Four years after the layoff of all its employees due to a financial crisis, the Montreal community radio station CIBL is relaunching a daily information meeting next Monday, called Auroras Montreal.
This new show will air Monday through Thursday mornings on 101.5 FM, and a replay of highlights will be scheduled every Friday at 1 p.m.
In the animation, Montrealers will discover the voice of David Fillion, who until recently was a journalist with the daily The Voice of the East. For the past week, he has been working on building the show with the help of director Caroline Larouche.
The duo underlines it from the outset: no question of making a copy-paste of the show squeezed orangesCIBL’s former morning show, which aired for over 35 years before going off the air in 2018.
Already, Auroras Montreal will last only one hour, its time slot being from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. It will therefore not be a morning session strictly speaking. “We are arriving in the middle of November, there are already teams elsewhere who are doing excellent work in the 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. slot. Instead, we wanted to offer a new option at 9 a.m., where we generally find variety shows on other radio stations, ”explains David Fillion.
“We have this freedom to start from scratch, to have carte blanche. So we want to experiment and explore different avenues,” adds Caroline Larouche.
Each program will have its own news review and will welcome different columnists from one day to the next. The singer-songwriter Philémon Cimon will offer a cultural chronicle; freelance journalist Francis Hébert-Bernier will analyze political life; Martin Blanchard, from the Regroupement des Comités Logement et Associations de Tenants du Québec, will talk about housing.
Other columnists are yet to be confirmed, but there will certainly be a section on the environment, as well as another on research and science. Two comedians from the National School of Humor must also join the team of collaborators to talk about personal decline and offer a satirical news segment.
The local angle
In order to respect CIBL’s identity — that is, to be a Montreal community radio station — and to stand out from other stations, the daily show will be devoted to local news that often goes under the radar.
It will also be an opportunity to talk about specific areas of the metropolis by bringing together those who share the same reality or common challenges. “What excites me is that we will be able to create a closeness with the different communities of Montreal. We also want to give a voice to people we hear less often, people from the community, people in the field who are on the front line,” underlines David Fillion.
Of course, nothing is cast in stone, and the duo gives itself the right to improve the offer over the coming weeks.
The light at the end of the tunnel
“We were in a hurry to have the means to bring back a daily show. The news has always been important at CIBL”, says the station’s interim director, Jeanne Doré, delighted to see the chain back on track.
Remember that the radio installed at “2-22”, Sainte-Catherine Street has experienced difficult times in recent years. With dry coffers and a debt of more than $ 100,000 to the syndicate of co-owners of 2-22, it had laid off its 13 employees in January 2018.
For several months, the waves of 101.5 FM had been deprived of any human presence and were almost exclusively musical. Quietly, shows were put back on the schedule in late 2018 and into 2021. Enjoying an annual surplus of around $225,000, the station has since resumed hiring.
“At the moment, we have three employees, and a fourth position is to be filled. We also managed to get some funding for this special daily news project to hire two people for the year,” says Ms.me Doré, who hopes to keep Auroras Montreal on the air for as long as possible.