The Alouettes are changing radio stations after a decade and a half with Cogeco’s 98.5 FM.
It’s not a huge shocker, but what’s surprising is that they’re not going to Montreal’s French-language all-sports station, BPM Sports 91.9, but have instead signed a deal with CJPX-FM 99.5, owned by Leclerc Communication (which also owns WKND 91.9 and BLVD 102.1 in Quebec City, both music stations).
It’s effective immediately, and 99.5 will broadcast all the Alouettes games starting with next Friday’s preseason opener. They haven’t announced who will be doing play-by-play or analysis. UPDATE (May 19): Jean St-Onge, who did play-by-play at 98.5, will continue to do so for 99.5. Former Alouettes offensive lineman and coach Luc Brodeur-Jourdain will do analysis, replacing former Redblacks defensive back Jean-Philippe Bolduc.
The deal doesn’t affect English radio rights, which are held by Bell’s TSN 690, or television rights, held by TSN and RDS.
The 99.5 station, which doesn’t have any branding besides its frequency, is a de facto rebroadcaster of Quebecor’s QUB Radio during the day (a loophole to get around CRTC ownership limits), and broadcasts mostly music during evenings and weekends. The fact that Quebecor is owned by Pierre Karl Péladeau, who also owns the Alouettes, has been noted by some people online. Did existing relationships grease a deal here, or will Quebecor produce Alouettes broadcasts or something? We’ll see.
One quirk of this deal means Montreal’s three main sports teams are on three different French language radio stations — or, well, they would be if BPM Sports hadn’t stopped broadcasting CF Montréal games. But at least it means Alouettes games won’t be online-only in French when they conflict with Habs games.
This isn’t the first time a sports team has gone with an odd choice for broadcasting rights. The Alouettes had previously been on NRJ/Énergie before going to CKAC Sports 730, and recently the Laval Rocket chose the online-only media outlet Sick Media for radio broadcast rights.
Anyway, now the station has to establish a sports department, or at least find a way to produce home and away Alouettes games. And there’s a week left to do it.
The reach of that station ( it’s broadcasting antenna) is fairly limited and, as far as I remember, BPM’s reach is even worst. That doesn’t seem like a very good decision in terms of “selling” the Alouettes to as many quebecers as possible and I’m not even talking about the very limited financial possibilities…
At the link below, you can see CJPX-FM 99.5’s reach.
It covers the metro Montreal market very well.
https://fccdata.org/?lang=en&canfm=CJPX-FM
Those living outside this area will have to stream the station.
Do it mean the tv broadcast will be on qub’s tv station and not on TVA Sports? The tv station is a simulcast of the radio station.
No. RDS holds the French-language TV rights to the CFL, so they would not be allowed to broadcast video. And the radio rights are held by 99.5, not QUB, so it’s not clear if QUB would even rebroadcast the audio — that would be up to 99.5 and QUB to see if they want to make that deal.
The station doesn’t have to establish anything. Like the QUB deal, the content will likely be produced by Quebecor ‘s sports staff and potentially will even be under the QUB name… you never know. The nature of the deal could be nothing more than more purchased air time. So I don’t think anything really changes here, just more of the same.
A week to come up with a game plan for broadcasting the Alouettes’ games! No pressure, eh. It would make for better publicity if they had a play by play and colour commentator there when they made this announcement. Lucky there’s a few pre-season games to warm up and make mistakes.