Twenty years ago today, approximately 50,000 people marched in the streets of Quebec City to protest the CRTC’s decision to revoke CHOI Radio X’s licence. The federal agency wanted to sanction the station for the many controversial comments made by its star host Jeff Fillion. A few months later, the defamation lawsuit filed by Sophie Chiasson would precipitate the departure of the controversialist. But Radio X would ultimately never leave the airwaves. Two decades later, this frequency with its abrasive style and very right-wing editorial line continues to enjoy great success in Quebec City. An enigma for its detractors, who popularized the term “trash radio.”
“It’s not trash radio,” Patrice Demers, the former head of CHOI, immediately corrects. “I prefer to say that it’s reality radio. It’s radio where we talk like we talk in real life. Where we don’t pretend to be in a good mood when we’re not. I compare it a lot to reality TV, which appeared on television in the same years,” continues the Quebec businessman, who today owns, among other things, the erotic magazine Summit.
With his company Genex, Patrice Demers acquired this small, previously moribund FM station in 1997. The accountant by training quickly made it the number one radio station in Quebec City by targeting a male audience in their twenties and thirties, to whom the rest of the media offering spoke very little. He initially focused on rock, which the target audience had grown up with, but since French-language music quotas “prevent radio stations from broadcasting the songs that people really want to hear,” CHOI moved to a spoken-word format. The content was intended to be protest-oriented. Everything to reach young men, many of whom disagreed with Quebec nationalism, feminism, social democracy, in short, all the ideals carried by the Quiet Revolution and their parents’ generation.
And who better to embody this state of mind than Jean-François Fillion, known as “Jeff”, an emulator of “the shock radio » American Howard Stern for some, worthy successor to André Arthur for others. The show The Parallel World of Jeff Fillion quickly became a phenomenon in the old capital in the late 1990s, particularly thanks to his puerile humor. In an interview with Free Shooters In 2007, Jeff Fillion said he had already invited his listeners to “eat their girlfriend’s Tampax” for a competition.
Provocative, Jeff Fillion also had the habit of denigrating public figures on his microphone, often resorting to vulgarity. “The big ass at Musique Plus. […] “His asshole is so fucked up that it looks like a vulva,” he said, among other things, in 2000 of an openly homosexual television host.
“Was I comfortable with 100% of what he said? No. Did he sometimes go too far? Certainly. When that was the case, the courts looked into it. But one thing is certain, it was not the CRTC’s role to judge that. I think there was pressure from competitors on the CRTC to silence Radio X. We were number one and we were the only station in Quebec that didn’t belong to a large group. That bothered a lot of people,” says Patrice Demers, who is still convinced of it today.
A social movement
Pressure or not, the CRTC announced in July 2004 that CHOI was losing its license following numerous complaints about comments made on air. A few days later, 50,000 people took to the streets of Quebec City to save the station from certain closure. “Freedom” became their rallying cry. Seen from Montreal, this massive mobilization attracted mockery, even contempt.
“Even us, it took us by surprise. It was in the middle of summer, right in the middle of the construction holidays. We were overwhelmed by the scale. Yes, there were a lot of Radio X listeners who had come to march. But there were also a lot of people who cared about freedom of expression, and who didn’t necessarily listen to Radio X,” recalls Gilles Parent, who was the station’s other headliner at the time.
The fight quickly spilled over into the political sphere. In September 2004, Mario Dumont’s ADQ won a by-election in the riding of Vanier, in Lower Town Quebec City, clearly positioning itself as the defender of Radio X and freedom of expression during the campaign.
At the time, sociologist Simon Langlois took a closer look at the pro-CHOI movement that had taken hold in the region. This professor at Laval University saw it as a broader expression of the malaise of a ” lower middle class “, essentially masculine, haunted by the threat of downgrading. An analysis that was widely made ten years later to explain the election of Donald Trump and the rise of far-right parties in Europe.
Yes, there were a lot of Radio X listeners who came out to march. But there were also a lot of people who cared about freedom of speech, who didn’t necessarily listen to Radio X.
“Many people today aspire to be part of the middle class. But a good portion of it has difficulty maintaining a standard of living that truly allows them to be part of it. That was true at the time and it is probably even more true today with inflation. Political movements and right-wing media, like Radio X, are the only ones trying to provide answers to their fears. We have the feeling that the left has somewhat neglected their concerns in favor of more identity-based issues,” summarizes Simon Langlois, who is now retired.
Sophie Chiasson, a turning point
Ultimately, CHOI will remain on the air. After the CRTC decision, the station had managed to obtain a reprieve that allowed it to continue its operations. Its survival was ensured following its acquisition in 2006 by the Radio Nord group.
When the new owners took control, Jeff Fillion had already been gone for a year. The host had left CHOI in March 2005, in the midst of the highly publicized legal battle between him and Sophie Chiasson. On several occasions, Jeff Fillion had allowed himself to make disparaging remarks on air about this young weather presenter, stating among other things that the size of her brain was “inversely proportional” to the size of her breasts. Patrice Demers, Jeff Fillion and his co-hosts were ordered to pay $300,000 at the end of this case.
“Rather than settling amicably like everyone else who was attacked by Radio X did, Sophie Chiasson persisted and went to trial. Seeing this young woman, who had done nothing wrong, being gratuitously insulted in this way alerted public opinion to the excesses of this radio station. For CHOI, it was the last straw at a time when things were already getting complicated with the CRTC,” observes Claude Thibodeau, who was morning man and shareholder of the rival station, FM93.
Twenty years later, Radio X continues to be the black sheep of the media world. The station was once again in the hot seat during the pandemic because its presenters were challenging health measures and giving a voice to some anti-vaccine figures. “Controversy soft “, judges Claude Thibodeau, who notes that the comments currently being made on this channel are not comparable to what Jeff Fillion was able to say at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s. There will have been a before and an “after Sophie Chiasson” in the radio world in Quebec, particularly with regard to personal attacks, he adds.
Jeff Fillion, who did not respond to our interview request, has acknowledged several times since that he went too far at the time. While he remains a controversial figure, he maintains that he does a different style of radio today. After returning to CHOI between 2016 and 2022, he now devotes himself to hosting his web radio, Radio pirate.