CJLO: A tale of two stations
It’s a classic tale of two stations.
A not-so-long time ago, each Concordia campus had its own radio station: CRSG at Sir George William and CFLI at Loyola.
Then one day a deal was struck, ending years of competition over signal possibilities and student council funding, and merging the two stations into one in 1998.
Today, CJLO is a labour of love, run by volunteers and funded by a 34-cent-per-credit fee levy paid by Concordia students. The last few years have been busy: the station held its first fundraising drive and started the CJLO Artist Outreach Project to help local artists produce and promote their own EPs.
“It's cool to have laid the foundation for this fantastic station,” says Alex Freedman, BA 01, CJLO’s first co-station manager and formerly of CFLI. With an old mixing board and a wild plan, he and Mike Babins, then-station manager at CRSG, put together the bones of what is now an award-winning community radio station.
CJLO celebrates a double anniversary — 15 years as a station and five years on the air — this year.
Celebrating a decade and a half
Fifteen years later, CJLO is still going strong, to the delight of its founders. The station can be listened to at 1690 AM or online at CJLO.com, and is in the process of applying for an wider-reaching FM signal.
They’ve also recently released a series of compilations on Bandcamp and beefed up their schedule with more shows, though the overnight slots are proving difficult. They’re looking to recruit students living in residence at Loyola to fill the airwaves through the witching hours.
Babins, formerly known as “Metal Mike” to longtime CHOM and CJAD listeners, says he and Freedman made a great team.
“Alex was really good at working with the business side of things and coordinating with the student union. I was really good with getting publicity and had lots of connections,” says Babins.
For example, those connections once helped Babins book Bob Marley’s reggae band The Wailers at Reggies for a private, end-of-year party for their DJs.
Clearly the station hasn’t lost that ambitious streak. CJLO plans to mark its double anniversary — 15 years as an online-streaming station and five years since it started broadcasting at 1690 AM — with a massive concert, an open house and a free birthday bash this fall.
“We’ll be celebrating all year, but this is the trifecta of party events,” says Stephanie Saretsky, CJLO’s station manager since 2011.
Wintersleep, Fucked Up and Cadence Weapon roll into town to kick things off with a concert at La Société des arts technologiques on St. Laurent Blvd. on October 25.
"It is kind of a weird line-up, but it's something that we did on purpose,” explains Saretsky. All three are Canadian bands CJLO has supported over the years and the mix of genres shows a good example of what gets played at the station.
Tickets to CJLO’s anniversary concert are $5 in honour of the station’s five years on air can be purchased at record stores across the city or online.
Longtime listeners of the show can get a glimpse of where the magic happens at a 5 à 7 open house at their Notre-Dame-de-Grâce studio on November 8 (7141 Sherbrooke St. W., room CC-430). A free birthday bash — complete with party favours, cake, pinata and free drinks for the first 100 guests to RSVP — is also planned at bar/bowling alley Notre Dame Des Quilles on November 9.
An early look at the station from the CJLO archives.
Alumni attribute career success to CJLO
Those who fall in torrid love with campus radio do not go unrewarded.
Both Babins and Freedman went on to successful careers in Canada’s media: Freedman will soon be producing the CBC morning show in Quebec City and Babins, after many years on the Montreal radio scene, does PR for 70,000 Tons of Metal, the self-described “world's biggest heavy metal cruise.”
“It's all because of radio that I'm where I am and it started at CJLO," says Babins. He isn’t the only person who’s benefited from volunteering at CJLO.
Emily Brass, BA 12, is a radio and television reporter for CBC Montreal:
“I had my own show on CJLO called Grrls Groove — it was all different genres of music, but with women fronting the bands. As a female musician, I noticed just how few women are in the industry and thought it was something important to promote. I was also a radio news reader and writer and I co-hosted a world music show called Beat the World for about a year.
“Every week was a challenge and a great experience for later in becoming a journalist. Working at CJLO takes away that fear of the open mic. You get used to being on the air and handling a lot of things at once. I would spend a lot of time preparing for my shows, picking out the setlists and making CDs so that I would have everything organized.
“In 2012, I won the Joan Donaldson CBC News Scholarship. In my application, I used my radio experience at CJLO as proof why I was ready to go to the CBC.”
Darcy MacDonald, BA 08, is a columnist for Cult MTL:
“I was at Loyola campus a lot and CJLO was a place to hang out. I hosted a hip-hop show on Saturday afternoons called the Ear Exam and later became the station's hip-hop director. Over the 4 1/2 years I was hip-hop director, I managed somewhere around 20 different shows, usually about eight at a time. I learned a lot about management — suddenly I was responsible for a staff of rap DJs!
“I still reference my work at CJLO in job interviews as something I'm proud of having done. When I look at my professional life now, the independent hustle I learned at CJLO couldn't have put me in better standing.”
Katie Seline, BA 07, licenses music for TouchTunes, a Montreal-based tech company:
“When I was growing up, no radio station played the music I wanted to hear. Then I found CJLO.
“In the second year of my undergraduate degree, a friend of mine was starting a show and she asked me if I wanted to do it with her. I didn't even know that Concordia had a radio station then. I checked it out, got bitten by the bug and I never really left.
“When I was station manager, I saw that the students who were coming in, even though they were volunteering, had opportunities to gain really solid work experience in journalism and broadcasting.”
Related links
- Listen to CJLO online
- Buy tickets for 5th anniversary show featuring Wintersleep, Fucked Up and Cadence Weapon
- More information about CJLO’s open house
- Check out some of CJLO’s compilations on BandCamp
- Donate to CJLO