NRJ (Canada)

NRJ (Canada)

NRJ (previously known as énergie) is a network of French-language contemporary hit radio outlets broadcasting throughout the province of Quebec and portions of eastern Ontario, in Eastern Canada. They offer a personality-driven mix of francophone and anglophone pop hits and cutting-edge programs, catering to a young adult audience. Although the flagship station is CKMF-FM Montreal, the 10 stations in the network usually have their own talent for each of their own markets. They are owned by Astral Media.

Most, but not all, NRJ stations broadcast in the same markets as Astral's adult contemporary network RockDétente.

On July 6, 2009, Astral Media and European group NRJ Radio announced a deal to rebrand the Énergie network as "NRJ", effective August 24. (The French pronunciations of "NRJ" and "énergie" are nearly identical.) Astral will retain full ownership of the stations.

From 2006 to 2010, Astral also programmed a satellite radio channel, branded as Énergie2, for broadcast on Sirius Canada and Sirius Satellite Radio, on channel 89. This channel offered essentially the same format as the terrestrial network, and was hosted by Richard Fortin and Nicolas Wilson. However, the Énergie brand was entirely discarded in September 2010, as Sirius Canada acquired the channel, dropped the English artists and renamed it as Latitude franco.

For the network, the Astral Media IDs usually use Astral's rock jingles from rock stations rather than Astral's jingle packages used on the contemporary hit radio stations such as CIBK-FM in Calgary or CHSU-FM in Kelowna.

Since the NRJ switch, the stations began airing bumpers saying "Pub...express" before almost every single commercial break, following the same lead as NRJ's outlets in France -- it is customary for radio and television stations in France to have bumpers identifying commercial breaks before and after the breaks.

Read more about NRJ (Canada):  Stations, Slogans