MONTREAL – Six years ago, in the summer of 2011, a pair of Montreal businessmen went public with a project to revitalize the radio market in Montreal. Using two clear-channel AM frequencies, one for each language, they would provide a new kind of talk radio that wouldn’t be afraid to invest in content and would provide a much needed alternative to the cost-cutting machines at Bell Media and Cogeco.
Six years later, after going through several bumps in the road, the company finally has two AM stations on the air, though we’re still waiting for them to broadcast the high-quality talk programming they have promised.
7954689 Canada Inc., known as Tietolman Tétrault Pancholy Media, flipped the switch on CFQR 600 AM, its English station, on the evening of June 30, just hours before the final deadline the CRTC gave them to launch the station. Though it is still in on-air testing mode, the Commission appears to be satisfied that it has met the deadline.
“From CRTC’s perspective they have informed us that they are operational,” wrote Patricia Valladao, media relations manager at the CRTC, in an email. She could not say when the notice was given, because “this information is not public.”
TTP Media’s other station, CFNV 940 AM, was similarly launched right before its last deadline last November.
Both stations are currently broadcasting an automated music lineup. Rajiv Pancholy, president of TTP Media, said the plan is still to launch both stations simultaneously. He wouldn’t give a date, but said the group is impatient. Steve Kowch, a former program director for Montreal’s CJAD and Toronto’s News Talk 1010, who has been involved with the TTP Media group since 2011, said it would be by the end of this year.
No announcements have been made about on-air staff at either station, though Pancholy said they have spoken to many people and have several agreements in place. He said many of the names would be recognizable to Montreal radio listeners. The Montreal market has no shortage of unemployed or underemployed radio personalities who have resigned, been laid off or otherwise left their jobs, often to jeers of protest from loyal listeners.
The road has been a long one for TTP Media, which started in 2010 when Paul Tietolman and Nicolas Tétrault tried to present an alternative to Cogeco’s $80-million deal to acquire Corus’s Quebec radio stations. Their $81-million offer was unsuccessful. In 2011, they scored a partial victory in a five-way battle for two clear-channel AM frequencies in Montreal, winning 940 kHz for their French station. A year later they settled on 600 kHz for their English station. Applications for FM music stations in Toronto and Calgary, both heavily contested, were unsuccessful, and a plan for a French-language sports talk station at 850 AM in Montreal was abandoned for technical reasons.
Despite promises to be on the air quickly, TTP Media applied for several extensions on their two-year deadline to launch. After a “final” extension in 2014 for 940, the commission changed its mind and gave a second “final” extension a year later. It did the same for the English station.
TTP Media gave many reasons for the delays. At first, it wanted to wait to see how the Bell acquisition of Astral Media would turn out, hoping it might acquire one of the AM stations that would put Bell over the common ownership limit. (Bell ended up getting an exception to the rule.)
“There were a lot of question marks about the future of radio,” Pancholy said. So TTP Media chose to “take a step back and see how the landscape is changing.”
Then, it was technical issues. The only transmitter that would work on 600 was owned by Cogeco on the Mohawk reserve of Kahnawake. TTP Media had to negotiate a new deal with Cogeco, the band council and the land owner that eventually saw TTP Media acquire the equipment on the site and a new lease for the land. Then it had to fix the transmitter, which had last been used in 2010 at 690 and 940. Other technical delays, including the sudden death of their broadcast engineer, pushed the launch right to the deadline.
But now that the technical aspects are out of the way (assuming testing goes well on 600), the group can turn to programming. Pancholy said they will have a temporary studio as they prepare a permanent one.
Exactly what kind of talk programming should be expected is also being kept close to the vest. In their CRTC application, TTP Media spoke of a debate format, where shows would be hosted by two people with differing political opinions. But the broadcasting industry has changed in the past six years, and Pancholy said the group is constantly reassessing its strategy.
Asked about trying again to launch stations in other markets, Pancholy said “we always have ideas, but now it’s a credibility issue.” The group needs to prove it can get its Montreal stations going before it looks to other projects.
Montreal radio listeners who are disappointed with the major broadcasters are impatiently waiting for those stations to offer them something new.
