French faith-based radio planned for Montreal
MONTREAL, QC—Official approval seems to be the last major hurdle for what could become Montreal's first French Christian radio station. Communications Média Évangélique, a local consortium of business, broadcast and ministry professionals, has already resolved many of the technical issues, found an appropriate site and used temporary frequencies to run trial broadcasts.
An impressive application package is currently being reviewed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). The station has reserved the call letters CKZW and is being considered for the powerful low frequency of 650.
Chain reaction
"We see this as one of the next major thrusts forward in an ongoing chain reaction," says André Joly, president of the consortium and prime mover of the project. Joly has 40 years of broadcast experience as a reporter for CJRC in Ottawa and is infectiously enthusic about the project.
"We have seen it happen in many other areas of the Christian world," Joly explains. "Christian radio often brings an impetus—a focal point—and an energy that gets the ball rolling for other outreach projects [such as] print media, video, gospel music concerts…with increased collaboration between churches, all working together to effectively communicate the gospel to the masses."
Joly believes this project is long overdue for the Montreal area. Radio has been used in French Canada as an outreach tool for some time, but mostly in remote areas.
Early efforts
From the very early radio efforts in northwestern Quebec by Ron Heron and Québécois evangelist Gaston Jolin with "L'Heure de la Bonne Nouvelle" to dozens of other local churches and groups, the efforts were focused in small population centers and dependent on commercial radio stations.
Even evangelist Fernand Saint-Louis' first attempts in 1963 to bring the gospel to Montreal radio waves with his program "La Foi Vivifiante" involved purchasing airtime on commercial stations. And even now scheduling remains at the mercy of available time and "objectionable" content can lead to listener complaints that result in being bumped to middle of the night or removed from the air altogether.
Though it is secularism rather than opposing religious viewpoints that motivates opposition now, similar complaints have already limited Joly's previous efforts on commercial stations. This makes a dedicated Christian station vital to maintaining any control in getting the message out.
Connie Billiter and her husband Terry have been managing a Christian radio station out of Champlain, New York for more than 18 years. "From the very beginning at WCHP," she says, "we had a heart for French Canadians and we wanted to use our proximity to the Montreal area as a tool to encourage churches there." Montreal area churches and ministries have little trouble filling more than two hours of each broadcast day with French teaching and outreach on WCHP.
Since WCHP is essentially talk radio and CKZW's proposed focus is gospel music as an outreach tool and drawing card, the two ministries don't compete and in fact regularly compare notes and share resources, and even a key broadcast engineer.
Joly says the the CRTC approval process could be done within a month or two, but might well stretch out to over a year if public consultations take place.
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