Editing CKAC (section)

===Decline and sale to Corus Entertainment===
In 2001, [[Astral Media]] (successor of Radiomutuel) got permission from the [[CRTC]] to buy Telemedia's Quebec radio properties, which included the [[RockDétente]] network as well as 50% of the Radiomédia network. However the [[Competition Bureau]], another federal agency, partially blocked the deal over concentration of ownership issues, and ordered Astral Media to sell Radiomédia stations, which were temporarily put into trusteeship.

A first attempt failed when [[TVA (Canadian TV network)|TVA]] ([[Quebecor]]) and [[RNC Media]] were refused permission by the CRTC in June 2003, to buy the stations, because of ownership concentration concerns. A second deal was announced in September 2003, with businessmen Gaétan Morin and Sylvain Chamberland, but a month later popular CKAC morning man [[Paul Arcand]] unexpectedly announced his departure from the station, and in late November [[Corus Entertainment]] announced that it would launch a new news/talk format on [[CHMP-FM]] 98.5 (then CKOO-FM) in January 2004, with Arcand as its morning man. [[Jean Lapierre]], who was the afternoon drive host, also announced his departure as he returned to active politics; as a result Morin and Chamberland exercised their option to cancel their acquisition, paying a million-dollar fee to do so.

Astral Media then concluded in March 2004, an exchange of [[assets]] deal with [[Corus Entertainment]]; the latter publicly announced in June its intention of dramatically reducing programming expenses if the deal was approved, most notably by shutting down the CKAC newsroom.

Despite widespread opposition against that deal, the known existence of at least four other serious and much less controversial contenders to buy the Radiomédia stations, and numerous allegations to the effect that Corus Entertainment's offer was actually part of a larger plan to [[anti-competitive practices|prevent any meaningful competition]] to its new FM [[talk radio]] format (as Corus seemed to try to weaken and steal listeners from CKAC and not from the increasingly popular CBF-FM, and its sales representatives claimed to clients that they would be better advised to buy advertising at [[CHMP-FM]] and not CKAC as they pretended the latter was going to close shortly no matter what would happen), the deal was approved in January 2005, by the CRTC in the midst of strong rumours that [[Astral Media]] would close CKAC if the deal was not approved. The deal took effect a few months later after a failed attempt by CKAC employees to appeal the decision to the [[Cabinet of Canada|Federal Cabinet]].

On May 30, 2005, Corus Entertainment closed the reputed CKAC newsroom in favour of the lowly regarded CINF (Info 690) newsroom, which, until its January 2010 closure, produced newscasts for all French-language Corus Entertainment stations under the name "CorusNouvelles". (The production of CorusNouvelles would move to CHMP-FM following the closure of CINF).<ref>[http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/January2010/29/c5055.html CNW Newswire: "AM Info690 Montréal and AM940 Montreal's Greatest Hits to cease operation on January 29, 2010", January 29, 2010.]</ref> The Radiomédia network became known as the [[Corus Québec]] network, and CKAC continued to be the flagship of the network as it continued to be the source of talk programming for Corus' talk stations outside of Montreal. However ratings continued to suffer, and CKAC fell well below the 500,000 listeners mark according to [[Bureau of Broadcast Measurement|BBM]] ratings.