Rythme FM, Montreal’s most listened to music station, had a rather hectic return to radio on Monday. Patricia Paquin learned that she was being let go, a few hours before returning to the airwaves for the noon show she had co-hosted with Marie-Ève Janvier for the past year and a half. According to our information, Maripier Morin is expected to succeed her.
The Duty also learned that Rythme parted ways on Monday with Ricky Dee, a veteran of Montreal radio, who had hosted weekends at 105.7 FM for several years.
These major programming changes come at a time when this Cogeco antenna is seriously losing ground, according to the latest figures from the firm Numeris. In just one year, Rythme has lost almost 4 market shares. The station is now only slightly ahead of its big rival Rouge, owned by Bell, which has been fairly stable in terms of audience figures over the past year.
Last winter, Rythme fired its two morning show co-hosts, Dave Morissette and Julie Houle, just a few months after they took up their positions. This time, the station is parting ways with another of its headliners, Patricia Paquin.
After the summer holidays, the presenter was due to return to the microphone on Monday in the show The Lunch Girls. She instead learned a few hours before going on air that she was being fired immediately. “You will understand that this is not my decision, but rather a change in the on-air strategy. That’s life,” wrote Patricia Paquin on her Facebook page, where she had kind words for her co-host, Marie-Ève Janvier.
The latter remains on the Rythme antenna. Different sources have reported to the Duty that Maripier Morin could join 105.7 FM in the coming days: information that Cogeco has neither confirmed nor denied. “An announcement will be made during the week,” the company simply said.
Lots of changes
Maripier Morin will also host the reality TV show this fall OD Temptations in the Sunwhich will be broadcast on the Crave platform. The 38-year-old host is thus consolidating her big comeback after having withdrawn from the public space in the controversy in the summer of 2020. At the time, the singer Safia Nolin had criticized her, among other things, for having behaved inappropriately sexually towards her. Maripier Morin had also been accused of racist remarks.
Until recently, Maripier Morin was at the helm of the morning show on WKND, a music station that had attracted a starving audience since its arrival three years ago in the Montreal market. The station laid off its hosts two weeks ago and announced a complete image change. It remains owned by Quebec City company Leclerc Communication. But starting Monday, the 99.5 FM frequency will be used to rebroadcast the daytime programming of Qub, Quebecor’s digital radio station, which legally cannot have an antenna on the FM band, since the company already owns a daily newspaper and a TV station in the Montreal market.
The face of Montreal radio is set to change in the coming months. 98.5 FM, which also belongs to Cogeco, is banking on a completely new programming since the departure of Paul Arcand, nicknamed “the king of the airwaves”, who had been giving it first place for years, survey after survey. There is no doubt that the next figures from the firm Numeris on listening habits will be the most scrutinized in a long time in Montreal.