Radio l\u2019\u00cele-du-Prince-\u00c9douard<\/a> is an online station created for francophone and Acadian Islanders. It launched in June 2025 and is driven by community volunteers and local priorities.<\/p>\n“People have been waiting for such a long time for this radio station because it had been in discussion for well over 40 years,” said Paul Gallant, who hosts the morning show and helps lead the station\u2019s programming.<\/p>\n
“We’re not a big radio station \u2026 but it\u2019s growing bit by bit.”<\/p>\n
LISTEN | P.E.I.\u2019s community-led francophone radio station:<\/p>\n
Island Morning8:58P.E.I.\u2019s community-led francophone radio station<\/p>\n
Listeners have been tuning in to Radio \u00cele-du-Prince-\u00c9douard for over a year now. We check in with host Paul Gallant to hear how the community-led radio station has been getting on.<\/p>\n
Gallant said the idea of a community French-language station on P.E.I. is not new. Francophone community radio stations have operated outside Quebec for decades, including stations across the Maritimes, helping preserve language and culture.<\/p>\n
But when the group behind Radio l\u2019\u00cele-du-Prince-\u00c9douard was ready to move forward, the CRTC had frozen new FM applications as it considered the future of radio and digital broadcasting.<\/p>\n
Earlier community stations grew up on FM and later added online streaming. Radio l\u2019\u00cele-du-Prince-\u00c9douard is doing the reverse.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019re kind of an experiment in terms of how do you make it function online,” Gallant said. “We know that we want to go to FM, but we know that it\u2019s also changing.\u2026 We have to become a multimedia platform, and that\u2019s a lot of work.”<\/p>\n
For now, Radio l\u2019\u00cele-du-Prince-\u00c9douard is on the air 24\/7 through its website and a new app, with much of its programming focused on local artists.<\/p>\n
“Our main focus is Island Acadian or francophone artists. Those are the ones we play as a priority,” Gallant said. “We also do anglophone artists from P.E.I. So that\u2019s what a radio station is: it reflects the community.”<\/p>\n
Gallant has seen the impact of that kind of programming before in a place he previously lived for decades. He said a community radio station there helped young people discover local musicians alongside global stars.<\/p>\n
“Sure, they knew the American top 10,” he said. “But they also knew their local artists. The local artists were their heroes too.”<\/p>\n
‘We\u2019re wide open to the community’<\/p>\n
Gallant said the station is not trying to compete with mainstream or commercial radio on the Island.<\/p>\n
Instead, Radio l\u2019\u00cele-du-Prince-\u00c9douard leans into hyper-local content and flexible programming that reflects its audience, something he said community radio can do best.<\/p>\n
Volunteers can pitch niche shows that may never make it onto a commercial schedule.<\/p>\n
“People can volunteer and say, ‘I want to do a show on jazz,’ whereas you might not find that on a commercial station. We\u2019ll play it,” Gallant said. “We\u2019re wide open to the community and what they want to hear and do.”<\/p>\n
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Radio l\u2019\u00cele-du-Prince-\u00c9douard also has a free app, so listeners can tune in to the station on their phones any time. (Thinh Nguyen\/CBC)<\/p>\n
That openness extends to the Island\u2019s increasingly diverse French-speaking population, he said.<\/p>\n
“We try to maintain the Acadian language and culture and way of talking, but at the same time we\u2019ve done some projects with the immigrant communities, and we want to do more,” Gallant said. <\/p>\n
“Volunteer to do music in Arabic or music in Punjabi, whatever your language is \u2014 we\u2019re welcoming in that sense too.”<\/p>\n
To keep the station operating, Gallant said it sells some advertising and relies on a lot of community support.<\/p>\n
“We do a lot of creative projects, if you will, to get some funding. But basically, we’ve got to maintain it on our own, and so far, it’s been going OK,” he said.<\/p>\n
‘I have the best job in the world’<\/p>\n
For Gallant, the work over the past year has been personally rewarding.<\/p>\n
“For me, it\u2019s two hours by myself listening to great music and discovering music. I think I have the best job in the world,” he said of his morning show.<\/p>\n
Community radio, alongside public broadcasters, is part of protecting Canadian and francophone voices in a media environment dominated by U.S. content.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s a reflection of our culture, who we are, and we don\u2019t want to be too swept up by the American wave.”<\/p>\n
Gallant pointed to recent discussions around cutting funding to public and community broadcasters, and he said that would have lasting consequences.<\/p>\n
“The day that that happens is the day that we start to lose our democracy,” Gallant said. “You add community radio stations to that mix, make that stronger, and that\u2019s good for everyone\u2019s identity.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 5 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859002,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-859001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859001\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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