Speak about me, good or bad, the important thing is that you talk about it. This could be the motto pursued by André Arthur throughout his radio career. And he never missed an opportunity to attack his prey with all the qualifiers that came to mind, from the most offensive to the most degrading.
And yet, the morning man had the rating. The vast majority of Quebecers were connected every morning to the station where Arthur gave his show morning. The lines of the telephone galleries were not ringing. We even often heard Arthur denigrate his interlocutor, who returned to the air the next morning.
André Arthur was an outstanding communicator, and his privileged subjects succeeded in capturing the interest of his listeners, who, for the most part, recognized themselves in his arguments. His listeners adored him. In their eyes, they were saying aloud what many were thinking without saying it. In short, he was outspoken, and his listeners loved it. It is not for nothing that Arthur was so often sued for libel, but he always resurfaced and easily won back his avid audience.
If Quebec City got the unenviable mention of junk radio capital, it is in large part because of André Arthur, who unquestionably contributed to creating this type of media in the “old capital” of the time. For André Arthur, the important thing was to say what he had to say to his listener “friends” without firing a shot. By calling him the “father of trash radio” in Quebec City, we can conclude that he left a less than stellar legacy to the journalistic world!
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