Townships community embracing CJMQ Radio Bingo
For the last three months, local community radio station 88.9 FM (CJMQ) has been broadcasting a weekly bingo game across the Eastern Townships airwaves. Every Tuesday at 7 p.m. people have gathered with their friends and family at home and in public spaces to listen to their radios and play four games of Bingo. Gordon Smith, who hosts the show and runs the game, has been impressed by the number of people who play each week. “I have to give full thanks to the community, they embraced us big time.”
David Teasdale, Station Manager, adds, “it’s been something that I wished for,” since he started at CJMQ.
Radio Bingo is pretty much what it sounds like. It involves broadcasting a bingo game from the radio studio while players tune into the radio station from anywhere they choose. Bingo cards are purchased at various businesses which sponsor the show. The exact format, setup, and even tone of the show can vary from station to station, according to Smith and Teasdale.
At CJMQ, Smith is the bingo manager and “MC”, Teasdale is on the phone answering prospective winners, and Cody Gallichon runs the bingo machine and calls out the numbers on the balls. Each week also features various guests, often employees from the sponsoring businesses, but also invited guests by the station. Smith, as bingo manager, explains the rules of each round, and while waiting for each ball to be called, tells a mixture of his own and community-sourced jokes and trivia.
“I’m trying to make it more than a show where you say ‘D3’”, says Smith.
He explains that since “you have to wait 20 seconds between calling each number”, rather than having dead air, Smith tries to fill it with interesting trivia, or more often, terrible (but radio-friendly) jokes. Finding the right jokes is a delicate act, says Smith, who doesn’t want to alienate people while they play. “The dad jokes are the most popular,” says Smith, who encourages people on-air to send in jokes, messages, and other things they want to hear. Birthday messages are becoming popular, says Smith, who will also sing happy birthday if it happens to be on a show night.
Although Coaticook’s CIGN hosts a Frenchlanguage radio bingo, Smith himself didn’t understand what it was and first heard about it about a year ago. “I saw a notice in The Record about David Teasdale wanting someone to do radio bingo,” explains Smith. After sitting down with Teasdale, Smith grew more interested and got involved, as he saw the value in it as a means of bringing the community together, especially after a few years of isolation due to COVID.
Radio bingo is common elsewhere, says Smith, but was relatively unheard of here. “Down east,” remarks Smith, “I hear that people don’t call [on the phone],” showing how dedicated some communities can be.
Teasdale says that this has been a project long in the making. “When I first started [here] 20 years ago, I realized it would be a good thing to get going,” he explains. Unfortunately, gathering enough money to cover startup costs proved difficult. “To do radio bingo,” Teasdale explains, “you have to have a bunch of prizes lined up for your bingo card, you have to figure out where you’re gonna sell them, and how to deliver them. It’s a lot of travel and coordination that the station has to organize.” There’s also a license the station must obtain and renew yearly from the Quebec government.
After setting up a means of distribution, each week is also a big undertaking. “The first $1,200 goes to the winners of the [game],” explains Teasdale. This means they need to sell enough tickets and have enough sponsors to consistently have enough money to honour the cash prizes, but still have leftovers to invest back into the station.
“When we initially started, we were looking at [other] community stations,” says Teasdale. According to him, many stations said they had “nothing come from it for at least a year,” and while Teasdale notes that they’re not in it for the revenue stream, at the station they are hoping to turn it into a regular fundraising source. “We’re already doing remarkably well,” says Teasdale, for having started less than a quarter of a year ago. He hopes to use the money to start a dedicated news department at the station.
“My motivation is to have a service for the community,” says Teasdale. Smith feels that the show is a “win-win” for the station and for the community, because of how it brings together the community, even outside the game. People come up to him now to suggest jokes or give comments about the show. “It’s really morphed into a gathering of people, where you reconnect with each other,” says Smith.
Bingo tickets will set you back $6 and can be purchased at 26 locations, such as the Provigo in Sherbrooke, Depanneur Craig in Richmond, and Marche Massawippi in Ayer’s Cliff. Other locations are in Magog, Cookshire, and Sawyerville, and Teasdale says they’re adding more “all the time.”