OTTAWA-GATINEAU and MONTREAL – The CRTC has given the go ahead for two new English language FM stations and a French language community FM radio station to serve the areas of Ottawa and Gatineau.
The Commission also approved, with some changes, applications by Astral Media Radio and Torres Media Ottawa for the allocation of the 99.7 MHz and 101.9 MHz frequencies, respectively, and the application by Radio de la communauté francophone d’Ottawa (RCFO) for the French community station. Corus Radio’s application for a local news and information station was denied.
Astral and Torres originally received approval for the two English stations back in August 2008, but the governor-in-council referred this decision back to the Commission for reconsideration and a new hearing last November. The CRTC confirmed its original decision on Tuesday in Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2009-481, after hearing from the applicants again in March.
RCFO must amend its original application within 60 days to formally request the 94.5 frequency, rather than 101.7 which it had initially applied for. The station’s musical format will consist mostly of a mix of rock, pop and dance music, as well as country, concert, folk, world beat and international, jazz and blues. It plans to offer 126 hours of programming each week, most of which will be produced by Franco-Ontarian volunteers, including 94 hours of local programming.
Astral and Torres have agreed to help with the support and development of RCFO, since the operating costs related to the use of the 94.5 MHz frequency would be higher than these anticipated in its initial proposal, the CRTC’s press release read.
Astral’s application said that the format of its new station, tentatively called Eve-FM, will be ‘comfort radio’ (or soft adult contemporary and ballad style), targeting adults aged 35-54 years of age, while skewing 80% to female listeners. Torres is planning to launch a blues/blues rock-based station targeting audiences aged 25-54 years.
Astral said in a statement that it “welcomed” the news.
"I am pleased by the decision, which will contribute to programming diversity in Ottawa-Gatineau and create substantial benefits for the region, including direct investments" said Jacques Parisien, group president of Astral Media Radio and Astral Media Outdoor.
But at least one CRTC Commissioner disagreed with Tuesday’s decision.
Commissioner Michel Morin filed a dissenting opinion, calling it “utter nonsense” to allocate one of the last frequencies in “this spectrum-congested market” to Torres’ experimental blues/blues rock-based format.
“When you only have enough food for those who are already at the table, you don’t invite more people to the party”, Morin’s opinion read, while expressing support of the Commission’s approval of Astral’s application.
“In my mind there’s no doubt that the best proposal presented in the new hearing was the News/Talk format was (sic) proposed by Corus Radio Company (best in terms of programming expenses, job creation, less impact on other players, etc.), and ‘the best use of the frequencies’ should have implied a more balanced choice between the News/Talk format proposed by Corus, Astral’s music format aimed at female markets, and the community radio proposal by Radio de la communauté francophone d’Ottawa (RCFO)”, Morin continued.
He also called Corus the “perfect player” to break the “dual-band monopoly” of the CBC on the FM band and CFRA (owned by CTVglobemedia) on the AM band in the region, and said that Corus could have also offered greater financial assistance to RCFO than Torres.
“With its format, Corus Radio would have improved competition in this market for the production of news, not only for the radio market but for the television market as well”, Morin added. “In refusing to grant a licence to Corus Radio we have thwarted the very market forces that could improve the production of news in this region as a whole.”
– Lesley Hunter
