CHIN Radio brings 50 years of experience in the ethnic broadcasting sector to Ottawa/Gatineau and is totally dedicated to this concept. CHIN Radio Toronto has for many years enjoyed a high level of recognition and acceptance in Ottawa as a quality ethnic program provider through its television programs on Citytv and its radio programming on Cable FM and Satellite. CHIN Radio draws on its history, expertise and respected position within the ethnic communities to serve as the foundation for the development of a vibrant and exciting multilingual radio service for CHIN Ottawa 97.9FM.
CHIN's strength in the Toronto ethnic radio sector has been to recognize and meet the constantly changing and evolving needs of Toronto's ethnic audiences. Drawing on the experience and success in providing ethnic broadcasting services to Toronto's diverse multicultural communities, an expansion into the Ottawa/Hull market was the natural extension of CHIN's fundamental philosophy of meeting the needs of the ethnic communities.
CHIN Ottawa 97.9FM CJLL is committed to serving the greatest number of cultural groups and communities as possible and serves up to 37 distinct cultural communities in 20 different languages; The station carries a mix of music, entertainment, news, community events and live talk shows. Local programming focus is reflective of the needs of the Ottawa/Gatineau ethnic communities that CHIN Ottawa 97.9 serves.
Excerpt from a CHIN media release announcing the awarding of the Ottawa 97.9FM licence......
October 4, 2001
The Canadian Radio-Television Commission has announced today that CHIN International Radio Toronto has won its bid to bring Multicultural radio programming to the Ottawa-Hull area.
"We are thrilled and delighted with the CRTC decision to grant CHIN Radio the licence for FM 97.9 in the Ottawa/Hull area." announced CHIN Radio CEO and founder Johnny Lombardi. "CHIN's new Ottawa station will be the pioneering multicultural broadcaster in the Ottawa-Hull area, just as CHIN Toronto was 35 years ago in the GTA". "This is an exciting and wonderful opportunity for the multicultural communities in Ottawa-Hull to have a voice and forum on radio" states CHIN Radio President Lenny Lombardi.
CHIN Ottawa was a dream of the late Johnny Lombardi, CEO of CHIN Radio Toronto when the CRTC (Canadian Radio and Television Commission) put forward the availability of FM frequencies in the Ottawa/Hull (now Ottawa/Gatineau) area. The CRTC was not looking for a mainstream station for the area, but rather, a multicultural service to serve the needs of the growing ethnic communities of Ottawa/Gatineau. Johnny Lombardi and his son, Lenny Lombardi, President of CHIN Radio, began the lengthy and exciting process of filing the application for the 97.9FM frequency to become the very first multicultural/multilingual radio station in our Nation's Capital. Months of preparation, meetings with community leaders who came forward to support the CHIN application, technical adjustments, and much more, just leading up to the day our panel sat in front of the CRTC commissioners at the Public Hearing in Ottawa in 2000.
