The Southern Ontario/WNY Radio-TV Forum / Forrmer Toronto Radio Station & TV Guide Canada Owner Dies

**Posted by RadioActive** April 24, 2025 7:12 am

He was the owner of a Toronto commercial radio station and the Canadian edition of TV Guide.

But chances are, unless you worked there, you've never heard of him.

Philippe de Gaspé Beaubien was the guy behind Telemedia, which owned 26 radio stations in Canada - including CJCL when it was still at 1430 in the 1980s. He also created TV Hebdo, a popular television listings magazine in Quebec and took over TV Guide in Canada (and ruined it in my opinion - recipes in TV Guide - no way!)

He passed away this week after an unusual career in the media. His first brush with media fame came when he got his hands on CKAC Montreal, a very successful French-language station in La Belle Province. It soon became infamous for other reasons.

"In 1970, one of his radio stations, CKAC in Montreal, became part of what became known as the October Crisis. The Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) sent its demands and manifesto to the radio station. The FLQ revolutionaries helped make CKAC a raging success."

The media mogul was 97.

Former Telemedia Owner Philippe de Gaspé Beaubien Dies At 97

**Posted by Forward Power** April 24, 2025 8:32 am

RadioActive wrote:
Philippe de Gaspé Beaubien was the guy behind Telemedia, which owned 26 radio stations in Canada - including CJCL when it was still at 1430 in the 1980s.

The "CL" in that callsign stands for Canadian Living magazine, one of Telemedia's many properties. The company also owned Toronto's 97.3 for some years, as well as two Simcoe County stations - Orillia's CFOR 1570 and Midland's CKMP 1230, which both flipped to FM by the mid '90s, as CICX-FM 105.9 and CICZ-FM 104.1 respectively. Both stations are now Bell properties after a series of ownership changes in the 2000s and 2010s.

Telemedia also had a few radio stations in northern Ontario, but picked up some more in that neck of the woods, as well as the Ottawa Valley, when Pelmorex (controlled by fellow Montrealer Pierre Morrissette) got out of radio in the late '90s.

After reading the G&M article, I'm wondering if my wife's late uncle, a former pulp & paper exec from MTL, ever crossed paths with Beaubien or other notable names such as Paul Desmarais of Power Broadcasting, or Astral's Greenberg family.

**Posted by andysradio** April 24, 2025 8:41 am

I think TV Hebdo is still going?

**Posted by RadioActive** April 24, 2025 9:01 am

Somewhere in my travels, I came across this chilling letter. It's from Telemedia management and was aimed at the people working for CJCL in 1983. At the time, the station was a hybrid of talk and music (but mostly talk), a format that was new to the city and was a bit ahead of its time.

For the most part, they were paying the bills thanks to the Leafs and Jays games, because the place was not earning a lot of profit. This memo from the top explained why they were pulling the plug on the thing after about a year and a half of trying to make a dent in the ratings and coming up empty.

That led to this letter, which essentially told staff to get ready for layoffs. "It is likely there will be significant staff cutbacks required. Today we make no promises of employment to anyone, other than our commitment to be fair and reasonable."

(Fair and reasonable? A radio company doing layoffs? Yeah, right!)

The memo talks about finding a new format for the station, which I believe ended up being Music of Your Life, which did not last long. But if you ever wondered what one of those letters looked like, this is it.