DiMonte began his first shift back at Montreal's Spirit of Rock on Monday, and I managed to score an invitation to see it from the studio (even if it meant pulling an all-nighter after a late shift at work). This is the story of that day.

Terry DiMonte reads the paper just before he starts his first show. (And by "the paper", I mean the section in Saturday's Gazette seemingly devoted to him)

It's hard to imagine someone like Terry DiMonte being nervous about going on the radio. So I didn't take it too seriously when he warned me the week before that he would be a nervous wreck on his first day.

But as he walked into Astral Radio's Fort St. offices just after 5am, it was apparent he wasn't quite 100% back in his chair and it would take some time to make him fully comfortable. He knew he would be judged from the moment he pressed the button that turns on his microphone, that thousands of people who knew about him coming back (either through the promotional campaign Astral put on or through the full-page piece in Saturday's Gazette) would be tuning in just to hear his voice again.

He was worried about screwing up, absent-mindedly referring to Q107, the station he left a month earlier, instead of CHOM. Thankfully for him there were posters with CHOM's logo and frequency all over the studio, so he needed only look up if he forgot.

In the end, he didn't screw up. He got the call letters right, and the frequency, and the motto. He needed to be reminded of the phone number at one point, but mostly it was like he never left. And if he was nervous at all during his first break ("break" being how radio types refer to "the part where I'm on air"), he didn't show it as he said hi:

The first song for DiMonte's first show was Back in the Saddle by Aerosmith, which came as a suggestion on Facebook when overnight host Ronny Mack asked fans which should be the first song. DiMonte hadn't thought of that song as an option, but considered it very appropriate considering he's coming back from Calgary.

The team

Maureen Holloway joins Terry DiMonte on his first show

Shortly after the show began, DiMonte was joined in studio by Maureen Holloway. Holloway hosts is a big part of the morning show at Q107 in Toronto, and contributed to his former morning show at (a different) Q107 in Calgary. Both are owned by Corus. Because Corus no longer has a Montreal station with the sale of CFQR and others to Cogeco, she wasn't on the air here and Astral managed to reach an agreement to bring her on to do a segment just before 6am and have it repeated at 7:15.

But because Holloway was just finishing a vacation and happened to be in Montreal, she came into the studio and joined DiMonte for a few hours, giving him someone to chat with on air. His actual cohost, Heather Backman, doesn't start until Jan. 16.

Holloway's arrival, a surprise for DiMonte, resulted in a reunion for the two friends who have worked together for many years, going back to when DiMonte hosted the morning show at Mix 96.

The show has two other regular contributors, both of whom come in studio to do their bits: Eric Engels with his once-daily Habs report and Trudie Mason with news on the hour.

Mason did her first newscast at 6am:

DiMonte did some sports news after that, and got in a mention of Calgary Flames captain Jarome Iginla scoring his 500th career goal. It was a legitimate sports story of national interest, but a bit of a reminder that there's still a bit of Calgary in DiMonte.

Engels only comes in once a day. You can listen to his first Habs report here (MP3).

Esteban Vargas sits behind the big board pressing all the cool buttons

The last contributor to the show is the guy behind the scenes, board operator Esteban Vargas. I recognized the name, but I didn't know where I'd heard it. He suggested it might have been when he was doing odd shifts as a traffic reporter, which might have been true. But I think I actually recognize the name, oddly enough, from the Kelly Alexander Show podcast, even though I haven't listened to that in quite a while.

Though he's been at Astral for six years, and clearly knows what he's doing, there were a few jokes about child labour when DiMonte posted a photo of Esteban online.

The magical computer box lists songs, commercials, traffic reports and all the other live an recorded sounds that go into a show.

Terry needs a clock

It was one of those things. If you see in any of these videos DiMonte looking ahead and up as he talks, he's looking at a non-existent analog clock. There used to be one on the opposite wall, but it disappeared some time after he left in 2007. There's one on the wall behind him, but that's incredibly awkward to try to look at when you're on the air from that chair.

DiMonte explains the reason best in the video, but the clock provides a reference not only for the time (which he can just read off his computer screen), but also how much of the show is left, and how long until the top of the hour. After decades in radio, it's become second nature to him to see an hour in terms of the analog clock and to mentally plan accordingly.

DiMonte was repeatedly assured that a clock would be acquired and installed.

Media circus

There were quite a few people around to witness DiMonte's return. In addition to myself, the studio was visited by cameras from:

Global Montreal

CTV Montreal

... and CHOM's own promotions department. (There was a second, more professional-looking camera also taking video)

The CHOM video of DiMonte's first day has been posted online. It includes his first and last words on his first show. The latter part includes a specific thank-you to me, which I didn't expect. My mom heard it, but in case you want to listen to just that part, here it is (MP3).

A complete list of DiMonte's news coverage is at the bottom of Monday's post. So far it includes a Saturday feature and live chat with The Gazette, a story and later in-studio interview at CTV Montreal (they've produced a behind-the-scenes video vignette), and a brief on Global Montreal, plus wherever Astral's press release has been republished.

But DiMonte has also been talking to non-traditional media. Besides me, he's talked to Gazette blogger Bugs Burnett and the Cornwall Free News, besides one-on-one chats with people on Twitter and Facebook.

Terry appreciates you calling

Plenty of DiMonte's critics say he has a huge ego and everything is about him. While I'd never accuse any successful media personality of not having an ego, DiMonte spent quite a bit of time his first day answering calls from listeners, even with the studio filled with people and everything else going through his mind.

The calls were relatively short, and some had to be interrupted because DiMonte had to go back on the air. In general, they went something like this:

Even Andrew Carter at CJAD was getting calls from people welcoming DiMonte back, one Astral employee walked into the studio to report with a laugh. (I tweeted that, resulting later in Carter coming in and asking "who's Fagstein?" - after a bit of nervous panic, we introduced ourselves, and it turns out he likes the blog.)

DiMonte also communicated via Facebook and Twitter, as he's become a bit more adept at social media in the past few years.

Cake

A special cake was brought in to celebrate DiMonte's first show

A special "welcome back Terry" cake was brought in, much to DiMonte's surprise. That missing bit on the left is where he stuck his finger in to taste the icing. "I bet that's fantastic," said the guy who continues to be worried that his return to Montreal is a one-way ticket to extreme weight gain.

What's next?

In case there are still people in Montreal who don't know about DiMonte's return, the big promotional push will come next week when Heather Backman joins the show and things start moving on all four wheels. I haven't been told of any extreme promotional plans, just the usual contests (including their "man cave" watch-the-Super-Bowl-with-Terry deal) and advertising/marketing.

Maureen Holloway and Terry DiMonte share a hug as she departs for Toronto

UPDATE (Jan. 16): CHOM's website has some audio clips from DiMonte's show. They include more episodes of Holloway's Dirty Little Secrets, Engels's Habs Report and Pierre Houde of RDS talking about Michael Cammalleri, as well as interviews with visiting artists like Martin Short, Mark McKinney and Demetri Martin.

There's also a short-answer get-to-know-Heather segment, in which we learn they haven't yet decided whether they'll call her Heather Backman or Heather B.

Related Posts

• CHOM’s new schedule adds Terry DiMonte, Heather Backman in mornings
• Pete Marier leaves CHOM over contract dispute
• Terry DiMonte returns to CHOM Jan. 9
• Astral’s Martin Spalding on Terry DiMonte, CHOM, CJAD and Virgin Radio
• Terry DiMonte returns to CHOM, and is back in Montreal for good

Terry DiMonte does his first show back at CHOM on Jan. 9.

The news that Terry DiMonte was coming back to CHOM came out all the way back in June. The date was set and publicized in November. But details on such things as who his cohosts would be and what happens to the rest of the schedule were kept under wraps until Monday when DiMonte started his first show.

Here's the details of its new schedule:

Mornings Rock with Terry DiMonte

The morning show, from 5:30 to 10am weekdays, is being completely reconstructed around DiMonte. His cohost, starting Jan. 16, will be Heather Backman, who left CJFM a year ago for an opportunity in Cleveland, which she's leaving to come back to Montreal.

Backman and DiMonte don't have any history, which makes the choice a little out of left field. But she did a demo with DiMonte and there was something about it that he and Brand Director André Lallier liked. "She's very witty," Lallier said. "She brings a certain edge. She has a good laugh. A fresh perspective."

Backman and DiMonte together just sounds good, he said, and in radio that's what's important.

The show also includes some regular contributors:

Maureen Holloway will do entertainment segments twice each morning from Toronto.

Maureen Holloway will do entertainment segments (called "Dirty Little Secrets") at 5:50 and 7:15am daily. Holloway works out of her home in Toronto for Corus stations across Canada, and was a feature of DiMonte's morning show at Q107 in Calgary. She's also an old friend of DiMonte's.

Holloway previously contributed to CFQR, but since it and other Corus radio stations in Quebec were sold to Cogeco, there's no Corus station in this market, so they were able to negotiate having her on CHOM.

Because she happened to be in the area finishing off her vacation, Holloway joined DiMonte in studio on his first day.

(As an aside, I find it funny that DiMonte comes from Q107 in Calgary, Holloway comes from Q107 in Toronto - both owned by Corus - and Backman comes from Q104 in Cleveland. Gives you an idea of the lack of imagination when it comes to branding radio stations.)

Trudie Mason does newscasts on the hour

Trudie Mason of CJAD walks down the hall just before the top of the hour and gives the news headlines (usually preceded off-air by an apology from DiMonte for not being on time).

Eric Engels talks about the Habs

Eric Engels continues contributing his Habs report to CHOM's morning show, though it's moved to 6:55am. Engels is a Habs reporter who writes for HockeyBuzz and does the Engels Angle on CTV Montreal's website, among other things. You can follow him on Twitter at @EricEngels.

Esteban Vargas sits behind the big board pressing all the cool buttons

Esteban Vargas is the unsung hero behind the big board, queueing all the songs and audio clips and traffic reports and everything else. He's been at Astral since 2005, working mainly as an operator and in promotions.

• Tootall (Weekdays 10am-3pm). His shift remains unchanged, as does his noon-hour Made to Order show.
• Bilal Butt (Weekdays 3-8pm). Bilal gets upgraded back into the afternoon drive slot vacated when Pete Marier left the station last month. The afternoon drive show expands in length to five hours.
• Jason Rockman (Weeknights 8pm-midnight). Rockman shifts earlier to take over Butt's slot. His Amped show runs weeknights instead of one day a week.
• Brandon Craddock (B.C.) and Ron MacKinnon (Ronny Mack) continue to share overnight duties from midnight to 5:30am.

Weekends

• Sharon Hyland stays on weekend mornings, shifting earlier so she starts at 6am instead of 8. "It's all good," she writes on her blog.
• Rob Kemp takes on the midday shift on weekends, from 11am to 4pm each day.
• Randy Renaud remains the weekend evening person, 4-8pm Saturday and 4-10pm Sunday
• Jay Walker maintains his Montreal Rocks show from 10pm to midnight Sundays.

Chantal Desjardins moves to CJAD

The one personality leaving CHOM is morning co-host Chantal Desjardins. But she's not leaving the building. Instead, she's joining Aaron Rand's show on CJAD weekdays from 3-7pm, essentially doing the job of sportscaster that Barry Morgan did. Now Morgan can concentrate on his own show, which comes on after Rand's.

Desjardins says she's "really enjoying" her new job already. "I think Aaron and I have natural chemistry...he is very encouraging and his energy is contagious. And have I mentioned I've slept in until 9am the last two days? Amazing."

She says she also plans to keep doing stuff for CTV on the side and is "looking forward to a new adventure."

Rand says he's excited about Desjardins. "Chantal is funny, opinionated, and smart, AND she brings a female perspective to the show, which is something I’ve always thought was a good complement my style," he told me. "We’d worked together before on a couple of occasions, and I immediately liked her style and personality."

"And, it gives Barry Morgan a chance to spend all his time focusing on his evening show from 7-10, without having to worry about doing the afternoon sports run on my show."

"So as far as I’m concerned, it’s a win/win all around."

Rand has made Desjardins a part of the last half-hour of his show, from 6:30 to 7pm, when the two chat about weird and funny stories. "I figured that would be a good way to incorporate her into the show beyond her sports reports,  and give her a feel for how I work so she can get comfortable with my style," Rand said. "After that it’ll be a matter of getting her more involved on a regular basis."

Desjardins let her Facebook friends know about her new job, drawing dozens of encouraging comments.

Rob Kemp okay with weekends

Kemp also put on a happy face about his new job. Kemp posted on his CHOM blog taking the bright side of being on the radio only two days a week.

Lallier talked up the new weekend lineup, saying that ratings show that 30-35% of the audience is now on weekends, which means Saturday and Sunday are no longer audience wastelands. Weeks after the Q became the Beat and put big names Ken Connors and Nat Lauzon on the weekend, resulting in ratings boosts, it seems CHOM is also paying attention to weekends.

What about Pete?

I asked Lallier about Pete Marier, and the possibility of him coming back. A cursory look at the new schedule suggests it wouldn't be that difficult to shift things around to put Marier back on the afternoon drive show.

Lallier's answers differed little from what Astral VP Martin Spalding told me just before Christmas. They wanted Marier to stay and form one of the "three pillars" of the station. They offered him a "very, very good" contract for an afternoon drive host, and gave him multiple opportunities to accept. Lallier pointed out that even after it became clear Marier wouldn't take the contract and his show was terminated, management still let him go on air one last time (something that is very unusual in professional radio because it can lead to people saying things on air that make the station look bad) but that again Marier said no.

Marier himself remains quiet, despite lots of activity from his fans (a protest had been planned via Facebook for Monday morning outside CHOM's offices, but was called off because a poor showing would have seemed worse than none at all). At least one other radio veteran who works at Astral has expressed hope that Marier can put his emotions aside and work out a deal with management to come back.

Coverage

Astral's press release explaining all these changes was issued Monday morning.

The Gazette's Bill Brownstein had a feature on DiMonte in Saturday's paper, in case you haven't read it yet. It includes a sidebar on what happened to Marier.

Global and CTV both sent cameramen to document DiMonte's first show. CTV later sent reporter Cindy Sherwin to talk to DiMonte. Global's brief is at the end of Monday's newscast (skip to 23:15).

CTV Montreal also interviewed DiMonte on the noon newscast on Thursday.

A live chat with the Gazette

UPDATE (Jan. 11): The Gazette invited DiMonte to do an hour-long live chat on Wednesday, in which he talks about his favourite music, his weight loss and what it's like to come home. Even his mom stops by and asks him to get some rest.

Of interest to us, he offered the following on Pete Marier:

I feel bad that Pete left but have been hopeful that there is a raprochement possible. He chose to leave. I hope we can change his mind

(Answering a question on whether Marier would come back) I hope so Pat... there seems to be a detente brewing there

On Ted Bird:

I would LOVE to have Ted back..the best fun I ever had...and maybe someday...but right now he loves what he's doing at K 103...so not in the NEAR future I don't think...unless we can change his mind

DiMonte also called Rob Kemp a "talented young broadcaster" and said he met Backman for the first time in October but "liked her very much".

UPDATE (Jan. 14): Richard Burnett talks to DiMonte for his Gazette blog. DiMonte also talks to the Cornwall Free News.

Related Posts

• Terry DiMonte leaving CHOM for better offer in Calgary
• Terry DiMonte’s first day at CHOM … again
• Pete Marier leaves CHOM over contract dispute
• Terry DiMonte returns to CHOM Jan. 9
• Astral’s Martin Spalding on Terry DiMonte, CHOM, CJAD and Virgin Radio

Pete Marier

 Last update: Dec. 27 at 2am, adding a comment from Marier at the bottom.

"My show on CHOM was terminated last night."

That was the extent of the comment from Pete Marier Friday morning, on Facebook, to the fact that he's leaving CHOM.

Rumours about Marier's impending departure have been flying about for a few weeks, but things came to a head this week when Marier was given an ultimatum, a source close to Marier said. (Marier himself isn't talking - his only communication with me directly was to confirm the news of his departure.)

According to the source, who asked not to be named for fear of pissing off Bad Pete, Marier was told Thursday after his show to sign a contract that would have decreased his salary by more than half, otherwise he would be terminated as of Friday. Marier refused, which led to a heated verbal confrontation in Astral Media vice-president Martin Spalding's office on Friday morning. Marier was thrown out of Astral's Fort St. offices, and called the police to press for charges of (very minor) assault against Spalding, according to the source, who was in the office at the time.

Spalding wouldn't get into what happened in his office, saying he didn't want to air dirty laundry, but he did say that emotions got the better of both of them. Spalding confirmed that Astral exercised an out clause when Marier made it clear he would not accept a new contract with a reduced salary, and his last day was set at March 8, 2012. Spalding said the new salary figure, which he wouldn't specify but said was nowhere near a 50% pay cut, was "very competitive" for an afternoon host in this market, and that even if it's less than what he would make in mornings, it's higher than what he made the last time he was doing the afternoon drive show.

Spalding said Marier was given five chances to accept the offer and stay at CHOM. He maintained that Marier was to be one of the three "pillars" with Terry DiMonte and Tootall, and that they wanted him to stay. "He was in our long-term plans," Spalding said.

"No choice"

"He left us no choice," he explained. With DiMonte set to return Jan. 9, management wanted to get its schedule finalized by then. Spalding said he and Brand Director André Lallier didn't want to go through a big launch Jan. 9 and have to make a big change two months later when Marier left.

Spalding said the decision was made Thursday night, after one final offer, to make Friday Marier's last day. That still gave Marier the chance to say goodbye to listeners, which he seemed to accept on Thursday. But on Friday morning, Marier changed his mind and said he wouldn't go on air.

Marier remains on CHOM's payroll, as per the terms of his contract, until March.

"It saddens me because I think he's a great guy," Spalding said. Despite their falling out, Spalding had nothing but praise for Marier's talent and said it was unfortunate that he wouldn't accept Astral's offer.

The timing is probably the worst part about this. Marier's last contract wasn't set to expire until next September, but with DiMonte's return so close in the new year, the decision had to be made now.

On Friday, as they have done in the past with acrimonious departures, CHOM scrubbed Marier's name and photo from its website. The 3-7pm timeslot on the schedule now just reads "The Drive"

Listeners fight back

Marier's Facebook wall was flooded with comments from angry listeners, one of whom has started a Facebook group to demand CHOM rescind its decision, but its chances to success are just about zero now that the decision has been made. After initially allowing non-profane comments to stay, the people managing CHOM's Facebook page deleted all comments about Marier. That didn't stop them, of course, and they kept posting, adding more anger and some sarcasm to their voices.

It used to be that broadcasters, newspapers and other media could control their means of communication, and simply make people or issues disappear. But with social media like Facebook, their power is limited. They could shut down the page completely to comment, but that would throw away the baby with the bathwater.

Unfortunately for Marier, this kind of thing blows over. People aren't calling in to CBC anymore to complain about Nancy Wood, or calling in to Q92 to complain about the axing of Tasso and Suzanne. CHOM can only hope that the protest about Marier dies down enough by Jan. 9 that it doesn't harm their promotional plans.

Pillar of CHOM

Marier, 52, has been at CHOM since 1989 (except for a stint in Winnipeg from 2002 to 2005), mainly hosting morning and afternoon programs. He stepped back into mornings with Ted Bird and Chantal Desjardins, then went back to the afternoon drive when CHOM rejigged its schedule to prepare for the return of Terry DiMonte.

At the time, Spalding agreed with myself and many others that Marier's voice was probably more suited to afternoons than mornings. (Even though CHOM's ratings actually went up with Marier in the morning show chair.) There was no indication at the time that Marier's future at the station was in doubt. In fact, Spalding referred to Marier as one of the "pillars of CHOM" - a description he maintained even when discussing Marier's departure.

Not DiMonte's fault

There's been speculation that Marier's departure is related to DiMonte's return. It's true that the timing of that is why this decision came now, and that DiMonte's return is why Marier moved back to afternoons (and hence was offered less pay), but neither of these things are DiMonte's fault.

Still, many comments online are extremely negative toward DiMonte, suggesting his return is why Marier is leaving, in part because CHOM spent big bucks for DiMonte and has little left for the rest of its staff.

That's just not true, DiMonte says.

"The notion that I had anything to do with it is complete nonsense," DiMonte wrote to me on Saturday. "I was REALLY disappointed that he left. I've known Pete for years and we always got along great. He's a great broadcaster, a Montreal favorite and part of the fabric at CHOM... and I thought with me, him and TooTall it was going to be a helluva lineup. I'm really sorry he left."

DiMonte also denied that Astral is breaking the bank to bring him home (he denied similar rumours about the kind of money he was supposed to be making in Calgary). He said he's getting a pay cut, not a pay increase, to come back home. "The notion that there's nothing left for others is internet claptrap. It's just not so."

Spalding similarly flatly denies that other announcers are being offered less because DiMonte got more.

Though DiMonte is getting a say in his morning cohosts (no decision has been announced yet), he said he had no part in Marier's contract negotiations and was only told about everything after the fact.

"It's not going to be as much fun without Pete, but I'm not sure what I can do about that."

Team Pete or Team Astral?

I don't have access to the dollar figures involved here, so I can't say whether CHOM's move was justified or whether the contract was fair. A 20-plus-year veteran is obviously going to attract a lot more sympathy than a faceless corporation, but that doesn't mean the latter has to cave to the former.

That said, if Marier's only demand was that he get paid the same salary, it's hard to be too outraged by it. If Marier was a "pillar" of CHOM, he should have been treated as one. Unless his salary as a morning DJ was unreasonably through the roof, would it have hurt the bottom line so terribly for it to remain at that level?

As with any negotiation, the two sides choose what they can live with. Marier believes his talent (or his dignity) is worth more than Astral offered, and if he's right he won't be unemployed for long. (He's still doing freelance voice work, including a lot of radio commercials - many that are still airing on the station he left.) Astral believes it's more profitable to let Marier go than to keep paying him a morning-show salary. If it's right, the company will either save money by not having Marier on payroll, it will do better on ratings and revenue with the money it would have spent on him, or both.

No matter how this ended, or which side is right, it really sucks for something like this to happen two days before Christmas.

Lineup decisions coming soon

No decision has been made about the rest of the CHOM lineup, including who will replace Marier on the drive show. Spalding said Rob Kemp and Chantal Desjardins, who will get the bump from the morning show unless they become DiMonte's sidekicks, are still part of their plans, and roles for them are being finalized. He said an announcement should be expected within the next two weeks. In any case, it'll come before Jan. 9.

UPDATE (Dec. 26): From Marier, on Facebook:

Dear Friends, Thanks for the tremendous support and well wishes. Both are greatly appreciated. In spite of recent events (on which I cannot comment right now), my family and I had a great Christmas! I hope you all did too. Merci encore!

"Happy to sit down"?

UPDATE (Jan. 6): A Gazette story from Bill Brownstein on Terry DiMonte coming back to CHOM includes a sidebar that mentions Marier. It includes quotes suggesting reconcilation is possible:

Spalding: “If Pete called me today and if we could come to terms, we’d make it work. We would have him right back in drive. The last thing I ever wanted was to lose him. He’s an incredible talent.”

Marier: “If Astral Media is willing to negotiate a contract with me, I’d be more than happy to sit down with Martin Spalding and try to work it out.”

Related Posts

• Astral’s Martin Spalding on Terry DiMonte, CHOM, CJAD and Virgin Radio
• Terry DiMonte’s first day at CHOM … again
• CHOM’s new schedule adds Terry DiMonte, Heather Backman in mornings
• Terry DiMonte returns to CHOM Jan. 9
• Terry DiMonte returns to CHOM, and is back in Montreal for good

Overall market share for anglophone Montreal (note that this includes only BBM members)

Ah, ratings. That time of the every-few-months where people who own radio stations gloat about their rising numbers, and if they don't have rising numbers they selectively comb through demographics and time periods until they find something to gloat about, and if they don't find anything there either they just bullshit their way through a press release.

Normally I don't pay much attention to them, because the changes are so insignificant. But with some major programming changes this fall, and some corresponding jumps and plummets in audience, it's worth taking a closer look this time.

Here are some more objective highlights from the ratings numbers from what I've been able to find. The top-line numbers from BBM Canada are here (PDF, first page is English audience, second page French audience). You can compare that to the spring report or last year for the same period.

Astral Media also does a presentation (PDF) that looks into the numbers overall for key demographics, and for important time periods for adults 25-54, which advertisers apparently covet.

CJAD 800AM (Astral)

Programming changes: Aaron Rand show added to evenings, moving Ric Peterson to early afternoons and Kim Fraser to weekends. Barry Morgan does 7-10pm weekdays, replacing Dan Delmar. Loss of Canadiens games to CKGM.

Overall (adults 2+, seven days a week), CJAD is still the highest-rated station in the Montreal English market. It has a 24% market share, within 0.2 percentage points of this spring and last fall. But it's losing audience in key demographics, especially young adults. In the 18-34 demo, it's down from 17% this spring to 11%. Though losing rights to Canadiens games is undoubtedly part of that, it's not the whole story.

If CJAD thought Aaron Rand would give a ratings boost for its evening drive, that hasn't happened. Its audience for 4-7pm weekdays is stagnant, and it has dropped to fifth place, behind Mitch Melnick on CKGM, for 25-54.

CKGM 990AM (TSN Radio 990, Bell Media)

Programming changes: Rebranding. Acquisition of Canadiens games. Denis Casavant leaves morning show.

The biggest change to CKGM is the addition of Canadiens games, which is giving a significant boost to the evening audience, making it No. 1 on game nights. "Canadiens games are registering an impressive 28.2 share among males 25-54," Bell Media's Greg McIsaac tells me. Previously, the station was fifth place with a 3.7 share during that time period. Now, overall, it's 19.8, ahead of Virgin Radio, station manager Wayne Bews tells Mike Cohen.

But the station is seeing ratings gains everywhere. Overall, CKGM is reaching more listeners, 131,000 a week compared to 93,000 in the spring. Its market share overall has gone up from 2.7 to 4.

Mitch Melnick's afternoon show has the most impressive gains, going from 3,490 to 4,540 listeners during an average minute, representing a 30% increase in audience. It was enough to push CKGM past CJAD for this time period among adults 25-54, particularly impressive since he's now up against Aaron Rand.

For me, the big question out of this is: Was getting Canadiens games worth it? Obviously they won't get into details about their business plans, but the mood seems to be pretty positive.

Bell Media also wouldn't comment on whether the station is still losing 30% of its audience after dark, as it complained to the CRTC during hearings that eventually granted it the right to move to the clear channel of 690 kHz. But critics might argue it's hard to get a 28% share if you're having significant reception problems.

There was also speculation that the station might be picking up francophone listeners after the closure of CKAC Sports. Though there has been a "moderate increase", Bell Media's McIsaac says, the overall numbers among francophones have remained unchanged since the spring. Overall, CKGM has a market share of 0.0 among francophone listeners.

If anything, the more likely scenario is that anglophone listeners who tuned into CKAC are coming back to CKGM. The French all-sports station had a 0.5% share among anglophone listeners. Stands to reason many of them would prefer hearing sports-related news and commentary during the day.

CKBE 92.5FM (ex-CFQR, The Beat, Cogeco)

Programming changes: Complete station rebranding. Cat Spencer replaces Aaron Rand on morning show, Ken Connors moves to weekend mornings, Nat Lauzon does weekend afternoons (starting Oct. 15).

They called it a brand new radio station. They wanted to shed all remaining remnants of the old Q92. But despite all the changes, it has still inherited the old Q ratings. The station has a 16% market share overall, which is actually down slightly from last year.

But program director general manager Mark Dickie still has a happy face. (Well, I assume he does. He seemed content when I chatted with him over the phone.) That's mostly because CKBE has made the strategic decision as part of the Beat rebranding to target the 35-44 female demographic that competitor CJFM seems to have abandoned, and it's seeing corresponding gains there, and Dickie says they've managed to do that while continuing to grow its 45-54 female demo. Overall, from 9am to 4pm, it has a 30% market share for women 35-54.

"It's pretty well what we were hoping for in the first book," he said. Among his cherry-picked highlights, the breakfast show with Cat Spencer and Sarah Bartok has surpassed CJFM among the key demo and has gone from fourth to second (behind CJAD) among adults 35-54. (Expanding to adults 25-54, it's still third, but gaining on second-place CJAD.)

Besides the new morning show, the Beat has also focused on weekends, moving Ken Connors to a beefed-up weekend morning show and bringing star Nat Lauzon in for weekend afternoons.

Lauzon's numbers are good, even though she's been on for only half the ratings period. Her numbers are up 6% on Saturdays and 7% Sundays compared to the spring. Among adults 35-54, afternoons are up 12% on Saturdays and 15% on Sundays.

But it's Connors who is making the biggest impact, with double-digit growth on weekend mornings. Among women 35-54, the station's audience has grown 37% on Saturdays and 53% on Sundays on weekend mornings.

"It's definitely paying off," Dickie says of the decision to focus on weekends, and of the Beat rebranding in general.

Of course, a lot of that is the promotional blitz that comes with a station rebranding. We'll have to give it another ratings period to see if this audience is sticking around.

CJFM 95.9FM (Virgin Radio, Astral)

Programming changes: Freeway Frank replaces Cat Spencer on morning show, Nat Lauzon leaves midday show for CKBE.

Virgin is still the market leader among adults 18-54. The only big demo it's lost control over is men 25-54, where CHOM has snuck into first place. The morning show, which took on Freeway Frank Depalo this year and is about to lose Lisa Player, has kept its audience. Its audience during midday, which has lost veteran Nat Lauzon, hasn't seen a significant change among adults 25-54.

Virgin's on-air lineup is young, and midday hosts Andrea Collins and Nikki Balch are new to the station over the past year. But if it ain't broke, don't fix it, I suppose. "As the leader our plan was not to react," Brand Director Mark Bergman tells Cohen.

CHOM 97.7FM (Astral)

Programming changes: Pete Marier moved to afternoon drive, Rob Kemp to morning show, Tootall to middays and Sharon Hyland to weekends.

Even though CHOM is in a period of transition as it awaits the return of Terry DiMonte on Jan. 9, this has actually been a pretty good ratings period for the station. It's up just about everywhere, except among women and during the drive-time show, where it's stagnant. It's now first overall among men 25-54, overtaking sister station CJFM. Even the morning show has picked up listeners, though it still sits fourth among English-language stations overall.

CBC Radio

Overall, Radio One's market share is still 8% among anglos, which hasn't changed over the past year. For Radio Two, there's been a slight drop in overall audience, going from a 3.1% to 2.6% market share.

CHMP 98.5FM (Cogeco)

Programming changes: Incorporation of sports programming in evenings after closing of CKAC Sports.

Cogeco Nouvelles, in a totally unbiased press release masquerading as news, declared 98.5 the most listened-to station in Canada. I'm too lazy to confirm that, but they're not making up their significant market gains.

Overall, the station has jumped from a market share of 12% last fall to 20% this fall. That's incredible. It's gained throughout the day weekdays (it's stagnant on weekends, when it plays music). The morning show, hosted by Paul Arcand, has gone from 33,000 to 45,000 average listeners a minute since last spring, a 37% increase. It's a 47% increase if you count from last fall.

In the noon and early afternoon periods, CHMP has rocketed past three other stations, CITE, CKMF and CKOI, to jump from fifth place to second among adults 25-54.

Demographically, the spike is most pronounced among men 25-54, where it was once in a three-way tie for first place with NRJ and Rythme FM, but is now way ahead (28% to 20%). But it's also ahead among women and young adults.

Unsurprisingly, the station has seen an increase in ratings during the evening, where it has replaced repeats of the day's talk shows with sports talk and Canadiens broadcasts. "Its new sports programming has proven a contributing factor to the station's growing success," says Cogeco. But that's not the whole story. Simple math shows that adding all of CKAC's former audience to CHMP only accounts for about half its increase in market share. Something else is causing more people to listen to the station and/or for longer.

CKAC 730AM (Radio Circulation, Cogeco)

Programming changes: Complete station rebranding, replacing sports and sports talk with 24/7 traffic information.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that since its switch Sept. 6 from sports talk to traffic, CKAC has plummeted in the ratings. But that was expected. Last fall, it had a 4.1% market share. This fall, it's 0.5%.

Where CKAC's morning show had an average minute audience of about 9,000, Radio Circulation is only 1,290. Similar drops happen across the schedule and across demographics.

Still, CKAC reaches more than 1 million listeners a week (counted as those who listen at least a minute in a week).

In its application to the CRTC this spring to put a French-language traffic station on 690AM, Cogeco estimated a French-language traffic information service as having a market share of 0.8%, with a total 265,200 weekly listening hours. That number, they said, would double as of the third year. As it turns out, they're behind that estimate a bit (even though there's one fewer station to compete with).

Fortunately for Cogeco, its agreement with Transport Quebec doesn't set any minimums concerning market share or total audience.

Other French-language stations

There haven't been much changes to the music stations on the French side, certainly not much of interest to anglos.

Among young adults (18-34), Astral's CKMF (NRJ) has overtaken Cogeco's CKOI for first place, going up six points with a corresponding drop of six points for CKOI.

CKOI's overall market share has dropped from 9.8 last year to 6.6 this fall, a significant drop. Why Cogeco would say it's proud of the station's performance is beyond me.

Quebec City

In brief:

• CFEL (CKOI), recently sold by Cogeco to the Leclerc family on orders from the CRTC, has slid significantly in market share among adults 18-34. It's now 16%, compared to 24% last fall, dropping it from first to third in the market.
• There's a corresponding spike for Astral's CITF (Rouge FM) in that same demographic. It has gone from 5% to 11% market share over the same period.
• CHOI (Radio X) is losing a lot of audience during weekday midday, and Rouge FM has a corresponding spike in audience for that period.

Related Posts

• Astral’s Martin Spalding on Terry DiMonte, CHOM, CJAD and Virgin Radio
• You’re listening to an Astral Media radio station
• Behind-the-scenes changes at Astral Media radio
• Aaron Rand moves to CJAD afternoons
• CJAD loses Habs broadcasts to Team 990

Until recently he had a job at Espace Musique, Radio-Canada's music radio network. But when RadCan wanted to kill his show and move him online, he left. He took a job back at MusiquePlus, where he hosts two shows, Rajotte (Fridays at 7pm) and Hors Circuit (Sunday mornings at 1am). They're not exactly big-budget shows (Hors Circuit in particular looks pretty cheap), but the quality is in Rajotte's biting commentary (like tonight where he trashed Nickelback by saying they seem to be stuck in a 90s time-warp).

Having gone back to MusiquePlus, Rajotte wondered if maybe he could get a job at CHOM as well. But, La Presse reported, CHOM said no.

It's not because they're not interested, explained Astral Media VP Martin Spalding, just that they don't have any openings for him. "There wasn't an opportunity," Spalding said. "But that doesn't mean there won't be an opportunity in the future."

Spalding explained that giving Rajotte a show would mean cutting the time of existing staff like Bilal Butt, who hosts evenings. "For the time being, we want to allow Bilal to grow in that timeslot," Spalding said.

Sadly, the radio market isn't what it was even a decade ago, and the anglophone music stations aren't as eager as the francophone ones to grab big names to do an hour a day.

Could fate open up an opportunity for Rajotte at his other former home? As Spalding would say, never say never. But I wouldn't hold my breath.

Related Posts

• Terry DiMonte’s first day at CHOM … again
• CHOM’s new schedule adds Terry DiMonte, Heather Backman in mornings
• Pete Marier leaves CHOM over contract dispute
• Radio ratings: A good fall for Cogeco and CKGM
• Terry DiMonte returns to CHOM Jan. 9

Corus is making DiMonte work all of the six-month obligation he triggered when he gave his notice in June. DiMonte has no trouble fulfilling his obligation as his contract stipulates, but it's clear from his comments on social media that he's eager to return to Montreal.

While those comments are pleasing his Montreal-based fans, they're also disappointing his Calgary-based ones, some Montreal expats who share with him a connection to this city they once lived in before economic factors brought them out west, but many just classic rock fans who have been loyal to the station and woken up with him every weekday morning since 2007.

DiMonte tells me his last day at Q107 will be Dec. 9. After that he returns to Montreal and prepares to go back on the air at CHOM. His first day back in his old chair is almost certainly going to be Jan. 9. Astral VP Martin Spalding, who courted DiMonte back to CHOM, says this was considered a better date than a week earlier, when many people are still on holiday.

Spalding's hands are tied in terms of marketing DiMonte. Not only is DiMonte still physically in Calgary, except for occasional trips here during his time off, but because DiMonte is still under contract with Corus, his brand still belongs to them. Astral can't market DiMonte until his contract expires, which will happen on Dec. 22, six months after DiMonte gave his notice.

Terry and ...

The biggest question for the past five months remains: Who will be DiMonte's partner on the CHOM morning show?

Spalding and DiMonte said they've met a lot of potential candidates - some in person, some by phone, with more still to talk to - but no decision has been made yet. (The decision will be a joint one between DiMonte and the station.) They don't even know if it's going to be one or two people. But they will have to make a call within the next few weeks.

"As you're probably aware, I am QUITE gunshy and very careful now after a certain time period in my old life...so I will be taking some time," DiMonte writes. Spalding echoes those thoughts, telling me that "this is a five-year play, so we want to make it right."

Spalding also said that there have been a lot of candidates, some they sought out, and some who offered to come on board. "It's amazing how many people have come out of the woodwork and want to work with Terry," Spalding said.

For those wondering, Ted Bird said he's not one of them. There have been no discussions between him and CHOM about a possible return, and he remains the big name at the K103 morning show in Kahnawake.

Two obvious candidates for the job are the ones currently holding it now: Rob Kemp and Chantal Desjardins.

Kemp might be headed back to an early afternoon shift if he's not on the morning show (currently Tootall does 10am to 3pm), though any reshuffling of shifts won't be decided until after the morning team is in place, Spalding said.

The outlook for Desjardins is less certain. Spalding said she's a "clear candidate" for the morning show co-host, but there's no lock on it. She might end up somewhere else at the station, perhaps at another Astral station in Montreal, either CJAD or CJFM.

Desjardins clearly wants to get the job with DiMonte, though.

"I really enjoy working for Astral and I hope to continue in the morning show co-host position when Terry arrives," she told me. "Seriously…who wouldn’t want to wake up at 4am every morning? ;)" (her emoticon, not mine).

TV viewers might have noticed that Desjardins has been doing sports stories for CTV Montreal. (UPDATE Nov. 23 - She even got a turn behind the anchor desk, as you can see from the video above.)

She said she's "thoroughly enjoying the experience" and likes the work environment at CTV.

"But I still love the energy and immediacy of morning radio so I guess we'll just have to wait and see how everything plays out!"

I feel bad for Desjardins. I know the saying that in radio it's not if you get fired but when. Not getting the morning show gig doesn't mean she'll be fired, but to have your employment future be so uncertain for so long can't be a fun thing to experience. I know, because it happens fairly often for me. (The main difference being thousands of people don't notice what happens to me unless I tell them.)

Desjardins would make a welcome addition to the CTV sports team. That department is tiny (though still bigger than its competitors combined), and right now it's 100% male. And she seems very comfortable in front of the camera.

But radio is what she wants to do, and it's where people know her from. And Desjardins's ability to match (or even surpass) wits with the boys is probably more valuable at the classic rock station than the TV station. Aside from Desjardins, Sharon Hyland is the only woman with a shift at 97.7FM, and she's on weekends now.

It's possible DiMonte and Spalding will come up with a name so fantastic it will have fans going "Chantal who?", but it would have to be pretty fantastic to make me forget that these kinds of decisions have effects on the lives of real people.

Related Posts

• Terry DiMonte’s first day at CHOM … again
• CHOM’s new schedule adds Terry DiMonte, Heather Backman in mornings
• Pete Marier leaves CHOM over contract dispute
• Astral’s Martin Spalding on Terry DiMonte, CHOM, CJAD and Virgin Radio
• Terry DiMonte returns to CHOM, and is back in Montreal for good

Astral VP Martin Spalding outside his offices at Fort and Ste. Catherine Sts.

"You only have one chance to make a first impression."

It's a cliché, but I thought it was funny when I heard it come out of the mouth of Martin Spalding, the vice-president at Astral Media who is in charge of its three English-language stations in Montreal: CHOM, Virgin Radio (CJFM) and CJAD. The fact that we were talking to each other was kind of proving that assertion wrong. Or at least it was strong evidence against it.

Eleven days earlier, I called Spalding at his office to talk to him about the return of Terry DiMonte to CHOM, a move he arranged. But our conversation was brief.

"I know who you are," he said after I introduced myself. Just as I was starting to feel relieved that I wouldn't have to go through the trouble of convincing him to speak to some guy on the Internet as if he was a journalist, Spalding put the brakes on the interview. "I'm not in the mood to have this conversation," he said.

I asked why. "Let's just say you should be careful what you post on Twitter," he said, without elaborating. He followed that with "this conversation is over."

There was a slight hesitation in his voice, as if even he couldn't believe he was saying this.

I didn't know how to react. I don't expect that everyone I contact will be interested in talking to me - mostly because I'm not a traditional journalist and my audience is not that of a metro newspaper or a supper-hour TV newscast. But I'd never had someone answer me like this before. This conversation sounded like it would be in the script from a bad movie.

What got me most is that I had no idea what set him off. Other than quoting some press releases with his name in them, I'd never talked about him on my blog. I'd never mentioned his name on Twitter. I didn't even know what he looked like.

And I've posted thousands of things on Twitter. Plenty of stuff has been negative about CHOM and other Astral stations. I couldn't really narrow it down.

The call was just before the end of business on June 23. My post about DiMonte - with the bit about Spalding at the end - was published the next day.

An email from Spalding was dated 9:05am the next Monday. He said he realizes he may have been a little "curt" in our phone conversation, and offered to take me out to lunch to explain. We scheduled a meeting for the following Monday at noon - July 4.

After seeing Spalding's office - a corner office with wood panelling - and meeting Virgin Radio Brand Director Mark Bergman, we went to a Chinese place nearby and discussed our respective pasts a bit. Everything was cordial.

It was actually quite a while into our conversation at the lunch table until Spalding set the record straight about that minute-long conversation.

He said he had taken exception to something I tweeted the day before, suggesting that CHOM's promotions department was lacking because its website had no mention of DiMonte a day after a press release announcing he was coming back to the station.

Spalding explained that it wasn't because they'd simply forgotten about this or were lazy about it. Because DiMonte was still contracted to Q107 in Calgary, Spalding said that CHOM couldn't use his image or promote him. Even issuing the press release was "playing with fire," he said.

Spalding took my ill-informed tweet as an attack on the employees who work for him, and for me to then call and ask for comment after bashing his radio station didn't exactly put him in the mood to cooperate.

By Monday morning, he had read my post on DiMonte, and his mood changed. He apologized for the curt tone on the phone, and went out of his way to compliment me on posts I had written, including the DiMonte one and an earlier one on Cogeco's CRTC application for all-traffic radio stations, which he considered much more solid journalism than some of the shoot-from-the-hip tweets that are based on incomplete information.

It's amazing how a simple conversation can change your perspective.

I, in turn, asked Spalding to apologize on my behalf to CHOM's promotions department, an apology I repeat here. I jumped to an incorrect assumption (not the first time I've done so with CHOM-related news), and I should have checked. Just because it's on Twitter doesn't mean it's exempt from basic journalistic rigour. I'll try to do better in the future.

So we're good now. Spalding gave me his card (asking me to call him before I tweet next time), paid for my lunch (the next one will be on me - I want to try to have at least some journalistic ethics here) and gave me two hours of his time - even pushing back a conference call so he could give me a few extra minutes.

The image of the super-professional businessman that DiMonte had painted for me during our conversation turned out to be a lot more accurate than I had thought after that brief phone conversation.

So, now on to the good stuff. I had a good bank of questions related to recent events at his radio stations, so I posed as many as I could fit in before I started to feel really guilty about taking him away from his real job.

Terry DiMonte: star power

Spalding has known DiMonte for a long time. In fact, one of his earliest jobs in radio was acting as DiMonte's assistant. He told me a story about ironing DiMonte's jacket before the radio jock was set to make a public appearance. At the time, DiMonte the radio guy bachelor didn't really appreciate the need to look professional.

Spalding worked with DiMonte from 1986 to 1991. "For five years, we were inseparable," Spalding said. He then worked another five years for former Standard Radio manager Rob Braide (Spalding said his first job in radio was moving boxes for Braide). He later worked as promotions director for what was then FM96 (CJFM, now Virgin Radio) and then for the Canadian Grand Prix before returning to radio as an Astral VP in 2009.

"Last fall, I knew the combination of Pete (Marier), Chantal (Desjardins), P.J. (Stock) and Merv (Williams) wasn't jelling," Spalding said. This led to the canning of Stock and Williams in March.

"I know what CHOM represented 26 years ago. It's kind of lost its way over the past four or five years," Spalding said (covering about the amount of time DiMonte was gone). He wanted to get it back on track. That started with the morning show.

"We needed someone who would resonate with the listenership. We needed star power," he said.

In discussions about who that star could be, Spalding said one name kept coming up: DiMonte.

So Spalding flew to Calgary to try to convince the well-known former Montreal morning man (and local-consumer-affairs TV show host) to come back home. "I wanted to demonstrate that we were seriously interested in bringing him back," Spalding said of the decision to meet in person rather than converse on the phone or via email.

DiMonte "is one of the best interviewers I've heard on radio," Spalding said. He explained that DiMonte has fantastic comedic timing, but "he knows his role. He won't try to our-star a star."

But part of being a good interviewer isn't just being funny and friendly. It's also about knowing your stuff. Asking a guy the same questions he gets from hundreds of other media is going to prompt a canned answer. But asking questions that make it clear you're familiar with someone's work can lead to a lot more depth, and the interviewee becoming a lot more comfortable and more likely to open up.

DiMonte, Spalding said, is a generalist, who will read everything he can get his hands on (this is easily confirmed by looking at all the stuff he posts on Facebook). That's what makes him a great interviewer and a great host, Spalding said.

Like DiMonte, Spalding sees this deal lasting longer than its contract specifies. "This is a long-term play," Spalding said.

Other talent at CHOM

Though the online rumour mill is buzzing with speculation about who's going where on CHOM's schedule, no official decisions have been made yet. And they won't be until the morning team is figured out, and that won't happen until DiMonte gets to Montreal, which won't happen until he's released from Q107.

Spalding said that after hearing about DiMonte coming back to CHOM, "people have reached out to us" about becoming DiMonte's cohost. But whether they hire from outside or just reshuffle their existing talent remains to be seen. DiMonte and Chantal Desjardins will at some point be introduced, but "there has to be chemistry" in any morning team, Spalding said. So they'll see how that plays out.

Pete Marier, meanwhile, is expected to go back to an afternoon drive-time show. His gruffy voice is much better suited to destressing after a day at work than waking up in the morning. Spalding said Marier is better as a drive-time host than a morning man, a sentiment I've heard from others who follow the industry.

For the rest of the schedule, it's still up in the air, though two changes have been made already: Tootall, one of CHOM's most ancient veterans (and a man filled with crazy stories from decades past), has been moved to mid-mornings, doing the 10am to 1pm shift. "We want him to be one of our pillars," Spalding said. He replaces Sharon Hyland, who has moved to weekends.

The other change is the show Amped with Jason Rockman (one of the station's young talents) on Friday and Saturday nights. It features more up-tempo music that Spalding described as "a soundtrack to a corporate party with your buddies."

Though Spalding said the station "worked very hard to keep our staff," he does expect some attrition. He doesn't know who that is yet, but he does seem to expect some announcers to leave for other opportunities elsewhere.

One thing is for sure, he wants the station to be local. While Q107 in Calgary can get away with having only four announcers (two in the morning, one in the afternoon and one on weekends), that wouldn't fly in Montreal. Nor does Spalding want it to.

"Given the choice between Alice Cooper - which is syndicated - and local, I'll always choose local," he said. "Our strategic advantage is to stay local."

That means local announcers - who can tell you what happened during the Habs game, who know the difference between Pie IX and "pie nine" - even during the overnight hours.

Mind you, Virgin Radio's schedule still features quite a bit of syndicated content, especially on weekends.

Ted Bird: never say never

Ask the Internet who Terry's cohost should be, and you'll probably get "Ted Bird" as an answer. But is such a thing possible, or likely? Bird has said it isn't - even though he and DiMonte are good friends.

I wondered, from Spalding's perspective, how torched the bridge between CHOM and Bird was. "Ted is an incredibly talented broadcaster. Very passionate, very emotional," he said.

Spalding also pointed out that "people's memories are very short."

In Spalding's world of media management, letting your ego get in the way of a good business decision means you're not doing your job. "You hire the act," he said. In media, being controversial can be as much a benefit as it is a liability. If CHOM wanted to hire this act back, there's nothing legally preventing it.

And, Spalding reminded me, it was Bird who made the decision to leave CHOM.

"Never say never," he said.

But don't get your hopes too far up. Bird has said he's happy at K103 in Kahnawake. And Spalding said that there have been no conversations with Bird about rejoining the station.

"But I'm not closed to the idea," Spalding said. "I'm not closed to anything."

Bird's main beef at CHOM was with the program director, Daniel Tremblay. For Bird, he was this guy who bragged about never being on the air and who started bossing people around at CHOM after working at some French stations in another city. For Spalding, Tremblay was a man with lots of experience in the industry in a management role. "Daniel has done one thing in his life, and that's work in radio," Spalding said.

Now that Tremblay no longer works at CHOM, and DiMonte is coming back, the chances of reconciliation with Bird are much higher. But still not high enough that I actually expect it to happen. Public demand would have to be much higher to force CHOM to put enough resources into luring Bird back.

Poaching at Virgin Radio

The biggest pieces of news to happen to CJFM in the past few months are remarkably similar: Two of the station's big names - Cat Spencer and Nat Lauzon, have left the station and will take jobs at competitor CFQR (92.5 the Q) in the fall. I asked Spalding about this, and whether this is just a coincidence or if he's worried about losing top talent to Cogeco.

It's business, he said, and the two left under different circumstances. Spencer got a better offer at the Q, and apparently felt it was a better opportunity for career advancement, while Lauzon wanted to reduce her work hours to concentrate on other projects.

These things happen. And if you're looking for talent, it makes sense to target the big stars at the No. 1 station in the market. But Spalding isn't worried.

Besides, he said, Freeway Frank Depalo, who was hired to replace Spencer on Virgin's morning show, has been "a blessing in disguise," and ratings have gone up since the former Montrealer joined the team.

Spalding isn't panicked about competition, particularly since Astral has a 76% market share with its three stations, which includes the top-rated station in the market, CJFM.

But the competition is constant, and Spalding said his goal is to make his stations' programming as seamless as possible. What he called "errors" are what lead listeners to switch stations. Long pauses, technical snafus, or just songs and segments that don't hold the listener's interest.

"The one who makes the fewer errors wins," he said.

CJAD Habs-less

For CJAD, the biggest news recently has been the loss of broadcast rights of Canadiens games to Bell's CKGM (Team 990). Though Spalding took issue with how I phrase the question.

"Losing broadcast rights to Team 990 is a misrepresentation of what happened," he said.

The writing was on the wall not for weeks or months but since way back when Bell purchased CTV and Team 990, Spalding said. The business connections between Bell and the Canadiens are almost too numerous to mention. Bell owns a minority stake in the team, it owns the French-language TV broadcaster (RDS), the English-language regional TV broadcaster (TSN), the naming rights to the team's arena, lots of exclusive rights for mobile, and it produced a special TV series profiling Canadiens players that was available exclusively on Bell video on demand before airing on RDS and TSN2. And that's just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head.

To suggest that Team 990 won the rights to Canadiens games strictly on its own merits is ludicrous, according to Spalding.

Spalding's interpretation jives with that of Mike Boone, who wrote shortly before the announcement that the deal was essentially forged when Bell negotiated regional TV broadcast rights for Canadiens games (they air on a special "TSN Habs" channel that's so far available only on Bell and Bell Alliant).

I asked Spalding if he thought this was unfair. A slight grin developed on his face.

"Unfair? Life is unfair," he said, returning to his this-is-just-business philosophy. There's no bitterness, no anger, just acceptance. This is how things work in the media business, and you have to understand that and get used to it.

So CJAD will move on. "We'll keep covering the team as a news item," he said. And regular programming will be more consistent (though CJAD still retains the rights to things like Alouettes games). And Spalding said he doesn't expect ratings to suffer hugely.

"It wasn't a huge ratings benefit to us," he said. But it was "prestigious" to be known as the official Canadiens broadcaster.

Asked whether there will be significant programming changes to expect for the fall now that there are about 10 more hours a week to fill during the season, Spalding answers simply: "Aren't we always?"

Cogeco's all-traffic stations

Spalding mentioned a post I wrote about Cogeco's proposal for all-traffic AM stations in Montreal. I asked him what he thought of it.

"It's opportunistic," he said, a way to make use of transmitters and antennas they bought as part of the purchase of Corus Quebec. Give him $1.5 million a year and he'd be more than happy to setup his own traffic station.

Astral Media Radio has submitted an intervention in the application that largely echoes the points raised by Spalding and myself.

Related Posts

• Pete Marier leaves CHOM over contract dispute
• Radio ratings: A good fall for Cogeco and CKGM
• You’re listening to an Astral Media radio station
• Behind-the-scenes changes at Astral Media radio
• Terry DiMonte’s first day at CHOM … again

Terry DiMonte has lost some weight since leaving Montreal

Stop me if you've heard this one before: They're bringing back Terry DiMonte.

It was with a lot of excitement (well, one exclamation mark anyway) that Astral announced (in English and French) that DiMonte has been hired to host the morning show at CHOM for a third time. For DiMonte, the news was "a little bit bittersweet", having to leave this new home in Calgary he had tried to make his own over the past three and a half years.

There is no word on who his co-hosts will be, but so far Pete Marier and Chantal Desjardins are expected to be able to keep their jobs at the station, even if they're not on the morning show team.

The Gazette has posted a story about DiMonte's return, as well as some videos that were created as part of a series on expat Montrealers in 2009: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. There were also briefs on CTV News and Global's local newscast, but otherwise coverage has been light.

No date yet

When DiMonte will return to Montreal and its airwaves is still undecided. DiMonte signed a five-year contract with Calgary's Q107 in late 2007, which means he still has about a year and a half left. The deal does allow him to get out early with six months notice, which was given on Wednesday. So depending on how the station plans to play this, it could be as late as Christmas before he's allowed to return to Montreal.

"My intention was and is to fulfill my obligation for the next six months," DiMonte told me over the phone on Thursday. Still, the decision is up to the station. They could have him keep working until December, or they could pay him not to work. But a small radio station with only four full-time staff that paid decent money to lure DiMonte to Calgary in the first place probably isn't too eager to waste it on talent it can't use.

"A bit defeated"

Though demand for DiMonte as a Montreal radio host was apparently high enough that Astral went out to get him, he admits that his time at Q107 hasn't been a runaway success. "I didn't meet my own expectations in Calgary," he said, though he did say that "things have gone relatively well here." Aside from some Montreal expats who remember him from his days here, there isn't nearly the kind of familiarity in Calgary as there was here. Part of that is the simple fact that he's only been in Calgary for three and a half years. But he also said he was disappointed that there wasn't more done to market his station and its morning show. His face wasn't on billboards or on TV, despite how much effort and money Corus went through to bring him there. The fact that the economy went down the toilet shortly after his contract began probably had something to do with that.

The result is that Q107 has been stagnant in the ratings. Its morning show has a 6.7% commercial market share, making it eighth out of 15 stations in that market. They're better, but not much better. And as this 2008 Calgary Herald story made pretty clear, Q107 expected significant results by taking DiMonte on board.

"I believed that by the time 2012 comes around, my contract would expire and I wouldn't be offered another one," DiMonte said.

Still, it wasn't him that made the first overture about coming back to Montreal. He was wooed.

"We made a mistake"

DiMonte said the first move happened in December, when he got an email just before Christmas from Martin Spalding, the Astral VP who is in charge of CHOM, CJFM and CJAD. The two have known each other for a long time. Spalding was once DiMonte's personal assistant. So DiMonte didn't think anything of it when this friend wanted to take him out to dinner during a visit to Calgary.

What DiMonte didn't know at the time was that Spalding wasn't on some tourist visit or there for some corporate meeting. The dinner with DiMonte was the purpose of the trip. Spalding wanted to bring DiMonte back to CHOM.

"I was, to be frank, a little stunned," DiMonte said. Not only at the discussion of his coming back to CHOM, but at the idea that someone would fly to Calgary just to discuss the matter with him.

Spalding, DiMonte said, "paid me probably the highest complement I've ever had. He said: 'When we let you get away we made a mistake, and we want you to come home.'"

Discussions continued over the coming months, and Spalding flew back and presented an offer.

Here's where DiMonte did something that he wouldn't have done five years ago: He took the deal to his lawyer. In 2007, he didn't even have one for negotiating contracts. He has since learned their value. By March, it was clear DiMonte was going to be coming back, but the fine print had to be ironed out. Everything became official when he submitted his notice on Wednesday and Astral sent out its press release.

DiMonte said he has no regrets about going to Calgary when he did. "I was broken-hearted when I left Montreal," he said, but "I think I did the right thing. I got out when I needed to get out."

Bad blood

The story of DiMonte's break from CHOM in 2007 is one of a personal conflict. His contract was up, and he was being asked to sign a document with a lot of fine print, he told The Gazette in 2009. "Don't you dare bring in a lawyer," he was reportedly told.

DiMonte said he had no issue with the station or its owners (CHOM was in the process of being purchased by Astral Media when he left), but said the problem was local management at the station, and particularly one individual, whose name he didn't utter during our interview, perhaps out of fear he would have to follow it by spitting somewhere.

"My beef was not with Astral because I never got the chance to work with Astral," DiMonte said. "My beef was with one guy running the radio station."

A lot has changed since then. Former program director Bob Harris is in Hamilton, and Astral VP Rob Braide left the company and works as a consultant. CHOM's management isn't what it used to be. It isn't even what it was when Ted Bird left - program director (they call them "brand directors" now) Daniel Tremblay, who replaced Harris and was the focus of Bird's fallout with the station, left his position recently.

Glad to be back

"I try not to let sentiment interfere with any kind of business decision I'm making," said DiMonte, who at 53 is a lot wiser about the business of radio than he was before he left CHOM.

An offer to go back to his old job, live in his home town again, just as it was becoming clear that his future in Calgary might not be so bright, seemed perfect.

The first thing he did, he said, was look at his contract with Q107, where he was "pleased and surprised to read" that the five-year contract had a clause allowing him to leave early on six months' notice.

Thank God for lawyers, he thought. His had served him well here.

Still, even with the deal done, DiMonte had worries about returning to CHOM.

"I was concerned," he said. "Am I going backwards? Am I covering territory I've already covered?" - These are sentiments echoed by a few online commenters who see this move as CHOM regressing to its comfortable old ways. DiMonte, like Bird, they say, is boring and stale, and CHOM should save its money and instead hire new, young, dynamic talent. There certainly in't a labour shortage in Montreal's radio industry.

When asked how much of his decision to return was a personal desire to move back home versus a business decision that this was best for his career, DiMonte said it was "50/50."

"Okay, 60/40. Because money isn't everything."

DiMonte didn't tell me what kind of money he'd be making at CHOM, but he did say the offer was "very reasonable" and fair for someone of his experience coming into a market like (anglo) Montreal.

He also pointed out that rumours of how much he was making at Q107 were wildly exaggerated.

Overwhelmed

"There seems to be a fair amount of goodwill associated with my name," DiMonte said, as if he was genuinely surprised of this fact. "I'm pleased as punch that people still remember me four years after I left."

That's a bit of an understatement. Since news came out on Wednesday afternoon, DiMonte has been flooded with messages of congratulations from his Montreal fans. In the less than 48 hours since, he has received 316 posts on his Facebook wall (not including comments added to his messages, which also number in the hundreds), a few dozen messages of congratulations on Twitter (his name was even trending in the city when news erupted), and all sorts of other, less public messages from friends and fans.

It was so much that DiMonte at first clammed up online. A prolific Facebooker and budding Twitterrer, he stopped posting on both as the messages flooded in. I thought at first he might have been under some sort of gag order, unable to confirm the news. But he said he just couldn't handle the sheer volume of messages. He's put up a few mass thank-yous, and hopes to get back to everyone individually - maybe he'll succeed by the time he starts at CHOM.

DiMonte mused that social media might have a lot to do with why he's still remembered here. Rather than have him disappear completely from their minds, they can follow him online. He has more than 4,000 friends on Facebook, where he posts links that are of interest to fans in both cities. He also has 948 followers on Twitter.

While social media certainly helps, I think DiMonte underestimates the long memories of Montreal radio listeners.

The story was similar before DiMonte became active on social media, when he left the city in 2007.

"I was at my parents' place just before Christmas when I left, with tears in my eyes trying to answer all the emails I got," he said. "I had no idea I was reaching people in this way."

It was enough that Corus decided to experiment with him doing a noon-hour show on Montreal's CFQR from Calgary. But that lasted less than a year, ending in June 2009.

Mostly quiet on the Calgary front

While reaction to DiMonte's return has been mostly positive here, it made a much smaller splash in Calgary. A handful of the Facebook posts he received were from disappointed Q107 listeners, and some took issue with the fact that they learned about this news through social networking or via Montreal media online rather than from DiMonte himself.

DiMonte hasn't formally announced to his listeners that he's leaving. He said he wanted to let Q107 make the call on his future there first, and give them something a little more definitive than saying he'll be leaving at some point over the next six months. The Internet being what it is, many of his listeners still found out.

DiMonte knows he's a smaller fish (somewhat literally, he's lost a lot of weight since going to Calgary) in a bigger pond there. "I haven't been here long enough to make the kind of impact I made in Montreal," he said.

While news of his return resulted in an article in the Gazette and mention on at least two local TV newscasts, in Calgary there was just a brief in the Herald (and the comments on it are not particularly flattering to DiMonte - then again those on the Gazette piece aren't the nicest either).

That said, DiMonte asked me to emphasize that he loves Calgary (particularly its lack of sales tax) and he appreciates the support he's received from his listeners there. He also has nothing but kind words for Q107 and Corus, who have been good to him despite the tiny resources at the station.

He said he's learned through his experiences that stereotypes about Canada's regions are all bull, whether they're Quebecers' views about Calgary or Calgarians' views of Quebec. Albertans aren't all ultraconservative oil baron cowboys, and Quebecers aren't all lazy separatist unilingual francophones.

Getting back into the Montreal mindset

When DiMonte first started at Q107, he found he had to let go of Montreal. "I was watching RDS and reading The Gazette and said 'I gotta stop this.'" Though he remained a Montrealer at heart, he started transforming himself into a Calgarian.

Now he has to change back. He's been watching Mutsumi Takahashi and this new kid Van der Heyden, "trying to replug a bit."

Asked by Gazette managing editor Ray Brassard whether this means we can stop sending bagels, DiMonte laughed. But he added that he is a bit worried about coming back to Montreal and its food. He lost quite a bit of weight since moving out there, as he told The Gazette's June Thompson last year, and credited being away from some Montreal restaurants with helping him keep it off. He said he's "terrified" of gaining it all back.

Setting conditions

One of the nice things about being wooed for a job is being able to get some concessions. DiMonte didn't demand a gold-plated helicopter or anything, but he did ask for - and receive - more creative control.

"I refuse to go into an office at 10 o'clock and have philosophical arguments with a guy who's never done this before about what I've done on the air," DiMonte said he told Spalding before accepting his offer. "I'm not going back into a situation like that."

I know a few radio veterans who know very well what he's talking about. I've heard stories of program directors - some with little or no on-air radio experience - critiquing the work of radio personalities who started in the business before those pencil-pushers were even born. This issue is a large part of why Ted Bird and Aaron Rand left their jobs.

You're nobody, DiMonte

When DiMonte first started working at CHOM in 1984, he said he was making $30,000 a year. Seeing the ratings go up with him at the mic, he asked for - and was denied - a raise. He ended up leaving for CJFM, which at the time was owned by a different company. He recalls clearly being told he'd be nothing without rock records, and his boss at the time telling him not to bother coming back crawling to CHOM.

Of course, we all know DiMonte didn't go crawling to any job since. He worked five years at Mix 96, another four at CJAD to replace (he preferred to use the term "follow") George Balcan, and then back at CHOM where he was reunited with Ted Bird in an attempt to rebuild the station's ratings after the station made the mistake of moving to a more alternative rock format to compete with WBTZ (99.9 The Buzz) across the border.

Terry and ...

The big question on everyone's minds, other than when he's coming back, is who's going to be sitting with him. Lots of his fans want him to be reunited with Bird yet again, even though Bird's statements since indicate he's happy at K103 in Kahnawake and he's not expecting to come back.

What makes this debate interesting is that one of the concessions DiMonte sought in his contract with CHOM is co-approval of his morning team. Forced marriages, he said, don't work, and he didn't want to be in a position of working in a team that didn't have chemistry.

DiMonte has seen the comments about Bird, and so far the response is "we'll see." DiMonte and Bird are good friends, and he certainly isn't against the idea at first glance.

"There's been two people in my work life that have been absolute dreams to work with, one is Patti and the other is Ted."

Patti, of course, is "Peppermint" Patti MacNeil (formerly Lorange), who worked with DiMonte in Montreal and was reunited with him as his cohost at Q107 before she was dismissed last year. DiMonte currently does the Q107 morning show with another former Montrealer, Tim Morgan.

So could we see Terry and Ted again at CHOM? Maybe. Daniel Tremblay, the man most responsible for Bird's departure, is no longer there. But there's still a pretty scorched bridge between Bird and Astral, far more precarious than DiMonte's. It will depend a lot on how bitter Astral's management is about Bird's departure, and how willing Bird is to forgive CHOM for the sake of working with DiMonte again. At the moment, there is no sign that Bird is on his way out at K103, even though he's probably being paid more than they can afford there, and advertising hasn't been as huge as the station might have hoped when it signed Bird.

UPDATE (June 29): Bird says as much in his own words on his Gazette blog:

To answer the obvious question: no, there are no plans for a Terry and Ted reunion at CHOM. That bridge is in worse shape than the Mercier, and even if I hadn’t blown it to bits, I’m having too much fun in Kahnawake to entertain a return to the corporate radio milieu, even with someone I admire and respect professionally, and with whom my friendship is as strong as ever.

Aaron Rand, who recently left the Q for similar reasons as Bird and DiMonte left CHOM (though on much better terms), is another possibility, technically. But Rand seemed to close the door on that shortly after the announcement about DiMonte's return, posting on Facebook that he won't be going to CHOM. He also hinted that "I hope to have an announcement soon to let you know what's next for me." Rand had considered going to CHOM, and there were discussions with Astral, but the fact that Rand wants to be repaired with Paul (Tasso) Zakaib means there's not much room for DiMonte as well.

A more likely scenario might be DiMonte being teamed up with existing hosts Pete Marier and Chantal Desjardins, or something entirely different that nobody predicted. In any case, he and CHOM have some time to think about it.

CHOM indicated to The Gazette's Brendan Kelly that there would be a shuffle of personalities, and that none of them would be kicked out. This presumably means Marier and Desjardins will get slots at other points of the schedule.

Two years, at least

Since DiMonte was able to get out of his Calgary contract early, I wondered about his deal in Montreal. It, too, has an out clause, though DiMonte has agreed to guarantee at least two years to the station. The contract is for five.

DiMonte knows this is all just business, and he can't guarantee this latest job is for life. But, he said, at the end of this contract he'll be 58, and he has no intention of moving again. One can never say never, but he's pretty sure he's back in Montreal to stay.

A reversal in Montreal radio

The most surprising thing about DiMonte's return to the Montreal airwaves is that it seems to be going in the opposite direction of some recent moves. The music stations particularly have been shedding veteran talent and replacing them with younger, cheaper and less stubborn hosts. Bringing DiMonte back is the opposite.

When Spalding told DiMonte that letting him go was a mistake, was this a sign of some deeper change in perspective on behalf of Astral?

DiMonte said he looks to the United States, which he describes as a few years ahead of Canada in terms of trends in radio programming. He pointed to decisions made by ClearChannel to cut on-air staff, reduce talking time and play more music. He said the strategy worked in the short term, but people started to tune out as they lost their connections with the personalities.

"They've damaged their relationship with the community," he said.

On the other hand, DiMonte said he looks at developments like a 10-year contract offered to John Derringer at Toronto's Q107, which he described as "unheard of" in the radio business, as a sign that radio executives are starting to appreciate the value of veteran, familiar talent again.

UPDATE: Spalding's view

I met with Spalding later to talk about DiMonte and other issues at Astral's radio stations. You can read about that talk here.

Go to hell: Astral VP

I called up Spalding, the Astral VP in charge of CHOM, CJFM and CJAD who brought DiMonte back to Montreal, to get his take on this story and answer a few questions about the station's plans.

Unfortunately, Spalding wasn't interested in talking to me. The man who appeared in DiMonte's story to be the height of professionalism and class said he was "not in the mood" to have a conversation with me about DiMonte (or anything else), suggested it had something to do with something I posted on Twitter (he didn't specify what that was) and then said "this conversation is over" before hanging up the phone.

Mere moments after hearing praise from DiMonte about how fair I was in my reporting on this blog (compared to other Internet gossipers who spread bull around, he said), I had a surreal conversation with a media executive I had never met or written about (beyond quoting press releases) who apparently doesn't appreciate what I say and figures the best way to deal with it is to childishly refuse to talk.

I guess some things don't change.

UPDATE (June 27): Spalding sent me an email this morning - a mere five business minutes after this post was published - saying "Perhaps I was a little curt with you the other day." He's promised a meeting to explain. I'll update afterward to include his take on DiMonte's return.

Related Posts

• Terry DiMonte’s first day at CHOM … again
• CHOM’s new schedule adds Terry DiMonte, Heather Backman in mornings
• Pete Marier leaves CHOM over contract dispute
• Terry DiMonte returns to CHOM Jan. 9
• Astral’s Martin Spalding on Terry DiMonte, CHOM, CJAD and Virgin Radio

"Freeway" Frank Depalo was introduced to Montreal at the St. Patrick's parade with co-host Lisa Player the day before he debuted as morning co-host on CJFM

The past month has seen a lot of staff changes in the Montreal radio scene. All three anglo FM music stations are seeing morning hosts leave, and at least two are introducing new faces to replace them.

Aaron Rand got the ball rolling by announcing he would be leaving CFQR's Q Mornings show at the end of April. Rand has been hosting this show for two decades, so you can imagine how listeners reacted to the news. He's got a lot of new Facebook friends and a lot of people posted messages to the Q's Facebook page.

Though Rand himself reached out to listeners and communicated with them, the station's management was silent. Mark Dickie, its general manager, didn't return my phone calls or emails, and provided The Gazette's Bill Brownstein with a pathetic quote that sounds like it came out of a fill-in-the-name-here press release.

As if to underscore a lack of respect for this dean of local radio, Rand's seat wasn't even cold before it was announced that Cat Spencer would be leaving CJFM to take his place ... in September. (Maybe before, if the two stations can work out a deal on his contract.) This is still months away, yet for some reason they couldn't wait 24 hours to make the announcement. What little coverage of this story appeared in local media had to be about both Spencer and Rand instead of just the latter.

Cat vs. Freeway

Learning that Spencer would be leaving, some Virgin Radio listeners also spoke up on its Facebook page. At least there, a few brief replies from the nameless Facebook page administrator saying Spencer had decided to leave. But otherwise, the station has been pretty silent about it. Program Director Mark Bergman hasn't made any public statements that I'm aware of.

That contrasts, of course, to all the publicity it's generating about its new star, "Freeway" Frank Depalo, who debuted on Monday as Lisa Player's cohost. (You can read an interview Depalo did with Mike Cohen on his blog, and a story in The Gazette by Kathryn Greenaway.)

The same day "Freeway" started on Virgin Radio, the Q launched a new contest where it gives away $1,000 daily to people who listen to the morning show. It promoted it like crazy, including an ad wrap around the front section of Monday's Gazette (hope some of that ad money trickles down to me).

PJ who?

And then there's CHOM, who yanked PJ Stock and Merv Williams from their morning show. Perhaps it was unrelated to the other changes, or perhaps the station decided it needed to freshen up while its competitors are changing things up. We don't know, because CHOM Program Director Daniel Tremblay isn't talking.

Again, fans complained. Not on the station's official Facebook page because it doesn't have a wall. But there were comments here and elsewhere, most more upset at the loss of Williams than the part-timer Stock.

The same day the news became public, there was a flurry of activity from the morning show's social media outlets, its Twitter feed (which had been dormant for more than two weeks) and its blog. Neither had any mention of Stock or Williams. Instead, we heard about Alouettes cheerleader tryouts and other ridiculousness.

As far as CHOM was concerned, it was easier to pretend these people never existed than to even briefly acknowledge and explain its reason for terminating them.

Listeners deserve better

Program directors aren't under any obligation to talk to me. I'm just some guy on the Internet. But their own listeners deserve explanations of these kinds of changes.

Radio stations go through a lot of effort to build familiarity with their hosts. Just look at what Virgin Radio is doing with Freeway Frank. Listeners become attached to them and, if the branding effort is really successful, they become loyal to those hosts, even if they've never met them in person or heard them off the air.

And then, when the usual turnover in radio causes that familiar voice to leave, the station expects listeners to instantly forget about them, to not ask questions.

It's a giant insult to the intelligence of those listeners. They understand how broadcasting works. They understand that people leave jobs that are no longer fulfilling for them (Rand), leave for better-paying competitors (Spencer), or leave because they've been fired (Stock and Williams). Simply coming forward and explaining yourselves to listeners would be a simple, albeit uncomfortable, experience.

I don't have 24/7 logs of these stations, so I can't say for sure about what statements have and haven't been made on air, but if the social media sphere, the websites and the lack of communication with media is any indication, the strategy seems to be to sweep bad news under the rug and hope nobody notices it, even though it's beyond obvious that they are.

Each of these three radio stations has gotten on the social media bandwagon, highlighting their Twitter and Facebook pages, and putting blogs on their websites. Listeners are using those forms of communication to try to seek answers.

They won't get answers, because CHOM, Virgin Radio and the Q are being antisocial.

That's a shame.

Related Posts

• Radio ratings: A good fall for Cogeco and CKGM
• Astral’s Martin Spalding on Terry DiMonte, CHOM, CJAD and Virgin Radio
• Nat Lauzon jumps to the Q
• You’re listening to an Astral Media radio station
• Chantal Desjardins replaces Kim Rossi on CHOM morning show

It's just Chantal and Bad Pete now

Apparently unhappy at being the only anglo music radio station to not make major changes to its morning show, CHOM has decided to drop PJ Stock, the former hockey player and Hockey Night in Canada analyst who joined the station a little over a year ago.

Also being scrubbed from CHOM's website is Merv Williams, a supporting cast member on the morning show, but one whose presence had been felt more and more. Williams also contributed to CJAD's Trivia Show, and that too has come to an end. (Unlike CHOM, which seems to be pretending like he never existed, the Trivia Show made it a point to note Williams's departure on air, as you can hear from this clip (MP3).)

The reasons for the move aren't known. Williams politely declined to comment, Stock couldn't be reached for comment, and Program Director Daniel Tremblay hasn't responded to an email sent over the weekend (I'll update this if he does, but I'm not holding my breath).

UPDATE (March 15): The decision to can Stock hasn't exactly caused a lot of commotion. No newspaper articles, no Facebook protest campaigns. The fact that Stock would join the crew only after 7pm, and often not at all because of commitments to Hockey Night in Canada and others, meant he was more of a part-timer on the morning crew than anything else. A lot of people, of course, just didn't like the guy, and thought he was a poor choice for a radio host (the man he replaced, Ted Bird, isn't among them - Bird suggested Stock be invited to be part of the show even before he resigned from it).

But the disappearance of Williams is being felt, despite not being a marquee name. Aside from the on-air tribute on the Trivia Show above, Williams also got a public shout-out from Bird on Twitter and Facebook, the latter prompting dozens of comments.

Related Posts

• PJ’s first days at CHOM
• PJ Stock joins CHOM morning show
• Terry DiMonte’s first day at CHOM … again
• CHOM’s new schedule adds Terry DiMonte, Heather Backman in mornings
• Pete Marier leaves CHOM over contract dispute

Making a joke about this would lessen its comedic value.

Related Posts

• Terry DiMonte’s first day at CHOM … again
• CHOM’s new schedule adds Terry DiMonte, Heather Backman in mornings
• Pete Marier leaves CHOM over contract dispute
• Radio ratings: A good fall for Cogeco and CKGM
• Claude Rajotte on CHOM? No, but …

On Feb. 1, the station rebranded itself, promising more and better music, though without being too specific about it.

Whatever they did, it isn't working. According to the latest ratings numbers, CHOM is losing listeners just about everywhere.

The ratings cover the period from Nov. 30 to Feb. 28, which means only about a third of the latest ratings period covers the "new CHOM", but it gives the first indications of how listeners reacted to the format change, and that reaction isn't good.

Astral Media, which compiles ratings information into boring webcasts, has created charts showing numbers for the Montreal region. They're not complete (and, for those interested, they don't give very useful information about non-commercial stations like CBC), but for the commercial market, it gives a good perspective of what's going on.

CHOM, like CJFM and CJAD, is an Astral Media radio station, though the numbers come from BBM.

The chart above shows adults 18-49, a key demographic for advertisers. You can see that CHOM has dropped from second to third, and now sits behind Corus's CFQR in the ratings (this will be a common theme in the numbers below). In the slightly older 25-54 bracket, it's the same story, although there CFQR, CHOM and CJAD are neck-and-neck-and-neck with 21% market share each. CJFM holds a commanding lead with 33%.

CHOM is still #1 among men 25-54, but CJFM has virtually eliminated its lead over the past six months, and sits at an uncomfortably close second. Among women 25-54, it's fourth, and the only station among the big four to lose listeners in the last ratings period.

In the mornings, we see that CHOM has dropped from being a close third to fourth, behind CFQR. While the other stations are gaining listeners or stable, CHOM is clearly losing listeners in large numbers.

This is significant because Ted Bird left at the beginning of January, and Chantal Desjardins came on at the same time. So two thirds of that blue bar represent the new morning team.

It's not just the mornings. For every time block Astral's report included (all of them for age 25-54), CHOM has lost listeners, and in most cases has dropped below CFQR in the ratings game:

• Late mornings: CHOM has dropped from second to third, behind CJFM and now CFQR.
• Lunch hour: CHOM has dropped from second to third, behind CJFM and now CFQR. CJFM now has almost twice as many listeners as CHOM during this time slot.
• Early afternoons: CHOM has dropped from second to third, behind CJFM and now CFQR.
• Drive home: While still holding on to second place, it has lost a lot of ground to leader CJFM, which is the only anglo commercial station to show marked improvement.
• Weekends: CHOM has dropped from third to fourth, behind CJFM, CJAD and now CFQR, losing 20% of its listeners) in only three months.

CHOM program director Daniel Tremblay didn't respond to a request for comment about what this might mean for the future of programming on the station.

Related Posts

• Terry DiMonte’s first day at CHOM … again
• CHOM’s new schedule adds Terry DiMonte, Heather Backman in mornings
• Pete Marier leaves CHOM over contract dispute
• Radio ratings: A good fall for Cogeco and CKGM
• Claude Rajotte on CHOM? No, but …

From left: Chantal Desjardins, Pete Marier and PJ Stock, the morning crew at CHOM

There are a lot of people on the Internet who don't like PJ Stock. The former NHL player (who had twice as many penalty minutes as games played) has jumped into media in his retirement, as an analyst with Hockey Night in Canada and until recently a show host at the Team 990. He has been criticized for everything from being clueless about hockey to having a tenuous grasp of the rules of English grammar (not that I agree with these criticisms).

On Wednesday, two days after his contract expired at the Team 990, Stock officially joined the morning team at CHOM-FM, effectively replacing the departing Ted Bird.

It's odd that PJ is considered a full member of the team because he's only present half the time. The deal is he comes in from 7 to 9 Mondays to Thursdays (Desjardins and Marier do the full show from 5:30 to 9 Mondays to Fridays). And even when he's present, it's mostly Marier doing the talking. Desjardins reads the news and Stock reads sports (Abe Hefter is still reading sports news while Stock isn't present).

Aside from the peanut-gallery comments that are common throughout the show, Stock's actual talk time is about 10 minutes a day. This includes "Stock Options" (the latest bad pun on his name), a sports commentary segment at 7:20am. (Day 1, Stock criticized the Canadiens for being overhyped - hardly a unique idea. On Day 2, he criticized the media for not being more hostile to Tiger Woods's wife for allegedly attacking him with a golf club - something even Marier wasn't comfortable endorsing.)

Rather than try to summarize it all, I'll let you listen to compilations of his sports reports and banter from his first two days:

• PJ Stock Day 1 (MP3, 8:59)
• PJ Stock Day 2 (MP3, 6:30)

Day 2 includes his first major blooper, when he couldn't figure out how to turn on his microphone.

Stock the jock

It's clear from his first days on CHOM that Stock is the sports guy. If you don't like sports, and you don't like how much time is spent on the radio talking about sports and the Canadiens in particular (there are people who listen to CHOM who don't like sports, believe it or not), then you're not going to like PJ Stock.

Hell, even if you're a die-hard Canadiens fan, you might not like Stock. He calls it "Pete Marier's favourite team" and doesn't seem to share his city's blind support for the bleu-blanc-rouge.

Otherwise, Stock is comfortable on the radio. He's not awkward, he doesn't slur his speech or say "umm" a lot. He's not a radio professional by any means but he fits in well.

I don't know how long this weird schedule can last though. It's understandable that Stock wouldn't want to get up at 4am the morning after a Habs game, and that travel to and from Toronto might make him unavailable on Fridays, but this just highlights the fact that to Stock, Hockey Night in Canada comes first and his job at CHOM comes second.

I have a feeling that, eventually, he's going to have to choose between the two.

Related Posts

• CHOM drops PJ Stock, Merv Williams from morning show
• PJ Stock joins CHOM morning show
• Terry DiMonte’s first day at CHOM … again
• CHOM’s new schedule adds Terry DiMonte, Heather Backman in mornings
• Pete Marier leaves CHOM over contract dispute

November 2007 newspaper ad

This is part of an ad that appeared in The Gazette in November 2007, reassuring listeners after Standard Radio was purchased by Astral Media that their radio stations wouldn't suddenly change.

Since then:

• Two of these three stations have changed logos, making this ad all the more ironic
• All three have changed program directors (CJAD changed twice)
• CHOM has replaced its entire morning crew (at the time it was Terry, Ted and Kim)
• CJFM has replaced its entire branding with one that Astral purchased from England
• CJAD has fired a bunch of on-air staff

"Please be assured of our commitment to continue providing the same great listening pleasure you have come to enjoy," the ad said. "Respect for our broadcast audience and the public in general is a core value of Astral Media."

I'll leave it to you to judge, based on their subsequent actions, whether Astral Media stuck to their word.

Related Posts

• Radio ratings: A good fall for Cogeco and CKGM
• Astral’s Martin Spalding on Terry DiMonte, CHOM, CJAD and Virgin Radio
• No way to treat your listeners
• “Sir” Patrick Charles dumped from Virgin Radio Breakfast Show
• Terry DiMonte’s first day at CHOM … again

CHOM's new logo

That's CHOM's new logo.

No, seriously.

No, seriously.

They launched it this morning, to great fanfare:

With PJ Stock joining the morning show this week (it will be "Chantal, PJ and Bad Pete"), it made sense to do it now. CHOM had risked being the only Montreal music station not undergoing a bullshit renaissance over the past year (see Mix 96, Q92, Énergie).

They made a big deal of it on the morning show, though I can't figure out what other than the logo is changing. The tagline is still "The Spirit of Rock", and it sounds like the music is still going to be the same (Pete Marier made a vague reference to "nicely tempoed rock and roll"). The press release makes mention of "more music" (sound familiar?), but gives little details. It lists three bands: 30 Seconds to Mars, Cavo and Shinedown (three bands I've never heard of) as examples of music that will "now strengthen the core of music that CHOM listeners love", whatever that means. Listening to their music just now, I can't say that makes me terribly optimistic.

But, it also reassures loyal CHOM listeners that Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Pink Floyd and Metallica aren't going anywhere.

You can listen to their new audio branding here, which sounds pretty indistinguishable from their old branding if you ask me.

The logo

CHOM's old logos are everywhere, they're familiar, and they feel like the kinds of logos you'd find on a classic rock station:

CHOM's old bumper-sticker logo

With a 2002 redesign, it kept the red and black motif, even if it lost some of its charm. Still, it was clean and simple. Professional, even if a bit too corporate:

CHOM's most recent logo

This new monstrosity of a logo looks like it was cooked up by a 14-year-old in his basement using Adobe Illustrator. The black and orange seem to evoke a Harley Davidson-esque feel* (without being so similar that they'd get sued over it), but other than that there doesn't seem to be any reason behind it. Why orange? Why something that looks like an American highway sign? (Is it because Tom Cochrane's Life Is A Highway is going to be even more overplayed?) Why go overboard on the simulated gradients?

*UPDATE (Feb. 2): Apparently it's no coincidence. Their contest of the week involves giving out a Harley Davidson motorcycle.

Why is there nothing about this logo that makes me think of Montreal or rock music?

It's been compared to a U.S. hockey team's logo. I can't think of a worse insult.

If this is CHOM's "new baby", I'm just going to have to be brutally honest: It's a really ugly baby.

UPDATE (Feb. 11): Hour's Craig Silverman explains the new logo with comments from program director Daniel Tremblay (and quotes this blog post). Rue Frontenac also has a piece on CHOM's attempts to attract a younger audience.

Related Posts

• Terry DiMonte’s first day at CHOM … again
• CHOM’s new schedule adds Terry DiMonte, Heather Backman in mornings
• Pete Marier leaves CHOM over contract dispute
• Radio ratings: A good fall for Cogeco and CKGM
• Claude Rajotte on CHOM? No, but …

PJ Stock

James Mennie has the story for The Gazette that P.J. Stock, formerly of the Team 990 and best known as a Hockey Night in Canada analyst, is going to be a morning man at CHOM.

Kind of.

The first news about Stock going to CHOM came from Pat Hickey back in December, when Stock left The Team 990 because of what was apparently more work and travel than he could handle (he left his regular TV segment on the CBMT newscast for the same reason). Back then, the idea was to do a five-minute phone-in once a day.

But the departure of Ted Bird changed that. So instead, Stock tells Mennie, he'll be on for two hours a day (7am to 9am) Monday to Thursday.

The irony is that Bird was instrumental in getting Stock onto CHOM in the first place, convincing both sides that it was a good idea. Obviously, it wasn't supposed to be as a replacement.

Still, Bird was gracious in an email to me about Stock joining his former morning team:

To his credit, PJ called me this past weekend to make sure that I was through at CHOM and that he wasn't undermining me in any way.  He's a class act and a decent and funny guy, and he'll do well as long as they let him be himself and don't try to recreate him as something he's not, which is what programmers who've never sat in the chair and don't understand or appreciate the craft have a habit of doing.

The big question is what CHOM is going to do with Stock. Is he going to talk about hockey or music? I've heard a couple of people complain that CHOM already talks too much about the game, and this certainly won't change that. Will he join in the usual cliché morning show banter? Will it be "Chantal, Bad Pete and PJ"? Or will he be more of a supporting cast member and less of a star?

What is clear is that if Stock has two hours four mornings a week to sit in a studio on Fort St. while rock music is playing, then he would have had more than enough time for hockey analysis at CKGM 990 on Greene Ave. So it's not just a question of having too much work.

I couldn't reach Stock for comment, so you'll just have to fill in the blanks there with your imagination.

Mennie says Stock's first shift will be Feb. 1. Stock repeated that on the CHOM morning show the next day, but Pete Marier kept saying Feb. 2. Feb. 1, notably, is the day after Stock's contract at CKGM expires. UPDATE: Astral's press release, which I assume to be a definitive word on the subject, says Stock begins Feb. 3.

UPDATE: Listen to Stock's phone-in on Thursday's CHOM morning show (MP3). Stock will take over the CHOM "sports department", which sounds like it will still be Chantal and Bad Pete but that Stock will do the morning sports news currently being done by CJAD's Abe Hefter.

Related Posts

• Radio ratings: A good fall for Cogeco and CKGM
• CHOM drops PJ Stock, Merv Williams from morning show
• PJ’s first days at CHOM
• To Ted Bird: “You were perfect”
• Ted Bird quits CHOM over “creative and philosophical differences”

One of those emails struck him particularly hard, and he suggested I share it here:

Every morning, Mr. Bird, I wake up at 5:30 so I can catch the very start of CHOM’s Morning Show. I don’t think I’ve had a worse morning than I did yesterday. When I heard the announcement of your resignation, I was extremely saddened. I truly believe that you are the reason that I have been a loyal CHOM listener for so many years.

I read the article about you in the Gazette this morning, and I find it almost comical that you said that the station is targeting a more youthful audience and that you aren’t getting younger. Coming from this 19-year-old, I can tell you that to me you were perfect. I laughed heartily every morning on the way to work. Between telling the city about what you did on your summer vacation, or Revisionist History, I had a hell of a good time. But there have also been times where I have been quite touched by your broadcasts. I was lucky enough to meet the side of Ernie Butler that was not only the humorist, but the loving, doting father as well the genuinely kind man. After he passed away, I made a point to listen to what you had to say, and just to hear you speaking so fondly of him brought me to tears.

I actually met you once just over a year ago as I was working as a cashier at Chapters, and I said “Hi” and although I spoke to you for all of 90 seconds, you were so pleasant. There you were; out with your son for the day, and I had to interrupt with my star-struck awe. But you were really nice about it. It makes a radio listener’s experience much more enjoyable when the host is actually as awesome face-to-face as well as on the air. I have an insurmountable amount of respect for you.

SO, I guess there isn’t much left to say except “Good Luck!” I wish you all the best on your future endeavors. I listened to you throughout my childhood, adolescence, and I hope I can say my adult life as well. Unbeknownst to you, you have taught me so much. Your presence in this city as a radio host has had a substantial and eternal impact upon me. And for that I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

All the Best,

Catherine Londei

Bird's response:

Hi Catherine,

I don't know how many hundreds of e-mails I've received in the last two days, and as much as I've been touched by all of them, your's is the only one that made me cry. And as you know, there's no crying in radio, goddam it.

I remember very well the day I met you at Chapter's, and trust me - I was as gratified that you recognized me as you were that I made time for you, however briefly. On the celebrity food chain, local radio personality ranks somewhere between circus clown and fuzzy mascot (think about it - more people have heard of Youppi than have heard of me), and we get just enough public recognition that it's flattering without being intrusive. But no matter what the level of celebrity, it's a two way street and even the biggest stars in the world owe it to themselves and their fans to make sure that their connection with the audience is emotionally genuine.

In any event, thanks a pantload for bringing me to tears for the first time since Bucky F#*&ing Dent's home run helped the Yankees beat the Red Sox in a one-game playoff in 1978 - my first year in radio and 12 years before you were born. Way to bridge the generation gap.

All the best,

Ted Bird

Bird is busy writing individual responses to everyone who has written to him. He can be reached at tesburp@live.ca, and he's now also cracking jokes on Twitter, to reinforce the image that he now has no life.

Related Posts

• PJ Stock joins CHOM morning show
• Ted Bird quits CHOM over “creative and philosophical differences”
• Terry DiMonte’s first day at CHOM … again
• CHOM’s new schedule adds Terry DiMonte, Heather Backman in mornings
• Pete Marier leaves CHOM over contract dispute

Ted Bird, one of the veterans of Montreal radio, has flown the coop.

Ted Bird

The official word from CHOM, Pete Marier and the Bird Man himself is that Bird resigned from his morning show job.

I'd originally reported here that he had been fired. I'll swallow my pride and retract that. My sources were wrong, and I relied too much on unverified information in repeating them. My apologies to my readers and to CHOM.

Bird himself confirmed Wednesday that he resigned from the station "for personal and professional reasons":

Just for the record, I did in fact submit my resignation from CHOM for personal and professional reasons, which VP and general manager Martin Spalding graciously accepted.  I no longer have an e-mail account at the radio station but if I owe anyone money or they want their driveway shovelled, they can reach me on my home e-mail at tesburp@live.ca.

It would be fair to say that there were creative and philosophical differences that took a lot of the passion and joy out of the process, and I'm not going to get up at 3am to go to a job that's no fun anymore. CHOM is skewing younger and I'm getting older (51 this month) so it just didn't feel like it fit.

Bird welcomes comments at his email address above, which he has asked me to share with his listeners.

The story is getting coverage in The Gazette and at CTV. Both are being flooded with comments from people who support Bird and others who support him being taken off the air.

Bird gave an interesting quote to The Gazette about the state of the industry, something I've heard a lot from other radio veterans:

Radio stations used to be owned by families. They were creative people with a passion and instinct for the business. Now stations are run by corporations. They've taken the craft out of the hands of the craftsmen. I have to work with creative people - as a collaborator - not be dictated to.

Following the usual playbook of pretending like people never existed when they leave, Astral wasted no time scrubbing references to Bird from CHOM's website on Tuesday, even while ads showing Bird were still appearing. Bird's blog and CHOM email have been deleted or disabled.

The move (or at least the announcement of the move) comes the day after Chantal Desjardins joined the morning crew. Desjardins moved over from CJFM (Virgin Radio 96) to replace Kim Rossi, who left for a new job in St. Catharines, Ont. Desjardins and Bird didn't work a single show together as "Ted, Chantal and Bad Pete".

The CHOM morning show was also in the process of finding a new name, running a contest asking for suggestions from listeners. That contest has suspended entries, though they will draw the grand prize on Friday for anyone who entered before the contest was rendered moot. For now, the show is being referred to as "Chantal and Bad Pete".

On Wednesday morning's show, Marier started by stressing that Bird resigned suddenly on Jan. 1 (though few people knew about it until Tuesday). He said he doesn't know why Bird quit, but that it was for "personal reasons". (He also took a shot at those pesky online rumours that are full of "BS".)

Marier also said the station will be looking for a replacement for Bird, even suggesting that one would be in place by February.

That's not to say Marier was quick to move on. He devoted a perfectly respectable 17 minutes of the first three and a half hours of the show (it was extended an hour because of the unrelated fact that afternoon host Rob Kemp has just had a baby). Considering this is a music station that's lucky to get five minutes an hour to talk about stuff between music, commercials, news, traffic, sports and weather, that's not bad.

Marier repeatedly stressed that Bird had not been fired (I feel guilty enough to want to send him flowers), and that there was no personal conflict between the two, who have long been friends (apparently some people suggested that Marier had something to do with Bird's departure, which really makes no sense).

Listen to Pete Marier talk about Ted Bird on Wednesday morning's show (MP3, runs 16:52)

Bird first joined CHOM 21 years ago as a news announcer, moving from CJFM. In 1993 he and Terry DiMonte moved to CJFM to take over the Mix 96 morning show. DiMonte and Bird later reunited at CJAD and in 2002 retook the CHOM morning show in a bid to bring the station back to its roots (and ratings).

You can get a taste of Bird's history in this mini documentary about the morning show trio, back when it was Ted, Kim and Kemp:

Asked what he'll do next, Bird was his usual wisecracking self:

I have no immediate plans, although my 8 and 10 year old sons, Charlie and Sam, want the three of us to set up an Internet radio station, where Sam suggests that some of our regular features include him falling down in the snow and hitting Charlie in the nuts with an apple.

Bird's current and former colleagues said they were shocked by the news, which was given to employees in the late afternoon on Tuesday. Terry DiMonte, who teamed up with Bird for many years at three radio stations, called it a "sad day for Montreal radio."

Related Posts

• PJ Stock joins CHOM morning show
• To Ted Bird: “You were perfect”
• Terry DiMonte’s first day at CHOM … again
• CHOM’s new schedule adds Terry DiMonte, Heather Backman in mornings
• Pete Marier leaves CHOM over contract dispute

Chantal Desjardins and Mark Bergman put on their sad faces in announcing they're splitting up on Twitter

The game of musical chairs in local radio continues. Bob Harris, formerly the head honcho at Astral Media's Montreal radio stations, is moving to take a similar job in Hamilton. His wife, CHOM morning host Kim Rossi, joins him and gets a job in St. Catharines.

Two weeks ago, Astral announced that each station would have its own program director and promotion director. Mark Bergman will take over Harris's job at CJFM 95.9 (Virgin Radio 96).

Rossi's job will instead be filled by Chantal Desjardins, Bergman's afternoon cohost on CJFM.

Mike Cohen was the first with the news in The Suburban. Bergman and Desjardins made the announcement on Wednesday's show. Desjardins joins the CHOM morning team of Ted Bird and Pete Marier on Jan. 4.

Before then, hopefully someone will figure out how to change the name of the Mark & Chantal Facebook fan page.

From her bio:

Chantal received a Communications degree from the University of Winnipeg and a Creative Communications diploma from Red River College. She then got her big media break as a sports anchor/reporter at CityTV Winnipeg.

Chantal got her first taste of radio thanks to a number of guest appearances on Winnipeg’s Q94FM and BOBFM’s morning shows. Once Chantal realized she could wear jeans and a ponytail every day to work, it was only a matter of time before her big TV hair and spray tan days were behind her.

Chantal’s lived in Montreal since 2006, reporting on the Montreal sports scene for CJAD800AM and helping people get home every afternoon as a traffic reporter for Astral Media Montreal.

Meanwhile Rossi, whose last day on CHOM's morning show is this Friday, has a long post on her blog saying thanks to just about everyone she's ever met.

Related Posts

• Behind-the-scenes changes at Astral Media radio
• Radio ratings: A good fall for Cogeco and CKGM
• Terry DiMonte returns to CHOM Jan. 9
• Astral’s Martin Spalding on Terry DiMonte, CHOM, CJAD and Virgin Radio
• No way to treat your listeners

The skinny:

• Mike Bendixen, former CJAD programming director who took a temporary job doing the same at CFRB 1010 in Toronto, will remain there permanently.
• Steve Kowch, the man Bendixen replaced at CFRB (and who took Bendixen's job at CJAD in a rather ironic move), is out. His last day is Dec. 18. He had expected to be at CJAD until March. Now he can concentrate on writing a book, at least.
• Chris Bury takes over as PD/Interim News Director at CJAD on Jan. 4. Bury started at CJAD in 1998, but for most of this decade worked at 940 News. He became CINW's program director when it became 940 Hits.
• Mark Bergman becomes Interim Program Director of CJFM (Virgin Radio 96), replacing Bob Harris, who is leaving for Hamilton. Bergman is currently the assistant PD. Bergman will remain on his afternoon show with Chantal Desjardins.
• Mathew Wood, who managed promotions for all three stations, now focuses exclusively on CHOM.
• Melissa Mancuso, a promotions assistant, replaces Wood as Promotions Director at CJFM.
• Bianca Bayer becomes Promotions Coordinator for CJFM. (What's the difference between a Promotions Director and Promotions Coordinator? Beats me.)
• Lisa Fuoco becomes Promotions Director at CJAD, stripping "assistant" from her title.
• Peter McEntyre will assist Fuoco part-time. (McEntyre is also one of the hosts of CJAD's Irish Show)

VP/GM Martin Spalding explains the strategy, in case it's not obvious:

The strategy is to have a dedicated Program and Promotions Director for each station. This will enable CJAD, Virgin 96 and CHOM to compete independently, prosper and build strong brand identities within an aggressive and ever-evolving radio market.

Could it be that Astral Media is finally realizing that radio stations work better if they have their own brands and target audiences, and that the tag "an Astral Media radio station" doesn't impress anyone?

UPDATE (Dec. 10): The Suburban's Mike Cohen talks briefly with some of the figures in these changes.

Related Posts

• Radio ratings: A good fall for Cogeco and CKGM
• Astral’s Martin Spalding on Terry DiMonte, CHOM, CJAD and Virgin Radio
• Chantal Desjardins replaces Kim Rossi on CHOM morning show
• Respect? Pleasure? On Montreal radio?
• Big media mergers remind us of past mistakes