux majeures ou qui ont encore des restrictions de poids
• VERT: structures qui ont passé l’inspection et n’ont pas besoin de travaux ni restrictions
• BLEU: structures dont l’inspection n’est past complet ou un décision n’est pas encore publié

D’autres liens utiles:

• Transport Québec
  • Le document original publié par Transport Québec juillet dernier des 135 structures (PDF).
  • Évaluation des dossiers terminés (PDF, 3e état)
  • Dossier 135 structures
• Commission Johnson
  • Le commission Johnson
  • Le rapport en complet (français, English, les deux en PDF)
• Mon blogue
  • Mon billet original après 7 heures de travail sur Google Maps
  • Mise à jour le 21 janvier
  • “Overpass collapses will probably happen again” (mon opinion sur le rapport Johnson)

Autres pensées:

• J’ai jamais pensé que le Courrier international à décidé que je suis un “ailleurs” ici. (En regardant le blogue encore, c’est plutôt parce que je suis anglophone, et il aime mon blogue alors j’ai rien contre lui)
• Ma mère n’est pas fâché contre moi pour le truc “Jim FM” (je savais pas qu’ils lisait mon blogue en direct!). Mais elle pense que j’étais un peu nerveux. C’est vrai, mais j’étais plutôt fatigué!
• Ma carte n’est pas à 100%, ça prend un autre mise-à-jour fini!
• Je retourne à mon lit maintenant.

(Voici un enregistrement “rush” de baisse qualité de l’entrevue. Je vais le remplacer par un plus meilleur: .mp3, .ogg)

See also:

• January 24, 2008 — Want to hear me practice my French?
• June 23, 2008 — Montreal Geography Trivia No. 27
• April 26, 2008 — Overpass inspections complete

The regulation was created to protect AM Top 40 stations from the FM Radio Menace that sought to kill them off with their better sound. Sure enough, now AM stations are disappearing, being replaced with talk radio, all-news stations, all-sports stations and some community and student radio stations. Portable music players are being built with FM-only tuners (where radio tuners are built-in at all), which will lead to further erosion of the AM listening base.

What does this law say about our radio broadcasting industry? Sadly, radio stations are failing to realize that having a 1,000-song playlist and virtually no indie content or DJ autonomy means that nobody wants to listen to your stations. Now they’re really starting to feel it as people tune to podcasts, Internet radio and songs they’ve ripped from their own CD collection.

I certainly hope their solution to that problem isn’t “more top 40 hits.”

Deadline for comments is March 4.

See also:

• November 16, 2007 — Own a photocopier, get sued
• January 16, 2008 — The CRTC does something
• December 25, 2007 — Bell Canada, our Do Not Call overlords

Ironically, Info 800 is being sold to local interests (including Patrick Roy) by Corus Entertainment for $282,177.40, becoming one of the few locally-owned media outlets there. It’s the new owners who want to make the cuts, despite reassuring the CRTC that the takeover wouldn’t reduce local programming (they even referenced the “montrealization of the airwaves” in their submission as an argument in favour of the purchase), and that they didn’t expect any journalists to be affected:

The idea is to turn Quebec City’s only remaining AM station into a news/sports talk station, with emphasis on sports. Its schedule will be all-sports in the afternoons and evenings, and the station would cover local sports events such as Rouge et Or university football games and Roy’s Quebec Remparts junior hockey team.

The request for transfer of ownership of the station will be heard by the CRTC on Feb. 26 in Vancouver. Submissions are due by Jan. 23.

See also:

• November 28, 2007 — TVA losing jobs too
• October 5, 2007 — Global TV outsourcing local news production
• August 18, 2008 — Trivia is learning too!

• Aphrodite Salas moves from the morning show to early afternoon, going solo for The Aphrodite Salas Show, weekdays 12:30pm-2pm starting Jan. 7. The show will have “roundtables on important issues, great regular contributors and celebrity profiles.” The show mainly replaces Dave Ramsey’s afternoon slot (see below).
• Dennis Trudeau goes solo for The Dennis Trudeau Show, which will end a half-hour earlier at 9:30am, starting Jan. 3 (the weekend edition clip show will still air 7am-10am Saturdays). He’ll have a “supporting cast” of Michael Dean (news), Shaun McMahon (sports) and regular contributors including:
  • Lou Schizas (Business News Network has-been) at 6:21 and 8:21 weekdays
  • Dr. Mitch Shulman (emergency room physician) at 6:51 weekdays
  • Guy Thibodeau (does anyone else report on ski conditions in this town?) at 7:25 and 8:55 weekdays
  • Jacques Demers (hockey has-been) at 7:35 weekdays
  • Jean Lapierre (federal Liberal has-been) at 7:41 Tuesdays
  • John Gomery (judicial has-been) at 7:41 Fridays
  • Brian Burko (advertising has-been now doing movie reviews) at 7:51 Tuesdays and Fridays
  • Orla Johannes (”Entertainment Reporter” — look at her website to see which “talents” she thinks are important) at 7:51 Mon-Wed-Fri
• Joe Cannon’s show shifts a half-hour earlier, from 9:30am-12:30pm weekdays starting Jan. 3.
• The Dave Ramsey Show (syndicated) loses its 1pm-2pm weekday shot to Salas. It will continue to air 8pm-10pm weekdays.
• Chick Chat, an American syndicated talk show about women’s issues, gets dropped from the lineup where it aired 10pm-midnight weekdays. It will be replaced with American syndicated talk show Coast to Coast with George Noory, which will add two hours to the beginning of its overnight timeslot.
• Orla Johannes starts “Table Talk with Orla”, which will air noon-1pm on Saturdays, replacing alternative medicine show “Wellness within with Gigi Cohen.” Her “Saturday Night Soul” program is unchanged.
• The syndicated Dr. Art Hister health show, 1pm-2pm Saturdays, replaces “VIP Business.”
• Former city councillor Jeremy Searle hosts “Searle’s Montreal,” bringing his YouTube-ial outspokenness on municipal issues to a much more public forum, Saturdays 5pm-6pm. He replaces “Get Connected with Mike Agerbo,” a syndicated technology program.
• Natasha Hall launches her new Talk Show Idol-winning program (generically called “What’s Up Montreal”) on Jan. 6. It will air Sundays, noon-1pm, and “focus on unique events and personalities in this city.”
• Zack Spencer of Global TV’s boring driving show hosts a syndicated driving issues show, 1pm-2pm Sundays.

See also:

• August 16, 2007 — Some retirement, Dennis
• June 24, 2008 — Natasha has a new job
• December 12, 2007 — 940 popularity contest surprisingly produces talent