CKOI-FM

For the CKOI radio network, see CKOI.

CKOI-FM

File:CKOI Montreal 2011.png
Montreal, Quebec
Broadcast area	Greater Montreal area
Frequency	96.9 MHz (FM)
Branding	"CKOI 96.9"
Programming
Format	hot adult contemporary (DJs and presentation/content are in French, but plays both Francophone and Anglophone music)
Ownership
Owner	Cogeco (Diffusion Métromédia CMR Inc.)
Sister stations	CHMP-FM, CKAC, CFGL-FM, CKBE-FM
History
First air date	1976
Call sign meaning	CKOI is an homonym of "C'est quoi?", meaning "What is it?".
Technical information
Class	C1
ERP	307,000 watts
Transmitter coordinates	45°29′53.88″N 73°34′14.16″W
Links
Webcast	[6]
Website	CKOI 96.9

CKOI-FM is a French-language Canadian radio station located in Montreal, Quebec.

Owned and operated by Cogeco, it broadcasts on 96.9 MHz from the roof of the CIBC Tower in Downtown Montreal with an effective radiated power of 307,000 watts (class C1) using an omnidirectional antenna. It is one of the few Montreal FM stations to not use the standard Mount Royal tower, and it is one of North America's most powerful FM stations.

The station has a hot adult contemporary format because of 1970s and 1980s music in the playlist. For many years CKOI-FM was the most popular station in Montreal according to BBM Canada ratings using full coverage reach numbers (as opposed to central reach numbers which only take into account listeners from the central market area); however, full coverage reach numbers are no longer available for Montreal radio stations as BBM now relies on the Portable People Meter (PPM) technology to measure ratings in Montreal.

More recently, the station's branding has been extended to sister stations CKOF-FM in Gatineau, CKOY-FM in Sherbrooke, CFEL-FM in Quebec City and CKOB-FM in Trois-Rivières.

History

CKVL-FM, as the station was originally known, was founded by Jack Tietolman and Corey Thomson and probably went on the air at some point between 1947 and 1957. Sources disagree on the date, and at least seven different years (including three post-1957 ones) are known to have been reported as the station's first air date. The confusion is increased by the fact that there is no known report suggesting that the station went silent for any noticeable period of time after getting on the air, despite this phenomenon being relatively common among 1950s FM stations. In any case, the Canadian Communication Foundation, which claims the station's first air date was in 1947, does report that CKVL-FM was confirmed as being on the air in 1957.

The station was originally a full-time repeater of AM sister station CKVL. As such, the station was bilingual (French/English), with the majority of programming being in French.

By 1962, CKVL-FM increased its power from 10,000 watts to 307,000 watts omnidirectional from the rooftop of the CIBC Tower in Downtown Montreal. It is often believed that this high power was the result of a clerical error by the CRTC, but that organization did not exist at the time as radio was still regulated by the CRTC's predecessor, the Board of Broadcast Governors, and regulations limiting effective radiated power to 100,000 watts on FM, which came into force that same year, do not apply to stations which had already received approval for a higher power.

The simulcast of CKVL ended in 1970, as CKVL-FM launched an automated oldies format.

On December 6, 1976, CKVL-FM became CKOI-FM, and the station's format was changed to progressive rock. It evolved into a largely New Wave based format in 1979 and adopted a rock-leaning contemporary hit radio format in 1980.

The Fall 1991 Bureau of Broadcast Measurement ratings were a defining moment for the station, as it found itself in first place with over a million listeners in full coverage. It was the first time ever in Montreal that any FM station obtained the first place in the Fall ratings, which are by far the most important for the radio industry as they are used to determine prices charged for publicity. CKOI-FM would get over a million listeners in 32 consecutive books (excluding Summer ratings starting in 2001 which were only done for the central area of the market), from Fall 1991 to Fall 2002 inclusively. (The station had already managed to get a million listeners on a few occasions during Summer ratings before 1991.) The station's best-ever results under the old diary system were obtained in the Spring 1995 ratings, in which CKOI-FM got 1,341,300 listeners; by comparison, CKAC, which was the station's closest competitor, got only 775,500 listeners.

CKOI-FM, along with sister station CKVL, was sold in 1992 by its founder Jack Tietolman to Metromedia CMR, a company owned by Pierre Arcand and Pierre Béland. Both stations would be sold again in 2001, this time to Corus Entertainment.

On January 1, 2002, the station's city of licence became Montreal (it had always officially been Verdun until then), as a result of forced municipal mergers which made Verdun a Montreal borough.

Unlike other North American superpower FM stations which have lowered their power since the 1990s, CKOI-FM does cherishes its signal; as a result, when Industry Canada advised the station in 2004 that it was not compliant with updated Code 6 safety regulations (which deal with acceptable levels of radiation), owner Corus Entertainment invested to make the transmitter compliant, instead of taking the "easy way" out, which would have been in this specific case to reduce power to "only" 122,800 watts.

longtime Corus-era CKOI logo; used until February 2011

The station's studios were moved for the first time ever in July 2006, after decades at 211 Gordon Avenue in Verdun; the new studios are located at Place Bonaventure in Downtown Montreal. Also, by September 2008, when the station changed programming and added the 2 plus 1 program, it morphed to more of a modern adult contemporary format, even though still listed by Mediabase & BDS as a top 40 station. When the station moved to modern AC, it began beating rival CKMF-FM (NRJ) again. By 2010, NRJ began beating CKOI-FM again.

On April 30, 2010, Cogeco announced it would purchase Corus Quebec's radio stations, including CKOI-FM, for $80 million, as Corus's Quebec stations were less profitable than its stations in other parts of Canada. On December 17, 2010, the CRTC approved the sale of most of Corus' radio stations in Quebec, including CKOI-FM, to Cogeco.

On November 24, 2011, the CRTC determined that CKOI-FM had abusively used musical montages of English-language songs in order to get around the French-language music quotas, and imposed a condition of licence on the station limiting the broadcasting of montages to 10 percent of the broadcast week.

Programming

On weekdays from the 2009-2010 season, they had the Top du top DJ mix show mixing four English songs at 10am, 11am, 1pm & 2pm, mixing mostly newer hits, recurrent hits and gold hits. In addition, another DJ mix show with English songs existed as 2 plus 1, where it aired at 10:30am, 1:30pm & 2:30pm. The show consists of it DJ mixes, starting with two classics/recurrents followed by a newer song, or as a result, when a new song aired between the two classics/recurrents. Sometimes it would start with a newer song followed by two classics/recurrents. Other mixshows are Le super 16 (similar to Le top du top), which during the 9am hour on weekdays would usually have 9 English-language hits, with the rest of the hits in French. Another mixshow is 3 par 3 at 3pm, 4pm & 5pm (also on weekdays, during the Tout un retour show), airing 3 hits, also old or new in general. In addition, 3 par 3 airs every hour on the CKOI ta toune show on weekends, but renamed the weekend 3 par 3 version as Puissance 3 on August 28, 2010. The 9am-3pm mixshows that aired prior to August 20, 2010 were discontinued, and a new mixshow called La puissance musicale au travail (or also Jeux de puissance) airs with three currents/recurrents plus one gold song (pre-2004) from 9am, 9:30am, 10am, 10:30am, 11am, 1pm, 1:30pm, 2pm & 2:30pm, all in the same timeslots as the former mixshows. During the Le prolongation du 6 à 6 @ 7pm, Le duel is aired, where you vote off 2 classics after calling the station. If one of the classics is highly-voted, then it is played @ 7:15pm. By August 2010, CITE-FM & the RockDétente radio network began airing a similar Le duel show on the Monday-Thursday editions of the 1980s music-based Mix 80 (6-8pm).

Personalities

In recent years, the station has been known especially for pranks by the Masked Avengers, a duo composed of Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel, against internationally-known personalities such as Jacques Chirac, Britney Spears, Sarah Palin and George W. Bush. The duo appeared on the program's afternoon show Les Cerveaux de l'info, along with co-host Richard Z. Sirois.

Comedian Pierre Brassard, also known for prank phone calls, was also previously associated with the station.

CKOI-FM lost its longtime morningman Normand Brathwaite on March 17, 2006, following a conflict with former co-host Jean-René Dufort; the latter became the station's morning man until June 22, 2007.

External links

• CKOI 96.9 official site
• CKOI history at Canadian Communications Foundation
• CKOI-FM in the REC Canadian station database