Many of us spend a few hours driving on the road each week, often flipping through the radio stations to find our favourite programming.
EZ FM is now on air, broadcasting on 99.5Mhz in the Esterhazy area and available online via streaming anywhere in the world.
The new station named EZ FM is a twist on the town name, EsterhaZy; the station’s call letters are CJEZ-FM.
Bill Gade of the CJ Radio family and 83 North Inc. explained that the station will play a wide variety of music. “It’s not exclusive to any one genre. It would be fair to say the station does have a country slant, but you’ll also hear oldies, rock and even a bit of polka! We model our music list on about 50% country and the rest from different types of music. You’ll hear new and old songs. We keep a rather large playlist compared to other stations that might only pick from 1,000 songs or less. Some of our songs only play every couple weeks.”
The station will also feature local advertising and events during the day, as well as local and regional/national news. Gade mentioned they will also track the latest weather forecast as they air the weather every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day.
Speaking about possible community fundraisers, Bill said they are in talks with a local group to host a radio fundraising bingo on the station and will likely be able to announce that in the coming weeks with a start date of early 2022.
EZ FM will air its own programming about 20 hours a day. There is a morning show, as the station joins their syndicated show which runs across the other stations in their network. As their upgrading at master control finishes, there will be portions of the show that only air in Esterhazy.
The morning show is the Mark & Bill Morning Show. This segment features a duo who have been working together off and on for 15 years now.
For the rest of the schedule, Saturday nights will feature a program produced in their Gimli studio. The Classic Country and Oldies Show airs from 6 P.M. to 9 P.M. Polka, aired on stereo, is featured from 9 P.M. to 10 P.M. A half-hour of gospel music plays on Sunday morning at 10 A.M.
The idea for a radio station in Esterhazy developed a few years ago. Bill explained, “We were looking to expand into Saskatchewan, and Esterhazy looked like a great place. Covid has gotten in the way of those plans, but like everyone else we are working through the pandemic.”
He continued, “Esterhazy seemed like a great town and we really liked the people. We went to a bunch of different towns and hung around to see what they were like. Once we were pretty sure we wanted Esterhazy, we held a stakeholder meeting and talked with a bunch of people who were as excited as we were. The idea that we chose Esterhazy out of all the options…it’s a sign of how great Esterhazy is.”
CJEZ broadcasts from the Esterhazy Water Tower at an effective power of 50 watts which is intended to cover a radius of about 10 miles. Tests notified that the signal could be heard near Churchbridge and Langenburg, although Bill admitted that coverage in vehicles is better than in homes. There is a bit of equipment to finish installing this week or early next week, with a tentative date of November 13th or 15th. Likely the station will be live in Esterhazy on the afternoon of the 13th with full programming beginning on the 15th; this of course is still subject to change.
Gade has a well-developed background in the radio business. He stated, “This will be the fifth radio station I’ve built. I opened my first one in 2006 in Swan River. I always had a lot of interest in radio and did some intern work in radio, but it was a new career for me when I started building stations.”
The stations in the CJ Radio family include CJSB-FM Swan River, CJBP-FM Neepawa. CJIE-FM Gimli/ Arborg, CJVM-FM Virden and CJEZ-FM Esterhazy.
In closing, Bill Gade said, “What we are offering is a radio station that is Esterhazy’s own with Esterhazy information – but that exists because we can swap resources back and forth with our other stations. Those connections will let us promote Esterhazy across our other stations. In one small example, we did a welcome video for Esterhazy. Hundreds of folks from our other stations chose to watch and learn about the town – most had never ever been there. We’ve even had a few listeners from our other stations hear us talking about Esterhazy and then ask us about visiting Esterhazy; to us, that’s amazing.”