Tag Archives: CJFM

| Business, Montreal, Radio

Mix 96 to become rebranded as Virgin Radio station

UPDATE (Jan. 12): Read the latest about the switch here.

Astral Media announced on Friday that Mix 96, the anglo FM station that tries so desperately to please everyone it ends up pleasing no one, will be rebranded as a Virgin Radio station, so it can start “challenging the norms of conventional stations and shaking up the radio landscape with a fresh sound and unique new programming formats; delivering a new voice with first class entertainment value to each market.”

In other words, The Mix sucks, and they’re hoping Virginization will help that. (Their ratings have remained relatively stable over the past few years: Third in the Montreal anglo market behind CJAD and Q92, reaching about 18% of the market, or 200,000 listeners).

Stations in Vancouver (95 The Crave) and Ottawa (106.9 The Bear) will also be rebranded.

The Mix’s format will still be “adult contemporary” music (and The Bear will keep its rock format (though it will be “re-energized”, whatever that means). I’m at a loss, in fact, to point out a single major programming difference that will result from this change.

Still, the rebranding alone (and the perceived de-localization of radio control) is enough to get a Facebook petition up already.

| Canadiens, Radio, Web design

Mix 96’s solid news judgment

Top sports story on Mix 96’s website tonight: “Sharapova beats Garrigues to advance at Bausch & Lomb Championships”

It’s not like anything more important happened or anything.

(I realize nobody’s going to go to Mix 96’s website as their source for news, which just makes me ask why they bother subscribing to Associated Press in the first place)

UPDATE: For good measure, the Team 990’s website’s current top sports story: “Jets agree to long-term deal with Rhodes” (and I can’t find out more details because their website is misconfigured)

| Montreal, Radio

Respect? Pleasure? On Montreal radio?

In an effort to fool reassure the public that their purchase of Standard Radio to create an even huger media megalopoly isn’t a bad thing, Astral Media ran full-page newspaper ads this weekend:

Astral ad

The ad, which implies that Mix 96, CHOM FM and CJAD won’t … uhh … change the logos they put on their baseball caps, I guess… includes this bit of hilarity:

… Please be assured of our commitment to continue providing the same great listening pleasure you have come to enjoy. Respect for our broadcast audience and the public in general is a core value of Astral Media…

I can only guess from this that Astral Media haven’t actually listened to CHOM or Mix 96 for more than a few minutes.

(The fact that CHOM and Mix 96, two radio stations that should be competing directly, are controlled by the same owner, is an entirely different issue.)

| Media

Big media mergers remind us of past mistakes

The CRTC has approved two big media ownership changes:

Astral Media, owners of The Movie Network, Teletoon, Astral Photo, and lots of radio stations in Quebec and Atlantic Canada including the Énergie (CKMF 94.3) and Rock Détente (CITE 107.3) networks, will take over Standard Broadcasting, which owns stations in Western Canada, but also three English Montreal stations — CHOM 97.7, CJAD-800 and CJFM Mix 96. Montreal is the only market where there’s any overlap, and even then they work in two different languages.

Rogers (telecom, Maclean’s, Rogers Sportsnet, OMNI and 51 radio stations) will buy Citytv (5 stations in Toronto and Western Canada) after CTVglobemedia (Globe and Mail, CTV, TSN/RDS, Discovery Channel Canada, Comedy Network, MuchMusic, Bravo! Canada, A-Channel, your first-born child) was ordered to divest itself of the competing TV network in its acquisition of CHUM Ltd.

More details in this Wikipedia article.

Neither decision is particularly bad for competition in Canada. The radio deal involves two companies that weren’t really competing, and the TV deal gives Rogers a foot in the door to network television.

Of course, it’s the deals that preceded these that are cause for concern. The fact that CHOM and Mix 96, which should be highly-competitive stations, are owned by the same company is troublesome. And CTV’s takeover of CHUM was ushered through without any apparent concern that their mega cable channel powerhouse has only gotten bigger. It now includes, for example, two all-news stations: CTV NewsNet and City’s CP24, which for some insane reason they were not required to sell off as part of Citytv.