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The WKND is over.
Leclerc Communication, which owns the French-language radio station formerly known as WKND 99.5 in Montreal, announced on Monday it will shift to a talk format starting Aug. 26, simulcasting Québecor’s QUB Radio programming from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays.
Evenings and weekends will continue to be music, but with a rock format, Leclerc’s statement said.
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WKND launched in June 2020 after Leclerc purchased Radio Classique from Gregory Charles for $4.89 million. Leclerc, which owns WKND 91.9 and Blvd 102.1 in Quebec City, brought the former’s popular music format to Montreal and hired on-air hosts to fill its schedule and compete with big French-language music stations like Rythme, Énergie and CKOI. But the station struggled to gain an audience, with only a 2.3 per cent market share according to Numeris. On-air staff were told last week they were being let go.
“In the hyper-competitive world of Montreal radio, the upheavals in talk radio over the past few months afford us an attractive opportunity to bring powerful new content of high quality to the FM dial,” Leclerc vice-president Nicolas Leclerc said in the company’s statement.
“We are convinced that the agreement with QUB is a win-win for listeners in Montreal and across Quebec,” added 99.5 Montréal director Benoit Simard.
QUB Radio launched in 2018 as a digital-only talk radio station hosted by Quebecor personalities who are also contributors to LCN or columnists with the Journal de Montréal. In January, it also began broadcasting on television. Its programming is very opinion-focused.
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Former Action démocratique du Québec leader Mario Dumont will serve as the morning man for both QUB and 99.5, followed on the schedule by Isabelle Maréchal, Benoît Dutrizac, Sophie Durocher and Richard Martineau.
Regulations from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission prevent commercial radio stations from having spoken-word programming for more than 50 per cent of their weekly schedule without prior authorization, which is why 99.5 is keeping music content on evenings and weekends. The CRTC also prohibits a company from owning a radio station, television station and local newspaper in the same market, which is why Québecor, which owns TVA and Le Journal de Montréal, can’t buy the station from Leclerc.
ADISQ, which represents Quebec music artists, said the news “constitutes a significant loss for our ecosystem.”
“The decline of the Leclerc group is a painful reminder of the importance of the current work of the CRTC to restore balance within our broadcasting system,” said ADISQ executive director Eve Paré.
Simard said music radio in general is declining.
“It’s not just the performance of the WKND brand that is at issue,” he said in an interview. “It’s the performance of music stations in general.
“What’s quite surprising is that unlike almost all cities, there was only one commercial (French-language news-talk) station in the Montreal market. So the decision was based on that reflection, then on this data analysis.”
Cogeco’s news-talk station 98.5 FM is the market leader, and often the most listened-to radio station in Canada. It is going through its own major shift in the fall, with La Presse columnist Patrick Lagacé taking over the morning position from longtime host Paul Arcand, who retired this summer.
Simard said the station first tried to change its program schedules internally, but was unable to build a schedule as strong as that of QUB Radio.
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