CKAC
Frequency | 730 kHz (AM) |
---|---|
Branding | Radio Circulation 730 |
Programming | |
Format | Traffic information |
Ownership | |
Owner |
|
CHMP-FM, CKOI-FM, CFGL-FM, CKBE-FM | |
History | |
First air date | September 27, 1922 |
Call sign meaning | Canadien-Kilocycle-Amérique-Canada |
Technical information | |
Class | A |
Power | 50,000 watts |
Transmitter coordinates | 45°30′50″N 73°58′24″W / 45.5139°N 73.9733°W |
Links | |
Webcast | Listen Live |
Website | radiocirculation.net |
CKAC is a
CKAC was officially launched on October 2, 1922, under the ownership of the local newspaper La Presse, as the first ever Francophone radio station in North America. CKAC had historically been a dominant station in its early years, with its listenership fuelled by popular programming such as a Sunday church broadcast, news coverage, as well as its broadcast rights to the Montreal Expos of Major League Baseball. In 1968, the station and La Presse was acquired by the Power Corporation of Canada, and CKAC was in turn sold to Telemedia the following year, becoming the flagship of a provincial network of stations.
By the 1990s, the station had begun to lose its dominance due to competing stations and other factors, resulting in a decision by Telemedia to merge its radio network with competing chain Radiomutuel as Radiomédia, and CKAC becoming a joint venture of the two owners. Radiomutuel's CJMS was shut down, and much of its programming and personalities were moved to CKAC. In 2001, Radiomutuel's successor, Astral Media, announced its intent to acquire the remainder of the Radiomédia network and CKAC. However, the acquisition was blocked by the Competition Bureau, resulting in the stations instead being sold in 2004 to Corus Entertainment as part of a larger exchange of assets between the two companies. CKAC became the flagship and provider of talk radio programming to the Corus Québec network, but its newsroom was later shut down in favor of that of its new sister station CINF (later CHMP-FM). In 2007, the station flipped to an all-sports format.
In 2010, Corus sold all of its Quebec radio stations to Cogeco. The following September, CKAC dropped its sports format and switched to traffic information programming, broadcasting live traffic reports for the Montreal area throughout the day.
Previous hosts
Previous hosts on the station included: Michel Langevin and Gabriel Grégoire (morning show), Mario Langlois (mid-mornings), Jean-Charles Lajoie (early afternoons), Michel Villeneuve (afternoon drive), Jean Chartrand (early evenings), Ron Fournier (late evenings), Marc Bryson (weekends) and Jacques Fabi (weeknights).
History
Early days
The construction of CKAC was announced on May 3, 1922, by daily newspaper
CKAC was broadcasting on 730 kHz right from the start, but it originally shared the frequency with CFCF (later
The station became an affiliate of the CBS network in 1929. This affiliation was established to broadcast concerts from renowned American orchestras on CKAC. CKAC also created its own orchestra that year, which would produce concerts aired on American stations twice a week until 1933. (CKAC did keep its CBS affiliation until the late 1940s.)
Radio dramas appeared on CKAC in 1931 and would continue to be heard for many years thereafter, until they were phased out as television was introduced and became popular.
Golden age
In 1950, CKAC increased its daytime power to 10,000 watts (nighttime power remained at 5,000 watts), and the station began to broadcast 24 hours a day.
On October 1 of that same year, CKAC began to air the "Le Chapelet en famille" (the "Family Rosary Hour") as recited by
On March 13, 1958, CKAC raised its power to 50,000 watts full-time, using a
CKAC faced serious competition which intensified in the 1960s as new French-language stations such as
However, CKAC quickly regained the top ratings spot in 1970, due to the crucial role its highly regarded news service had in keeping listeners informed during the October Crisis, in which the terrorist and separatist Front de libération du Québec movement kidnapped and murdered provincial Labour Minister Pierre Laporte.
The station was sold from
From 1970 until the late 1980s, CKAC was regularly one of the very few stations in Canada to attract over one million listeners according to
CKAC became the French radio flagship of the
The station got an
Unlike most other privately owned
Telemedia/Radiomutuel merger
CKAC ran into ratings difficulties in the early 1990s, mostly because of a resurgence from
Because of these factors, Telemedia merged its Quebec AM radio operations with
The merger did help CKAC to regain many of its lost listeners and market shares, but still CKAC did not dominate in ratings as it used to do. Even the format switch of competitor CKVL to
Decline and sale to Corus Entertainment
In 2001, Astral Media (successor of Radiomutuel) got permission from the CRTC to buy Telemedia's Quebec radio properties, which included the RockDétente network as well as 50% of the Radiomédia network. However the Competition Bureau, another federal agency, partially blocked the deal over concentration of ownership issues, and ordered Astral Media to sell Radiomédia stations, which were temporarily put into trusteeship.
A first attempt failed when
Astral Media then concluded in March 2004 an exchange of
Despite widespread opposition against that deal, the known existence of at least four other serious and much less controversial contenders to buy the Radiomédia stations, and numerous allegations to the effect that Corus Entertainment's offer was actually part of a larger plan to prevent any meaningful competition to its new FM talk format (as Corus seemed to try to weaken and steal listeners from CKAC and not from the increasingly popular CBF-FM, and its sales representatives claimed to clients that they would be better advised to buy advertising at CHMP-FM and not CKAC as they pretended the latter was going to close shortly no matter what would happen), the deal was approved in January 2005 by the CRTC in the midst of strong rumours that Astral Media would close CKAC if the deal was not approved. The deal took effect a few months later after a failed attempt by CKAC employees to appeal the decision to the Federal Cabinet.
On May 30, 2005, Corus Entertainment closed the reputed CKAC newsroom in favour of the lowly regarded
All-sports era
The format switch to all-sports was announced on March 1, 2007, and took effect on April 2, 2007. Sister station CHMP-FM became the co-flagship of the Corus Québec network. The long-time tradition of airing news bulletins on the 45th minute of the hour, a practice that was begun in 1972, was ended. Music programming also disappeared from the station's schedule for the first time ever, except for late-night Souvenirs Garantis oldies programming. Before April 2, 2007, the station had a news/talk format with sports talk in the evenings and some music (mostly oldies) during weekends.
CKAC was the radio
On April 30, 2010, it was announced that Cogeco will acquire all radio stations owned by Corus in Quebec for $80 million, pending CRTC approval.[9] However, Cogeco must either apply with the CRTC for an exemption from the common ownership policy, or sell off some of these (or Cogeco's own stations) to a third party as they will be over the maximum allowable number of stations in Montreal, Quebec City and Sherbrooke. Corus is selling off their Quebec radio stations, as they are less profitable than Corus's stations in other parts of Canada.[10]
On December 17, 2010, the CRTC approved the sale of most of Corus' radio stations in Quebec, including CKAC, to Cogeco. The same decision, however, also denied Cogeco's request to convert Sherbrooke station CKOY-FM 104.5 to a repeater of CKAC.[11] (That station would later be re-called CJTS-FM before closing down in 2011.)
End of all-sports era and transition to traffic information
On September 2, 2011, at exactly 10 AM, CKAC dropped its all-sports format. A recorded announcement from Cogeco vice president Richard Lachance was played, announcing a new
Effective September 6, 2011, some of CKAC's sports programming and airstaff have moved over to CHMP, along with Montreal Canadiens and Montreal Alouettes broadcasts.[12][13]
After playing a wide variety of continuous music over Labour Day weekend, Radio Circulation 730 made its debut at 4:30 AM on September 6, as announced. The first announcer heard on the air was Michel Millard.
Alongside the original (and ultimately abandoned) application to place traffic information on 690, Cogeco also planned on an English-language traffic radio service for 940 previously used by CINW.[14] However, that frequency was awarded instead to Paul Tietolman, for a francophone news-talk radio service.[15]
Rebroadcasters
The following community-owned rebroadcasters are currently listed with the CRTC as rebroadcasting CKAC.[16] Although traffic information for the Montreal area has little apparent relevance to these communities, no changes to this transmitter list (if any) following CKAC's 2011 format change have yet been published.
Transmitters
City of license | Identifier | Frequency | RECNet | CRTC Decision |
---|---|---|---|---|
La Grande-1 generating station | CFAE-FM | 101.7 FM | Query | 2004-258 |
La Grande-3 generating station | CFBD-FM | 93.1 FM | Query | 2004-258 |
Guyer | CFCC-FM | 92.1 FM | Query | 2004-258 |
Keyano (Camp LG-4) | CFDD-FM | 93.1 FM | Query | 2004-258 |
Nikamo (Camp LA-1) | CFEA-FM | 92.5 FM | Query | 2004-258 |
Laforge-2 generating station | CFFD-FM | 103.9 FM | Query | 2004-258 |
Brisay
|
CFGA-FM | 92.1 FM | Query | 2004-258 |
Champion | CIHQ-FM | 93.1 FM | Query | |
Poste Laverendrye | VF2155 | 103.9 FM | Query | 98-323 |
See also
- CHMJ, former sister station in Vancouver that also carries an all-traffic format.
References
- ^ Pierre Pagé (2007). Histoire de la radio au Québec, Fides, Montreal, p. 27
- ^ Bernard Montigny (1979). Les débuts de la radio à Montréal et le poste CKAC, M.A. thesis, Université de Montréal, pp. 21-22, 26.
- ^ a b Ouverture officielle de la station radio CKAC, Bilan du siècle, Université de Sherbrooke.
- ^ Montigny (1979), op. cit., p. 22.
- ^ a b Pagé (2007), op. cit., p. 451.
- ^ CNW Newswire: "AM Info690 Montréal and AM940 Montreal's Greatest Hits to cease operation on January 29, 2010", January 29, 2010.
- ^ "L'Impact conclut une nouvelle entente avec CKAC". cyberpresse.ca. March 30, 2010.
- ^ CKAC aired eight games in 2010 [1] Archived 2010-03-14 at the Wayback Machine and fifteen games in 2011 [2] Archived 2012-07-22 at archive.today.
- ^ "Canada's Corus Entertainment sells all its stations in Quebec, including Montreal". Radio-Info.com. 30 April 2010. Archived from the original on 5 June 2011.
- St. Petersburg Times, "Canada Report" column, May 9, 2010.
- ^ Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2010-942: "Transfer of effective control of various commercial radio programming undertakings from Corus Entertainment Inc. to Cogeco inc.", issued December 17, 2010.
- ^ Government pays for Cogeco to shut down CKAC Sports, September 2, 2011
- ^ On September 6, CKAC Becomes Radio Circulation 730, Montreal's First Dedicated Traffic Radio Station, September 2, 2011
- ^ Broadcasting Notice of Consultation CRTC 2011-571, September 7, 2011.
- ^ Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2011-721, November 21, 2011.
- ^ Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2004-258
External links
- Official website
- (in English) CKAC history - Canadian Communications Foundation
- (in French) CKAC history - Fondation Des Communications Canadiennes
- CKAC in the REC Canadian station database
- CKAC in the FCC AM station database