Ten employees will lose their jobs with the closure of AM940 and Info690. Ten employees will lose their jobs with the closure of AM940 and Info690. (CBC)

Corus Entertainment has shut down two Montreal radio stations, AM940 Montreal’s Greatest Hits and AM Info690.

Programming on both stations ceased as of 10 a.m. ET and both went off the air entirely at 7 p.m. on Friday.

The radio stations were unprofitable and were no longer viable in the current economic context, said Corus Quebec vice-president Mario Cecchini.

He said the stations have lost millions of dollars over the past decade.

New technology makes it difficult to keep an AM radio station afloat, Cecchini said.

“The youth since the '80s grew a lot with the FM radio and now it's a situation where things need to move on and people found their newsgathering somewhere else,” he said.

Ten employees will lose their jobs. They include eight at the French-language Info690: three journalists, two traffic reporters and three members of the operating staff. Two employees at AM940 will also lose their jobs — one on-air host and one technician.

Five reporters and three traffic reporters from Info690 will be transferred to another Corus station in Montreal, 98.5 FM.

AM940 had struggled to gain an audience after it was launched as an all-music station in June 2008. The station was previously known as 940News

Reporter Anny Guillemette will keep her job, but said she will miss her colleagues at Info690.

"It was a great adventure,” she said. “Everybody worked hard for 10 years and we don't really understand this morning, but we know that it's a financial decision and we just can't do anything about that."

Jobs fade in private radio

The loss of the two radio stations will mean fewer options for consumers of news, said Claude Hébert, secretary general of the radio union of the National Communications Federation of the Confederation of National Trade Unions, which represents employees at Info690.

There have been more and more cuts at private radio stations, Hébert said.

In August, Montreal talk radio station CJAD, owned by Astral Media, laid off eight on-air personalities and one off-air staff member.

Later that month, another Corus-owned station, The Q Montreal, made waves by parting ways with two-thirds of the members of its popular morning show.

Corus operates four radio stations in Montreal, The Q Montreal, 98.5FM and French-language stations CKOI and CKAC Sports.

The company is the largest private broadcaster in Quebec, reaching more than 4.5 million listeners a week.

Corus recently filed a preliminary prospectus to raise up to $500 million in new debt securities.

The company also operates several specialty cable channels, including YTV, Treehouse, W Network and Cosmopolitan TV, as well as Movie Central and HBO Canada in Western Canada.

With files from The Canadian Press