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?Spoken-word or written-word, you always gravitate to your first language,? says Martin Spalding, centre, vice-president of Astral?s five Montreal radio stations, with director of operations Martin Tremblay, left, and Andr? Lallier, brand director at CHOM.
Photograph by: Pierre Obendrauf , The Gazette
MONTREAL ?? It?s Montreal English radio?s little secret.
Most of the people who listen to the top English FM music stations are francophones.
Local common wisdom holds that, for the most part, francophones consume French-language media and anglophones consume media in the language of McLuhan. That is definitely true for TV. And although there are francophone readers of English newspapers, they?re very much a minority of that audience.
But music radio is a whole other enchilada. The majority of listeners for CHOM, Virgin Radio and The Beat 92.5 are francophones. The audience for the city?s classic-rock shop CHOM is 65 to 70 per cent francophone and around 60 per cent francophone for Virgin, according to executives at Astral Radio, which owns both stations. Rival hit station The Beat, which is owned by Cogeco, is in the same ballpark, with a listenership that is more than 60 per cent francophone.
At first glance, it?s an odd state of affairs. Francophones here love their local culture, can?t get enough of the homegrown vedettes and generally prefer to tune in to La Voix rather than The Voice. So why?s it so different in the radio world?
Two words go a long way to explaining this unusual phenomenon ? Led Zeppelin.
Whether you?re English or French-speaking, if you want your daily dose of Zep ? if you just can?t make it through the daily grind without a blast of Whole Lotta Love or Kashmir ? then CHOM is your go-to station. No other commercial station here is going to be spinning the Zeppelin classics.
In other words, it?s all about the music. If you want classic rock, it?s CHOM. If it?s contemporary hitmakers like Justin Timberlake, Rihanna and Bruno Mars you?re looking for, then your dial will be locked on Virgin or The Beat.
?In Montreal, there aren?t any other significant rock stations,? said Andr? Lallier, brand director at CHOM. ?So if you don?t want to hear Top 40 music, then CHOM?s the place to be.?
The French-language stations like CKOI, owned by Cogeco, and NRJ, owned by Astral, are forced by Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission rules to play 65 per cent French-language music. So if you?re not satisfied with a playlist that?s only 35 per cent English, then you?ll be headed for one of the anglo outlets. CKOI and NRJ play the hits from Daft Punk, Fun and Bon Jovi but the biggest chunk of their musical programming shines the light on local franco artists like Les Trois Accords, Marie-Mai and Karim Ouellet.
Johanne Cloutier, general manager of CKOI, notes that it?s clear some francophones simply want more anglo music than they get on CKOI, NRJ, Rouge or Rythme, and, she adds, ?you don?t have to be perfectly bilingual to appreciate music.?
In other words, the francophone listener might not understand every word in Freeway Frank?s jokes on the Virgin morning show, or all of the nuance to the lyrics in Justin Bieber?s Baby, but he or she doesn?t mind. They just want the music.
A big factor is that 65 per cent French-language music rule.
?The problem is that you might not have enough (strong French-language material) to make a good playlist,? said Leo Da Estrela, program director at The Beat.
?They play a lot of the same artists. So there?s a big burn factor. They?ll play the same songs and they?ll burn quicker.?
In the past, the executives at the franco stations have pleaded to have the quota reduced, making the case that they are scaring away francophone listeners who are ending up on stations like Virgin and The Beat that have zero per cent French music. But the music industry, represented by lobby group ADISQ, has always fought tooth and nail to keep the quotas and, until now, the CRTC has always sided with the music industry in this dispute.
The frustrating thing for the English stations is they are unable to sell that francophone audience to advertisers. The advertising agencies buy based on language. So when they buy CHOM, they?re only buying English listenership, and they refuse to pay for the francophone portion of the audience.
The ad agencies get added value, says Lallier from CHOM. They pay as if CHOM only has a reach of 455,000 listeners ? the anglo share of their audience ? even though their ads are in fact broadcast to all of CHOM?s 1.3 million listeners.
So if there are stations that click with both anglos and francos, why hasn?t someone started up a fully bilingual music station that would mirror the bicultural nature of that audience? Well someone did, actually, way back in the ?70s. In 1975, CHOM began operating as an officially bilingual station with the approval of the CRTC, and the station, at the time located on Greene Ave. in Westmount, featured anglo and franco jocks spinning LPs by Supertramp and Genesis alongside ones by Harmonium and Offenbach.
But this little slice of linguistic harmony didn?t last long. Just a year into the experiment, under pressure from the city?s francophone stations, the CRTC nipped the bilingual project in the bud and forced CHOM to go back to broadcasting only in the language of Chris de Burgh.
Most in the industry feel the concept of a bilingual radio station here simply isn?t realistic.
?It would be very hard for the francophone stations to survive,? Lallier says.
?I just think bilingualism could be a challenge,? said Martin Spalding, vice-president and general manager of the five Astral stations (CHOM, Virgin, CJAD, NRJ, Rouge).
?Spoken-word or written-word, you always gravitate to your first language.?
The idea of a bilingual radio station might just be a pipe dream but it?s an enticing thought for those of us who like the notion of the two communities coming closer together. Back when CHOM was embracing the bicultural zeitgeist of Montreal in the mid-?70s, many of us had our first exposure to francophone artists like Michel Pagliaro, Harmonium, Beau Dommage and Offenbach thanks to L?Esprit de Montr?al (as CHOM was known back then). And no one ? except rival stations ? was complaining about hearing the two languages side by side on-air.
?I think it would be fantastic,? said Da Estrela from The Beat. ?I think it would be a great reflection of who we are. There?s stuff like La Voix going on, with 2.6 million viewers and there?s not one anglo watching. If we were more bilingual, we?d have a better idea of what?s happening on the other side.?
Anne-Marie Withenshaw, who hosts All-Access Weekend on The Beat on Saturday mornings, and Isabelle Racicot, who hosts the weekend countdown show on Virgin Radio, are vedettes from the franco media who bring some of that flavour to these English stations. Withenshaw has interviews with international pop stars on her show, but she also brings in local franco celebs like Gregory Charles and Coeur de Pirate.
Withenshaw quite rightly points out that there?s a tradition of francophones hosting on English stations, most notably at CHOM, with jocks like Claude Rajotte, Beno?t Dufresne and Paul Beauregard. But she?s loath to read any great social or political import into her presence on The Beat.
?To me, it?s about local more than language,? Withenshaw said. ?When Gregory Charles announced his Vintage show, I had him on the show. I don?t make a point of the language. I find that gimmicky. I?m just into communicating.?
Though the talk is English on all three stations, the hosts are encouraged to throw in French phrases now and then, to say ?bonjour? when it?s a franco caller, and just generally to acknowledge that they know a big chunk of their audience is francophone.
And when someone requests the old Pag classic Le Temps presse, which happened a few days ago, veteran CHOM host Too Tall is only too happy to play it on the mid-day request hour Made to Order.
The dream of a bilingual station might be just that, a dream, but the regulators and rival stations can?t do anything about the bilingual/bicultural audience for these stations.
That just ?l?esprit de Montr?al.?
bkelly@montrealgazette.com
Twitter: brendanshowbiz
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