16 December 2013

PRESS RELEASE – Sherbrooke’s community radio station CFLX 95.5 FM gets a new lease on life with the recent acquisition of its new digital equipment. In addition to having a positive impact on the station’s growth, installation of the new automation system will give the NPO a level of technical credibility equal to that of its competitors.

The system will allow CFLX to automatically manage the entire radio production process such as recording advertising spots, programming, broadcasting, editing, circulation and billing reports, while taking into consideration the full range of potential sponsorship and advertising opportunities.

According to Jacques Lavoie, the station’s executive director, this new investment has enormous impact. “Production is now user-friendly for the approximately 100 station volunteers and broadcast quality is clearly better. Even more importantly, dead air is a thing of the past because the program handles technical problems automatically.”

It certainly makes the advertisers happy: they now know that their advertisements or sponsorship announcements will be properly aired and a broadcast report sent to them.

“It was not uncommon for customers to shy away from buying advertising because they didn’t want to risk the dead air caused by the old equipment,” recounted Lavoie. “Now that that problem has been solved, we look forward to attracting local advertisers through our advertising program and its competitve flat rates. Based on the medium-term budget, increased advertising revenues should guarantee CFLX’s survival,” pointed out Lavoie.

In carrying out this project costing a total of $22,441, CFLX was able to count on financial and technical support from Sherbrooke Innopole and the Sherbrooke Corporation de développement économique communautaire (CDEC for community economic-development corporation), with an $18,000 grant through the Sherbrooke Social Economy Business Development Fund (FDES).