Échange de stations entre Cogeco et Arsenal

A proposed mutual sale of radio stations between Cogeco Media and Arsenal Media will have to get over a hurdle to get approved by the CRTC, and it depends a lot on how many people live in a small region between Saguenay and Alma.
First announced in May, the agreement sees Arsenal sell CILM-FM (O 98.3) in Saguenay to Cogeco, while Arsenal in turn buys all of Cogeco’s radio stations in the Abitibi region, namely Capitale Rock (CJGO-FM 102.1 La Sarre, CJGO-FM-1 95.7 Rouyn-Noranda and CHGO-FM 95.7 Val-d’Or) and WOW FM (CHOA-FM 95.7 Rouyn-Noranda, CHOA-FM-1 103.5 Amos and CHOA-FM-2 103.9 La Sarre). Arsenal will keep its other Saguenay station, CKGS-FM Hit Country 105.5.
On Tuesday, the CRTC published the applications related to the transfers of ownerships of these stations, and we have more details on the sales:

• Arsenal pays $1.5 million to acquire CHOA-FM , CJGO-FM and CHGO-FM in Abitibi
  
  
• Cogeco pays $600,000 to acquire CILM-FM in Saguenay
  
  
• The Wow station will be rebranded Plaisir and Capitale Rock rebranded O to join Arsenal’s branded networks (Cogeco keeps the Wow brand)
  
  
• Cogeco will rebrand the Saguenay station to Rythme FM and have it join that network as an owned-and-operated station (it used to be an affiliate), putting it back in the largest market that network was missing in Quebec
  
  
• The transactions are separable — if the CRTC approves one but not the other, that transaction will still go through
  
  
• RNC Media, which provided local news services for the Abitibi stations as part of the agreement when it sold them to Cogeco in 2018, will continue to provide them for Arsenal
  
  
• Cogeco will add CILM-FM to its Cogeco Nouvelles network and add another journalist in the Saguenay region
  
  
• Both organizations are proposing standard tangible benefits, with 3% of the value going to Fonds Radiostar, 1.5% to Musicaction, 1% to discretionary initiatives and 0.5% to the Community Radio Fund of Canada
  
  

For Arsenal, the deal should not pose much of an issue since it doesn’t have any assets in the Abitibi region.
But in Saguenay, it’s a different story. Cogeco owns one radio station in Saguenay, CKYK-FM (Kyk 95,7), but it also owns CFGT-FM (Planète 104,5) in Alma, 45 kilometres away near Lac-Saint-Jean.
According to the CRTC’s common ownership policy, one owner normally can’t have more than two stations in the same language on the same band in the same market. Cogeco argues that according to CRTC policy CILM-FM and CFGT-FM are not in the same market (Kyk has a more powerful transmitter and a retransmitter in Alma, so covers both).
The CRTC actually has a policy for cases like this, and it depends on how much overlap there is between stations, measured both by their markets and their signals.

March 25, 2022 | Radio

CRTC approves station swap between Cogeco Media and Arsenal Media

While the big news of the day was its approval of the Shaw-Rogers purchase, the CRTC also approved a pair of smaller transaction on Thursday, in which Quebec’s Cogeco Media and Arsenal Media agreed to sell stations to each other.
Under one deal, Arsenal acquires, for $1.5 million, three stations in the Abitibi region:

• CJGO-FM 102.1 La Sarre (Capitale Rock), with transmitter CJGO-FM-1 Rouyn-Noranda
  
• CHGO-FM 95.7 Val-d’Or (Capitale Rock)
  
• CHOA-FM 95.7 Rouyn-Noranda (WOW), with transmitters CHOA-FM-1 103.5 Amos and CHOA-FM-2 103.9 La Sarre
  

In the other deal, Cogeco acquires, for $600,000, one station from Arsenal in Saguenay:

• CILM-FM (O 98.3)
  

The Abitibi sale didn’t bring up major issues, except for the fact that they were formerly RNC Media stations, which Cogeco bought in 2018, which means there are still tangible benefits related to that transaction. Cogeco has agreed to continue to pay those benefits despite no longer owning the stations.
Arsenal plans to convert the stations to its brands, which include O, Plaisir and Hit Country. They will be Arsenal’s first stations in the Abitibi market, adding to its 16 stations in regions throughout Quebec.
For Saguenay, there was a bit of a thorny issue in terms of competition. Because Cogeco owns another station in Saguenay, and a third in nearby Alma, there was concern it might exceed its ownership limit. Analysis showed the Alma station didn’t cover enough of Saguenay to be an issue, but there was some overlap in the Alma market. Nevertheless, because no other broadcasters complained and Cogeco said it would not seek out advertising in Alma from its Saguenay stations, the CRTC allowed the acquisition to proceed.
Cogeco plans to convert CILM-FM to a Rythme FM station, giving the network a presence in all five of Quebec’s largest population centres and more than half the province’s population.
As a result of this issue being decided, the CRTC has reopened a proceeding into whether Rouyn-Noranda should get another radio station. Josyane Cossette has applied for a commercial radio station while CHOW-FM (Radio Boréale) in Amos applied for a retransmitter in Rouyn-Noranda. Other broadcasters can file applications to compete with these if they want to serve the market.