Expos on the Radio in 1994

When MLB went on strike 16 years ago last week, it left a terrible void for flagship stations. Nowhere could it have been more painful than it was here in Montreal. The Expos were always the underdogs, and they always seemed to fall short. In 1994, for a few months they were the talk of the town, and on top of the baseball world.

On August 12th 1994, CIQC lost something that was sure to be a huge ad revenue generator through September - and probably beyond. Everyone wants to be associated with a winner, and no doubt advertisers would have been willing to pay top dollar for a spot on an Expo broadcast down the stretch in 1994. It's quite amazing considering how less than a decade later, the Expos' value to advertisers would be set at zero. Even on television, ratings were tremendous by the time the strike hit, and there were plans for the first pay-per-view Expos games to be shown in September. It must be added that they never revived the idea of pay-per-view ever again.

So what happened to the Expos' broadcasters when the strike hit? Well, first of all, they were sent down to cover the AAA Ottawa Lynx (now also long departed) franchise for a while. I believe they did the same thing in 1981 with Denver. Only that time, the strike did have an end to it. Sure it's a little intriguing to follow the farm club for a while, but that soon gets old.

After they stopped covering AAA, they did an odd thing. And I can't remember if this came before or after the season was wiped out... Maybe someone else remembers this better than I do... Members of the Expos english broadcast team joined the Jays' voices for a computer simulated World Series. I’m pretty sure the Expos were facing the 1993 Jays. They even added sound effects. It was more than a bit peculiar. Kind of like when they used to recreate ball games a long long time ago, I suppose. The only thing is that these games were never actually played. And in case you were wondering, the Expos won.

Here's another great memory: The NHL locked out it's players prior to the start of the 1994-95 season. In this town, all major sports just ground to a stop for what seemed like an eternity.

Anyway, for those who doubt the greatness of the 1994 Montreal Expos team, just take a look at their roster and at their stats when the strike began. In Montreal's long sports history, never before or since have the words "what could have been" ringed truer...

The Brockman Rule...

There’s this funny scene from the Simpsons where Kent Brockman can’t pronounce Kuala Lumpur, so he replaces his script’s text with France instead. It’s just no fun to mangle the English language, and not only the words you may be expected to have trouble with, but the ones that you’d never otherwise have a problem with. From now on, I think I’ll adopt the Brockman rule, and avoid the unpronounceable!

In reality, reading from a prepared text is an art. Ad libbing can be so much easier than having to read something on the air. It makes you appreciate the people who make it seem so seamless. Think back to the old radio announcers who could flawlessly deliver the news in a voice that made you stand up and take notice. Not too long ago, I listened to some vintage radio clips from the long-gone CFOX. The newscasters were impeccable in their perfection. Hopefully, it took them a while to perfect their art, and therefore there is still hope for me…

Practice makes perfect, but I find the absolute worse thing you can do is read the thing over and over again until you get it right. That’s what many of us did at radio school… When you are on live, you’ve got your one shot at getting it right. If that wasn’t bad enough, the podcast will record your mistakes for anyone who was fortunate enough not to have heard you the first time! Another art is the ability to recover from the mistake you might have just made. Still, I find it far more disturbing to make factual errors than grammatical ones. Anyway, that is why they call it a learning experience…

English Radio Outside of Montreal

It’s no secret that there aren’t too many English-language radio stations in Quebec, especially outside of the Montreal area. Of course, the CBC has a presence - if not at all local, all across the province... Outside of Montreal, there is a community radio station serving Lac Brome - CIDI 99.1 FM. They offer broadcasts in both official languages.

There used to be a few English stations scattered around the province, some of them seem to have done pretty well for themselves. For example, there used to be a decent English-speaking population in Quebec City. It was decent enough to keep a radio station up and running. That is not the case anymore. CFOM 1340 AM was the only English-language station in Quebec City until it closed up shop in 1976. They had been forced to run CBC programming because of the lack of an english CBC station in the area. By the early 1970s, they tried to change their format to attract more listeners, but were forced to stop and go back to the CBC non-commercial stuff by the CRTC. That was the beginning of the end for them. The station had been around since 1949, under several different call letter combinations.

CJMQ 88.9 FM is Bishop’s University’s community radio station. They came on the air in 1995, and can be heard in Sherbrooke and the Eastern Townships.

CKTS 900 AM had been in Sherbrooke since the 1940s. They tried to appeal to more French listeners during the 1980s, but were told by the CRTC that they had to remain a 100% English station. They ended up simulcasting CJAD programming during the final years of their existence. The station was shut down by its new owners in 2006.

There is no doubt that the CRTC frowns at the idea of purely “bilingual” radio stations. That would probably be the only way any English radio could ever possibly be viable outside of Montreal nowadays.

CRTC Power Is Real

The CRTC has actually revoked a license! This is a pretty rare occurrence for Canada. You hear about a lot of complaints and warnings and fines, but to pull the plug - that doesn’t happen very often. The last time that a station had its license yanked was in 2004, when CHOI in Quebec City was shut down.

The station in question is CHRC in St. Catharines, Ontario. According to the CRTC, their broadcasting of a “third-language” was what did them in. They weren’t mandated to broadcast ethnic programming. It seems they were aiming many of their programs at Toronto’s Italian community. According to CRTC regulations, the station could not accord more than 15% of its program schedule to a third language. CHRC attempted to obtain waivers, but were refused.

CHRC will be forced off the air at the end of August.

Fantastic Tribute to the Montreal Expos

Annakin Slayd put together this wonderful montage. Hopefully, MLB won't have YouTube take it down, as they are prone to doing to material that contains game footage...

Shortwave Radio and RCI

I still have a shortwave radio I purchased in 1989. I took a trip oversees and wanted to see if I could pick up Radio Canada International. It's hard for younger people to imagine a time when you weren't able to have instant access to information, but yes that is the way it was. Back then (late 1980s), about the only way to keep in touch with home aside from long-distance calls (which were still a big deal!), was to pick up the U.S.A. Today or try to pick up shortwave signals.

It was really amazing when you picked up a signal in english that was clear enough to understand! Voice of America was beamed around pretty well, but RCI seemed harder to catch. You had to acquire a schedule which included frequencies. It was necessary to send a request to the broadcasters by mail and wait for them to send it back to you. Oh yeah, things have surely changed since then!

You knew you had found the right frequency/time combination when you heard the first four notes of O'Canada right as they were about to begin their transmission. Then the voice said that you were listening to Radio Canada International - from Montreal. Instantly, you had access to Canadian news, weather and sports scores, among other things.

RCI is run by the CBC, sort of... I think right now they broadcast in 7 languages. The service used to broadcast in considerably more languages than that. RCI launched in 1945, primarily as a way for Canadian service men to stay in touch with news from home.

Pretty much all of their stuff is now available online. They can also be heard on Satellite radio. I'm not sure about their current situation, but I know for a while they were struggling to stay alive. Some federal budgets announced cuts that threatened to do away with the service altogether. Many claimed that the Internet makes shortwave services obsolete, but that is pretty naive thinking. There is still a sizable portion of the planet that does not have access to the Internet.

The Great Flood of 1987

I can remember a lot of heat waves, and most weren't as bad as the one Montreal just went through. One exception might be the one Montreal experienced in July of 1987. Maybe it's just me, but I can't recall it ever having been that warm in Montreal. Thermometers were pushing the 40 degree mark, but that might have been with the humidity. Obviously, there was no Internet and no Weather Network back then. Whatever the official stats were, it was excruciatingly hot, and it seemed to go on for at least a week.

The heat led to something that is still talked about by all who lived through it. That was the great Montreal flood of 1987. It happened on July 14th,  23 years ago today. Around 100 mm of rain fell in a few hours. We kind of had a mini version of that a few days ago, but nowhere near on the same scale.

The day started off hot and muggy, but by early afternoon, ominous dark clouds began to cover the island. It seemed to be very localized to Montreal. The storms began in the early afternoon. Wave after wave of storm cells hit for what must have been a good few hours.

So on went the radio, and there was long-time CJAD weatherman Bill Holdament (I’m hoping that was the way his name was spelled!) saying something to the effect of how you'd better tie up your lawn furniture or it might end up in your neighbour's yard. He wasn't kidding...

Montreal's sewer system couldn't keep up with the continuous downpours. Remember the images of the Decarie expressway under water? People lost an awful lot of possessions that day, including a lot of vehicles.

If something like that were to happen today, you'd go online and share your observations, or you might check out the weather channels or tune into one of the many all-news TV channels. Back in 1987, none of those things existed. You had to open your local TV channel and hope they were covering the happenings live. Or you did what most people probably did at the time, especially if you had lost power: you grabbed you transistor radio and listened to live coverage as it happened. I wish I remembered how the day was covered on local radio, but all I can recall are Holdament's comments. It's been a recurrent theme of mine that even today, when disaster strikes, radio is still going to be the best option for news and information. After all, technology becomes pretty basic when power and communications infrastructures go down.