For generations of Anglophones in one of Canada’s largest cities, tuning to U.S. broadcast media from Vermont has been a daily ritual. This includes a key NPR station that debuted from a transmitter high atop Mount Mansfield on Halloween Day 1980.
In the years since, Vermont Public has enjoyed the support of audiences to this FM from greater Montréal. Now, there’s a new wrinkle to reaching Les Québécois — and its thanks to a new Arsenal Media FM approved by the CRTC.
With 25 radio stations across the province of Québec, Arsenal is known for the “O”, “Viva,” and “Hit Country” brands, and it is the latter that is poised to serve greater Montréal with a 25kw signal licensed to Joliette, Québec, some 35 miles to the northeast of the city, as CJOL-FM.
Test broadcasts are now on the air, and as of August 14 that’s been enough of an issue for Vermont Public to discuss with its Canadian over-the-air audience. For those with persistent reception issues, they’re invited to use the Vermontpublic.org web stream.
The station license for CJOL was approved by Canada’s broadcast regulator, the CRTC, in 2024. While Vermont Public’s broadcast service is protected within the United States, those protections do not extend into Canada. “We know many listeners in Montréal rely on Vermont Public as their over-the-air source for NPR news, along with programming from the BBC and American Public Media,” Vermont Public noted.
A V-Soft Communications map of possible reception in greater Montréal indicates that key areas of the city are impacted.
WVPS’s signal is city-grade over Burlington, Barre and Middlebury, Vt.; and Plattsburgh, N.Y.; and is audible in most of northern New Hampshire and cities including Sherbrooke, Que.
While French is the primary language across Québec, a significant portion of Anglophones and Francophones have long consumed a variety of Burlington, Vt., radio properties, including WBTZ-FM 99.9, WEZF-FM 92.9, and WOKO-FM 98.9.
