Quebecor’s QUB Radio can stay on FM radio in Montreal.

On Friday, the CRTC finally issued a ruling on a joint complaint from Cogeco and Bell Media against an arrangement whereby CJPX-FM 99.5, the Montreal station that once broadcast classical music, then tried a pop music format, now outsources its programming for 12 hours a day weekdays to Quebecor’s QUB Radio.

In the ruling, the CRTC finds that the station, owned by Quebec City-based Leclerc Communication, does not give Quebecor de facto control over the station and does not violate a cross-media ownership policy. And so it can continue.

Cogeco, which went so far as to begin court proceedings to force the CRTC to rule on its complaint, arguing the commission was taking too long, wasn’t happy about the final ruling, even issuing a press release denouncing it.

But as I said a year ago, this ruling should have been expected, because the letter of the law, if maybe not the spirit, is being respected.

The reasoning

The big argument from Cogeco, which owns talk station 98.5 FM and so becomes 99.5/QUB’s main commercial competitor, is that this is an end-run around the CRTC’s cross-media ownership policy, which says that a person or organization cannot have de facto control over a newspaper, a TV station and a radio station in the same market. Since Quebecor owns the Journal de Montréal and TVA, it already has two of the three, and that is what is keeping Quebecor out of the radio industry.

Leclerc’s counter-argument was that it, not Quebecor, controls the radio station and this is merely a programming supply agreement. The CRTC, based on the various criteria it established, agreed with that conclusion and found Leclerc was still in de facto control of the station and its agreement with Quebecor did not require it to air QUB Radio programming if it didn’t want to.

Since the CRTC found Leclerc still ran the station, it also found there was no violation of a rule requiring commission approval before transferring control of a licensed station.

I should also note one of Leclerc/Quebecor’s counter-arguments in this case concerns CHLX-FM in Gatineau, which is owned by RNC Media but broadcasts a large amount of its content from Cogeco’s Rythme FM network. Cogeco countered that CHLX-FM has more local programming during those network hours than CJPX-FM does and that things are different for music stations, but those arguments seemed pretty weak to me.

Other arguments against the QUB Radio deal were also dismissed, including that CRTC approval was also required before switching from a music to a talk format. (Since 99.5 airs music for the rest of its schedule, it is still technically more than 50% music and so does not need to change its license.)

The precedent

But if the letter of the law was respected, was the spirit broken? Does this set a bad precedent, as Cogeco alleges?

The CRTC argued that the arrangement didn’t violate “either the letter or the purpose of the cross-media ownership policy,” mainly because of the station’s other programming. But it didn’t set any thresholds for how much of that other programming the station would need to have to pass that test. If the station went to 100% QUB Radio programming (once the CRTC decides that no special permission is required to switch between talk and music formats, which is something it’s considering), would that still be OK? It’s unclear.

What is clear is that Quebecor now has a de facto presence on radio (as well as an additional income stream for its QUB Radio service), and Cogeco isn’t happy. Whether they file an appeal with the court or just grumble about it, we’ll see.