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50,000 WATT MONTREAL STATION, CINW (940 AM) BOOMED IN HERE, LIQUIDATED

E

Early Byrd

Last Monday, I was tuned into 940 AM, CINW, a Montreal 50,000 watt oldies station that comes in great after sunset, and the General Manager was announcing (via a continuous loop message) that as of 7:00 pm that night, the station was going dark permanently because of "severe economic conditions".

I wonder if any New England stations operating on 940, or adjacent channels 930 or 950, can take advantage of CINW's unfortunate demise.

Incidentally, CINW was supposedly the first commercial radio station in Canada, signing on in 1919. It's Canada's version of KDKA, Pittsburgh.
 
According to Fybush's NERW, this will not mean any power increase, etc. for other US stations if I read correctly.

I know Scott lurks in these boards-- where are ya dude?!
 
I can almost guarantee that 690 and 940 in Montreal will not be silent for long. Montreal still has some AM'ers that would die to have at least one of those 50,000 watt blowtorches. I would not be surprised if CJAD/800 would be glad to get the 940 stick. That signal booms everywhere. Personally, I think something was fishy about the abruptness of the shutdown of both CINF/690 and CINW/940. I'll bet Corus (the owner of both stations) is trying to get an "FM preference" for the Greater Montreal area. You just DON'T shutdown a 91 year old station without a really good reason.

Both 690 and 940 are still protected in spite of the shutdown of both stations as they are Canadian "Clears". The US stations on those frequencies will not benefit with any power increases. This is mandated by International Treaty.
 
I'm here...but spent most of last week in California and all day yesterday in planes and airports.

I'm not sure the demand for 690 and 940 will be as strong as my friend Pete thinks. Remember that CJAD had the opportunity to apply for 940 a decade ago when CBM went silent, and chose not to bother. CJAD"s existing signal on 800 covers their market just fine, from a site Astral already owns. There's no benefit to be had for CJAD by moving to a bigger signal that reaches more listeners outside the market, since they won't show in the ratings and can't sell ad time outside their local market anyway.

Corus can't move CINF or CINW to FM, since it's already at the maximum (two English FMs and two French FMs) in the Montreal market.

This is, quite simply, the death of a medium. At this point, you can count the healthy AMs in Canada on two hands, and there are no - zero - zip - healthy French-language AMs among them. The Francophone audience is effectively now FM-only. The Anglophone audience will be there soon enough.
 
Scott Fybush said:
This is, quite simply, the death of a medium. At this point, you can count the healthy AMs in Canada on two hands, and there are no - zero - zip - healthy French-language AMs among them. The Francophone audience is effectively now FM-only. The Anglophone audience will be there soon enough.
Click to expand...

I can remember visiting CJMS 1280 in Montréal in about 1970. At the time, it was the Francophone Top 40 station (CFOX was the English one) and was an incredible sounding facility. The staff was large compared to a US Top 40, in part due to a larger news staff as well as a lot of promotional activity.

To think that today a facility like 1280 is next to worthless. Another post raised the question of whether Canada's move-to-FM initiative has hastened the decline of AM. I wonder if that is the cause, or is it simply that the Canadians realized what was going to happen to AM at the right time to do an orderly transition.

Now we see the first of the conversion zones the Mexican regulators have divided that nation into about to see the move of every single AM in 4 states to FM. The other zones roll out at roughly quarterly intervals and we'll see only a few dozen AMs left in Mexico.

Glancing through my 2010 World Radio TV handbook I am amazed to see how many countries now have no AM stations, or just one or two residual operations.
 
Peter Q. George (K1XRB) said:
I can almost guarantee that 690 and 940 in Montreal will not be silent for long. Montreal still has some AM'ers that would die to have at least one of those 50,000 watt blowtorches.
Click to expand...

I am surprised that Canada is abandoning their AM's (it appears to be a matter of policy).

Seeing that Canada has vast regions of area with sparse population that is underserved by radio...I would think that the expanded DX-Night reach of the 50KW AM's would do well in serving some of Canada's rural population.

In the US we appear to have abandoned the abilities of DX-night service.

I would think in Canada this would be a benefit of keeping some blowtorches on AM.
 
Anyone know how to say "brokered programming" in French?

Perhaps Brother Stair might want to look into getting a "language coach"? ;D
 
As a large percentage (80%, 85%?) of the Canadian population lives within,
say, 100 miles of the US border, they don't really need
"blowtorch" stations that cover a wide geographic area.
I'm not surprised, at all...
 
WLYNgm said:
As a large percentage (80%, 85%?) of the Canadian population lives within,
say, 100 miles of the US border.
Click to expand...

That's the point, reaching the remaining 15-20% in a rather efficient manner.

There are lots of little villages....along with indians, eskimos, aborigines(sp?) that could have programming from the "big cities" every night.

Many of them do not have internet, or FM service.

Maybe I'm living in the past, but I would think that the qualities of AM, would service their vast country well.
 
Maybe, but I would guess that covering a given town/village/small area
would be best covered by a local FM. The concept of "highest and best use"...
 
WLYNgm said:
Maybe, but I would guess that covering a given town/village/small area
would be best covered by a local FM. The concept of "highest and best use"...
Click to expand...

Many of them don't have local FM.
 
Don Juan said:
WLYNgm said:
As a large percentage (80%, 85%?) of the Canadian population lives within,
say, 100 miles of the US border.
Click to expand...

That's the point, reaching the remaining 15-20% in a rather efficient manner.

There are lots of little villages....along with indians, eskimos, aborigines(sp?) that could have programming from the "big cities" every night.

Many of them do not have internet, or FM service.

Maybe I'm living in the past, but I would think that the qualities of AM, would service their vast country well.
Click to expand...

That's what I don't quite understand -- it would seem that that remainder of the Canadian population, farther from the border and probably residing in more isolated areas, would be a source of listenership, if not a market, for blowtorch AMs.

But this is the age of the internet and fragmented media, and some rural Canadian areas have FM stations carrying national programming. But I suspect that AM reception in interior Canada is a mixed bag. Some parts of the Prairie Provinces have terrific ground conductivity, while other parts north of the Great Lakes and out west don't at all (from what I recall). AM blowtorches coming out of a place like Montreal just might not have enough of a market outside the metropolitan area(s) to make a go of it (apparently).
 
No, but every last one of them does have satellite reception, and both of the Canadian direct-to-home satellite TV services include a selection of radio stations from across Canada, including all of the CBC network services and a variety of commercial stations. Much better quality and reliability than skywave on MW.
 
Good point. In this situation, satellite delivery would
make perfect sense. (other than drawing a niche audience in
more heavily populated areas...)
 
Absolutely amazing..... 1200, 1330 and 1600 literally spend millions on upgrading their AM signals in Boston over 5 years...... and two superior-to-those AM signals in Montreal are just turned off and tossed!
 
The CBC station in Moncton, NB(CBA) used to bomb in here as well, on 1070. It's now just an FM operation. Best CBC heard around here now is 1550 Windsor (10k), which is tough to hear but audible.

CBA was the only station I ever heard broadcast --Atlantic time zone-- an hour ahead of EST.
 
If Mexico and Canada are *both* moving stations from AM to FM, maybe it's time to renegotiate the treaty. It seems silly to not use certain frequencies that are reserved for countries that don't want them, or to protect facilities that no longer exist in the other country (a la WWZN with CJRS and WEEI with CKVL).
 
got this on a facebook feed this morning from WGFP's FB person


Cool Country 940 - WGFP
We got an e-mail from someone in Quebec who got us yesterday, now that CINW 940 in Montreal has signed off
 
JIBGUY said:
Absolutely amazing..... 1200, 1330 and 1600 literally spend millions on upgrading their AM signals in Boston over 5 years...... and two superior-to-those AM signals in Montreal are just turned off and tossed!
Click to expand...
All during the contentious back-and-forth negotiations between the broadcasters and Oak Parkers, followed by the actual construction of the facilites on Sawmill Brook Parkway, I figured maybe ONE million dollars might have been spent (mostly by CCU). Millions PLURAL? Any evidence of that?
 
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