What the happy dude fails to mention is that Bell Media is A PACK OF FUCKING ARSEHOLES and are creating this French-language content by REMOVING the English-language content they acquired a year ago, where they even went so far as to boosting the signal to better serve the English community by going to 690.
Let's be clear: the demise of CKAC was a shame, but it speaks volumes when many Francophones prefer listening to CKGM. Maybe it's because they'd rather hear Mitch Melnick instead of what is basically the radio version of L'Antichambre. Maybe it's because the English station isn't so Quebec-centric by finding the happy medium of boosting local sports talent with world talent and not devoting all their time to the David Desharnais Is Better Than Tomas Plekanec shrine. And let's not forget, CKGM is listened to all around the world over the internet. This talk of the station being operated at a loss sounds exactly like Electronic Arts' profit-firing ratio (we only made 5-billion this year instead of 10 so we're firing a thousand of you we'll probably have to rehire in a month). They just ripped the rights to broadcast Habs games from Talk800, and apparently have this goldmine for like SIX years! I seriously doubt the ratings count anyone listening online. They sure have plenty of commercials for a station that supposedly isn't reaching anyone...
"See this book? This is you pissing off an entire community.
By the way I have 9 of these."
And how much more disingenuous can the people from Bell Media be when they claim during the CRTC process how they would love so very much to keep the station English DESPITE NEVER BOTHERING TO ASK FOR AN EXEMPTION FROM THE CRTC OWNERSHIP POLICY, OF WHICH THEY ARE PERFECTLY ALLOWED AND CAPABLE OF DOING?! This reeks of Bell Media not giving two shits of a fuck about the English community of Montreal. I mean hey what's one more shaft to the English community right? And creating more French content while eliminating English content is complete and utter rot. You want to better serve your consumers? CREATE A NEW FRENCH SPORTS STATION AND LEAVE THE ENGLISH ONE ALONE WHICH IS HOW IT SHOULD BE instead of somehow shoving the fragmented carcass onto Talk800 (the boring network that used to have the Habs games, but really is just 24hrs of complaining about something). Frankly there are way too many contradictions in Bell Media's talk about the issue, never mind the fact the company is just eating way too much for anyone's liking... Regardless, the Montreal market is way too different to follow CRTC rules and we only have 2 community focused talk stations which they want to smash into one (the FM stations hardly cover that front and one of them beams in from Burlington, Vermont).
Maybe the station should go back to it's pirate-y radio roots and move to Kahnawake. Oh and play the Bulldogs games again.