Growing in small market Quebec
MONTREAL – It only started in 2012, but Quebec’s Attraction Radio has already grown, entirely through acquisitions, to become one of the top radio broadcast owners in Quebec, based on a business model of small-market stations each maintaining their own identity and local management.
On Tuesday, the CRTC published the latest acquisition by this group, of CIPC-FM Port-Cartier (Radioactive 99.1) and CKCN-FM (PUR FM 94.1) in nearby Sept-Îles, on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, 500 kilometres northeast of Quebec City.
Both stations were owned by four shareholders, Yvan Beaulieu, Jean Laverdière, Luc Hovington and Alban Plourde. Attraction Radio will pay $3.4 million total to acquire the shares in the stations’ licensees.
Attraction proposed a standard tangible benefits package of 6% of the total value of the transaction (including assumed leases), which works out to $136,560 for CIPC-FM and $84,900 for CKCN-FM, paid out over seven years to RadioStar, Musicaction, the Community Radio Fund of Canada and other eligible projects. Attraction also paid off in full all remaining benefits obligations from changes of control in 2008 and 2012.
Attraction cites the changing landscape of the radio industry as reasons behind the sale. “Despite their distance from large markets, the stations aren’t shielded from the consequences of technological changes and the impact they have on listening habits of the population they serve,” the application read.
Attraction sees itself as a saviour of small-town radio stations (check the map of its station locations) in Quebec going through difficult times. It cites CHEQ-FM in Sainte-Marie, which was so heavily in debt it couldn’t pay for a new transmitter that would have improved its signal. Attraction acquired the station and invested half a million dollars in the technical changes. In 2012, it acquired CJIT-FM, the local station in what was then a little-known town called Lac-Mégantic. A year later, an oil train derailment destroyed the town’s centre, killing 47 people and devastating its economy. The station was a valuable information resource for residents during the recovery, but “for more than three months, advertising revenue was virtually non-existent,” said the company
And there was CKRS-FM in Saguenay, which was owned by Corus but left out of an $80-million acquisition of Corus Quebec stations by Cogeco in 2011 due to ownership concentration concerns. CKRS was threatened with closure several times, and finally sold to Attraction in 2012. Attraction switched it to a music format, changed its call sign to CILM-FM and it became an affiliate of Cogeco’s Rythme FM network. It says it expects the station to be profitable next year.
Yet another radio acquisition, this one CFLM-FM in La Tuque, was announced in April and is pending approval from the CRTC. It was their fifth station acquisition in three months.
Attraction Radio, part of the Attraction Media group of companies that also includes advertising and film and television production arms, is controlled by Richard Speer. It’s managed by minority shareholder Sylvain Chamberland, a former president of Radiomédia and executive at TVA, Quebecor Media and Radio-Canada.
