Montreal’s crowded FM band is about to get a little bit more crowded.
On Tuesday, the CRTC approved a new low-power French-language community radio station serving the eastern St-Laurent borough and not much beyond that.
The 50-watt station at 90.7 MHz (between CKUT at 90.3 and Radio Ville-Marie at 91.3) is called La Voix de St-Lo, and already operates online. It’s run out of the Centre communautaire Bon Courage de Place Benoit.
Its signal would reach eastern St-Laurent and the Town of Mount Royal, but not much beyond that before being wiped out by CKUT or the Radio-Canada station in Ottawa.
As I explained in January when the application was published, the station’s proposed programming would be mainly one- and two-hour programs, 94% in French but a bit of English, Spanish and Arabic. Music would take up a large part of the programming, but the application says that it would have 42.7% spoken word content, including 75 minutes a week of news. It only proposes broadcasting 70 hours a week (10 hours a day) to start.
The station proposed a high amount of third-language programming, but the CRTC notes in its decision that Montreal has several ethnic radio stations, so it is limited to 15% of programming in a language other than English or French.
It has two years from today to get on the air (but can ask for an extension), and its licence is up in 2022.
Just what we need..another community radio station
That’s Interesting, I was thinking of doing something similar for my area of town which is pretty close to this one. What does one need in order to get a license for broadcasting in low power?
The CRTC has <http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/info_sht/b313.htm>guidance on how to get a licence. You’d need to hire an engineer to prepare a report and find an open frequency (which is difficult near urban centres), and then apply to the commission for a broadcasting licence, showing you have a business plan and enough resources to offer programming and keep and file proper records.