MONTREAL – There may yet be hope that a group of Montreal-based entrepreneurs will launch a pair of news-talk AM radio stations in Montreal almost five years after the first was approved for a licence by the CRTC. Cartt.ca covered this back in July, saying then a launch looked unlikely.
Nicolas Tétrault, one of the partners in 7954689 Canada Inc. (known as TTP Media), posted (and then deleted) a video to YouTube last week announcing that the company has acquired dormant transmission equipment on the Kahnawake native reserve south of Montreal from Cogeco Media, and that the stations — an English one at 600 AM and a French one at 940 AM — would be launching soon.
Cogeco Media president Richard Lachance confirmed the sale of assets.
He said the price was confidential. Previously, the company reached an agreement with Cogeco to lease the transmission equipment. The site had formerly been used to broadcast Corus-owned stations Info 690 and 940 News/AM 940 until those were shut down in 2010. The assets were part of the deal when Corus sold its Quebec stations to Cogeco in 2011.
Tétrault did not respond to a request for comment. The partners in TTP Media, who also include former Nortel, Microcell, Mitec and TenXc executive Rajiv Pancholy and Paul Tietolman, son of the founder of CKVL, have refused or failed to respond to inquiries from journalists for years.
They face a tight deadline to get their stations on the air. The French one, whose deadline was extended three times (one more than the CRTC normally gives) has its next one on November 21. The English one, first approved in 2012, has its “final” deadline on November 9. Should they fail to launch, their authorization will expire and they will have to start from scratch unless the CRTC changes its mind again and grants another extension.
In June, TTP Media let an authorization for a third station, a French sports-talk station at 850 AM, expire without requesting an extension.
No explanation was given, but a year ago, CKLX-FM 91.9 in Montreal switched from a news-talk to a sports-talk format.
If 600 and 940 are to launch by the deadline, there’s still a lot of work to do. There have been no announcements about on-air talent, studio location or branding, call letters have not been assigned to the stations, and on-air testing has not yet begun. However, after five years of having very little to show, the group has finally made a serious move toward getting the stations on the air.
Montreal is served by two English AM commercial talk stations: CJAD 800 and TSN Radio 690, both owned by Bell Media. In French, the main commercial talk stations are news-talk 98.5 FM and traffic station Radio Circulation 730 AM, both owned by Cogeco Media, plus RNC Media’s 91.9 Sport.
