OTTAWA – The CRTC has decided against issuing a call for new radio stations to serve Quebec City after finding that the market cannot sustain an additional commercial radio station at this time.
The Quebec radio market (or the Numeris central market area of Québec) includes the cities of Québec and Lévis, as well as Saint-François-de-l’Île-d’Orléans to the east, and Neuville to the west. This market is currently served by nine French-language commercial FM radio stations operated by five ownership groups.
The Commission said Thursday that, despite an increase in population in the area over the last six years, “this growth has not prevented revenues from the Québec radio market from declining since 2014, nor its PBIT margin from falling well below the provincial average in 2016 and 2017.”
It added it will return the applications from Dufferin Communications (owned by Evanov Radio Group) for an English-language station, and from Gilles Lapointe and Nelson Sergerie (on behalf of a corporation to be incorporated) to operate a French-language station, adding that it will not generally be disposed to accept applications for new commercial radio stations to serve the Quebec radio market for a period of two years.
In two subsequent decisions, the CRTC did find that the Sainte-Marie and the Regional County Municipality of Portneuf could sustain one radio station each. Both small communities are within transmitter range of Quebec City.
The Commission said that it is not necessary to issue a call for applications to serve the two markets given that the only parties who have expressed an interest are Groupe Attraction Radio for a commercial radio station at 105.3 MHz FM in Sainte-Marie, and Michel Lambert (on behalf of a corporation to be incorporated) to operate a commercial radio station at 88.7 MHz FM in the Portneuf market. The two applications will be published as part of the non-appearing phase of an upcoming public hearing.
The CRTC’s original call for comments regarding the Quebec City radio market dates back to April 2016. It called for more comments in August.
