Category Archives: Radio

| Montreal, Radio, TV

2013 Montreal election night coverage plans: TV prime time stays untouched

Graphics that will be used on Global Montreal's News Final election special.

Graphics that will be used on Global Montreal’s News Final election results special.

When the polls close at 8pm on Sunday, Montrealers will be turning to their televisions to watch the results come in. And many will be disappointed.

Though there are municipal elections happening throughout Quebec, and Montreal’s election in particular has been getting a lot of attention, none of the broadcast television stations in Montreal is carrying election coverage before 10pm. Most are keeping the lucrative Sunday primetime schedule as is, and holding live election coverage until the late evening.

For the all-news networks, meanwhile, it will depend on your preferred language (just like with every other story, Montreal/Quebec news is national news in French but not in English). RDI and LCN will have election coverage starting at 6:30pm (presumably covering cities across Quebec, not just Montreal), while the three English networks have no election specials planned.

Here’s what’s going on for each network:

Local television

  • Radio-Canada: Tout le monde en parle until 10:18pm, followed by Le Téléjournal (presumably leading with election news), then simulcasting RDI’s election special starting at 10:42pm going until about 1am
  • TVA: Regular Sunday night primetime (a special Le Banquier with Céline Dion, On connaît la chanson), followed by TVA Nouvelles at 10pm, then a movie at 11pm
  • V: No live election coverage (the network only airs newscasts in the morning now)
  • Télé-Québec: No live election coverage (Télé-Québec stopped having live news long ago)
  • MAtv Montréal: No live election coverage
  • CBC Television: Local news as usual at 11pm, focused on election results, hosted by Thomas Daigle. Prime time (Battle of the Blades) is untouched. Results throughout the night online.
  • CTV Montreal: Regular late local news at 11:30pm, focused on election results. Five field reporters, plus political panel. Hosted by Paul Karwatsky and Caroline Van Vlaardingen. Prime time remains untouched, but results are promised during “extended news breaks”, with an on-screen crawl when the winner is named, says news director Jed Kahane. Results throughout the night online.
  • Global Montreal: News Final is extended from half an hour to an hour, starting at 11pm. It will also be streamed online. Jamie Orchard hosts, with live reports from Tim Sargeant (Pointe-Claire), Elysia Bryan-Baynes (Beaconsfield) and Billy Shields (CDN/NDG). “We’re also working with the best election graphics in the industry,” says station manager Karen Macdonald. Former city councillor Karim Boulos will be in studio as an analyst. Online, election results and a live blog will be posted as of 8pm. Like its Focus Montreal mini debates, Global plans to focus on demerged on-island suburbs in results and analysis.
  • City Montreal: No live election coverage

Cable TV

On cable, we can expect extensive coverage from the French networks, but not so much from the English networks:

  • RDI: Election special from 6:30pm to at least 1am. Hosted by Patrice Roy, with Véronique Darveau providing results and Carole Aoun following social media. Reporters are promised at the four Montreal party HQs, plus Laval, the South Shore, Quebec City, Gatineau, Trois-Rivières, Estrie, Saguenay, Abitibi and eastern Quebec. Analysts include former mayor Jean Doré, former Quebec municipal affairs minister Rémy Trudel, former Baie St-Paul mayor Jacinthe Simard, and former CBC Montreal anchor Dennis Trudeau.
  • LCN: Election special from 6:30pm to at least midnight. Hosted by Pierre Bruneau, with Jean Lapierre and Mario Dumont as analysts.
  • CBC News Network: Nothing special scheduled. It will run The National from 9 to 10pm as usual, presumably with news from Quebec. Otherwise the primetime schedule is documentaries on Julian Assange, Princess Diana and a chimpanzee.
  • CTV News Channel: No election special, but CTV News Weekend with Scott Laurie is expected to check in regularly with Montreal reporters covering the election here from 6 to 10pm. After 10, it’s the usual plan of simulcasting CTV National News for the first half of each hour.
  • Sun News Network: Schedule lists the usual repeats of opinion shows from earlier in the week. There normally isn’t live programming after 5pm on Sundays.

Radio

On radio, things are much better, with news talk stations carrying live election coverage after polls close:

  • CBC Radio One (88.5 FM): Live coverage as of 8pm, hosted by Mike Finnerty, with analyst Bernard St-Laurent and results from Joanne Bayly.
  • CJAD 800: Live coverage as of 8pm (end time will depend on results, but probably at least midnight), hosted by Aaron Rand and Tommy Schnurmacher. “We will have a full complement of newscasters and reporters scattered on and off-island. We will also be providing a live feed of the victory speech of the next Mayor of Montreal,” says program director Chris Bury.
  • ICI Radio-Canada Première (95.1 FM): Live coverage from 8pm to 11pm, hosted by Michel C. Auger, with journalists Frank Desoer, Jean-Sébastien Bernatchez, Benoit Chapdelaine, Francine Plourde, Dominic Brassard and Alexandre Touchette. Bernard Généreux, president of the Quebec Federation of Municipalities and mayor of Saint-Prime, will be an analyst. Coverage is promised from all regions of Quebec with Radio-Canada staff. Quebec City and Gatineau will have their own local election night specials from 8pm to 10pm, the rest of the network will carry Auger’s show.
  • CHMP 98.5 FM: Election special from 8pm to midnight hosted by Paul Houde. Panelists Marie Grégoire, Liza Frulla and Jean Fortier, guests Pierre Curzi, Jean Lapierre and Mario Dumont, and journalists Philippe Bonneville, Chantal Leblond, Catherine Brisson, Any Guillemette, Julie-Christine Gagnon and Geneviève Ruel. Other Cogeco Nouvelles stations will also have election specials from 8pm to midnight:
    • Jean-François Gilbert in Quebec City at 93.3 FM (starts at 8:30pm)
    • Martin Pelletier in Sherbooke at 107.7 FM (starts at 8:30pm)
    • Roch Cholette and Louis-Philippe Brûlé in Gatineau at 104.7 FM (8pm to 11:30pm or midnight, depending on results)
    • Claude Boucher in Trois-Rivières at 106.9 FM, which will also be presented on local community channels Cogeco TV and MaTV.

Online

And of course there’s online, where almost everyone is promising extensive coverage and live results.

I’ll be spending election night on the Gazette news desk, which has all reporting, editing and managing hands on deck, and will be feeding its website throughout the night.

Live blogs:

And, of course, you can just go to see the election results yourself.

The debates

The four main candidates for mayor were in what seemed like different debates every day, as just about everyone organize their own. If you missed them, here they are again (links to videos where I could find them):

In addition, Global Montreal held four short debates among mayoral candidates for demerged suburbs on the island on its weekly Focus Montreal show: Montreal West and Pointe-Claire on Oct. 19, and Beaconsfield and Hampstead on Oct. 26, and a debate among candidates for mayor of the Côte des Neiges/Notre Dame de Grâce borough on Nov. 2.

| Opinion, Radio

What happened to TTP Media?

From left: Paul Tietolman, Nicolas Tétrault and Rajiv Pancholy, partners in 7954689 Canada Inc., aka Tietolman-Tétrault-Pancholy Media

From left: Paul Tietolman, Nicolas Tétrault and Rajiv Pancholy, partners in 7954689 Canada Inc., aka Tietolman-Tétrault-Pancholy Media

Over the past few months, one of the questions I’ve been asked a lot is what is going on with the group known as TTP Media. The group, composed of businessmen Paul Tietolman, Nicolas Tétrault and Rajiv Pancholy, has licences for three AM radio stations in Montreal, none of which has launched yet. And none of them has said anything publicly for months.

Some of those inquiries have come from people looking for jobs at these new stations, which have promised to invest heavily in local programming and local news. Others have come from radio watchers excited about having something else to listen to. And some are from people who have a beef with CJAD and want to see competition as soon as possible.

Since May, I have been trying to get answers from all three of them. And it has been proving strangely difficult. Tietolman, who had previously been very talkative about the new station, without giving away any secrets, clammed up, asking me to speak with Pancholy, who is the managing partner.

Pancholy told me he didn’t have anything to say at the moment, but that I could expect an announcement in the next four to six weeks that would answer most of my questions.

That was May 23. Despite repeated phone calls, I haven’t spoken to Pancholy since. (That’s 20 weeks ago, in case you’re counting.)

Tétrault, for his part, has at least been getting back to me. “Our group is very much alive and hard at work,” he wrote me in an email on Aug. 20. “However, we do not want to announce anything till we are fully ready. I hope you understand. We will contact you when the time comes.”

On Oct. 3, in response to another request for information as the deadline to launch the first of those three stations approaches, Tétrault said “we do not like to talk about our plans” but that he’d make an exception to tell me this:

In the current business environment, it makes business sense to launch multiple radio stations as close to each other as possible. Consequently, we had requested that our implementation deadline be extended. The CRTC has recently responded favorably to our request.

We do not have any other comments at the moment.

Tietolman had told me something similar the last time I saw him in person, during the Bell/Astral CRTC merger hearings in May. The group wants to launch its English and French news-talk stations at the same time. (The three have gone back and forth on this plan a bit, first saying they would launch simultaneously, then saying they wouldn’t have to do that, and now saying they want to do that again.)

News of this extension will no doubt fuel more rumours out there about why this group has disappeared from the public radar.

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| Radio

Tasso leaves Mike FM

Paul (Tasso) Zakaib in the Mike FM studio

Paul (Tasso) Zakaib in the Mike FM studio

Two years after joining Mike FM (CKDG) as a big-name personality on its afternoon drive show, Paul Zakaib and his on-air alter-ego Tasso Patsikakis are once again looking for work.

“It was a good two-year run,” Zakaib told me on the phone. He described his departure as the end of an experiment that failed to meet the station’s hopes. Mike FM owner Marie Griffiths offered him a different job that he wasn’t crazy about, so he left. His last day was Sept. 30.

Griffiths didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. I’ll update this post if I hear from her.

James Foster, who was Zakaib’s producer and news anchor, has taken over the job of afternoon drive host.

Failed experiment

Zakaib isn’t bitter about the departure, but seemed resigned to the fact that things just wouldn’t work at the low-budget station. Its equipment is basic and outdated, and didn’t afford him the flexibility needed to produce a complex show filled with humorous skits. This was particularly true after co-host Patrick Charles left the station a year ago.

CKDG-FM and its sister station CKIN-FM are commercial ethnic stations operating out of a tiny studio space on Parc Ave. in Mile End. CKDG tries to make money for the station with English-language morning and afternoon drive shows. The hiring of Tasso and Patrick was supposed to spark a boost in audience and advertising. It now seems evident that that didn’t happen.

(CKDG-FM doesn’t subscribe to BBM’s ratings measurement system, so it’s impossible to know beyond anecdotal evidence whether the show did indeed have more listeners and if so how long that increased listenership lasted.)

What now?

So now Zakaib joins people like Ted Bird and Ric Peterson and Patrick Charles and Chantal Desjardins who are without jobs in radio despite being veteran broadcasters. And that’s not counting all of those who are underemployed or not being used to their full potential.

Zakaib told me he wants to go back to something he did a while ago: freelance, doing voice work for animation and commercials. As a man with many voices, it’s what he does best.

“I’m trying to get back into that field,” he said, lamenting how much has changed with technology since the good ol’ days.

What about an Aaron and Tasso reunion? Well, Zakaib called up Aaron Rand’s show on CJAD recently, just for fun. He said he might do so again, out of nostalgia.

If there’s any justice in the world, CJAD will free up a few dollars to get him to contribute to Rand’s show on a regular basis.

But nobody’s holding their breath waiting for that to happen.

| Radio

CJMS 1040 off air: Is this the end?

During the summer, when CJMS’s website went down and it experienced transmission problems, I was informed by its owner Alexandre Azoulay that it we should not be worried about its future and it would continue as normal.

Then last month the station was ordered by the CRTC to appear at a public hearing to respond to a series of serious licence compliance issues. And the station has been off the air for almost two weeks now. And nobody knows when it’s coming back.

(CJMS 1040 AM, no relation to the former AM station of the same call letters, is a 10kW/5kW country music and talk station based in St-Constant. It launched in 1999.)

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| Radio

Radio Moyen-Orient applies for FM retransmitter in St-Michel

Radio station CHOU 1450 AM, which airs programming in Arabic, French and other languages from the Middle East, has applied to the CRTC for permission to setup a low-power rebroadcasting transmitter on FM to help alleviate reception problems in the city’s northeast.

The transmitter would operate at 104.5 FM with a power of 50 watts, from an antenna on top of the Sami Fruits building on 19e Ave., near Pie-IX and Jarry.

The station’s primary transmitter is 2,000 watts from the St-Laurent industrial park. In its submission to the CRTC, the station says it has looked at other ways to improve its signal, including increasing power with a directional antenna, but that adding another antenna to its main transmitter site isn’t a practical solution.

Realistic pattern of the new CHOU retransmitter

Realistic pattern of the new CHOU retransmitter

Montreal doesn’t have much empty space on the FM dial, so trying to squeeze in another station, even a low-power one, is bound to cause some problems.

The biggest source of problems here would be CBME-FM-1, the retransmitter of CBC Radio One at 104.7 FM in the west end. Because they’re so close together, there would be interference between the two. Because the CBC transmitter is more powerful, that interference would be closer to where the CHOU retransmitter will be located. CHOU’s broadcasting engineer mapped out the interference pattern like this:

Red splotches mark places where CHOU may cause adjacent-channel interference with CBME-FM-1 at 104.7.

Red splotches mark places where CHOU may cause adjacent-channel interference with CBME-FM-1 at 104.7.

Normally, this kind of interference would kill an application in its tracks, unless the other station agreed to accept the interference. But CHOU argues that, because CBME-FM-1 is a retransmitter designed to cover Westmount, NDG, Côte-des-Neiges and Hampstead, where the main CBC transmitter at 88.5 was apparently experiencing reception problems, people in affected areas will be listening to the station at 88.5 anyway and won’t mind not hearing the retransmitter.

We’ll see if the CBC agrees with that logic.

The CRTC is accepting comments on the proposal until Oct. 31. Comments can be submitted through the CRTC’s website here. Note that all information submitted to the CRTC, including contact information, becomes part of the public record.

| Radio

Just For Laughs Radio launches on SiriusXM

Comedian DeAnne Smith is the voice of Just For Laughs Radio

Comedian DeAnne Smith is the voice of Just For Laughs Radio

Just For Laughs is expanding its media empire yet again. At noon on Thursday, it launches Just For Laughs Radio, a 24/7 channel on SiriusXM, complemented by a one-hour daily highlights show on the satellite service’s Raw Dog comedy channel.

For details, you can read this story, which appears in Thursday’s Gazette. Their press release is here.

Montreal comedian DeAnne Smith is the voice of the channel, which will be mainly recorded shows presented “jukebox” style, except during the festivals when it will also include some live programming. Since this channel is launching in the middle of JFL 42 in Toronto, that means we’ll see some of that right off the bat, with Raw Dog host Mark Seman doing some shows from Toronto, interviewing the comedians appearing there. The first week will also feature some content from the 2013 Just For Laughs festival in Montreal, namely the Andy Kindler State of the Industry address and the Colin Quinn keynote speech from the ComedyPro conference.

During festivals, like this one, JFL Radio will be continuously simulcast on Raw Dog.

JFL COO Bruce Hills tells me that the plan is to start slow and build up. They’ve never really done anything like this before.

To give you an idea what the channel is like, here’s the schedule for the simulcast that will air on both channels for the remainder of the Toronto festival.

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| Radio, TV

Weather/traffic shuffle at CBC Montreal

Sabrina Marandola, left, is leaving Thomas Daigle's weekend show to join Nancy Wood, right, on weeknights.

Sabrina Marandola, left, is leaving Thomas Daigle’s weekend show to join Nancy Wood, right, on weeknights.

The departure of Catherine Verdon-Diamond, who is now doing weather at Breakfast Television on City, has resulted in a shuffling of staff at CBC Montreal. Verdon-Diamond was the weather presenter on the 11pm newscast with Nancy Wood for only a few months before getting the City gig.

Taking her place, officially as of October, is Sabrina Marandola, who was doing the weekend weather with Thomas Daigle. Her job, in turn, is being taken by Jeremy Zafran, who was doing traffic for Homerun on CBC Radio One. He will continue doing that job Mondays to Wednesday’s.

On the other days, Homerun’s traffic desk will be run by Jennifer Allen. Allen has been doing traffic at CBC for a while, mainly on Daybreak.

| Radio

CJLO celebrates fifth anniversary with concert

Concordia’s radio station is actually celebrating two anniversaries this year: It was created 15 years ago through the merger of two closed-circuit radio stations on the university’s two campuses. And it marks the fifth anniversary of its broadcasting at 1690 AM.

CJLO birthday

So it’s organizing a concert on Oct. 25, featuring Wintersleep, Fucked Up and Cadence Weapon. You can buy tickets here.

The station is also organizing an open house on the afternoon of Nov. 8. “If you’ve always been curious to see where your favourite shows broadcast from, this is the afternoon to do so!”

And on Saturday it’s hosting a party to end its artist outreach program, which created EPs for local artists thanks to a grant from the Community Radio Fund of Canada.

On the air, the station has undergone programming changes that happen with the student renewal that happens every fall. You can see the whole schedule here.

CJLO recently had its licence renewed to 2019. It’s been making waves about technical changes to improve its coverage, possibly a low-power FM transmitter downtown, but nothing has been published yet.

| Montreal, Radio

Axe falls at Bell Media: TSN 690’s Ted Bird, CJAD’s Ric Peterson, Chantal Desjardins and Claude Beaulieu fired

Ric Peterson, who hosted early afternoons, is out at CJAD.

Ric Peterson, who hosted early afternoons, is out at CJAD.

A month after Chris Bury was named program director at TSN 690, in addition to the same role at CJAD, some veteran broadcasters are losing their jobs: Morning man Ted Bird has been fired from TSN 690, and mid-day hosts Ric Peterson and Suzanne Desautels have had their faces scrubbed from CJAD’s website.

My Gazette story on the changes is posted here.

“I wasn’t given a reason, only told that my services were being terminated. That’s all I can say for the record,” Bird writes me in an email. His Twitter account has disappeared as well, but he says he’ll be back “after the trolls finish their feeding frenzy.”

Desautels, who four years ago was let go from the Q92 morning show, sparking outrage from listeners, addressed her job change indirectly on Twitter Wednesday morning:

She then clarified:

She told me she will continue doing the weather for Andrew Carter’s morning show, and is taking over the Saturday morning travel show as well. That move means Sharman Yarnell is off that show and the station. “And this couldn’t have happened at a better time for me,” she tells me. “I am pursuing my travel writing career, as well as my new PR company A.C.E. (Arts, Culture & Entertainment) with Tracey Hill. This does not mean I won’t be back on radio, though!”

After a day of radio silence, Peterson posted this to his Facebook page on Thursday morning:

After more than 30 years of broadcasting in Montreal I thought my first day off the air would be one without much talking on my part. I was mistaken. I am very touched by the many phone calls and moved by the texts, emails, comments as well as the posts to my social pages. Your kind words are very much appreciated. It pleases me to know how many lives I’ve touched, thank you for listening. Some wise soul once said, “man maintains his balance, poise, and sense of security only as he is moving forward” I am looking forward to sharing my future adventures with you all.

Barry Morgan, who’s filling in for everyone these days, it seems, hosted the noon to 3pm show Wednesday on CJAD.

The cuts and changes also mean CJAD sports reporter Chantal Desjardins is out of a job. She made light of the news on Twitter and Facebook:

Bell confirmed with me this afternoon that CJAD reporter Claude Beaulieu has also been terminated. Spokesperson Olivier Racette wouldn’t confirm how many jobs have been cut.

I’ve also heard from multiple sources that assistant CJAD program director Teri-Lee Walters is gone. But because she’s not on-air staff, Bell did not confirm that name. An email sent to her at work prompted an automated response saying it had been forwarded to Bury.

Bury wasn’t allowed to comment directly about the changes. All comment from the employer was filtered through Racette. Here is what he wrote to me in an email:

We are consolidating our Montréal-based radio stations in one location at 1717 René-Lévesque [E.] this week to improve operating efficiencies. We have made reductions in a number of positions that would have become redundant as a result of the move.

Additionally, the move provided the opportunity to make some programming changes, which will see the departure of TSN Radio 690’s Ted Bird and CJAD 800’s Ric Peterson, Sharman Yarnell, Chantal Desjardins and Claude Beaulieu. They are all highly-respected figures in Montreal radio and we thank them for their contribution to the success of both TSN Radio 690 and CJAD.

TSN’s move from its Greene Ave. office to the one at the corner of Papineau Ave. housing the former Astral stations took place Thursday morning at 10am. Shaun Starr and Elliott Price were the last people to broadcast from 1310 Greene.

UPDATE (Sept. 12): Word has come out that TSN has cancelled The Franchise, the weekend morning show. Host Nick Murdocco says the show will continue, broadcast 8-10am weekends on MontrealHockeyTalk.com.

His co-host, Gary Whittaker, had this to say on Facebook:

Had a great 4 year run at TSN Radio working the weekend mornings, which has now officially come to an end. I want to thank everyone for their support since we started at CJLO. Definitely not over for The Franchise…sometimes you need to be pushed out of the nest in order to fly, and this is exactly what we plan on doing…taking off to bigger and better opportunities for us to make a full time career out of it.

Racette confirmed the news, saying “the TSN Radio 690 [weekend] morning show is headed in a new direction. Details will be announced at a later date.”

UPDATE (Sept. 30): Producer Sheldon Fried is also reportedly among those let go.

| Radio

CRTC threatens to pull licence of CJMS 1040

CJMS 1040, the country music AM station in Saint-Constant, is in trouble.

After repeated attempts to acquire logs and tapes from the station to evaluate it ahead of its licence renewal next year, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has ordered it to appear at a hearing in Gatineau on Nov. 5 to explain itself, and has threatened to impose sanctions, up to and including non-renewal or revocation of its licence.

A radio station broadcasting licence involves several requirements, among them that the station has to provide, on request, logger tapes (i.e. recordings of what was aired) and program logs (written lists of what was aired, including all musical selections) for a given date.

In a letter sent July 4, the CRTC says it has been trying since December to get the logs and tapes for a week in November. The CRTC planned to evaluate that week as a sample as it reviews the station’s licence, which expires on Aug. 31, 2014. It followed up its initial letter with a phone call two days later, then another phone call in January, then another in February and then an email in June. Even after the July 4 letter, CJMS has not handed over the tapes and logs.

This is a very serious problem. The logs and tapes are the only way the CRTC can evaluate what goes on the air. It can’t tell whether the station is meeting its Canadian content requirements, or its requirements for local programming, unless it can tell what was actually broadcast.

The CRTC judged the station in non-compliance with its licence, and has now requested the logs and tapes of the last week of May instead.

This isn’t the first time CJMS has been in trouble with the CRTC. In fact, the commission says this is the fourth consecutive licence term that CJMS has failed to comply with all aspects of its licence:

Non-compliance with a licence is bad enough, but repeated non-compliance, particularly over the same matters, causes the CRTC to take much more drastic action. It’s calling CJMS to the hearing to give any reasons why it shouldn’t issue a mandatory court order forcing it to comply with its licence.

But it could go even farther, it says: “Given the licensee’s history of non-compliance, the Commission may also consider recourse to the suspension or revocation of the licence, pursuant to sections 9 and 24 of the Broadcasting Act.”

The CRTC has gone this far before. The most famous case was in 2011, when it revoked the licence of CKLN-FM, the Toronto-based radio station at Ryerson University, whose administration and programming went right off the rails during a long management dispute. The frequency vacancy led to 22 applications to fill it, a race that was won by what is now Indie 88.

Four straight non-compliant licence terms is very bad, and revocation is definitely a possibility here. The key will be if the logs and tapes are submitted and what they show. If the station is otherwise compliant, and demonstrates serious measures to ensure compliance in the future, it might get away with a mandatory order or just another short-term renewal.

But everything in this station’s history (including problems I wrote about this summer) points to a radio station that is at best disorganized and at worst incapable of managing the basic regulatory requirements asked of all licensed broadcasters.

The CRTC is accepting comment about CJMS’s licence issues, but requests that those comments relate only to the specific non-compliance that is being investigated here. Comments can be filed through the online form here until Sept. 27. Choose option 1 then check the box next to “2013-1228-0: 3553230 Canada Inc.”

| Radio, TV

Wayne Bews appointed Retail Sales Manager at CTV Montreal

Wayne Bews

Wayne Bews

Wayne Bews, whose job as general manager of TSN Radio 690 was made redundant when Bell Media acquired Astral Media and CJAD’s Chris Bury was made its program director, will stay with the company.

CTV Montreal’s general manager Louis Douville confirmed that he has named Bews the station’s retail sales manager. Bews begins on Monday.

After the departure of Tony Ecclissi last month, Douville said he decided to split the position of general sales manager into retail (local) and national sales. Martin Poirier, a senior account executive for more than a decade, takes over the national sales job.

“Wayne is a very well respected person in our market, he has close relationships with many of our clients,” Douville said of his new hire, noting that he has 15 years of sales management experience.

Mike Cohen, who first reported the news, quoted Bews as describing his new job as a “very exciting new challenge.”

UPDATE (Oct. 2): Cohen follows up with an interview with Bews.

| Radio

The Beat adds Carson Daly show

Daly Download with Carson Daly

In what it described as an addition to its “already amazing weekend lineup,” 92.5 The Beat has added Carson Daly, whose Daly Download top 30 show will air Saturdays from 9am to noon.

The show, which launched in July, airs on dozens of CBS and Cumulus radio stations in the U.S., but this appears to be its first Canadian pickup. It’s distributed here by Spark Networks, comes in three-hour and four-hour versions, and contemporary hit radio and hot adult contemporary formats.

On The Beat, the show mainly replaces All Access Weekends with Anne-Marie Withenshaw, which had a long run on the station from 10am to noon on Saturdays. Withenshaw just had her first child and is taking maternity leave. So I asked The Beat’s program director Leo Da Estrela what will happen when she’s ready to come back.

“Anne-Marie is definitely part of the weekend line-up when she returns form her maternity leave,” he said. “Without saying too much about our future scheduling, Carson Daly and Anne-Marie will be an integral part of our weekend line-up.”

The rest of The Beat’s schedule remains local, even overnights. Daly’s show follows Weekend Breakfast with Ken Connors and leads into Feel Good Weekends with Nat Lauzon.

Here’s the press release:

Montreal, August 30, 2013 – Carson Daly, host of NBC’s “The Voice” has a new weekly countdown show called “The Daly Download with Carson Daly – This Week’s Top 30”.

THE BEAT WELCOMES CARSON DALY TO ITS ALREADY AMAZING WEEKEND LINEUP

The Daly Show will be part of The Beat’s Saturday schedule, premiering August 31 from 9 a.m. until Noon. The show features three hours of great music, and exclusive interviews with the biggest and brightest names in music. The show brings a new twist to radio by taking listener interactivity to another level. With the biggest hits and the biggest stars while showcasing one the most influential music personalities, Carson Daly’s “The Daly Countdown” is now part of your “Feel Good Weekends” on 92.5 The Beat of Montreal.

| Radio

Radio X Montreal tries again to rid itself of jazz

CHOI 91.9Only a few months after the CRTC denied a request from RNC Media to change the licence of CKLX-FM 91.9 so it could go from Planète Jazz to Radio X, the company is trying again.

On Wednesday, the commission published the station’s renewal application, and set a hearing for Nov. 5 in Gatineau to discuss it.

CKLX-FM, which launched in 2004, is licensed as a specialty music station, and one of the requirements is that 70% of the music it airs must be in the jazz/blues category. When it launched, it was thought that because Montreal has a successful jazz festival every year, there would be a market for a jazz radio station. As it turned out, the ratings were very poor, and the station continuously lost money. (It wasn’t the only one. Other commercial jazz stations in Canada also changed formats after deciding it wasn’t working.)

It changed formats a year ago, going from all-jazz to a talk format during the day on weekdays, rock music on weekend afternoons, and jazz otherwise. The new format met the letter of the licence, if not its spirit. But RNC wanted to rid the station of jazz completely, and for that they need a change of the licence.

As it did last time, the application is to modify the licence so that instead of a specialty music station focused on jazz/blues, it becomes a specialty talk station, with a minimum of 50% talk during the broadcast week.

The CRTC doesn’t deny that the station is struggling financially enough to warrant a licence change. But it cited other reasons why the request should not be granted. The new application (which was first filed before the decision denying the licence change was issued) attempts to address those concerns:

Potential harm to new competitor: The CRTC took note that TTP Media has a licence to launch a news-talk radio station in French at 940 AM, and said that having a new competitor right off the bat might cause them harm. TTP Media opposed RNC’s request to change the station’s licence the first time around. RNC counters this time by saying that the AM and FM audiences are different (it suggests 940 AM would target an older audience because its programming would include call-in shows), but also that the licence change would affect hours after 7pm weekdays when Radio X currently airs jazz music, and that those hours represent a small portion of listening hours to talk radio stations.

The possibility of a new specialty musical format: RNC shot down the idea that CKLX-FM try a different musical specialty format, in part because it felt its experience was in the talk format that makes CHOI-FM a top station in Quebec city, and in part because it feels the other music stations in Montreal have a huge competitive advantage because they are owned by the same two companies (Astral, now Bell, and Cogeco).

Non-compliance with licence obligations: The CRTC doesn’t like to reward broadcasters who aren’t in compliance with their licences by approving changes to those licences. It prefers that broadcasters come into compliance, and then present a case for a licence amendment. In this case, the CRTC found that RNC was classifying hit songs as jazz/blues songs, and that with proper classification, the station wasn’t in compliance with the minimum level of jazz/blues songs, and with another standard condition that 65% of popular music that airs on French stations be French songs.

RNC responds to this mainly by disagreeing with the way the commission proceeded. It said the CRTC rejected songs that aired on the station as being in that category because they were hit songs, but there’s no rule that says songs that reach positions on sales charts are ineligible for inclusion in that category. One document attached to the application even goes so far as to define “jazz” and “blues” by copying the introduction to their Wikipedia articles, then justify why it believes the songs are actually jazz/blues. They include these:

  • 1,2,3,4 by Feist
  • Waiting on the World to Change and Gravity by John Mayer
  • Don’t Worry Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin
  • Proud Mary by Ike and Tina Turner
  • Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell
  • Purple Rain by Prince
  • Oye como va by Carlos Santana
  • Rehab by Amy Winehouse
  • Roxanne by The Police
  • You Can Call Me Al by Paul Simon
  • These Eyes by The Guess Who

Justifications include their artists’ profiles on allmusic.com, and participation in the Montreal International Jazz Festival.

Nevertheless, it said it has removed these songs from its playlist.

And $350,000 to sweeten the pot

As part of its request, RNC has said it would commit to adding $350,000 over seven years (but only starting in the fourth) to its Canadian content development contributions, with $200,000 going to journalism/broadcasting scholarships, and $150,000 to Fondation NewRock.

According to financial projections it filed, if the application is approved its advertising revenue would go up from $1.4 million in the first year to $7.9 million in Year 7, its expenses would go up from $3.5 million to $5 million a year (including the proposed additional contributions), and it would make money starting in Year 4. Without the licence change, it would lose between $1.1 million and $1.5 million every year of its licence and the company would have to consider shutting it down.

While normally that would be a bad thing, here the CRTC has to consider that Montreal does not have available FM frequencies, and opening up one that allows for a 4.6kW transmitter on Mount Royal might mean a lot of great ideas for new radio stations.

But as much as some people don’t like the Radio X format, RNC is an independent in this market, and talk radio is an expensive format that the commission usually encourages. I suspect that here, finally, RNC will get its wish, and we’ll be rid of jazz music for good.

The CRTC is accepting public comment on the proposed licence change, and on the overall renewal of the licence of CKLX-FM in Montreal, until Sept. 27. You can file comments here, by selecting Option 1 and then Application 2013-0237-2: RNC MEDIA Inc. Note that all information submitted, including contact information, goes on the public record.

| Radio

CFRA upgrades transmitter, improving signal toward Montreal

Comparative map of existing (red) and proposed (black) night contours of CFRA Ottawa.

Comparative map of existing (red) and proposed (black) night contours of CFRA Ottawa.

You might remember back in September, I told you about Ottawa’s CFRA 580AM, which had received CRTC approval for a nighttime transmitter power boost that would improve its overnight signal toward Montreal.

In short, CFRA convinced the commission that a power increase would help it with reaching Ottawa’s growing suburbs. And because there aren’t other stations on the same frequency, it’s not harming anyone to do so.

That transmitter upgrade is currently in progress. The station has been sending updates via Facebook and Twitter because the process involves turning off the transmitter at certain points overnight. It said the disruptions could last until the end of this week.

| Radio

The Beat hires Kim Sullivan for evening show

Kim Sullivan on The Beat

The Beat has grabbed yet another personality from Virgin Radio. Although this one had a few in-between steps first.

Kim Sullivan, who was part of CJFM when it rebranded to Virgin Radio in 2009, took a job nine months later at CHIQ-FM in Winnipeg (then Curve 94.3, now Fab 94.3), then went to Ottawa’s CJOT-FM (Boom 99.7) in 2010. She also hosted a show on Rogers TV in Ottawa. Since moving away she’s made no attempt to hide her love for her home town and openly mused about coming back here someday.

Now she gets her chance. The Beat announced the hiring Monday morning, and her first show (called the Sulli Show) is Monday evening. She takes over the Monday to Thursday 8pm to midnight slot formerly occupied by Paul Hayes before he moved back to the U.K., and then Jeremy White after that.

White is back on overnights with Thom Drew. “Jeremy was there for the summer so that we can give him some prime-time exposure,” The Beat’s program director Leo Da Estrela tells me. “At a tender age of 19 we’re going to continue to give him full-time mic-time overnights and allow him to continue to gain experience in the various duties of an announcer. You’ll be hearing him all over the programming schedule this fall.”

Here’s the press release:

KIM SULLIVAN JOINS 92.5 THE BEAT Monday to Thursday 8pm to midnight

Montreal, August 26, 2013 – 92.5 The Beat’s Program Director Leo Da Estrela is thrilled to announce the return of Kim Sullivan to the Montreal airwaves.

WE HAVE AN EERIE FEELING THAT KIM IS 3 TIMES LUCKY…

Born and raised in Montreal, Kim obtained 3 degrees, traveled to over 30 countries and lived on 3 continents before becoming a teacher for the deaf. Too quiet for her, 3 years in, she threw herself into Montreal’s radio scene! After enjoying broadcasting stints in Winnipeg and Ottawa, where she also had her own bucket-list-accomplishing TV show, move #3 brings Kim back to Montreal! It’s been 9 years since she first started her career in the city; she now comes back with 3 tattoos but only 2 puppies… maybe she’ll steal one of Nat Lauzon’s! 92.5 The Beat is happy to have Kim back home where she’ll entertain Montrealers weekday evenings from 8p – midnight with “The Sulli Show”…you might even hear dogs barking in the background.

You can follow Kim on Twitter (@KimSulli) and Facebook. She also has a website and a YouTube channel.

UPDATE: Audio of Sullivan’s breaks from her first hour on The Beat: