Barely a week after the CRTC officially approved the sale of the station to Torres Media (owner of Ottawa’s Dawg FM), CKOD-FM has relaunched with a new studio location, $75,000 of new equipment, and a new branding: Max 103.
As I explained in May, the Valleyfield station was in a pretty dire situation less than a year ago, unable to pay its rent or even keep the transmitter running. Torres Media came in with a lifeline and got it back up and running, getting the CRTC to approve a temporary management agreement while it deliberated on the official sale.
The purchase price was $250,000. Torres Media asked for an exemption to the CRTC’s tangible benefits policy, which normally places a 6% tax on the sale of radio stations, with that money going to Canadian content development funds or other similar initiatives. The commission denied that request, and so the new owner has to pay $24,076 in addition to $1,500 to make up for the previous owner’s failure to pay mandatory Canadian content funding contributions.
The relaunch happened yesterday, and Cogeco’s local community TV service sent a reporter to do a report on it:
The Journal Saint-François was also there.
Yves Trottier, who has been with the station for a couple of decades now, returns to the air as the morning man. He also has a 5% ownership stake in the station.
CKOD-FM’s 3kW signal at 103.1, which is unchanged in this ownership transition, allows it to cover the Suroît area, reaching from Hudson to Huntindgon and the Ontario border to Saint-Martine. Its coverage area also includes Île Perrot and Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue. People further east will have trouble hearing it due to interference from CHAA-FM 103.3.
The investment seems significant, and Torres Media seems serious about relaunching the station. They’ve promised to keep it local, and have apparently reached a deal with InfoSuroit.com to provide local and regional news.
Dès 17h30 lancement en direct de la nouvelle radio Max 103 installé à Valleyfield. Plusieurs artistes sur place… pic.twitter.com/W2tLR24f0y
— INFOSuroit.com (@INFOSuroit) December 1, 2015
I can’t find a website for the station The station’s website is pretty bare right now, and there’s no online stream. Hopefully that will come soon.
To come…
http://www.max103.com/
http://max103.com/ has been live for over a month already.
The station’s Facebook page has a little bit more–even though it may not have been updated since the launch…
https://www.facebook.com/Max-103-767038363422684
It’s good to see them pulling this back from the brink. I think that there is a lot of potential for success in that region of Quebec, it is turning not only into bedroom communities and rural, but also more commercial and industrial too. More people in the are, and more people staying their whole day inside the listening area is a damn good thing. The Max103 style at least looks modern, and they do look solidly focused on their market and are not trying to be a border station playing into the Montreal market.
Maybe I missed something in Acoustics 101 back when the subject was taught to undergraduate architects, but I’d imagine a studio which is fifty per cent glass is probably not the best choice. The short clips sounded very echoey.