| City of license | Montreal, Quebec |
|---|---|
| Branding | CJAD 800 |
| Slogan | News Talk Radio |
| Frequency | 800 kHz (AM) |
| First air date | 1945 |
| Format | News/talk |
| Power | 50,000 watts (daytime) 10,000 watts (nighttime) |
| Class | B |
| Callsign meaning | Joseph-Arthur Dupont (founder) |
| Owner | Astral Media |
| Sister stations | CHOM, CJFM |
| Website | CJAD |
CJAD is an English language radio station, owned by Astral Media, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The station has a news/talk format and identifies itself as CJAD 800.
Owned and operated by Astral Media, it broadcasts on 800 kHz with a daytime power of 50,000 watts and a nighttime power of 10,000 watts as a class B station using a very directional antenna with the same directional pattern day and night to protect various other stations on the same frequency.
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Commonly referred to as Montreal's Heritage Radio Station, the station was founded by J. Arthur Dupont in 1945, whose name the call letters were based on. In its first years, CJAD was based on De La Montagne street in Montreal (now the site of O'Sullivan College).
In 1961, CJAD purchased by Standard Broadcasting. In 1978, control of Standard Broadcasting was purchased by Conrad Black. In 1985, Standard was purchased by Slaight Communications, a privately held company owned by J. Allan Slaight.
In 1962, a sister station CJFM was launched. Always separately programmed, CJFM's programming became totally different from CJAD only from about 1976.
For much of its life, CJAD had a full service format. The music was mainly adult contemporary plus two specialized shows on weekends — The Bandstand with Dick Irvin, and Starlight Concert with Rod Dewar. In 1995, CJAD shifted its format to full-time news/talk, dropping all music and entertainment, save for the Sunday morning Trivia Show and the CJAD Comedy Show.
Starting in 1992 almost all of CJAD's programming was simulcast on Corus Entertainment-owned CKTS 900 in Sherbrooke. On November 19, 2006, CKTS ceased broadcasting and its licence was surrendered to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). This, according to Corus, was because of high ongoing maintenance costs that neither they nor Standard were willing to cover.[1]
In April 2007, Astral Media and Standard Broadcasting announced that Standard had agreed to a purchase offer by Astral.
In 1998, all four of CJAD's broadcast towers toppled during The Ice Storm. CJAD's first attempt to get back on the air was to use CKGM's former 980 transmitter, re-tune it to 800, and CJAD would be back on the air on its frequency. This, however, turned out to be impossible as the 980 site was damaged by ice as well. It then made arrangements to broadcast on CFMB's former 1410 transmitter but the signal was extremely bad to the west. They then reached an agreement with CHUM Limited to use their CKGM transmitter on 990 kHz until new towers were erected.
CJAD is the exclusive English radio broadcaster of the CFL's Montreal Alouettes. Some game broadcasts are simulcast on sister station CHOM 97.7 FM. CJAD was the longtime English radio home of the Montreal Canadiens until the 2010-11 season. In June 2010 it was announced that sports-talk rival CKGM will be the new English broadcaster through the 2017-18 season.
CJAD broadcasts with 50,000 watts in the daytime and 10,000 watts at night to avoid interfering with other stations using the 800 frequency, such as the country-formatted CJBQ in Belleville, Ontario, CHRC in Quebec City (which is approximately 250 kilometres (160 mi) away) and CKLW in Windsor, Ontario.
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