CINF was a French language Canadian radio station located in Montreal, Quebec.
Owned and operated by Corus Quebec, it broadcast on 690 kHz with a power of 50,000 watts as a clear channel (class A) station, using a slightly directional antenna solely for the purpose of improving reception in downtown Montreal.
The station had carried an all-news format since December 1999, identifying itself as Info 690. Before that date, the station was known as CKVL and was on 850 kHz; it then had a news/talk format. Along with longtime English-language sister station CINW, it ceased operations at exactly 7:02 p.m. ET on January 29, 2010. Two and a half years later, the 690 AM frequency was reused for sports-formatted station CKGM, which moved to that frequency from the 990 AM frequency.
History
Early years
CKVL was founded by Jack Tietolman and Corey Thomson and opened on November 3, 1946. The station was originally on 990 kHz, and operated with 1,000 watts as a daytimer. The station was bilingual (French/English), but the majority of programming was in French and it was largely perceived by listeners as a Francophone station. The call sign stood for "Canadian Kilocycle Verdun Lakeshore". Programming on CKVL was varied, as it was then typical, and numerous radio dramas were aired.
An FM sister station, CKVL-FM (CKOI-FM since 1976) was created sometime between 1947 and 1957. In any case, CKVL-FM was a full-time simulcast of CKVL until 1970.
By 1948, CKVL was broadcasting on 980 kHz, and operated 24 hours per day.
In 1954, CKVL moved to 850 kHz and increased its power to 5,000 watts full-time. The 980 kHz frequency would later be re-activated when CKGM went on the air in 1959.
Following the advent of television, the station was forced to redefine itself and some Top 40 programming appeared with Léon Lachance, whose show was highly popular with both linguistic groups.
CKVL became in January 1958 the first privately owned station in Montreal and all of Quebec to operate with 50,000 watts daytime (competitor CKAC increased its power to 50,000 watts full-time two months later). The station's nighttime power remained at 5,000 watts, and was only increased to 10,000 watts in the 1960s.
CKVL innovated with the first open line talk show in Quebec in 1959, hosted by "Madame X" (Reine Charrier). Efforts by Jack Tietolman to open a French-language television station failed, as the licence was given to Télé-Métropole (CFTM-TV); that station opened in 1961 and became the flagship of the TVA television network.
1968 to 1992
In 1968, CKVL abandoned its variety format in favour of a hybrid talk/music format, with weekday daytime programming being all-talk with a high proportion of open-line shows, including the famous Jacques Matti / Hélène Fontaine duo and former Liberal (and future Social Credit) politician Yvon Dupuis as morningman. Music programming mixing Top 40 hits with Adult contemporary music completed the schedule. The proportion of talk shows would increase over the next years, but at least some music would remain until 1999.
Sister station CKVL-FM started its own programming in 1970, using an automated oldies format.
New efforts by owner Jack Tietolman to get a television licence failed again in 1974. A licence was attributed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to another group (Télé Inter-Cité Québec Ltée), which managed to go bankrupt before even getting the station on the air. That same year, CKVL introduced all-news programming for its AM and PM drives (using respectively the names "Québec-matin" and "Québec-soir"), but high costs and less-than-satisfactory results provoked the end of that experiment the following year.
A long labour strike affected programming in 1976. CKVL also officially became a unilingual French station that year, as the CRTC forbade bilingualism on privately owned radio stations (unless a station would get a special dispensation).
Starting in 1978, CKVL started to lose money, due to declining listening combined with high labour costs. After being one of the most listened-to stations in Montreal in the 1950s and 1960s, strong competition from CKAC (and to a lesser extent from CJMS and FM stations) combined with the station's signal being inaudible at night in many parts of the Montreal market due to urban sprawl, resulted in a long decline in BBM ratings which would, along with corresponding financial losses, last until 1990.