MONTREAL – After a week of watching the suits speaking before the CRTC, on Thursday, it was up to the people to make their case and several members of Montreal’s English community showed up to protest Bell’s plans to turn TSN Radio – formerly the Team 990 – into a French radio station.
Anglophones like Sheldon Harvey say they have a lot lose if the language switch is accepted.
This isn’t the first time he has appeared before the CRTC but today he feels his testimony is critical.
The Greenfield Park resident argues that the anglpohone community has a lot to lose if the all-sports English radio station, TSN, is converted to a French equivalent.
I don’t think it’s as much a language issue as it is a content issue,” he told Global News.
“We’re losing a broadcasting entity that’s been building up its following over the last ten years.”
Bell is seeking regulatory approval, so that it can finalize its purchase of Astral Media for more than three billion dollars.
Part of the controversial deal involves turning the Montreal English sports radio station into a French one.
Anglophones appearing before the regulatory board were making a passionate plea to stop the language switch.
“We English-speaking Quebecers have our attachments to some very established voices.”
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One by one they spoke.
“This year they started broadcasting English Premiership soccer games.”
Rrahul Majumdar is a huge fan of TSN Radio and he too believes the station should continue to broadcast in English.
“It would be a loss for the local market because it’s not something you’re going to find anywhere else,” he says.
Bell executives counter that this is simply just not the case.
Bell’s plan is to increase sports coverage on CJAD by transferring the broadcast of Montreal Canadiens hockey games to this station.
But anglophone sports fans say that’s not good enough.
“To simply say you can combine what that voice does with another voice, I don’t think it’s realistic,” says David Birnbaum, the Executive Director at Quebec English School Boards Association.
Yet only a handful of anglophones appeared at the CRTC hearing on Thursday – most of the hearing room was deserted.
However Montreal media critic, Steve Faguy, doubts that the lack of numbers will hurt their case.
“I think what really marked it for the commissioners is that we have individuals appearing who don’t have any financial interests. They are really here because they care about radio stations.”
But other anglophone language advocates take a different view.
“Sure, the all-sports station’s devoted listeners would miss its programming, if the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approves Bell Media’s proposal to make the switch. But there aren’t many of them,” Don Macpherson, who writes for The Gazette, blogged recently.
“While the station’s ratings have grown slowly from year to year, it still consistently ranks at or near the bottom among English-language commercial radio stations in the Montreal market. In the latest ratings, the station’s share of the market didn’t exceed 10 per cent of the English-language listeners in any demographic category.”
The CRTC is expected to make a ruling by the end of the year.
If it refuses to allow TSN Radio to become French then Bell has said it would simply close the station down or try to sell it – either option could put a lot of people out of work.
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