The Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) is currently deploying its vast pre-election advertising offensive on the CHOI Radio X station. health measures during the pandemic.
If it is true that François Legault’s party is flooding all the media these days with its latest series of advertisements, one could still believe that the purchase of advertising space on Radio X did not flow from source. . On a few occasions in the fall of 2020, the Legault government had deplored the coverage of the pandemic which was made on the airwaves of Radio X, where the seriousness of the COVID-19 was regularly questioned by the animators and the guests.
During a press conference held in October 2020, the Prime Minister even went so far as to express his dissatisfaction when a journalist from Radio X asked him a question. Several organizations and companies—Hydro-Québec and Desjardins, among others—had decided at the same time to withdraw their advertisements from this antenna.
But now, a few days before the start of the election campaign, this boycott movement seems far away, and the CAQ refuses to ignore the audience of Radio X in the Quebec region. “The CAQ does not boycott any official media. As for our advertising strategies, they come under internal management, ”said Claude Potvin, the party spokesperson, by email on Tuesday.
Bad ad placement?
However, the station’s headliners are still just as vitriolic about the policy pursued by the CAQ. Many do not hide their preference for the Conservative Party of Éric Duhaime. Result: CAQ advertisements are broadcast between segments where the party in power is vilified. On the Radio X website, for example, an ad featuring Quebec’s Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, precedes an audio clip titled “My father is DEAD ON FACETIME CAUSE DE LA CAQ!” “. In this interview, a woman laments not having been able to accompany her father at the time of his death because of the sanitary measures then in force.
Other headlines on the station’s website are also particularly corrosive towards the CAQ: “Suicidal son: I will never forgive the CAQ”, or “Éric Caire is a CONTENT CAQU”. And yet, listeners have systematically been entitled to an advertisement from the CAQ for a few days before accessing these extracts.
“It is therefore to the credit of the decision-makers of the CAQ […] to place and buy advertising space on a media that criticizes them. Discussing or communicating with “convinced” people is always easier, of course, but it usually does not bring in much, ”said Philippe Lefebvre, vice-president of RNC Media, owner of CHOI Radio X, by email.
For him, there is no contradiction between constantly scratching a party on the air and agreeing to play its high-rotation advertising campaign. No question for RNC therefore of depriving itself of these revenues, as was the case in September 2020 with an advertisement by Public Health against misinformation. The message in question imitated the sound identity of Radio X, which had been perceived by the owners as contempt for the listeners.
In protest at this refusal, the City of Quebec dealt the station a hard blow by withdrawing its advertisements. Following the election of Bruno Marchand, the City returned to Radio X, the new mayor maintaining that “public money cannot become political money”.
Strategic objective
In the case of the CAQ, what does it have to gain by spending on an advertising placement in a radio station won over to the ideas of Éric Duhaime? “It is true that this decision may seem inconsistent with what has happened during the last two years of the pandemic. But we must not lose sight of the fact that the CAQ seeks to have a supermajority. And preserving the seats in Quebec, it necessarily goes through the listeners of Radio X, who are currently tempted by Éric Duhaime, ”explains Mireille Lalancette, professor of political communication at the University of Quebec in Trois-Rivières.
Unsurprisingly, Québec solidaire, the most left-wing party on the political spectrum, rules out buying advertising on Radio X for strategic reasons. The Conservative Party of Quebec was unable to discuss its campaign advertising strategy. The Liberal Party and the Parti Québécois did not respond to questions from the To have to on the subject.