Category Archives: Radio

| Media, Radio

Competition Bureau deal with Bell/Astral: No change to plans for TSN 690

The Competition Bureau issued a statement on Monday saying it has come to a deal with Bell over its acquisition of Astral Media. Combined with a statement from Bell, we’re learning some details about this deal and how Bell will avoid owning so much stuff it threatens competition in Canadian radio and television.

We’ll learn more when the CRTC publishes the application this week.

What we know so far:

Bell has come to an agreement with Corus that will see the latter buy the following assets for $400.6 million:

  • CKQB-FM The Bear 106.9 Ottawa (Astral)
  • CJOT-FM EZ Rock 99.7 Ottawa (Astral)
  • 50% of Teletoon/Teletoon Retro in both French and English (Corus already owns the other half)
  • 50% of Cartoon Network (Canada) (Corus already owns the other half)
  • 50% of Historia
  • 50% of Séries+

A separate deal between Shaw and Corus, which are both owned by the Shaw family, will see Corus own the other half of Historia and Séries+, plus ABC Spark. Shaw will take Corus’s 20% stake in Food Network and $95 million in cash. Corus has a press release on the two deals here.

Bell will also sell the following assets at auction:

  • Family (which includes Disney Junior)
  • Disney XD
  • Disney Jr. (French)
  • Musimax
  • MusiquePlus
  • CKCE-FM Kool 101.5 Calgary (Bell)
  • CHBM-FM Boom 97.3 Toronto (Astral)
  • CFXJ-FM Flow 93.5 Toronto (Bell)
  • CKZZ-FM Virgin 95.3 Vancouver (Astral)
  • CHHR-FM Shore 104.3 Vancouver (Astral)
  • CISL AM 650 Vancouver (Astral)
  • CHIQ-FM Fab 94.3 Winnipeg (Bell)
  • CFQX-FM FX 104.1 Winnipeg (Astral)

Corus can’t buy any of the eight radio stations listed here because of CRTC ownership limits in those markets (two AM and two FM in each market). Corus doesn’t own any stations in the Ottawa market.

The list of radio stations for sale (including the two to Corus) is unchanged from the one Bell presented the CRTC last year. That’s interesting because the CRTC didn’t particularly appreciate Bell’s plan to sell off some Bell stations and some Astral stations in order to keep the best ones (with two exceptions, the ones for sale are the lowest-rated ones in those markets of the combined Bell/Astral holdings).

In its decision in October, the CRTC said:

the decision to include certain Bell Media radio stations in the divestiture plan can be viewed as an attempt by BCE to trade underperforming stations for successful ones, which would not provide a benefit to the Canadian broadcasting system or create the conditions for healthy competition. Selling less profitable stations could reinforce BCE’s position in these markets, make the entrance of new competitors more difficult and reduce the total tangible benefits paid on Astral’s radio stations.

What does this mean for TSN 690?

No Montreal radio stations are listed, even though the purchase of three English commercial stations would put Bell over the limit in this city. When the new deal was announced, Bell said it would ask for an exemption allowing it to keep CKGM as an English station. That remains unchanged:

Astral and Bell heard the loud and clear desire of Montréal sports fans to retain TSN Radio 690 as an English-language sports station (Bell had earlier proposed to convert the station to a French-language RDS sports station to meet CRTC rules). Bell has filed a separate application with the CRTC requesting an exception from application of the common ownership policy to allow the continued operation of TSN Radio 690 by Bell Media as an English-language sports station.

This proposal, though it might be favourable to fans of the station, is far from a done deal. Buying CHOM, CJFM (Virgin) and CJAD would mean Bell would own four of the five commercial English-language radio stations in Montreal, or four of six when the Tietolman-Tétrault-Pancholy station at 600 AM launches. Would owning such a large portion of the market be too much for the commission to consider?

Expect opposition from Cogeco, which owns The Beat, the only station that wouldn’t be owned by Bell. Their opposition will be somewhat hypocritical, mind you, because Cogeco got its own exemption from the CRTC in 2010 allowing it to keep three French FM stations in Montreal (Rythme FM, CKOI and 98.5).

The fate of TSN 690 will be up to the CRTC. It could accept the exemption or force Bell to sell or shut down one of the four stations to remain under the limit (Bell indicated previously that if it had to sell a station, TSN would be the one to go). Selling the station might be difficult, because Bell would retain rights to Canadiens games, and TSN has previously said the station has never made money doing all-sports.

| Media, Montreal, On the Net, Radio, TV

Italians are everywhere

CBC's Sabrina Marandola is among the Italian Montrealers profiled by Panoram Italia

CBC’s Sabrina Marandola is among the Italian Montrealers profiled by Panoram Italia

It’s not just me who’s been talking to English-language broadcasters in Montreal. Italian community magazine Panoram Italia has been profiling members of its community who have jobs in the media in Montreal. The magazine’s December/January issue is devoted to it, with CBC’s Sabrina Marandola and CJAD/CTV’s Laura Casella on the cover.

| Radio

CRTC approves power increase for CKIN-FM

Current (blue lines) and newly approved (black lines) contours for CKIN-FM

Current (blue lines) and newly approved (black lines) contours for CKIN-FM

Earlier this month, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approved a request from CKIN-FM, the commercial ethnic station at 106.3 FM, to increase its power, from 300 to 1200 watts.

The station (pronounced “Skin FM”), which is owned by CHCR, the same company that runs Mike FM 105.1 (the two operate from studios in the same building), was approved in 2007 and began broadcasting in 2010. It operates on a format similar to Mike, only its rush hours have French-language programming instead of English.

The application resulted in some very strongly-worded opposition from CKIN’s competitors, Radio Humsafar, Radio Shalom and Yves Sauvé of CJVD-FM in Vaudreuil. Some of their beefs go back to the competitive process that saw CKIN’s original licence awarded. Sauvé also applied for 106.3 for his Vaudreuil-based station, but the CRTC gave it to CHCR and forced Sauvé to find another one. He picked 100.1, which restricted the station’s coverage on the island of Montreal, mainly because there’s a community station in LaSalle on the same frequency. He opposed the new application because he had applied for use of the then-vacant frequency of 106.7 FM to give CJVD a better signal, and allowing CKIN to increase its power at 106.3 would have affected the signal on 106.7.

That was all made moot when the CRTC approved a new radio station in Hudson/St-Lazare on 106.7 FM last fall.

The other opposition was mainly about self-serving competitive needs, with station owners crying about how doomed their business model is if they don’t get their way. Humsafar, which applied for an AM radio station in that same 2007 hearing and was denied, operates a South Asian service on a subcarrier. It tried to apply again for an AM ethnic station serving the South Asian community in 2011, but was denied. Then it tried to convert the AM station it owns, CJLV 1570 in Laval, to an ethnic station, but that was denied too. The main reason behind these denials was the inability of the Montreal market to sustain another ethnic radio station.

Humsafar opposed the application, arguing that CKIN-FM was already encroaching on its audience after increasing the amount of South Asian programming well beyond what it first proposed. But the CRTC points out in this month’s decision that Humsafar, as a subcarrier service, does not provide financial information to the commission that it could use to evaluate the possible impact on its service, and in any case CKIN is not violating its licence obligations by having the amount of South Asian programming that it does.

Radio Shalom opposed for the same reasons as Humsafar and Sauvé, though it’s not clear what interest Montreal’s Jewish radio station has here.

The commission noted in its decision that other ethnic radio stations didn’t oppose the application, and the power increase doesn’t have an adverse effect on anyone else on a technical level. While CKIN didn’t show a pressing economic need to increase its coverage, the CRTC was satisfied of the technical need to improve reception by listeners who complained about difficulty receiving the station.

As a result, the CRTC has said yes to CKIN increasing its power. The pattern remains the same, pointing mainly to the northwest.

Leeja Murphy, a PR representative for CHCR, says she does not know when the technical changes required to increase the station’s power will take place.

| Montreal, Radio

Andrew Carter: He’s cool now

Andrew Carter

Andrew Carter doesn’t remember what day he started as the morning man at CJAD in 2003, but he remembers when he was told he got the job. It was the Thursday before the Super Bowl, he remembered, which would have made it Jan. 23. At the time, he was the afternoon guy at CJAD, which would normally be a pretty decent gig, but was more of a consolation prize after he lost his job doing mornings at CHOM.

“2002 was a near-death career experience,” Carter told me as we sat down for an interview in an unused production studio after his anniversary show on Feb. 13. In early February of that year, Rob Braide, who was the general manager of CJAD, CHOM and what was then Mix 96, made the decision to make big changes at Montreal’s rock station, ending its experiment with “contemporary rock” and replacing its morning team (Carter and Pete Marier) with fan favourites Terry and Ted.

The switch in formats and on-air staff worked for CHOM, which saw big ratings gains very quickly. Everyone was happy. But it didn’t exactly look good for Carter. Nevertheless, he wasn’t about to get thrown under the bus.

“Braide called me into an office,” Carter recalled. “He said ‘Andrew, I have a job for you. I don’t know what it is.'”

That isn’t exactly a good sign.

Later, Carter got a visit from Rick Moffat, who was the program director at CJAD at the time. Moffat offered Carter the afternoon show on CJAD. With DiMonte vacating the seat once held by George Balcan, CJAD afternoon man Ric Peterson moved to mornings, which opened up afternoons for Carter. (Marier went off to Winnipeg, only to come back to CHOM later and eventually get replaced by Terry DiMonte again.)

“Before he finished his sentence I said yes,” Carter told me.

Continue reading →

| Radio

CJLO will make EPs free for deserving artists

Mixing board at CJLO

Are you a local artist who has fantastic musical talent but not the financial means to rent a professional studio to record your songs?

Concordia’s student radio station might be able to help. CJLO 1690AM has received a $14,500 grant from the Community Radio Fund of Canada for its CJLO Artist Outreach Program, and it’s using that money to offer their services free of charge to mix and master an EP’s worth of music for a handful of artists.

“The CJLO Artist Outreach Program aims to provide a stepping stone for local artists in the Montreal community to learn about how to get their music played on the radio and create a physical product that they can use to achieve this goal,” a statement from the station reads.

Included in the deal is up to 70-80 hours of labour of a producer to record and mix the songs together into a 15-to-20-minute EP, and an “artist liaison” to teach artists how to promote the music.

Because the funding is limited, so is the number of artists that can make use of these services. CJLO invites those interested to fill out a form on their website, and the station will select from among applicants.

Station staff tell me that the plan is to benefit at least five artists with this fund, but aiming for more like 8-10, with some requiring more work than others.

Applications are open until Feb. 15.

| Montreal, Radio

New low-power FM station would carry mainly Tamil programming

“…there are for all practical purposes no more FM frequencies available to serve Montréal.” — CRTC, July 6, 2007

Five and a half years after the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission made that statement in approving two new FM stations in Montreal, there are still people finding holes on the FM band to fill with low-power stations or stations in Montreal’s suburbs.

The latest is an application published on Wednesday for a low-power FM station carrying mainly Tamil programming.

The station, at 102.9 MHz, would essentially be a migration of an existing service that operates on a subcarrier of CISM-FM. Before that it was on a subcarrier of CKUT-FM. Subcarriers are great because they can piggyback on existing stations, but they require special receivers to listen to.

And that’s the problem that AGNI Communications Inc., owned by Phillip Koneswaran and Jenoshan Balasingam, is trying to overcome. According to the brief they submitted with their application, a younger demographic is more mobile, and the special receivers aren’t built into car radios. To them, getting on FM, even at only 50 watts, is a better way to reach their audience.

Programming

For those familiar with the existing service, it will stay mainly the same. The proposal is that more than half of the programming (before 10am and after 5pm weekdays; before 10am and after 8pm weekends) will be in the Tamil language. The rest of the schedule will be filled with programming for the Sri Lankan, Indian, Malaysian, Ethiopian, Maldavian, Malaysian, Somali, Nepalese and Singaporean communities.

If that seems like an obscure mix, it is. The main selling point is that these communities and languages are not served by any other radio station in Montreal.

In 2011, the CRTC denied applications for three new ethnic radio stations in Montreal, mainly because they would compete with existing ethnic stations in markets that can’t handle that kind of competition. By limiting its programming to those communities not served by any existing stations, this service can argue that it’s not competing with them and there would be room for more.

According to the application, the radio station would be 100% ethnic programming, with no programming in either French or English. Its programming would be mainly local, and it proposes a minimum of 60% local programming being imposed as a condition of licence, increasing to 70% in the third year.

Broadcast contours and interference zones for proposed new FM station (click for larger)

Broadcast contours and interference zones for proposed new FM station (click for larger)

Transmitter

The low-power station would operate as a 50W transmitter on top of a building on Chabanel St. next to Highway 15. The signal covers Saint-Laurent, Ahuntsic, Mount Royal, Park Extension and parts of western Villeray before it starts hitting interference from other, much more powerful stations (the shaded areas above).

The technical brief goes through each of the stations that could cause interference problems:

On the same frequency:

  • CHOC-FM-2 St-Jacques-le-Mineur (34km away): This retransmitter of the French community station southeast of Montreal would not receive any interference in its current pattern, but at its theoretical maximum it might get some interference in a sliver around Candiac and La Prairie, most of which it would see interference from anyway from another station on the same frequency.
  • CFOI-FM-1 Saint-Jérôme (42km away): This retransmitter of a Quebec City-based Christian station would not receive any interference in its primary pattern, which covers a radius of about 20km. In fact, you wouldn’t have to get far from the Montreal station before you start hearing this one instead.

On the first-adjacent frequency (103.1 or 102.7):

  • CITE-FM-1 Sherbrooke (102.7) (113km away): This 100kW Rouge FM station has a huge pattern that reaches into the Montreal area, and will be the primary cause of interference for this new proposed station. Only a tiny sliver of the station’s coverage area of more than 30,000 square kilometres could be affected by interference from the new station, and the technical brief says the protection for stations of that class is limited to a radius of 86km, where there would be no interference. And it’s kind of a moot point practically because people in that area (roughly downtown Montreal) would be listening to Montreal’s Rouge FM station anyway.
  • CKOD-FM Valleyfield (103.1) (45km away): Though closer together, this station and the proposed one would not interfere with each other to any great extent.

On the second-adjacent frequency (103.3 or 102.5):

  • CHAA-FM Longueuil (103.3) (9km away): This Longueuil community station, whose transmitter is actually on the island of Montreal, is far in frequency from the new proposed station, but is physically very close. The technical brief nevertheless shows no interference between the two stations.

The analysis also includes stations even further away in frequency, CKRK-FM at 103.7 and CINQ-FM at 102.3. The first won’t cause any issues because of its distance, and the station has promised to resolve any interference issues affecting the second.

Budget

The financial projections for the station are modest: $120,000 a year in revenue, increasing steadily to $300,000 by the seventh year. The first-year projection is perfectly reasonable, since it made that amount in 2011. Whether they can double that in five years is another story.

Operating expenses would be even more modest, going from $76,200 in the first year to just over $100,000 in the seventh. This means the station would be making a profit already in its first year.

The cost of actually setting up the transmitter is only $20,000.

Procedure

The CRTC has called a hearing for March 20 to consider this application (the same hearing at which it will consider an application for a French sports-talk station at 850AM). Unless significant objections are raised, a presentation by the applicant will not be required at the hearing, which will take place in Gatineau.

People wanting to comment on the application, or express support or opposition, have until Feb. 15 to do so (this includes other broadcasters who might oppose the station for technical or programming reasons). They can do so by clicking here, choosing Option 1 and then 2012-0821-5: AGNI Communication Inc.

 

After the hearing, it’s up to the commission to decide when to come to a decision and what that decision will be.

| Montreal, Radio

CRTC proceeds with TTP application for French sports talk at 850AM

Proposed propagation pattern of station at 850AM

Proposed propagation pattern of station at 850AM: day (black lines) and night (blue lines)

An application I told you about in September, for an all-sports radio station at 850AM, was published on Wednesday by the CRTC and will be considered at a hearing in March.

The proposed station would be the third AM talk station in Montreal owned by TTP Media (officially 7954689 Canada Inc.), a company formed by partners Paul Tietolman, Nicolas Tétrault and Rajiv Pancholy. The trio’s other two stations, already approved by the CRTC but yet to launch, are for a French-language news-talk station at 940AM and an English-language news-talk station at 600AM. They are expected to go on the air simultaneously some time this year.

Here’s what the application tells us about this new 850AM station:

Programming

“Utilizing sports professionals and experienced broadcasters, AM850 will offer a locally produced, innovative brand of sports talk unlike anything heard previously in Canada. Francophone sports fans will finally have a 24 hour a day source of information covering the topics about which they are most passionate. Opinion, insight and debate sprinkled with listener interaction and lifestyle commentary will be offered up in a cutting edge fashion.” — Supplemental Brief in application to CRTC

As was the case for its previous applications, TTP likes to talk big about how it’s going to revolutionize radio with ideas no one else has tried before. This station is no different.

For one thing, there won’t be a focus on live broadcasts of sporting events. Unlike TSN Radio in English, which has things like European soccer and NFL football games broadcast live, the TTP station plans to have zero syndicated live sports programming. Instead, it will be locally-produced sports talk, 24 hours a day, seven days a week (they’re even willing to accept a condition of licence to this effect). Pancholy told me there might be some live local sports coverage, but the focus will be on discussion (which one would imagine would be mainly Canadiens-related) outside of games.

This is interesting, to say the least. Team 990 went a decade without rights to Canadiens games before it finally got them from CJAD in the hope that that would bring them back into the black (it didn’t, but the station hopes that the move to 690AM will push it over the break-even mark).

On one hand, people love to rant about their Canadiens. On the other hand, they’re more likely to do that on a station that carries the Canadiens broadcasts. Or at least that’s the conventional wisdom.

Programming details will have to wait until the station is approved, but the application said they expect a total of four hours a week of hard news, and 126 hours (i.e. every minute of the week) of local programming.

The application also makes reference to “an online strategy.”:

Online is the perfect place to offer up stats plus extended commentary and analysis. Using social media is an ideal way to further engage listeners in debate and discussion. A strategic use of cutting edge technology will insure that AM850 remains contemporary, immediate and relevant.

History

The application comes in the wake of the decision from owner Cogeco to replace CKAC Sports with Radio Circulation in September 2011. That move, which came after it became clear there was resistance to a move to reactivate 690 and 940 for government-subsidized all-traffic stations in English and French, left Canada’s largest French-language market without a full-time sports talk station.

Instead, Cogeco’s news-talk station CHMP 98.5FM has adopted a hybrid format, with news and information during the day and sports talk during the evenings, including live broadcasts of Canadiens and Alouettes games. (Montreal Impact games are not broadcast on radio in French in Montreal).

Though that decision has been criticized, and CKAC’s market share is only a tenth of what it was as a sports station, CHMP’s ratings have soared, and it’s now the top-rated station in Montreal.

TTP’s application focuses on the void left by CKAC and the need for sports talk during the day.

The transmitter

The proposed frequency, 850AM, was previously used by Montreal’s CKVL (a station founded by Tietolman’s father, Jack Tietolman). That station changed frequency and was transformed into Info 690 in 1999, and 850 has been vacant here ever since.

But rather than bring the station back using its previous parameters, TTP has suggested a new setup with an improved signal. The transmitter would be located in a wooded area off Don Quichote Blvd. in Notre-Dame-de-l’Ile Perrot. There’s no transmitter site there, or towers, or anything. But it’s an ideal location for the coverage pattern they want to create.

Because it’s not a clear-channel station, it has to adjust its pattern to protect distant stations at night on the same frequency. The trickiest one is WEEI 850, a 50,000W station in Boston. This limits the proposed station’s pattern to the southeast. There’s also WKGE in Johnstown, Pa. (10kW), CJBC in Toronto (Première Chaîne at 860 kHz), WAXB in Ridgefield, Conn. (500W), as well as clear-channel stations in Denver and Alaska that are too far to be a real concern.

The station must also protect potential stations, patterns that are allocated but where no station is currently transmitting. (For the most part, these are patterns that used to be used by AM stations that no longer exist or that have changed frequency.) These include allocations in Timmins, Ont., Spaniard’s Bay, N.L., and Enola, Pa., on 850, plus adjacent-channel allocations in Drummondville (820), Brockville, Ont., (830), Rivière-du-Loup (840) and Quebec City (870).

The proposed station was originally going to be 50kW day and night, but that had to change after the Federal Communications Commission in the United States noticed that the station would interfere with WEEI. The technical application had been based on incorrect data, and the new data showed an unacceptable interference. TTP responded with the simplest solution, which is to reduce its nighttime power to 22kW, but it says it may try another solution if it comes up with something better later on.

The proposed signal also encroaches on the allocated pattern for the Spaniard’s Bay station. The community, just west of St. John’s, was served by AM station CHVO on 850 until 1990, but the allocation remains active. TTP proposed reducing the Spaniard’s Bay allocation’s contours slightly, arguing it would be better for the broadcasting system as a whole, and the advantages to the Montreal station (which would, you know, actually exist) would far outweigh the disadvantages to an AM allocation that might never be revived.

Taking all these protections into account, TTP decided the best move was to point the signal toward to the northeast (around 35 degrees). Putting the towers on Île Perrot maximizes the population inside the coverage area for a signal pointed in that direction.

The proposed transmitter setup is four towers 88.2 metres high spaced 98 metres apart, in a line pointing toward Montreal. The signal would be very directional, with the 0.5mV/m contours reaching almost to Quebec City 250km away but barely grazing towns like Hawkesbury, Cornwall and Hemingford which are only about 50km away. The signal would be excellent in the lower West Island (somewhat ironic since it’s a French station) but would cover Montreal and both shores pretty well.

Building a new transmitter site won’t be cheap. The application lists $1.5 million for transmitter setup costs, plus $63,000 in annual rent. The project could also be the subject of hearings if residents nearby object. Pancholy didn’t want to discuss details of potential hearings, but said that things were moving along well in terms of getting approvals necessary for the transmitter site.

TTP’s other two stations will use a transmission site in Kahnawake owned by Cogeco on rented land. This site was deemed inadequate technically for the 850 station.

Budget

The financing for the proposed station would, like with the others, be through a combination of personal financing from the partners and a bank loan. The application lists $5 million in total financing, which breaks down as $1 million from the owners and $4 million in debt from James Edward Capital.

But the station’s optimistic budget shows a quick profit turnaround. With $3.5 million in annual revenue, increasing to about $5 million by the end of the first seven-year licence term, the station expects to be making money by the fourth year of operation. Expenses would start at $3.6 million a year and rise to $4 million a year by Year 7.

Though TTP would argue its projections are conservative, its competitors would say they’re unrealistic.

Station revenues would come mostly through local advertising, since TTP doesn’t have any stations outside of Montreal (yet). It expects to come out of the gate with a respectable market share for an all-sports station:

“We conservatively project that by the end of the first year of operations AM will secure a 3.4% share of hours tuned for All Persons 12+ and a 6.0% share of hours tuned for males 25-54.”

Nevertheless, it expects its impact on other stations “will be negligible. The approximate 2-4 % average yearly increase of revenue coming into the market should largely offset the financial impact of minimally decreased share for these stations.”

TTP breaks down its ad revenue like this:

  1. 20% of our revenue will be derived from advertisers which do not currently advertise on existing radio services.
  2. 20% of our revenue would result from increased spending from advertisers which currently advertise on existing radio services (given this unique targeted opportunity).
  3. 15% of our revenue will come from our online/web site offerings.
  4. The remaining 45% of our projected revenues will come from existing radio services.

The application doesn’t list the number of jobs the station would create, and Pancholy didn’t want to come out with a number. Many administrative jobs would be shared among the stations.

The application makes reference to “a special intern program”, which suggests that unpaid interns might be a big part of the plan here. (Cheap and free labour is certainly a large part of the tight-budgeted TSN Radio).

Process

The CRTC has called a hearing in Gatineau on March 20 to consider this application and others. Unless there are significant objections, the commission plans for these to be non-appearing items, meaning that the applicants won’t have to appear at the hearing and there will be no actual discussions.

The public is invited to file comments with the commission on this application until Feb. 15. They can do so here (choose Option 1 and then 7954689 Canada Inc.)

After the hearing, the commission will take a few weeks (or a few months, it’s really up to them) to make a decision. Once the station is approved, it will have two years to launch, though Pancholy said they would expect it to be up within a year of a positive decision.

What do you think? Does this business plan sound plausible? Are people more interested in talking about sports than listening to live matches? Can you have a sports talk radio station without any live sports? Leave your comments below.

Other coverage

The Journal de Montréal/Agence QMI has a story on this. Its headline says there will be a decision this summer, but no source is provided for that statement, and I doubt the commission has confided that detail to the reporter. It’s a good guess, but it’s a guess. The decision could be done by the end of April, or they might still be waiting for one in October. It’s really up to the commission.

| Radio

Astral issues layoffs at Boom FM stations

Boom FM's laid-off staff, according to the Courrier St-Hyacinthe (from left): John Perron, Daniel Charlebois, Patrice Lemieux, Marc Perrault

Boom FM’s laid-off staff, according to the Courrier St-Hyacinthe (from left): John Perron, Daniel Charlebois, Patrice Lemieux, Marc Perrault

The same week that Astral posted its best quarterly profit ever, the company has let go talent at its Boom FM stations in St. Hyacinthe (CFEI-FM 106.5) and St. Jean sur Richelieu (CFZZ-FM 104.1), causing worries that the stations would no longer be independent.

The Courier de Saint-Hyacinthe broke the news in Thursday’s edition (the story isn’t online yet), saying that announcers, ad salespeople and technical staff had been laid off at a meeting on Tuesday. It named John Perron (mornings) and Daniel Charlebois (afternoons) of CFEI, Patrick Lemieux (afternoons) of CFZZ and Marc Perreault, who appears on both stations, as victims of the cuts.

These details are confirmed by looking through the stations’ websites (though their show pages have been disabled from the site’s navigation menu as they still list the old hosts).

According to the updated schedules (so far just for weekdays), CFZZ’s François Bessette continues to do mornings now at both stations, each with a different cohost (Marie-Pier Boucher at CFEI and Véronique Dupont at CFZZ). Nathalie Lussier continues to do the daytime shows at both stations, and Annie Tardif is doing the afternoon show at both stations.

When asked about the layoffs, Astral spokesperson Olivier Racette offered the following, which I’ll let you parse for yourself:

Radio being a fast-evolving and extremely competitive industry, we have to constantly adapt to our listeners’ and clients’ tastes and needs. Given that context, broadcasters need to regularly make changes to their programming, which can sometimes lead to structural reorganizations. Today’s restructuration was implemented as part of our commitment to become always more competitive. It involved position reassignments and, unfortunately, a few job losses.

These changes will help us become even more a central part of the Montérégie community. As boom celebrates its 10th anniversary, we are proud to position ourselves as information leaders in the region with a team of 4 reporters keeping their community informed. Also, boom in Montérégie innovates as it will shortly inaugurate two radio and web-TV recording studios in its St-Hyacinthe and St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, giving the artistic, business and political community a new platform to reach the Montérégie population.

We are also happy to bring to our communities a new morning show with both co-hosts each broadcasting live from St-Hyacinthe and St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, giving the two cities a local programming under the same dynamic brand.

So at least the stations will still have some independent programming, and will still have journalists. But they’ll have to get by on a smaller staff.

According to the latest licence renewal for both stations, issued in 2007, they don’t have a minimum requirement for local programming per se, but both have a “commitment” to broadcast a minimum amount of local news and information.

For CFEI-FM in St. Hyacinthe:

The Commission notes the licensee’s commitment to devote 3 hours and 19 minutes, including 34 minutes on weekends, to local news. The licensee shall also devote 2 hours and 15 minutes to local weather, sports, culture and entertainment.

For CFZZ-FM in St. Jean:

The Commission notes the licensee’s commitment to devote 3 hours and 19 minutes, including 34 minutes on weekends, to local news. The licensee shall also devote 2 hours and 49 minutes to local weather, sports, culture and entertainment.

The licences of both stations come up for renewal in 2014.

| Photos, Radio

Inside Astral radio’s new Montreal studios

This fall, Astral Media’s three English stations in Montreal — CHOM, CJAD and CJFM (Virgin Radio) — moved from Fort St. to Papineau Ave. The goal was to consolidate Astral’s five radio stations, allowing them to share resources, including a newsroom.

I got a couple of chances to visit the new offices, once for interviews with a couple of personalities and again when they held an event for clients. Here are some photos to give you a sense of what it’s like inside.

Astral’s building at Papineau Ave. and René-Lévesque Blvd.

I just realized when producing this post that I don’t have a recent picture of the exterior of the Astral Media building at Papineau and René-Lévesque. The one above was taken in August 2009. On the front are logos of the two French stations, both of which have rebranded. Rock Détente (CITE-FM) is now Rouge FM, and Énergie (CKMF-FM) is now NRJ (with the same pronunciation).

Anyway, the outside hasn’t changed much, except for the logos. It’s inside where everything’s different. The offices have been renovated. There’s glass everywhere. Even the office of Astral vice-president Martin Spalding is surrounded by glass, so anyone in the nearby CHOM studio can see what’s going on in there.

The studios of all five stations are on the second floor. Using the Montreal bastardization of cardinal directions, the southwestern corner is CHOM, the southeastern corner (at Papineau and René-Lévesque) is Virgin (facing René-Lévesque) and NRJ (facing Papineau). Rouge FM is on the eastern side, and CJAD’s studios are on the northeastern corner. CJAD’s newsroom covers the north side.

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| Montreal, My articles, Radio

The young faces of Montreal’s drive-time radio

 

Gazette Culture section, Jan. 5

On the list of jobs everyone wants but nobody can get, radio DJ ranks pretty high. Right there with TV anchor and newspaper staff columnist. Those privileged enough to get these coveted positions seem like the luckiest people in the world, especially because the job sounds like it’s so simple.

In Montreal, the three big music stations all have announcers or hosts (what they call the DJs now) in the afternoon drive periods under the age of 35. Why is that? Shouldn’t such a prestigious position (second only to the morning drive slot) go to people who worked in the medium for decades, toiling at some obscure community station in a tiny town working as the overnight traffic announcer? What do these people have that’s so special?

For profiles that appear in Saturday’s Gazette, I met with these three announcers, all of whom got their current jobs in 2012, and asked them about their career paths. As you’ll learn, it’s a combination of good timing, talent, a lot of determination, and a bit of luck.

(These stories took a surprisingly long time to do. Astral was a bit nervous in light of the whole Bell thing, and even after I managed to do all the interviews, the story stayed in the bank for a month so it could work as a feature story in the first week of January when the local arts scene is pretty uneventful. To give you an idea, the photos of Bilal Butt and Andrea Collins, which I took during their interviews, were taken while CHOM and Virgin were still at their old studios on Fort St.)

The Beat’s Vinny Barrucco

“Cousin” Vinny Barrucco, 28, started at The Beat in May, after being poached from the same job at Virgin Radio. The Beat’s management apparently found him good enough to fire their existing drive guy and convince Vinny to stay off the radio for three months to comply with a non-compete clause in his Virgin contract.

A guy this young getting poached like this (Cat Spencer and Nat Lauzon were also lured to The Beat from Virgin, though they have much more experience) has got to get to a guy’s ego.

Vinny might seem like a goofball, and to a certain extent he is, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t work hard. He started by doing those right-of-passage jobs, interning for Mitch Melnick on Team 990 and then working at Kahnawake’s K103. He had his eyes set on Virgin, and as he tells it pestered management there for months to get noticed. Finally he was offered an overnight shift in 2009, but quickly moved up to afternoon drive, replacing Mark Bergman who became the station’s brand director.

Vinny’s story includes other tidbits, like his rejections from Concordia’s communications studies program, or the untimely death of his father that set his career back a year but also helped to get it started.

It’s the story of a man who is living his dream because he followed his passion and never gave it up. Yeah, it sounds like a cliché, but there were a few Oprah-like moments when I interviewed him at The Beat, so it seems a propos.

CHOM’s Bilal Butt

Bilal Butt, 33, is a more familiar name among Montreal radio listeners. He’s been at CHOM since 2005, and worked at CHOM and Mix 96 before that. He was mainly doing evenings until the unceremonious departure of Pete Marier led him to be upgraded to the afternoon drive slot.

When I talked to him last summer and again in the fall, he apologized for leading such a boring life. He’s just a guy with a job on the radio and a musician in his spare time.

To Butt’s boss, André Lallier, that’s what makes him so relatable to listeners: he’s just a regular guy.

Not that his life has been entirely vanilla. His home didn’t have music in it when he was growing up, and his parents didn’t approve of his career goals at first. But he loved radio too much. After interning for Cat and Nat at Mix 96, he began working for CHOM, then took a job in Fort McMurray, Alta., before coming back to CHOM in 2005. And though maybe someday when he’s older he might make the jump to mornings, he’s more than happy where he is right now, with a schedule that lets him both sleep in and go out at night, and a job that lets him play rock music and sit behind a microphone.

Virgin’s Andrea Collins

Andrea Collins, 28, is the newbie to Montreal radio. She started here in 2011, taking over Virgin’s daytime shift after Nat Lauzon left to focus more on her other projects and do weekends at what would become The Beat. In April, after Barrucco also left for The Beat, Collins was bumped up to afternoon drive.

So I guess Collins owes a lot of her career here to The Beat, even though she’s never worked there.

Collins came to Montreal after a career that led to her working at stations in Winnipeg and Victoria at stations called Kool, Curve, Bob and Q. It involved a lot of moving, but that helped her get so far in such a short time.

As I spoke to her, it had become clear that she’s embracing this city. She’s fallen in love with the Plateau (yeah, she’s become one of those people), and is working on improving her French.

One thing noteworthy about Collins is that she’s the first female solo drive-time announcer at a major commercial English station in Montreal, at least as far as anyone knows (correct me if I’m wrong here). Not that there haven’t been other women in strong positions in Montreal radio, with Sue Smith, Nancy Wood, Nat Lauzon and Donna Saker among them. But the afternoon drive post has been a pretty male-oriented slot, or with a male-female team (conversely, the workday has been mainly female-oriented for music stations like this).

What’s perhaps most remarkable is that this isn’t a big deal, either for Collins or Virgin. It may be a historical footnote, but gender wasn’t really a consideration in choosing Collins for this job, and there hasn’t been some huge feminist revolution that has opened the door to this. It just happened.

There are still some aspects of radio that are sexist in nature. Morning shows, like TV newscasts, are paired male-female, even when some of the most popular teams have been of the same gender (see: Aaron and Tasso, Terry and Ted). But it’s nice to see that another glass ceiling has disappeared, even if Collins didn’t feel it smash as she passed through.

Five things you didn’t know about professional music radio announcers

1. They listen to themselves. You might think these people just show up to work, talk about random stuff they have in their head and then go home. But they actually review a lot of what they say, and so do their bosses. It’s the best way to improve how they sound, and constant improvement is necessary in a world where success is measured by ratings. So these announcers will listen back to recordings of their breaks (in music radio, a “break” is the part where the announcer talks live into the microphone, which sounds like the exact opposite of what a break should be).

2. They’re not rich or famous. Collins and Butt drive old beat-up cars. Barrucco takes the commuter train. Though they can’t claim to be poor, radio announcers in their kinds of jobs have pretty middle-class salaries. Add to that the complete lack of job security and it’s less glamorous than you might think. As for fame, these characters walk the streets undisturbed pretty often. Butt recounts the one time someone recognized him at a Subway. Being recognized in public is the exception rather than the rule.

3. They spend a lot of time at fundraisers. It’s even written into contracts now that radio personalities have to participate in certain events to help promote the station. Add to that events that they’re asked to participate in outside of work. Part of it is because they’re perceived to be locally well-known, and part of it is that radio announcers like these tend to make good emcees.

4. Many of them work alone. Morning shows still have a concept of team, with multiple hosts, a news announcer, a traffic announcer and a technician. But most other shifts at these music stations consist of a single person, who hosts and operates the boards, cueing songs and taking calls. There’s enough time to do it with all the music that plays, but it’s quite a bit of multitasking, and it takes a while to get it all down without screwing things up. Adding social media communication to the mix only adds to that workload.

5. They plan what they say. A good deal of research goes into these shifts. Music announcers have to keep up on the latest news and get everything from celebrity gossip to concert announcements to relay that information to listeners. Even finding little bits of trivial information to send out between two songs requires going out and finding it. It’s not exactly like putting together a Master’s thesis every day, but it’s still a lot of work.