CIRR-FM (103.9 MHz, 103.9 Proud FM) was a radio station in Toronto, Ontario. Owned by Evanov Communications, it broadcast a rhythmic contemporary format with a focus on the area's LGBT community. Launching on April 16, 2007, it was the first radio station in Canada targeted specifically to an LGBT audience, and the first commercial, terrestrial radio station in the world to target such an audience. It was one of six stations in Toronto that reports to Nielsen BDS' Canadian Top 40 airplay panel.
Originally broadcasting from Toronto's Church and Wellesley neighbourhood, CIRR's studios were subsequently located on Dundas Street West in the Eatonville neighbourhood of Toronto, while its transmitter was located atop the Sheraton Centre on Queen Street West in downtown Toronto across from Toronto City Hall.
On August 16, 2023, Evanov announced that the station would be shut down effective September 1, with its staff reassigned to sister station CIDC-FM.
History
Application and launch
The application was filed by Rainbow Media Group, a partnership between Evanov Radio Group and other private investors, in 2005, and was approved by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission on April 5, 2006. The company planned a format featuring a mix of popular and classic music (with daytime focused primarily towards current and classic hits, and evenings featuring more specialty rhythmic, dance, and world music), with spoken word programming oriented towards Toronto's LGBT community (including at least 7 hours of news programming, and 21 hours of talk/information programming per week). The station also promised to fund a $5,000 annual scholarship to journalism, art or music students at Humber College and Carleton University, and a $30,000 stage showcase for musical artists at Toronto's Pride Week celebrations. Programming would be partially overseen by a community advisory committee. The company first applied for this licence in 2000, but was denied in favour of Milestone Radio's CFXJ, Canada's first urban music station.
Several interventions opposing the application, as well as National Post columnist Lorne Gunter, noted that the CRTC had not issued an open call for other applications, alleging that the application was given special treatment by the CRTC for "politically correct" reasons — notably, Gunter directly linked the station's approval to the CRTC's denial in 2003 of a licence for a Roman Catholic radio station in Toronto, alleging religious discrimination. In the licence approval, the CRTC noted that because the proposed 103.9 frequency is second-adjacent to Evanov's own CIDC, and Evanov would therefore have to give its consent to accept a zone of radio frequency interference to its signal, the company would effectively have held a veto over any competing application for the frequency. The Catholic station, conversely, was one of eight applicants for a single frequency, 101.3, which was awarded to the multicultural station CJSA-FM.
Pink Triangle Press, the publisher of the city's LGBT newspaper Xtra!, was originally a partner in the application. The company pulled out in December 2005, alleging that Evanov was using the application as a backdoor into the Toronto market — where reception of the company's existing rhythmic contemporary station, CIDC-FM Orangeville is unreliable — and intended to eventually drop the LGBT programming and convert the station to a mainstream format or rebroadcaster of CIDC. Evanov stated a commitment to serving LGBT audiences, but refused Pink Triangle's request to have the commitment reiterated in a legally binding contract.
Post-launch
In 2009, Evanov bought out the remaining owners of Rainbow Media Group, becoming the station's sole owner.
In the station's early years, some listeners noted that even in the Church and Wellesley Village itself, the station's signal was sometimes drowned out by CBL-FM's rebroadcaster in Peterborough or by CKDK-FM from Woodstock. In 2010, the station applied to the CRTC to increase its signal from 50 watts to 128 watts, with an ERP of 250 watts, which received CRTC approval on June 9, 2010. However, the station still broadcast from a transmitter location near Yonge and Eglinton in the Midtown region, rather than from a downtown location like most other radio stations in the city, and its signal later deteriorated even further as condominium development increased in the area. CIRR has since relocated its transmitter to the top of the Sheraton Centre on Queen Street.