For the past five years, one of the most common questions I’ve been asked by people in the local broadcasting industry is what’s going on with TTP Media, a group of local businessmen who won CRTC licences to launch three AM talk radio stations in the city and had promised to revolutionize the market with big investments in quality programming.
Unfortunately, for years now the answer has been “nothing that I know of.” And unfortunately that continues today.
Since getting the licence for 850 AM in 2013, the group’s only on-the-record activity has been asking for extensions and technical changes from the CRTC, each time indicating that the stations were mere months from launch.
But now there’s finally some news, even though it’s not clear what it means. In June, the authorization from the CRTC to launch a French sports-talk station at 850 AM expired. Because the decision approving the station was published in 2013, and the first extension given last year, a second request for a final one-year extension should have been a matter of formality.
But that request was never issued. So on June 19, when the deadline was reached, the authority to launch the station expired.
According to the CRTC, the frequency is now available for anyone else to apply for.
I chronicle my attempts to seek comments from the partners in Tietolman-Tétrault-Pancholy Media in this story published by Cartt.ca. Paul Tietolman, whose father Jack founded the station that used to be on 850 AM in Montreal, was the only one who would talk to me, but he wouldn’t answer questions about the group’s plans, wanting to defer to his partners and not act as a company spokesperson.
My attempts to talk to partners Nicolas Tétrault and Rajiv Pancholy failed. I started with an email to the addresses both have registered with the CRTC. But those emails bounced, because the domain name they use, ttpmedia.ca, has expired. That’s certainly a bad sign.
I called both of them and left messages. Weeks later, I called again. Tétrault answered, and I identified myself. That was followed by a pause, and then he hung up. I called back and was sent straight to voicemail. Someone answered the phone for Pancholy and took a message for me. Neither of them have gotten back to me.
History
Tietolman-Tétrault-Pancholy Media, officially 7954689 Canada Inc., was founded in 2011 when Cogeco applied to revive two AM transmitters in Kahnawake to start government-subsidized all-traffic stations serving the Montreal area. The three businessmen objected, and said they have their own proposals for radio stations using the two vacant clear channels (690 and 940 kHz). This led to a hearing at which Cogeco and TTP Media presented their proposals, as did Bell Media (which wanted to move TSN Radio to 690 from 990) and Evanov Radio (which wanted to launch an LGBT station and didn’t mind too much which frequency it was on).
From left: Paul Tietolman, Nicolas Tétrault and Rajiv Pancholy, partners in 7954689 Canada Inc., aka Tietolman-Tétrault-Pancholy Media
The TTP group is composed of three businessmen: Tietolman, who seems to be perpetually working on broadcasting-related projects that haven’t materialized yet; Tétrault, a former Montreal city councillor and candidate for the PQ and BQ whose day job is as a real estate agent (the company’s address is the same as his Royal Lepage office) and Pancholy, a wireless communications executive who’s now CEO of India-based OnMobile (I’m told this means he spends a lot of time commuting between Montreal and India).
A year earlier, Tietolman and Tétrault had attempted to give a counter-offer to Cogeco’s $80-million acquisition of Corus’s Quebec radio stations with an $81-million after-the-fact offer. Corus rejected this and the sale to Cogeco went through.
Though their business plan is based on a lot of wishful thinking, TTP Media succeeded in getting three licenses from the CRTC:
- 940 AM: French news-talk station, approved Nov. 21, 2011, with a (second) final deadline of Nov. 21, 2016
- 600 AM: English news-talk station, approved Nov. 9, 2012 with a final deadline of Nov. 9, 2016
- 850 AM: French sports-talk station, approved June 19, 2013 with a deadline of June 19, 2016
Each had a different transmitter site when approved (940 from the CJMS 1040 transmitter, 600 from the Cogeco Kahnawake site and 850 from a new site built in Île Perrot). But TTP Media eventually found a way to consolidate all three at the Kahnawake site, which they said they were buying from Cogeco.
The group, and Tietolman in particular, talked big about how the news-talk stations would revolutionize radio. Their application spoke of a “face-à-face” format where people of diverging political views would debate the issues of the day. There was talk of something called “radiovision”, offering some sort of multimedia component to counteract the unappealing AM-quality sound. And Tietolman promised other mysterious aspects of these stations, things he couldn’t discuss lest competitors steal their ideas, that would totally change the game.
If Tietolman sounds a bit like a used car salesman to you, then I’m glad I’m not the only one with that impression. He likes to flatter, make big promises and use a lot of hyperbole. He’s a nice, professional guy, but his ability to sell you on such little substance might be a cautionary tale.
Even though last November, when the 600 and 940 license authorizations were expiring, the group said it was a few months from launching and had purchased all the equipment at the Kahnawake transmission site, Cogeco Media president Richard Lachance tells me they are still at the discussion stage about that sale.
For the record, here’s the list of equipment at the Kahnawake site, which has been dormant since Info 690 and AM 940 went off the air in 2010:
Maybe there’s a strategy here
Tietolman didn’t seem too concerned by the group’s failure to apply for an extension for the 850 AM station.
It could be, though no one has confirmed this, that the decision was strategic. A French all-sports station made sense after 2011, when Cogeco flipped CKAC 730 from sports to traffic, moving Canadiens and Alouettes games to CHMP-FM 98.5. And Tietolman had said at the time that getting rights to live games wasn’t a necessity.
But last fall, CKLX-FM 91.9 switched formats to go sports-talk during the day. That makes the business case for a French AM sports-talk station much more perilous. Two sports-talk stations in the same language, neither of which has actual live sports, seems non-viable, especially when you consider 91.9’s ratings.
The 850 station wouldn’t be locked into sports-talk, and could adopt some other talk format, or even a music one. But music doesn’t work very well on AM, and if you’ve already got one talk radio station, why split your audience needlessly?
This is still speculation on my part. But the only other reason I can think for failure to apply for the extension is a catastrophic breakdown of operations at TTP Media. And considering the domain name expiry, Tietolman’s projects outside the partnership, Pancholy’s new job, the group’s failure to communicate and the fact that so little has happened in five years, I can’t discount that.
No one’s waiting to pounce
You might wonder why the CRTC doesn’t put its foot down and yank the licence authorizations. It may do that in November. But there’s so little demand for full-power AM radio stations in Montreal that there’s no pressure to vacate the frequencies. The clear-channel 940 might be useful for a station like CJAD 800 or CFMB 1280 or CHRF 980 or one of the smaller commercial or ethnic stations, but otherwise if TTP Media loses the frequencies they’ll probably still be vacant if they ever come around and re-apply. Both 600 and 850 kHz have been vacant since 2000, and other frequencies like 650 could also be used for high-power AM stations.
Dispersed team
The team of Tietolman-Tétrault-Pancholy at the CRTC hearing (there’s a smaller second row of people behind them, about 15 in total)
When it first went in front of the CRTC in 2011, TTP Media had an impressive lineup of people, including former radio managers and survey experts. Some were just hired for the purposes of the hearing, but others were ready to take over management of the new stations. Unfortunately none of them are on TTP Media’s payroll:
- Steve Kowch, former program director for CJAD, was tapped to run the English station. He’s still waiting, and in the meantime is a radio consultant in Toronto.
- Jim Connell, former 940 AM morning man and program director, gave up on the project and went to work for Global Montreal’s morning show for two years. He’s now a freelance voice-over artist.
- Yves Guérard, the radio executive who headed CJMS, CKMF-FM and CKLX-FM when it was under the Couleur Jazz banner, was to run the French AM station. Guérard died of cancer last week.
People keep asking me if these stations will ever get on the air. The truth is I don’t know. At this point they have three months before they lose the 600 authorization, and they’ll lose the 940 one two weeks after that, unless the CRTC grants yet another extension and loses all credibility when it says these extensions are “final”. It’s possible to launch a station in that time, but every day closer to that deadline makes it less likely that they’ll pull it off.
If the project does die in November, that will be bad news for all the laid-off radio personalities and graduating students who were hoping for jobs, for the listeners who were hoping for new competition to force an increase in quality, and for me, who wouldn’t mind having another group to report on that isn’t named Bell or Cogeco.
nothing wrong with am sound quality if it’s either hd or analog am stereo. otherwise, unlike the u.s.a, canada will always be the follower rather than the leader. sad but true.
I don’t think I would agree that AM stereo is anywhere near the kind of quality of FM. As for HD Radio, it’s good quality, but the number of receivers is still low.
Why would anyone open an English language radio station when the audience is small and getting smaller every year? There are simply not enough advertisers to make this profitable.
Quality radio in this city is effectively a dead horse. Why bother?
As always, very informative and devoid of blatant butt licking, like some other Montreal writers I know all too well.
Rats!
Steven… the great this about your blog is you typically get and deliver the real facts – although in this case TTP makes it almost impossible to get any real info.
My $50 bet still stands… no way these guys are ever going to get another AM station on the air in this city.
I think they originally wanted to, but their other business interests probably (regardless of what they are) would generate a higher ROI than an AM station in this market.
This sucks… I’ve been itching to have a new English station that isn’t run by Bell Canada. I’m really tired of having to listen to the endless, stale, repetitive ads for Bell Canada’s Fibe TV and cellular services EACH & EVERY COMMERCIAL BREAK on AM800 and AM690. I now instantly turn off the radio whenever I hear and ad for a Bell Canada product… enough already.
Its completely ruined my listener experience.
That looks like enough equipment to test the transmitters at least. The fact that Tetrault hung up on you when you phone him doesn’t look good, especially for him. I think you’ve been more than fair in your coverage. If they’re still in the negotiation stage for the transmitter site, I think you can call this project dead. I can’t see why Cogeco would even want to hang on to a site they’re not using.
I suspect next spring we may see that site dismantled and returned to nature.
I guess one should not be surprised by the letting go fo the 850 station with he other games in town and no broadcast rights to any of the teams..
So does this mean we’re still stuck for some more time to come with the CJAD 800 monopoly and their continued complacency ?
Has anyone noticed since te mass Bell firings that they have lot of rookies and virtual newbies either as newsreaders of reporters on the road..? That’s proof of a monopoly !
No more scoops or exclusives being broken like the days of Claude Beaulieu…Sad!
The lack of surprise here is tangible. The TTP “group” appears to have given up on everything, at least in any way that actually leads to something on the air.
Starting ONE station is a big deal. Starting 3, well… clearly more than this group could handle. One partner has been mostly out of the country for more than 2 years, and one partner is busy selling real estate. The third partner (who brought some experience and credibility to the project) sounds like he hasn’t been in the same room as the other two since the last time they all sat in front of the CRTC.
The idea of a french, all sports, without any actual sports teams programming radio station is a pretty narrow market. 91.9 has proven fairly conclusively that there is a market there, but probably not big enough to justify even one station, let alone two. It wasn’t a super strong business case if they were the only french sports talk station, and it’s an abysmal failure of a business case if they are second into a tiny market.
The biggest disappointment for me is the (seeming) loss of an english language competitor for CJAD. The strength and listenership of CJAD clearly suggests that there is a case to be made for a competing station, as does the concept that so many people voice: They hate Bell. A station with some familiar voices and some new ones, with programming on par or better than ‘AD would like resonate much better than the past attempts with AM940.
With Bell going into “shrink to maximize profit” mode, the door opens even wider to snatch experienced radio voices and to really make an impact. Sadly, I don’t think TTP is the group to do it.
So play taps for it all, as you are likely to be writing the same story again later this year as they other applications expire with nothing more than a shuffling of paper and a sigh from the TTP people.
OK, I’m gonna stop holding my breath soon.
Not just that but people in the control rooms. Lots of audio issues of late at CFCF during the newscasts.
Please do not get me started on this., Since they moved the CTV Montreal (no longer CFCF) actual control to Toronto, there have been people with incorrect names applied to the videos, uncountable glitches, etc. It is just typical Bell crap… this is what happens when you have a monopoly. I remember back in the late 60’s when Bell was offering IMTS (telephones in cars) and there could be 13 conversations at the same time in Canada. Their people were IMPOSSIBLE to talk to. The attitude has carried down over the decades. And each time I dropped a service, they would get back to me in a month or so to beg me to come back. All my bell services used to cost me over $5k per year. Now… $300. Even the changes at CJAD are apparent… not in the on-air people, but the slip-ups in production. Oh well… thats Bell for you. Sorry for hijacking the topic, but I am very sad that TTP will not get into the game. I really would like an alternative.
Some of the people involved are very charming and lovely to talk with but for all their great idea’s.nothing ever gets off the ground..it was a dream from the start,i was just surprised at how many thought it could fly!!
CJAD is an ok station. With the new English station not launching by the way it seems to be heading. I will keep listening to CBC Radio one 88.5FM unless the new station does in fact launch.
Will it be a second opportunity for Cogeco’s Traffic Radio with millions from the Liberals?
Cogeco already has a traffic radio station in French. As for English, it’s unlikely. Cogeco abandoned the English station idea, in part because it thought it would be difficult to add another radio station in Montreal when they already own five.
The Wikipedia pages for the other 2 stations now redirect to the former CINW page. Should we take this as a sign that the other 2 are now unofficially dead?
No.
I know it’s kind of a ridiculous question, since Wikipedia can be questionable at times, but we’re really come up on crunch time. Are they being more co-operative with you when you contact them for updates? I think if we don’t see any testing or news by the 15th of September, it’s going to be very difficult to launch on time. I know the transmitter sites are in tact (based on the list of equipment you posted) so it could just be a matter of turning them on and off to make sure they still work.
No.
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