The old Hits FM logo

Remember Hits FM? It was a cross-border station in New York State at 94.7 FM that made no secret about targeting Montreal, even having a sales office in the city and choosing WYUL as its callsign. Its signal wasn’t as strong or Virgin or The Beat or CKOI, but it was unencumbered by CRTC regulations that included a quota on Canadian music, another for French-language music on French stations, and a limit on the number of hit songs on English-language stations.

But it shut down in 2021, the station’s licence sold to a religious broadcaster who turned it into K-LOVE 94.7.

Not included in that sale was Hits FM’s Facebook page, which went dormant (except for a single repost of some viral joke image) until November 2025, when it began actively posting again. No announcement, just a bunch of reshares of viral content, the kind you’d see on any radio station’s social media trying to build cheap engagement.

Just after the new year, the page announced (in a since-unpublished post) that Hits FM was back as an online radio station, kicking off with 10,000 commercial-free songs and announcements about DJs and other details to follow.

A new logo for Hits FM (via hitsfmradio.com)

It linked to a new website, hitsfmradio.com, which for now is just a playlist of songs, a live streamer, and links to download apps.

At first I thought this might have been someone’s attempt to take advantage of an abandoned brand. But the use of the existing Facebook page seemed to suggest some official link to the old station.

So I asked Tim Martz, CEO of Martz Communications Group, which owned Hits FM until it was sold in 2021, about the new station.

“Oops, that release was premature,” he told me in an email. “We’re working on possibly launching this to the public, but have not made a decision on how it would work and who would be involved.”

The Facebook post disappeared after that message, but the page is still posting reshared content.

Could it work?

The internet has plenty of online radio stations, and a handful of those specifically target Montreal. But those tend to be one-person mostly automated operations with no connection to traditional broadcasters.

If Martz wants to make a serious go at online radio, with live DJs, news and traffic reports, etc., he might be able to find enough of a niche audience like 94.7 Hits FM did, maybe with a smaller staff. But even with the advanced technology of today, it’s still a lot easier for people in cars to scan the FM band for stations than to try to connect to an online station.